Differing age groups paired in creative effort

Fish have never been so instructive.

Up to their elbows in reddish-brown clay, armed with rolling pins and texturizing tools and lots of curiosity, a classroom of first-graders from Elrod School were deep into a new project with a class full of Flathead High School ceramics students Friday morning.

"Starfish are my favorite," little Cody Collins told his high school helper, Amanda Wygant.

They were rolling out a firm lump of clay before they formed what would become a fish-shaped dish for Collins to take home in a few weeks.

"That's what I made," the 11th-grader responded, happily surprised. "A starfish!"

Feb. 18 was the first of a three-day exchange between the two groups. The second came Friday, when the first-graders trooped back over to the ceramics classroom to glaze their creations. They will get popped into a kiln for firing over the following days.

The third and final will come next week when the high-schoolers deliver the finished dishes back to the first-graders, who will host their new friends in a fun activity on their own turf.

It's an exchange that ceramics teacher Lavonne Burgard has fostered over many years.

Each semester, she gets in touch with teachers at Elrod, just a block away from the high school in Kalispell. They set up a time for the visits when it works best into curriculum at both schools.

In the past, second-graders have been the lucky students to get in on the fish-dish project because a core of teachers at that grade level had showed a special interest. But, gradually, they have now retired.

"So I thought, why not spread around the joy?" Burgard said.

The exchange enjoys the support of administrators at both schools, and it feeds nicely into studies at both ends of the spectrum.

"What's so great is our science unit is sand and pebbles," Elrod first-grade teacher Pati Bowman said. Her students study the process of erosion, learning how rocks become pebbles, then sand, then silt - and finally clay to make into fish dishes.

"This is very positive," Bowman said. "They've got a one-on-one interaction with somebody. It's not very often that they get that kind of attention" in class, considering the student-to-teacher ratio and the varied classroom requirements.

"I'm really amazed at how well they are working with each other," she said. "I love the enthusiasm and excitement."

Those were two commodities in abundant supply recently - from both age groups.

When the first-graders arrived in the ceramics classroom, each child picked out a high school partner who would spend the period teaching them how to work with clay and make the fish dishes.

After exchanging names, they set to kneading and rolling the clay "to make it soft," Collins said.

Then the youngster caught a good glimpse of his classmate's creation under way at the other end of the table.

"I like yours, Ethan," Collins said.

Ethan Thomas and Kyle Buckallew, a senior, were hard at work and had cut a fish shape out of their own pancake of clay.

"I have five fish," Thomas told of his aquarium at home, "but one died. I have two tropical fish and one goldfish and one sucker fish." The goldfish, he continued, eats pellets but the sucker fish eats beans.

The connection between art and life were clear.

The developing connections between older and younger students were encouraging.

"In the public school system, the teenagers try to be so grown up," Burgard observed. "But they yearn to have some of their childhood that they had to leave behind … They say, 'This is fun. I wish I could be a kid again.'"

In her own way, Burgard also gains something from the exchange as her students get their eyes opened.

"Those who are not so in touch with education see what it's like to teach and understand what I'm doing," she said.

Buckallew, who's heading to Helena Tech for metals studies in welding and machining after graduation, isn't so sure about the education bit.

To Sean Stewart, though, it's almost second nature.

"I've looked after a lot of kids," in three summers of working at the Loon Lake 4-H camp, Stewart said. He partnered with Austin Rollins who was quietly diligent as his own fish dish took shape.

Across the way, first-grader Alan Hobbs got a little art instruction from Spencer Roloson, a junior who's been thinking about a business career but really likes drawing. The slim-line fish got a fancy set of scales carved into its long body. To finish it off, Roloson draped it over a couple sticks to give it an upward curve.

Hobbs, for his part, was busy building a magic person. He figured he'd give his fish dish to his mom.

Ezra Kuntz knew exactly what he wanted from his fish.

The first-grader started making a cut in the flattened clay, but didn't like what he saw so rolled back over it and started on a new triangular shape. It was his second fish for the day. He's pretty good at art, he admitted.

"Better give it an eye," senior Cody Flora coached, as Kuntz carved intricate lines across the clay.

As they headed over to the wash-up station at the end of class, Flora pulled Kuntz's first fish from its storage box. The high-schooler pointed to a hole near one edge, with short, sharp lines radiating from it.

"That's where it got bit by a shark."

Bria Effertz, a senior, watched as the first-graders said goodbye and filed out the door.

"It was a lot of fun," Effertz said. "They have a lot of energy. It's been a long time since I've been around kids."

Her partner, Talyia Gironda, wanted to make five fish but ran out of time. It was a good match, Effertz said.

"I gave her my fish," she said of the ceramic projects Burgard had her students do to prepare for the first-grade experience. "Her little friend isn't here today, so she'll probably give it to her."

Burgard relishes those relationships, person-to-person and curricular discipline-to-discipline.

"It shows the interconnection. If the administrators gave us all a feather and said, 'You've got to teach with that all day,'" she postulated, teachers would tie in lessons on math, history, English, science and other areas as they used the feather to illustrate the lessons.

"Then I think the kids would see the connection."

Without that connection, she said, students compartmentalize their information as they move from one class to the next.

"Our lives are so disjointed, that any way we can make a connection" is positive, Burgard said.

"This is the best way I could think of for making that connection."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com