‘Wizards of Art’ Cast a Creative Spell on Pupils

Twelve years of experience running an art and interior design business could not have prepared Tod Carson for this.

On his first day volunteering to teach art at West Hollywood Elementary School, Carson wanted his students to decorate white T-shirts with their own handprints. But by the end of class, he had 22 screaming first-graders waving their hands in the air, red and yellow paint dripping down their arms.

A few weeks later, Carson tried an easier project: masks made with paper plates. But the cut-and-paste project was so simple the class finished 40 minutes early.

Finally, after three months of trial and error, he knows his class. He glides easily through the hourlong sessions and occasionally offers advice to fellow volunteers on how to teach.

Carson is one of 24 volunteers largely from art- and design-related businesses in West Hollywood donating time to teach art in a school that doesn’t have art teachers. Adopting the campus’ wizard mascot and calling themselves the Wizards of Art, the volunteers get together on alternating Thursdays and don aprons with a picture of a wizard on the front.

After just a few months of instruction -- the art classes started in September -- the bright blue aprons have become the volunteers’ trademark. As the Wizards walk through the halls, they’re bombarded with hellos and shouts of “They’re here!”

Third-grade teacher Diane Sternfels didn’t have to remind her class when the first art session after winter break drew near. “They asked as soon as we got back to school, ‘When are we going to be doing art?’ ” she said while squeezing paint onto small plates.

For most of the pupils, the Wizards are their first art teachers. Since the 1970s, arts programs in schools nationwide have been underfunded, said Richard Burrows, who directs arts education for the Los Angeles Unified School District. “Whenever arts teachers disappeared, general classroom teachers picked up the task,” he said.

This practice has become common in elementary schools.

To remedy the situation, L.A. Unified instituted a 10-year arts education plan, which aims to put dance, music, theater and visual arts back into every school in the district by 2009.

Every year, the program expands to an additional 40 schools districtwide, Burrows said. So far the district has reintroduced arts education into 200 of its 476 elementary schools.

“There’s increasing recognition that arts education makes an important contribution to student learning,” said Burrows. “Up to this point, it’s been seen as a sidebar activity to student learning.”

But the program’s current expansion still doesn’t meet the demand for arts programs, according to Royce Hill, arts education advisor in L.A. Unified’s Local District D, which includes West Hollywood Elementary.

In recent years, Hill said, she has received more applications from schools than her local district can accommodate.

“Three years ago I had 25 schools apply, but we only increased the program by four schools,” Hill said of District D. Last year, 17 schools applied for just two openings. Hill says the competition sometimes deters schools from applying.

West Hollywood Elementary Principal Dorothy Higa said that she admired the district’s arts plan but that her school just wasn’t ready for the program’s time commitment. The Wizards, however, offered a flexible schedule that left plenty of time to focus on reading and math.

West Hollywood Elementary is a Title I school serving some of the district’s neediest children. More than three-fourths of its 280 students are bused in from neighborhoods near downtown Los Angeles where the schools are overcrowded.

“A lot of these kids have very limited life experiences,” said Sharon Fabian, assistant principal. “Their parents are not the kind of parents taking kids to museums, to trips abroad, to theater.” Until the district can expand its arts plan to all its schools, Burrows said, community groups are working with teachers to take art into the classroom. For volunteers like Carson, it’s a chance to give back.

“It’s easy to write purchase orders and pick up fabric,” he said. “This is harder, because you never know what to expect.”

Teaching children to make pine-cone turkeys and patchwork clowns has also been a nice change from Carson’s usual work of selling 18th and 19th century English furniture and lighting lines from Europe.

“When you work with people all day long and sell them something they really don’t need, I felt I really needed to do something fulfilling in my life,” he said.

To fill the need for art at West Hollywood Elementary, an association of businesses called Avenues of Art & Design arranged for 12 volunteers to teach each semester. Founded in 1996, the group includes West Hollywood art galleries, high-end interior design stores, restaurants and coffeehouses along Melrose Avenue and Robertson and Beverly boulevards.

In case a volunteer teacher can’t make it, program coordinator Mark-Alan Harmon has a short list of substitutes ready to jump in on brief notice. One Thursday, an art teacher suddenly could not make it to class. Harmon immediately called one of his employees and told her to close his interior design shop so she could teach art. “I’m committed to having 12 teachers here every time,” he said.

While the school provides basic supplies, such as paint, glue and paper, many of the Wizards reach out to their friends and into their own pockets to supplement those materials with fabric swatches, colored feathers and crystal beads.

Carson’s latest idea for the kids to make miniature storage cans covered with colored tissue paper has him calling all of his friends for help.

“I’m collecting jars from every single person I know,” he said.

Glue-sticks and colored tissue paper are no problem. But with vivid recollections of his first day on the job, there’s still one thing Carson will not be taking to class.

“They will not see paint this semester,” he said. “It’s just not a good idea.”