Educational Leadership - October 2017

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48 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP / OCTOBER 2017 designed a cooking robot that had at least 20 different arms just for slicing and dicing pizza.

As students worked on their robots,
they also learned new printmaking
techniques that added contemporary
texture to their creations. They used
rubbing plates, crayons,
and watercolors to
blend colors and explore
basic color theory. They
showed the difference
between actual and
implied texture by dem-
onstrating how to create
the illusion of different
surfaces and by incor-
porating found objects
to create a tactile expe-
rience. They also tried
paper marbling, collage,
and other mixed media techniques.
In the end, students’ clever con-
cepts for their robots were even more
impressive than the art skills they
acquired. We had robots that could
solve homelessness by helping low-
income families build homes out
of nontraditional materials. Other
robots helped people find jobs and
make friends by making introduc-
tions and connections. Some robots
could clean your home, babysit your
brothers, walk your dogs, and do your
homework. There were mermaid-
bots, mommy-bots, superhero-bots,
and dragon-bots. All of the robots
were conceived of to quickly perform
tasks that would traditionally take a
human a lot of time to complete. For
each robot, students crafted an artist’s
statement that listed the name of the
robot and a list of special skills. Every
robot was unique, thought-provoking,
and relevant.

U.S. industrialist Henry J. Kaiser said, “Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.” When students encountered obstacles during this project, I helped them to view problems as opportunities for learning and reminded them that tackling a problem takes considerable effort and multiple iterations. For instance, one student was working on a baking robot, but she couldn’t figure out how to make the oven look realistic. After some trial and error, she amended her creation to include a lightweight door with a handle and a plastic window that would open and close with the aid of a magnet.

When the project was complete, we hung students’ artwork at a show, representing the artistic problem-solving creations of more than 750 students. We later invited students from a local high school to use the robots as inspiration for two murals at preschools in the community—artwork to inspire more young people to become problem solvers. EL