Compassion Through the Eyes of Children

May 20, 2015

St. Johns County students participate in Compassionate St. Augustine

By Kimeko McCoy

The meaning of compassion, as it is interpreted by St. Johns County students, will be unveiled tonight as another leg of Compassionate St. Augustine’s public obelisk art project. Over 400 students in 28 schools participated in painting and decorating 4-foot obelisks that will be visual representations of compassion awareness.  The project is part of the Obelisk Art 450 initiative where 25 professional artists were selected to express their interpretations of the foundational values of the Spanish Constitution — freedom, democracy, human rights and compassion. However, founders Caren Goldman and Ted Voorhees wanted to extend the project to the fourth-grade students, who had help from volunteers, teachers and other grade level students.  “The real hope for this as a legacy project is that when you have fourth-grade students who are learning about Florida history and their minds are still so open to so many ideas and ways of seeing the world, that we’ve given them a new lens and a new world view that has historical, cultural, artistic value and added to that is what’s often referred to as a degree of emotional intelligence,” Goldman said.

Another side of history

Many students visit St. Augustine to learn about the history of battles at Fort Mose Historic State Park or the massacre at Fort Matanzas National Monument. “What we want to do is try to change the perspective a little bit to give people a different lens,” Voorhees said. “At least now the ones in St. Johns County have a different view in terms of what all that’s about. It’s not just about the military battles and the French and the Spanish and the British and all that.” Some of the obelisks have paint drawings and handmade art while others have mosaic material and written quotes on them. The Otis Mason Elementary School obelisk reads, “Everyone has love somewhere in their hearts.” Each school that participated was given a blank 4-foot obelisk. Instead of just handing it over to the students, Otis Mason Elementary art teacher Max Vinzant created a curriculum to go hand in hand with the project. Different from other concepts and curriculums, Vinzant wanted to create something that teachers could put their hands on and students could discuss and understand.“I wrote the lesson plan for fourth-graders but fifth-graders got excited and wanted to get involved and I couldn’t say no,” he said. Vinzant said he showed the students examples of compassion to create a dialogue in the planning stages of what would become of the obelisks. “This definitely took more planning and a lot more thought. Normally we teach a concept and just go with it,” he said. While the curriculum was created by Vinzant, much of the project was coordinated by Chief Program Officer at Cathedral Arts Project, Inc., Josué Cruz, and St. Johns County Schools Arts Program Specialist, Tommy Bledsoe. “What (Bledsoe) saw was an opportunity to fill a gap. Up until we came along, the students in St. Johns County didn’t have an opportunity to get involved in the 450th,” Cruz said.  It took weeks to coordinate the project with the 28 schools as it was right in the middle of testing time. “The biggest thing we did was we had a buy in from St. Johns County schools,” he added.Bledsoe said the teachers embraced the idea. “The art teachers are just wonderful working with their kids and getting them to use their brainstorming and creative ideas and using those for compassion,” he said.  Each school and teacher took a different approach to the obelisks. Some created small student groups while others used art clubs.

Continuing compassion

Goldman said she’s gotten a lot of positive feedback. “It was so important to be able to have a project that was for the 450th and complement the highly successful Character Counts program throughout the public school system” Goldman said.  "For Compassionate St. Augustine, Compassion Through the Eyes of Children is truly the heart and soul of our Obelisk Art 450 public art initiative."  After tonight’s big reveal, the obelisks will be on display in the Crisp-Ellert Museum at Flagler College in September.Compassion through the Eyes of Children isn’t expected to end after the 450th celebration.“As part of it being a legacy project, it’s our hope that there may be in the future, other ways to ways to expand Compassion through the Eyes of Children so that more children and possibly young adults can have an experience that accomplishes what this did in terms of history, culture, art and emotional health,” Goldman said. The idea is to plant seeds of compassion in hopes that they will continue to grow in the hearts and heads of the students.Vinzant said the lesson of compassion goes beyond the classroom walls in that teachers teach compassion every day.  “There needs to be some type of compassion lesson here taught after the reception,” he said. The important message goes beyond what we’re doing at the elementary, middle school and high school level. I know I teach this every day.”