Inside the Classroom
Inside the Classroom is a storytelling series that offers a closer look at the learning experiences happening across ZCS classrooms.
Something special is taking shape in the art room at Zionsville Community High School.
In the new Peer Art Education course, students are creating more than art. They are learning from one another, adapting lessons, building friendships and discovering what it means to make sure everyone has an opportunity to create and belong.
For peer students Gwen DeCoursey, Elijah Schickler, and Julia Rooks, the experience is also shaping the way they see themselves, one another, and even their futures. And for Visual Arts Department Chair Grace Fletcher, the new course is an opportunity to create the kind of inclusive, collaborative environment she envisioned when developing it.
Hear from Fletcher and the students in the video below, then step Inside the Classroom to learn more about the art, relationships and sense of belonging being created along the way.
Step Inside the Classroom
Inside the Classroom:
Creating Art, Connection, and Belonging
ZCHS Peer Art Education brings students together to create, teach, adapt, and learn from one another
There is plenty of art being created in Grace Fletcher’s classroom at Zionsville Community High School, but look around the room and something else is taking shape alongside it.
Students are talking, creating, and problem solving together. They are learning what works for the person sitting beside them. They are building relationships. And in a new Peer Art Education course, they are creating a place to belong.
“I really wanted to create a class that would create more of an inclusive environment between all of our art students,” said Fletcher, chair of the ZCHS Visual Arts Department.
Fletcher had seen students receiving special services participate in courses such as ceramics or jewelry, but she wanted an opportunity to provide art experiences designed more intentionally around individual students.
“By creating this class and having students involved, we’re able to create really individualized lessons and also kind of focus on the social aspect of it, too,” Fletcher said. “And really just have a very inclusive, collaborative environment.”
That collaboration begins before students ever take out their art supplies. Peer students help plan lessons and consider how each activity can be adapted. They talk about accommodations for art supplies, ways to help students hold pencils, how students may respond differently to textures and what changes might allow everyone to participate.
Junior Julia Rooks said the goal is to make sure students are part of creating the art themselves.
“We help them,” Rooks said. “We do hand over hand, kind of just making sure that they’re involved. And it’s not them just sitting back and watching someone make art for them.”
Fletcher has watched the peer students become increasingly thoughtful about the individual students they work alongside.
“I’m hearing them already start to think about how to modify to the needs of our special services students,” Fletcher said. “We’ll have conversations about, ‘Oh, I don’t want to use this material because I don’t think Ben would like it,’ and things like that.”
For senior Gwen DeCoursey, the course combines two things she cares deeply about: art and people.
“I love art,” DeCoursey said. “When I saw that this was an option, I immediately took this class.”
DeCoursey said the experience has taught her how to create adaptable lessons for students with different abilities while also showing her how powerful art can be as a form of expression.
“They get to express themselves in creative ways,” DeCoursey said. “Whether they’re nonverbal, they can draw what they’re feeling or write what they’re feeling.”
For DeCoursey, that matters well beyond an art assignment.
“I think it’s really important to have someone that you can go to, especially in a creative setting like this, where you don’t even need to be verbal to be able to communicate with someone,” she said.
Art becomes another way to communicate. And as students create together, the learning begins to move in both directions.
Elijah Schickler said he chose the class in part because he wanted to give other students opportunities to create.
“Most of them say that they really like doing art, and I feel like it’s cool that I’m the one teaching them, like how to do it,” Schickler said. “I just feel like it’s really cool for them and for me.”
As he has worked alongside students in the class, Schickler has noticed changes in himself, too.
“I feel like I’ve been a lot more patient and more caring,” he said.
Working with Brady has also shown Schlicker how collaborative the creative process can become. Rather than telling Brady what his art should look like, Schickler watches what he is creating, offers ideas and sees where those ideas take them.
“We’re both just building off each other,” Schickler said. “And it’s just like a really positive experience for both of us.”
That idea of "both of us" is at the heart of what is happening in the room. The peer students may arrive expecting to help teach art, but they are learning right alongside the students they support.
Rooks said those experiences have helped her develop a passion for making sure others feel included.
“I’ve gained a lot of passion,” she said. “I really developed a love for helping people feel included and helping people feel like, ‘Oh, I can do this.’”
For Rooks, the experience is helping shape what may come next. Her involvement in peer classes at ZCHS has sparked an interest in pursuing a career in special education.
But perhaps some of the most impactful evidence of what is happening in Peer Art Education appears outside the art room.
“All of them know me by name,” Rooks said. “They walk in the classroom, they’re like, ‘Oh, hey, Julia.’ I’m like, ‘Hey, how are you?’”
And when they see one another in the hallways, that connection follows them.
“They can come up to me in the hallways and they’re like, ‘Oh, I know her from this class I’m in. I can talk to her. I’m a part of this.’”
Fletcher wants her peer students to understand just how important those relationships can become.
“Our students are going to become very attached to them and look at them as friends and role models,” Fletcher said. “If you see them in the hallway, you’ve got to remember that relationship that you have, that you’ve built in this classroom.”
DeCoursey feels that responsibility, too.
“I don’t want our students to ever feel like our peers, the ones that are leading the class, are just going through the motions, just here to get the class credit,” she said.
Instead, she wants students to know there is someone there who genuinely cares about what they are creating and about them.
“I love being in an environment like this where the children and the students can come to me asking questions about art, asking questions about anything creative related, or asking questions about day-to-day life,” DeCoursey said. “I think that’s really important, to have a connection with them.”
The course is new this semester, and Fletcher readily acknowledges that she is learning alongside her students. Before students arrive, peer students talk about what worked, what did not and what they may need to change.
“I am very much learning this process alongside of them,” Fletcher said.
That process feels particularly at home in an art classroom. Fletcher describes art as a place where students learn to experiment, encounter failure, rethink an idea and try again.
“It just pushes them to really critically think and problem solve in ways that they’re not always comfortable doing,” she said. “We talk about this environment being a very safe environment to fail in, because we’re going to be able to redo something.”
In Peer Art Education, students are doing exactly that. They are creating and adapting. Teaching and learning. Giving and receiving. And along the way, they are discovering that some of the most important things being created in the room cannot be hung on a wall.
They are: Relationships. Confidence. Friendship. Belonging.
“I can talk to her,” Rooks said, describing the connection students feel when they recognize their peers beyond the classroom. “I’m a part of this.”
In a class built around art, perhaps that is one of the greatest things students can create: the feeling that everyone is part of something.
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