Hershey Montessori School extends our gratitude and thanks to the Ohio Arts Council for approving a grant that will allow teaching artist Laurel Herbold to work directly with the 9th-12th grade students in our upper school community for a year-long residency. The yearlong project, titled Mastering Murals: Upper School Adolescent Mural Project at Hershey Montessori School, will provide students throughout our upper school community with the opportunity to learn, grow and mature in their understanding of mural arts. It will also help students develop their creative expression and build skills in areas such as filmmaking, photography, graphic arts, and entrepreneurship.

Laurel will be on campus for an average of 26 hours per week for 32 weeks. The residency will culminate in a permanent, large-scale wall mural with removable sections, videos, images, postcards, and posters that will be presented to the entire school community. For the project, Laurel will guide students through the entire mural creation process including the planning timeline, design, materials, paints and brushes, painting technique, and presentation.

Students working on this project will have the opportunity to share what they are learning with the Concord school community as part of community building and the mastery process, which includes students demonstrating their knowledge and growth through teaching others. Students may join this project throughout the year, and students who help Laurel through the first two quarters will lead a mural workshop for upper elementary (grades 4-6) during the fourth quarter.

This project will be accessible to students and families through both an in-person event and online communications and will be widely accessible from an ADA perspective. The success of the residency will be measured through student engagement, student articulation (the ability to clearly explain what was learned), and valorization (a Montessori term meaning that a student becomes strong and feels worthy, confident in their work, and capable of moving the work and themselves forward to pursue other ideologies) and guide observation.

Hershey is excited to share this opportunity with the adolescents and families in our community, and we are honored to have Laurel join us for the first two quarters of the 2021-2022 school year and the first 2 quarters of the 2022-2023 school year. Once again, we would like to thank the Ohio Arts Council for their generous grant and support for this project.

Hershey would also like to extend a special thanks to Martha Loughridge, a grant writer for Montessori Development Partnerships. Without her help, none of this would be possible. MDP was founded in 1990 by Debra Guren and David Kahn. MDP’s mission is to bring human and financial resources into a coordinated effort that results in greater support for Montessori schools in North America. Their vision is to bring more access to Montessori for more children. You can find more information about MDP by visiting their website, https://www.montessori-mdp.org/.