Before the first bell of the school day rings, fifth grade students in Danielle Michielini’s Creative Arts class at C.V. Starr Intermediate School in Brewster are busy getting ready for a huge statewide competition called the Olympics of Visual Arts.
The event is sponsored by the New York Art Teachers Association, and is held in Saratoga, New York at the end of April.
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Michielini said Brewster has been involved in this competition for about 20 years. Students are broken into small groups and work together in bringing their projects to fruition. The groups are given prompts that they must solve.
According to art teacher Michielini “the students read through all the prompts and decide what’s most interesting to them and break off into collaborative groups.”
The three groups chosen for this year’s competition were fashion, architecture and design thinking.
“A lot of what we do in regular art classes is very individualized, so we want them to work as a team which is more like a real work skill” Michielini said.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Brewster students gear up for NY’s Olympics of Visual Arts competition