UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Elementary classroom teachers often are called upon to be creative in their teaching, so that’s something that’s emphasized to teacher candidates in the Penn State College of Education.
Students in the pre-kindergarten through fourth grade option who are in their fifth and sixth semesters are assigned to a cohort that takes five courses together as their arts and literacy block. One of those courses, CI 497, The Creative Child: Arts and Creativity in the Educative Process, requires students to build a final project. One section of the class decided to base their project on Es Devlin's Trafalgar Square Lion.
Instead of creating the lion, which is iconic to London, they are creating Old Main, which is iconic to Penn State. The finished product will be displayed on the second floor of Chambers Building the week of Dec. 3, and passers-by are encouraged to write poems to place inside the structure. The pre-service teachers will check the poems and display a new poem daily.
Those who would like to contribute poetry but can't get to Chambers Building can email their submissions to edrelations@psu.edu.