Two Projects, One Mission

For the fifth year in a row, Ms. Carsley and Ms. Sanders join forces to plan enriching experiences for their classes, to share expertise with one another and to model collaboration for their students. Through this cooperative experience, students explore the interplay of art and literature throughout history, and today in our classrooms.

Fall Semester: Written and Visual Narrative

For the first of their two cross-curricular projects, Ms. Carsley and Ms. Sanders pair Fall Painting and AP English classes for an exploration of narrative in both written and visual form.  

Both classes build background knowledge independently before beginning their work in teams. Ms. Carsley’s painting students analyze works of art; learning how to “read” a painting and draw out the narrative. Ms. Sanders' AP Language and Composition students study the structure of narrative essays focusing on elements of voice, perspective and cultural details.


As a group they head to a local museum, this year The Walters Museum in Baltimore, to put these concepts to work. Once at the museum, students from each class work in groups to accomplish their individual assignments. For the painters, the goal is to explain the visual narrative of selected paintings to the writing students. Using the techniques explained by the painting students, the writing students students choose a painting and use it as the basis for a stylistic narrative essay.

Spring Semester: The Poet Painter Project

The Poet Painter project is built on the same principle that collaboration nurtures creativity and community. Exploring ideas of narrative and intention, Ms. Carsley and Ms. Sanders prep their language and painting classes with study of style, themes, subject and emotion in both poetry and painting using contemporary, historic Western and historic Eastern examples. Both classes use a similar framework of ideas to analyze their respective subjects, creating a common language among them.


The classes visit the National Arboretum in Washington D.C. to begin the collaborative portion of this project. Working in teams, our poets and painters create folding books containing a series of images accompanied by an original poem. The spring painting class uses the nature on display in the Arboretum as inspiration for their drawings, while the language students use that same inspiration to write poetry for the book. Working together, they create a harmonious balance between art and writing. If you’d like to see their work first hand, the poetry books from the Poet Painter project will be on display this spring in the McCleary gallery space.

Cross-curricular Teaching is Relevant Teaching

We strive to help students understand essential connections across disciplines so they develop deep knowledge with real world context. When students have the opportunity to share and create with one another through authentic experience, they see the practical application of their studies. The more they understand relationships between concepts and the value of working in teams, the better prepared they are beyond Severn School. Ms. Carsley and Ms. Sanders are just one example of a teaching team that truly lives this philosophy: to inspire students to imagine, create and work together.