Mead, Mt. Spokane teamwork springs coloring book out of pandemic

Mead and Mt. Spokane High School teachers collaborated this spring to give their students an assignment to create a work based on their reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine. Some of those works done by the students have been turned into a coloring book available to download for free.

Mead High School art teacher Matt Banger said the assignment was given about three weeks after schools shut down.

“We were just starting to get our bearings in an online learning environment,” he said. “We thought it would be a cool way to get them to engage.”

Art is also an outlet to express feelings that can be difficult to verbalize, Banger said. “They’re able to communicate things through imagery that they can’t in words,” he said. “I think it was fantastic. It’s really good to give students an opportunity to reflect and use their voice to share their experience.”

The art teachers at the two schools had begun meeting weekly to collaborate after schools closed, so it was only natural to give all five art classes at the schools the same assignment. Banger said he was pleased with the result. “A lot of it was dealing with the isolation, the sense of being alone,” he said.

One of the more direct pieces was a self-portrait of a student attempting to give herself a haircut, Banger said. Others were more abstract or subtle.

“We saw a lot of weird, off the wall stuff from our kids, which we like to see,” he said.

Usually the schools host a fall and spring art show to display the work of their students, but that wasn’t possible this spring. In looking for a way to get some the students’ work displayed, the idea of a coloring book surfaced.

“We had kicked around the idea of a coloring book last year,” Banger said. “We’ve had coloring page assignments before.”

The project never got off the ground last year, but it did this year.

“We thought it would be an awesome way to get their work out in the community,” he said.

Thirty-eight students had their assignment selected to be included in the book. Some drawings couldn’t be considered because they were in pencil or the photo quality was too low to allow it to be reproduced.

“A lot of it came down to photo quality,” he said. “They had to scan it or photograph it.”

The coloring book was also a good choice because it will provide something to help younger students keep busy and perhaps inspire them to create art of their own, Banger said.

He heard a lot of stories about families trying to navigate online learning as well as juggling work and lack of day care.

“We started hearing about the struggles people were having,” he said. “We wanted to help.”

The coloring book is titled “Better Together.” A PDF file is available for download at mead354.org/apps/news/ article/1243636 .

Banger said he doesn’t know if there’s a way to find out how many times the coloring book has been downloaded, but said his students were eager to get it.

“The students whose work were in it were really excited,” he said. “They were definitely pleased with the final product.”

Banger said he’s glad the project was able to happen.

“It was a really cool experience,” he said.