Project Aim is a Columbia College Chicago initiative, in which teaching artists are teamed with classsroom teachers to create arts integration units. For two years in a row, I've worked with language arts teacher Ronna Pritikin to engage 5th graders in a unit which weaves together poetry and art-making. During thirteen 75-minute sessions (fall and spring), students brainstormed, sketched, glued, wrote, revised, cut, smudged and created voice recordings. They worked to find 'the good hard' and to be 'artists with their words.'

I'm very proud of their work and hope you'll take some time to explore their images and words.

• The Dark Side/Light Side gallery features collages and poetry in which students discover and speak in the voice of their inner character traits. Witness their honest pleasure as they explore defining characteristics.Four individual galleries feature 4-5 pieces by extraordinary young poet/artists, including voice recordings and artist trading cards.
• The Emotional Objects gallery features work in which students sketched objects and then inserted language into their drawings
• The Inside of Me gallery features a few poems about the inner universes of 5th graders, paired with Artist Trading Cards illustrating these ideas.