The study of humanities can help people better understand others, and sometimes even themselves.
Through use of art, literature and other areas of interest within the subject, all can be tools in not only understanding, but also expressing the human experience — a perfect blend that has proven to be the winning combination for San Marino High School’s humanities program.
The San Marino Unified School District Board of Education spotlighted the high school’s humanities course at its Oct. 10 meeting, where the elective was celebrated for its unique vision and the harmonious melding of academic disciplines, as well as the school’s ongoing relationship with the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens — an influential component to the course curriculum.
The program is in its eighth year and is currently led by art teacher Michelle Pauline and English teacher Lisa Davidson, who joined Pauline in co-teaching the course last year. Davidson is her third collaborator.
“Each and every year is different,” Pauline explained to the Board. “Each and every collaboration is different. It’s a living, breathing course that changes over time.”
In 2017, the high school’s humanities program received a Golden Bell Award by the California School Board Association in the category of Community Schools through Partnerships and Collaboration for its connection with the Huntington Library.
The course material is ever-adapting, coming and going with the Huntington’s changing exhibitions. Students throughout the year have the opportunity to visit the venue on a biweekly basis.
“We use the collections at the Huntington as a jumping-off place for our curriculum,” Pauline said. “As you know, the museum evolves each year with their collections and exhibitions, and therefore, our class is never the same from one year to the next.”
Through this reading and writing intensive course, students are exposed to an array of subject matter that falls under the umbrella of the humanities, including the study of literature, art, theater, dance, music and architecture. Assignments in this seminar-style class often require students to read, analyze and discuss works of literature and art on display at the Huntington. Students also produce written critiques and participate in project-based learning each quarter. Some projects have combined multiple disciplines in the humanities resulting in drawings, paintings, songs, films and architecture creations.
Though the class had originally only been available to students who had a certain score in English and visual arts, Pauline and Davidson made the decision to open it up to other creative 11th and 12th grade students on campus with interests in journalism, yearbook and, more broadly, the media arts.
“When I was asked to collaborate with Michelle on the course, we realized that there was a definite deficit of visual art experience for this English teacher, but that I had other talents that I could bring to the class in literature, drama, music and other arenas,” Davidson said. “So, as we went through our first year together last year, it occurred to us that if I could be teaching a course in humanities that is heavily laden with visual arts, then why couldn’t we also have students who also had the same set of creative talents that I have that are not visual arts?”
After making the course more inclusive of various interests, the educators said they saw enrollment double.
“We were really pleased to see that, and this year, we are reaping the benefits of having students with very diverse talents and creativities,” said Davidson, who added that the program has become so popular that she and Pauline had to turn some of them away because of a limit to the number of students the Huntington allows.
Pauline said having a mix of students with different interests works well with the course’s use of universal design for learning concepts in the classroom.
“We have a lot of freedom to let the students have a choice in what they want to learn and explore, and we keep opening it up more and more,” Pauline said. “It’s a little scary sometimes, but we’re really enjoying having students that neither one of us may have had in a class before to start to show their own growth.”
For the first time in the program’s history, Davidson said this year’s cohort received a private showing of the Huntington Library and was able to view the Kelmscott Chaucer book, created by William Morris, up close. The class also received a lesson from a Fielding Collection of American Art curator with the Huntington. The school hopes to continue to expand this partnership.
“Our lessons are increasingly designed to encompass all the humanities,” Davidson said. “We are really trying to make it a holistic humanities approach, and I’ve got to tell you, it’s the best class on that campus and we love it. We love working together. … It’s truly soul food.”
SMUSD Superintendent Linda de la Torre agreed with Davidson’s description of the program being food for the soul, while also praising the leadership responsible for replenishing the minds of the students they serve.
“It’s not enough to have just the idea of presenting and providing a unique course, you have to have people who are willing to really take that idea and run with it and make it their own,” de la Torre said. “And here you have two amazing professional educators who have managed to orchestrate this transformative experience for our high school students that they are going to take with them for the rest of their lives.”
Principal Benjamin Wolf also commended Pauline and Davidson’s collaborative effort in making the course a success.
“It’s a really unique program,” Wolf said. “I’ve never seen anything else like it. I think a lot of people who don’t know anything about education might think that two teachers who share a period and co-teach it, might be something easy to do, but, in fact, it is not. Co-teaching requires a lot of planning and a lot of work to pull that off, especially when you have two teachers from two different disciplines.”
Wolf, de la Torre and Board Clerk Jane Chon recently shadowed the class at the Huntington.
“It was an incredibly awe-inspiring experience,” said de la Torre, who recalled being impressed with “how engaged every single one of those students were.”
First published in the Oct. 26 issue of the San Marino Tribune
