Students challenged in real-life scenarios Book art project to culminate with Feb. 27 art show BY JESSICA SMITH Staff Writer Above: Challenge Class students work on a triangle caterpillar book with book artist Dr. Sam Forlenza. Book art involves sculptural methods, unfolding pages, and non-traditional bindings and media. At right: Eighth-grader Brittany Finn demonstrates the proper folding technique in the Challenge Class. Below: Forlenza holds up a match-box book for students during a Feb. 6 visit to Old Bridge's Carl Sandburg School to teach students book art. OLD BRIDGE - Paula Eisen's eighth-grade students are supposed to be learning language arts and literacy, but what goes on in her classroom goes far beyond. While Eisen does teach the traditional curriculum at Carl Sandburg Middle School, she does it in nontraditional ways, challenging her students to reach their full potential. "They are the brightest children now in Sandburg," Eisen said. "I believe in empowering them. I think that's very important in learning." The 26 students in Eisen's Challenge Class have been together as a group since sixth grade. They all have a high proficiency in their school subjects, which makes Eisen's class valuable to them. Instead of becoming bored with subject matter they have mastered, the kids are able to take their skills to the next level. PHOTOS BYJEFF GRANIT staff "I have to really embellish the curriculum above and beyond," Eisen said. Eisen's curriculum is a mix of intensive research, creativity, problem-solving and experiential learning, with teamwork as an important theme. The class is divided into three components, consisting of business, art appreciation and culinary arts. Each of the segments lasts six weeks, including regular visits from a facilitator in the given field, and culminates with a special event for parents to attend. "It's just an incredible, wonderful thing, sharing it with their families," Eisen said. For the business component, the students learned business terminology and research skills to lay the groundwork. They were broken up into teams and had to create a business with a marketable product or service. Edward Fields, a business consultant, helped the students develop necessary skills to complete their project, and to take with them into the business world. The students were required to do everything a real business would require, including the creation of business cards and logos, T-shirts and fliers, and finally, a model of their product. Student businesses were complete with everything from the CEO on down, and the teams worked together to present and promote their finished products at a trade show for the parents in the school library. Among the innovations were a frying pan with a collapsible handle for easy storage, and a hairbrush that came fully equipped with styling gel within it. "These are brand-new things they created from scratch," Eisen said. The second curricular component, which the students are currently working on, consists of teams choosing a style or form of art, then researching it to a level where they can answer various questions about it. From there, each individual student picks an artist from their team's chosen genre, then selects a painting by that artist to study in-depth. On Tuesday, Eisen took the students to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for a closer look at what they had been studying. The tour guides brought teams to the sections of the museum where each of their genres was located, so students were able to make a connection with their chosen artists. Dr. Sam Forlenza visited the school to teach book art, which involves sculptural methods, unfolding pages, and nontraditional bindings and media, among other creative techniques. The art form turns the notion of the average book upside down, consisting of much more than mere text on a page. One of the projects students completed was creating a miniature library with tiny books of poetry and stories. This portion of the course work ends with an art show on the evening of Feb. 27. The students will give PowerPoint presentations of their research findings, and each team is required to create a work of art using media their chosen artists used. The culinary arts component deals with a lot more than just food. Students work together to set up their own ethnic restaurant. They learn everything that goes into the process, and are required to research the culture of the chosen ethnicity. "It has a lot of cultural diversity in it," Eisen said of the project. With the help of Claudette Herring, owner of A Tavola Italian restaurant on Route 9, the students are able to put their newfound skills to use. Herring closes the doors to the public for a night, allowing the students to run the place and serve dinner to their parents. They make the experience as authentic as possible, even donning clothing from the culture they have chosen. The lessons learned in Eisen's class go beyond the face-value title of the components. "One of the most beneficial things is they really learn to work on a team and get along with other people," Eisen said. Eisen has been using her innovative curriculum for four years at the school. She is in her 30th year as a teacher, and continues to be excited about her work. "I see tremendous growth in them," she said of her students. "It is very stimulating for me, and challenging."