Train travel and education continue on the route Novi Sad - Odžaci - Novi Sad. The idea of education on the train came about a long time ago, and by receiving the award for the Best Educator of Serbia, the opportunity arose to realize it.
Our adventures of capturing landscapes continued on May 13 with the train's departure from Novi Sad to Odžake. This time, a lesson on the train had class VII-3 from the Petefi Šandor Elementary School from Novi Sad.
During the one-hour drive, a lesson in fine arts and culture was held along with a professional orientation workshop led by school pedagogue Elvira Stevanović. We chose that topic for the workshop as many students have never traveled by train before and are not familiar with the railway industry occupations. As one of the project's goals is to popularize the railway, we have focused on educating students about the possible professions in this area.
Before the class, the students had the opportunity to receive teaching content via a Google classroom in the form of a presentation and video tutorial on a new art technique, dry pastel. Same as the previous time, the class was divided into two groups, A and B, as in the school. Group A was sitting in the first part of the train, while group B was in the back of the train. On train departure, group A had a workshop with a pedagogue, and group B drew landscapes with an art teacher.
The art class started with sharing materials and giving guidelines for work. The students first photographed the landscapes they saw from the train and then drew pastels from the images.
Everyone was working hard and was interested in expressing their impression of the surroundings. What also affected their motivation was the long period of isolation and online teaching. After a long time, children had an opportunity to compare their work with others, which they could not do while they were working alone from home!
On the lesson on the train, I brought a picture of Dimitrij Kolarević with the title After the Storm. It is an oil on canvas that served that very day for motivation. It was cloudy that day, and it rained before the trip. Inspired by that, I decided to take the picture with me. During this class, I told my students about the impressionists who liked to come out of their studio and paint in the middle of fields and meadows. What additionally motivated them was that they had to depict their impressions of the environment with tones that would correspond to the laws of the aerial perspective. During the work, I made corrections individually and thus directed students to present the desired motive in the best possible way. I noticed that even those students, who were previously demotivated for work at school, made the same effort as others during this class.
The available time of one hour of travel was enough for students to do interesting works. The slower students were a little dissatisfied that they did not manage to finish the drawings, but they were satisfied that they were drawing what they saw at the moment.
Meanwhile, in the second part of the train, the pedagogue led an engaging workshop on professional orientation. The students followed and participated in the realization with full attention.
We had a short break in Odžaci. When we returned, the groups rotated.
After the classes, I forwarded to students that participated in the project a small survey. A large number of them pointed out that this was an interesting way to learn, socialize with their peers and that they had the opportunity to visit places they would not if they had not traveled by train.
To be continued...