Professor to be honored as Missouri Art Educator of the Year

In a classroom early one morning last week, 21 Southeast Missouri State University students began waving paint brushes in the air in time to lively recorded flute music. Later on they painted to the wail of bagpipes.

The students are studying to become elementary school teachers or elementary school art teachers. "Listen to the music and let that dictate the movement and lines you put into your composition," Dr. Edwin Smith told them.

After their teacher left the room, one of the students offered that Smith is the kind of art teacher every student wants to have.

During the National Art Education Association convention in early April in Minneapolis, Minn., Smith will receive the organization's Missouri Art Educator of the Year Award. The organization has nearly 17,000 members nationwide and 821 in Missouri, not including student members.

In 2002, the Missouri Art Educators Association chose Smith for its Art Educator of the Year Award. A sculptor, Smith has been teaching art and art education at Southeast for 30 years.

Each student painted many tempera compositions during the two-hour class. The abstract swirls and dabs will become part of the portfolio they will take when they graduate from Southeast. The portfolio is intended to jog the students' memories about lessons they can teach their own students.

Katelyn Balunek, a student from St. Charles, Mo., said music affects painting naturally. "It's the same as if you're in a club and dancing. You move to the beat."

At one point Smith told the students to stand up and paint. "See how much freer you are standing," he said, adding that some teachers mistakenly insist that children remain seated at their desks when they paint.

One trick Smith has taught the students, how to make a disposable palette by folding up the edges of slick newspaper inserts, is more important than it seems.

"Children sometimes are denied the opportunity to paint ... because their teachers don't know how to dispense the materials and clean up," Smith said. "They just say, 'Get out your crayons.'"

He thinks children should be painting two or three times each week in school.

Across disciplines

Smith also is one of the professors at Southeast who has been teaching a class designed to show education students how to integrate the arts with other disciplines. It is one of the students' favorites. "I couldn't ever get them to leave," he said.

His students praise his rapport with students -- "You almost feel like a colleague," one said -- and how hard he works.

"You can tell he's passionate about art," one student said. "He wants children to enjoy art and for it to be a meaningful experience."

Smith said the award in 2002 surprised him. He knew he had been nominated for this one, but said, "This is kind of mind-boggling."

The thing he likes most about the award is that it tells prospective students that Southeast is a good place to study art education, a reputation that appears to be growing.

A dozen years ago only 12 students were enrolled in the university's art education major. Now there are 46.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182