Art docents celebrate 35 years of teaching
By Kathleen Acuff, Town Crier Staff Writer
 Los Altos Art Docent Betty Latta demonstrates watercolor techniques to Springer School sixth-grader Nicole Bennett. The Los Altos Art Docents will celebrate their 35th anniversary with the “Artists in Bloom” exhibit Thursday through Sunday at Hillview Community Center. |
An exuberance of children’s art will fill the multipurpose room at Hillview Center when “Artists in Bloom,” the annual student art show, opens Thursday. Works by every elementary student in the Los Altos School District, and by many middle school students, will be on view in the unjudged exhibit through Sunday.
The students’ work appears through the good graces of the Los Altos Art Docents, who not only volunteered to teach the lessons from which the art sprang, but also sorted, transported and hung or placed every piece - and will take it all away again. That’s about 3,500 pieces or, coincidentally, 100 paintings, collages and sculptures for every year the docents have been taking art instruction into the schools.
That is unarguably one way to stay fit, but it’s not the reason the program has gained strength in the course of its 35 years.
Nancy Marston and Marlene Grove co-founded the art docent program in the spring of 1970 when funding for art instruction in the public schools was cut. Joined by 25 other women determined to keep art in the schools, they vowed, in the words of the group’s mission statement, “to stimulate, at an early age, a child’s awareness of art and to help her or him understand its processes through appreciation and participation.”
The docent program has grown from the first 27 volunteers who taught 88 classes to 80 volunteers who teach 600 classes a year.
In the first year, docents taught three appreciation lessons and no hands-on art at all. Now they have a portfolio of 39 hands-on and appreciation courses. Lessons begin in kindergarten, and courses for first- through sixth-graders build on the skills, techniques and concepts taught in previous years. Appreciation classes support the social studies curriculum in each grade.
The course description for a third-grade unit called “Seeing and Drawing” contains what could be the docents’ mantra: “Learning to draw is learning to see.”
Second-graders learn about mixing colors. Docent board chairwoman Renee Marshalla told of swirling yellow paint into blue to make green as the children gasped in amazement.
Docent coordinator Nan Bajke thought teaching art appreciation lessons would be “intimidating, something you’d need an art degree for.” She learned that “you go in and ask for a response - there are no right or wrong answers.”
“The kids have amazing perspective,” she said. “You hear things from them you’d never hear from adults.”
Marshalla said, “We teach them that a diagonal line is action. They look for that now when they go to museums and art shows with their parents. They totally get it.”
Docents draw on their own experience and from continual research to keep art instruction in line with district curriculum and to introduce new topics. For example, three docents who are architects are developing a course on architecture for fourth-graders.
The arts program receives funds from the school district, PTAs and community arts groups. Docents raise money to buy art supplies for the lessons they teach. The program’s annual budget of $12,000 to $16,000 - about $3.50 per student - is spent on materials.
Keeping at it
Almost half the docents no longer have children in district schools.
“It’s so rewarding for us, we just keep on doing it,” Marshalla said.
Three docents have been active in the program for more than 25 years: Betty Latta, served for 27 years; Judy William, served for 25 years; and Nancy Barnoski, a veteran of 25 years retired last year from the post of docent coordinator.
District Superintendent Marge Gratiot said she “begged” Barnoski to take over the coordinator’s job after Marston retired.
“She is passionate about life - and about art,” Gratiot said of Barnoski. “We teased her about being the ‘right brain’ of a very left-brained district. Her enthusiasm and energy helped the art docents recruit volunteers, create new art opportunities for students and renew the organization every year.”
Fifteen to 18 recruits join the program annually to network with women from a wide range of professions and backgrounds, develop - and in many cases discover - their artistic ability and enjoy a flexible schedule. Each volunteer learns how to lead two to eight units in each elementary grade level and teaches at least three classes a month.
Bajke, who fills the only paid position in the volunteer program, said a docent does not need an art background or even apparent talent. The docent program gives recruits two years of thorough training. A new docent assists a veteran the first year, and begins to teach when she - so far, all the docents are women - feels ready. Docents take monthly field trips to museums and special exhibits and hear experts speak at their general meetings.
Before becoming a docent, Marshalla had no idea she would love teaching art in the classroom. Although she did not have an art background before volunteering in the docent program, “I guess I do have an art background now,” she laughed.
Los Altos School District Trustee Margot Harrigan, now in her 10th year as an art docent, was introduced to the program when she took a year off from a corporate job to serve as PTA president. Another PTA volunteer told her, “You have to try it - the women are fabulous, and you don’t need to know any art.”
Harrigan describes herself as all thumbs. She taught art appreciation lessons first, waiting till she felt more confident to teach hands-on lessons.
“I love this program; it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. The children are just great, and they really enjoy it. It’s really rewarding to see the expressions on their faces, and the thrill of accomplishment,” she said.
Harrigan said she grew up with very little exposure to art, so serving as an art docent “has been a life-changing experience” for her.
“It’s such an environment of nurturing,” she said. “Many women are incredibly talented; others, like me, learn a lot.”
According to Harrigan, the docents even midwived another arts program for Los Altos elementary schools. This one trains teachers to give hands-on lessons in projects that take hours or days to complete rather than the hour and a half that is the limit of most docents’ lessons. Harrigan said that Maddy McBirney, a docent at the time, wrote the grant that gave birth to the art aides, now called art specialists. McBirney became the art specialist at Almond.
Superintendent Gratiot said, “If I could pick one organization that exemplifies the Los Altos School District, it would be the art docent program. It attracts both parents and community members who serve as volunteers, often for many years, and who become their own ambassadors for the district in the wider community. … Being an art docent is a calling - it takes dedication, commitment, enthusiasm - but provides a huge benefit to the students in the Los Altos School District.”
Gratiot remembers that when she was the principal of Loyola School, one of her students was “almost always grumpy about something.” One day the student came to school smiling.
“You look happy today,” Gratiot said to her.
The student replied, “I know it’s going to be a great day - the art docents are coming!”
The “Artists in Bloom” student art show is scheduled 3-5 p.m., Thursday and Friday; and 1-5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, in the multipurpose room at Hillview Community Center, 97 Hillview Ave. Children are invited to make their own art 1-4 p.m., Saturday. The docents’ artwork will be on display June 1-15 at Main Street Cafe & Books, 134 Main St..
