What Art Did for One Child

“My vivid and colorful imagination turned me into a hopeless daydreamer in elementary school,” recalls award-winning New York art teacher Michele Sommer in this poignant Harvard Educational Review memoir. “Once, in first grade, I was so completely absorbed in a daydream that I didn’t notice all the children had been dismissed. I found myself sitting completely alone at my desk, my teacher glaring at me… I was keenly aware even as a child that the adults in my life regarded my daydreaming as a defect, and so I was deeply ashamed of it. I worked hard to learn to pay attention and follow directions like everyone else. What I wouldn’t give today, as an artist, to once again have that extraordinary mental capacity!” 

In second grade, Sommer had difficulty with subtraction, so one day she drew vertical lines through all the subtraction signs, turning those problems into addition, which she knew how to do. Her teacher was not fooled and put a big red F on her paper. On the way home, Sommer disposed of the paper under the neighbor’s pine tree. “My earliest failures in school set the tone for my entire kindergarten through twelfth-grade education,” she says. “The negative academic expectations were somehow passed on from grade to grade, teacher to teacher. I felt I could never be an A student.”

As she went through elementary school, Sommer did well in art and was praised for her ability. But was it a gift she might lose? “I have a distinct memory of the moment of terror I experienced entering the fourth grade,” she says, “wondering if I ‘still had it’ or if I had somehow lost my artistic ability over the summer months. What if I couldn’t draw anymore? How would I get through the school year?”

In junior high school, she still felt “dumb, humiliated, and worthless” as a student. But on graduation day, she was astonished to hear her name called by Mrs. Kiester, her art teacher, to receive an award for a colored-pencil drawing she had done of a geranium. The teacher’s note on the back commended her for her work – for “the satisfaction and happiness it has brought to me and others who have known, loved, and marveled at your creativity while you joined us here.” 

“My art teacher saved my life that day,” says Sommer. “The feeling of success and the knowledge that I had a valuable skill that I could share with others did buoy me and set me on the path to my bright future… Art continues to save my life every day. I need the elements of art like I need food and water; to me these elements are the basic building blocks of life.” 

As an art teacher, she continues, “I often get to see another side of a student who is struggling in academic subjects. For parents and teachers of these students, having someone witness this side of them is extremely valuable in working toward a deeper understanding of a child. I have an important role in discovering how children learn and how they see and feel about themselves and the world around them. I know that every child can experience success and become excited about learning. Art education has the power to make that happen.” 

“The Cream Does Not Always Rise: The Plight of Visual-Spatial Learners and the Power of Art Education” by Michele Sommer in Harvard Educational Review, Spring 2013 (Vol. 83, #1, p. 40-42), www.harvardeducationalreview.org

From the Marshall Memo #482