TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

A Celestial Celebration

ADVERTISEMENT

By JAMIE PILARCZYK, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 10, 2007

WEST TAMPA - After wiping the crumbs off the cafeteria tables, students at Stewart Middle Magnet School line up under the sun, Saturn and Venus.

The celestial beings come to life in a set of panels on facing cafeteria walls, a mural created by eighth-graders, their art teacher, Jody Chandler, and professional artist Tim Gibbons in honor of the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the dawn of the Space Age.

'They taught us how to blend colors,' said Isaac Otero, 14, a Jefferson High School freshman.

As an eighth-grader at Stewart, a magnet school that uses space exploration and technology to teach science, math, writing and reading, Otero worked on Saturn and Venus, colorful planets with smooth bands of color.

'I learned how to make the colors work together,' he said.

Along with the mural dedication Thursday, Lynn McDaniel, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Explorer Program at Stewart and the self-styled 'space science queen of the county,' announced the school was awarded $50,000 from NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

The grant will pay for supplies, science books and field trips. The program's students are mentored by scientists from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of South Florida and University of Florida. In turn, the students mentor fifth-graders at Dunbar and Just elementary schools.

'The scientists will help the students learn how we use space technology to help us here on Earth,' McDaniel said. 'We're the launchpad for learning. We try to launch our students into the 21st century.'

Artists in the Schools, a program of the Arts Council of Hillsborough County, invested about $1,500 last year in the mural and will finish the project by working with seventh- and eighth-graders to paint murals on the cafeteria's two other walls.

'It involves every area of academics from researching to drawing. It integrates it all,' council education director Lynn Norton said of Artists in the Schools.

Gibbons, an artist and teacher at, among other places, the Hyde Park Art Studio, said working with students empowers them. Being able to paint about his favorite subject - science - is a bonus.

'I can teach them what I've learned and how to make a finished product,' said Gibbons, who has painted murals throughout the school. 'It gives them inspiration.'

Reporter Jamie Pilarczyk can be reached at (813) 835-2114 or jpilarczyk@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT