Ms. Hannah Is Bananas!
My Weird School Series, Book 4
Author: Dan Gutman
Illustrator: Jim Paillot
Description (from Harper Collins):
With more than 11 million books sold, the My WeirdSchool series really gets kids reading!In the fourth book of the original My Weird School series, art teacher Ms. Hannah shows A.J. and the gang that art is everywhere! She wears dresses made out of potholders and collects garbage instead of throwing it out. And even makes A.J. draw a picture with smelly, tattletale Andrea!
Perfect for reluctant readers and word lovers alike, Dan Gutman's insanely popular My Weird School series has something for everyone. Don't miss any more hilarious adventures from A.J. and the gang.
And here is an interesting book report on Ms. Hannah is Bananas! by a third grader if you're interested in reading about it from a kid's perspective: http://www.spaghettibookclub.org/review.php?review_id=9010
Let's look at these three aspects in Ms. Hannah is Bananas to draw some observations about the identity of Ms. Hannah as representative of art teachers in general.
The Art Room:
"The art room was all the way on the other side of the school. We had to walk about a million hundred miles to get there. Michael told Miss Daisy it was like walking across the Grand Canyon..." With this, we know that the art room was not near the second grade classrooms, but it could be interpreted as more removed from the school than the other classes as well.
The next mention of Ms. Hannah's classroom is to note the lack of a trashcan, since as she tells the students, she never throws anything away, preferring to turn it into art. To hold onto assorted objects rather than throw them out is (stereo)typical of art teachers. Sometimes it is as nobel as Ms. Hannah appears to be with her "no waste" philosophy, sometimes it is a response to having a tiny or nonexistent materials budget. By the second art class "the art room was filled with all kinds of junk."
By the end of the book, the students are concerned about the "big mess" of the art room and decide it must be because Ms. Hannah has a hoarding problem.
The Art Teacher:
When we first meet Ms. Hannah, she is wearing oven mitts and a homemade dress of potholders that she bought on eBay. Ms. Hannah is presenting herself to the children in a wacky, out-of the ordinary, or as this book series likes "weird" outfit. One student calls it beautiful. The main character thinks "Personally, I thought it was the stupidest looking dress in the whole world." The differing opinions offer a fair assessment. I'm not an expert on the My Weird School series, but I wonder if any of the other weird teachers are wearing similar garments. "Art teacher clothing" as a professional identity is a very interesting topic that I would like to heavily explore in the We Art Teachers blog.
Ms. Hannah tells the students that the garbage men bring her garbage so she can use it in her art when she has the day off from work. The main character complains later that "She's not an art teacher; she's a garbage collector." Even later, the student who enjoys art says about Ms. Hannah, "You know, everything isn't art...Some things are garbage. Maybe Ms. Hannah became an art teacher because she couldn't throw anything away. She might be a sick, sick woman who needs help."
The Curriculum:
For the children's first assignment, they are given finger paints and the directions to paint, "Anything you like! Express your creativity. Paint what you love."
When the main character wastes the class by not creating a painting, he tells Ms. Hannah "I did too finger paint something. This is a picture of a white polar bear. He's playing in the snow. White snow. And he's eating...vanilla ice cream!" To which Ms. Hannah praises the student for using his creativity.
"Art is everywhere" says Ms. Hannah who adds the table-protecting newspapers to a large ball at the end of class. She asks students to bring in any items from their homes which were going to be thrown out so the class can use them for their own art.
The second assignment is for students to use the junk they brought from home and some sticky glue to make sculptures. Their instructions are to "express yourself" and "show your creativity"
On the third art class, the students go on a field trip to a museum. "Ms. Hannah was all excited. She just about ran from room to room telling us about all the wonderful art." She points out the modernist boxes of soup cans, the hanging kinetic mobiles, and even a street performer - art is everywhere.
After the museum, Ms. Hannah assigns the students the task of drawing a "friendship picture" which she defines as "a picture that two people draw together." She uses the assignment to partner the main character with a student he has been in opposition of throughout the book.
Conclusion:
Ms. Hannah certainly relies on stereotypes and tropisms of art teachers.
- Spacey. She fits all of the descriptors of the "Space Cadet" teacher described in the "5 Teachers You Meet at Art School" YouTube video. These include:
- taking students out of their comfort zones (having them work with garbage);
- giving out easy grades (she easily accepts the main character's lack of produced work for his 'creative' explanations);
- consider the journey as more important than the product (see previous);
- holds class outside of the classroom on occasion (she takes the students to a museum)
- lacks in teaching technical studio skills (all of Ms. Hannah's assignments ask only that students express themselves).
- Garish. Her dress is made of stitched together potholders.
- Messy. Her classroom is messy mostly because she collects garbage. We also saw this "pig stye" classroom in The Art Teacher from the Black Lagoon.
Her curriculum is an afterthought to the story playing out in the book, but to analyze what is there (for the sake of fun):
In most of the assignments, Ms. Hannah could be considered to be using a "child-centered" approach - stemming from, but much looser than Franz Cizek and Viktor Lowenfield models.
In the final assignment, Ms. Hannah is clearly working to encourage collaboration and a better sense of community in the second grade classroom. By partnering two students who are known to argue and known to dislike one another, Ms. Hannah is attempting to use art to build relationships. The assignment works initially as both students are pleased with the drawing. Then it backfires when the students destroy it in an argument about who gets to take the project home.
In the end, this story is much less about art and the art teacher than it is about the series of books following the main character. Ms. Hannah simply becomes another character to analyze in the exploration of representations of the art teacher identity.
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