Two Long & Winding Roads.

In the summer of 1997, I received a fellowship to travel to Japan. The fellowship was through the National Social Studies Association and funded by the Keizai Koho Center in Japan. My proposal was for fourth grade students in the Lamphere School District in Madison Heights to make a comparison of two roadways. One roadway was the historic Tokaido Road in Japan, connecting Edo (present day Tokyo) with Kyoto. The other was Interstate I-75 in Michigan, stretching from our Ohio border to our northern tip at Sault Sainte Marie. I-75 also runs through the middle of our district.

Tokaido and I-75

Although separated by time and space, (the Tokaido was built in 1602 and fell out of use in the 1860s), both roads share many commonalities. They both are about 300 miles long, have popular destinations along their routes and are so well traveled they have entered into the collective consciousnesses of their people.

My proposal was aligned with the fourth grade curriculum that teaches both about Michigan and about other cultures. The fourth grade students would learn about the Tokaido by studying the wood block prints of Ando Hiroshige. Hiroshige traveled the Tokaido in 1832 and recorded his impressions by creating a beautiful wood block print of each of the fifty-three rest stops along the road. Our students would use these prints to make comparisons of Michigan vacations they have taken up north along I-75.

Mapping, Poetry, & Printmaking 

We began the unit in September. The students completed a series of three interdisciplinary lessons which included geography, art, and language arts. In geography they located both roads and learned mapping skills. In art they learned how to make a print of a family vacation. For the printing plate, the students etched their drawing into a sheet of stryene instead of cutting a wood block. In language arts they learned about haiku poetry and later wrote a haiku based on their vacation prints. The prints and poems were bound into a class, Japanese style, accordion book.

Celebrating Our State

When Lamphere celebrated Michigan Week, May 18-22, Lessenger Elementary's fourth grade revisited the unit one more time. The students created beautiful chalk drawings in front of the school showing Michigan's grandeur, from Detroit to Sault Sainte Marie.

Students broke up into small groups and research an assigned area of Michigan. They relied on Michnet, Michigan's Internet web page, to find information about their assigned region. Next they made preliminary drawings on paper illustrating the highlights from their research.

Friday, the day selected for the chalk drawings, was beautiful--blue skies and warm temperatures. Before beginning to draw, the students swept their square of concrete clean. They sketched on the sidewalk first with white chalk and then began adding color. As the work progressed, they blended and smoothed the colors using stiff easel brushes. A six-foot step ladder was used to examine, admire and make suggestions of the work in progress. Students worked throughout the morning and later into the afternoon to complete their artwork.

From the height of the step ladder a patch-work quilt of colorful chalk had replaced the concrete sidewalk. Although the students' squares did not directly relate to the adjacent squares, there was one connecting element. A chalk road winding through each drawing representing our famous highway, Interstate I-75.

As parents began arriving at school to pick up their children to go home, I noticed one car packed with bicycles strapped to the back. When asked, the student acknowledged his family was heading "up north" to celebrate the three day Memorial Day Weekend. Their route of travel? Interstate 1-75, of course.

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Students know that the visual arts have both history and specific relationships to various cultures.

Craig Hinshaw is an elementary art teacher in the Lamphere School District in Madison Heights, Michigan.