Eighth Grade Self Portraits Part I

After weeks of working with Ms. Emmet on an individual exploration, half of the eighth grade class presented their self-portrait projects to the community on Wednesday, May 12. The other half presented in part two the next evening.

Ms. Emmet started this project 20 years ago and the thought of it was born as she was walking in the snow in New Hampshire. Read her introduction to the project:

"I had the thought to ask the eighth grade students to make a self portrait before they graduate at the end of elementary school and that it would be a compilation of the skills and ideas they explored and learned.

I thought that a young person who was educated at the Waldorf school of Baltimore receives an education that was respectful of their delicate unfolding mind, an education that nurtured their young and tender heart; so that they would be able to feel themselves in relation to their peers and the world at large, an education which cultivated their hands and body to express their ideas in many forms.

Such a young person is able - emotionally, intellectually and artistically - to reflect on who they are - to have an idea of what is important to them and have the skills to express it visually.

Over these 20 years I noticed as I watched the students become adults and make life choices that those self portraits in some way are like a seed of who they might become later in life.

The art is starting not just in the art room upstairs but the moment we walk into the school, the colors on the walls the placement of objects and the recorder playing the hand clapping the verses/poems recited and on and on and on… this project is self motivated made at home and brought back to us as gift."