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This is part of an occasional series on members
of the 2006 All-USA Teacher Team, USA TODAY's
recognition program for outstanding K-12 teachers.
Winners share $2,500 awards with their schools.
To nominate a teacher for the 2007 team,
visit allstars.usatoday.com.
JERICHO, N.Y. -- Amid the soothing strains of the first movement of Beethoven's Pastorale Symphony, paintbrushes sweep across paper like bows sliding across violin strings, creating ribbons of green, blue and brown. When more delicate notes play, the brushes tap like xylophone mallets, and as the tempo quickens, they stab the sheets as if wielding conductors' batons.
"You're hearing the music with your ears. It's going into your heart and out through your arms," says Susan Menkes, the maestro leading the 21 brush-wielding fifth-graders.
But on the way out, as Menkes might add, music -- and art -- take a detour through the mind.
Such an interdisciplinary approach has allowed Menkes, an art teacher at Cantiague Elementary for eight years, to position her passion near the top of her relatively affluent community's agenda, despite today's test-centric climate.
"We have tried here, while meeting all mandates, tried to embrace the arts," says Hank Grishman, superintendent for this Long Island district 25 miles west of New York. "And Susan is core to that."
She's nicknamed Mrs. "Magic" Menkes, and her fingerprints (often paint-splattered) touch all subjects, from reading to social studies. "It's about the integration of art into everything we do," Grishman says.
To wit: Menkes traveled to Japan on a Fulbright scholarship in 2002. A "Peace by Piece" mural, a joint project for 84 of her fifth-graders and 85 Japanese students, hangs in Cantiague's lobby, and a reproduction was sent by request to the White House. Her goal was to "have kids develop respect for those who aren't like themselves," says Menkes, 56, "in my own little way."
On a crisp blue fall morning, her commitment to multicultural understanding is on colorful display. Hundreds of striped and crosshatched pinwheels, "flowers" created by each of Cantiague's 415 children and planted in the schoolyard, whirl in the light wind. Class representatives and finally Menkes herself step up to a microphone and announce: "I plant this pinwheel for peace in our school, our community and in our world."
Menkes' inclusion classes have both gifted students and those with learning disabilities. Regardless of academic or developmental ability, everyone, in Menkes' eyes, is an artist "in some way," she says.
Menkes, with a personality as buoyant as her bouncy red hair, is "the one who encourages us to jump up and do more than we thought we ever could do," says Nina Glodstein, 10 .
No wonder, then, that her classroom banner reads: "You're the artist, so you decide!" Menkes' room can't be missed. There's no number posted out front, but the door is framed in notched turrets of gold foil. Scroll-like signs above and on the door welcome "all royal subjects to a royal subject: art!" explored within the walls of Menkes' "Magic Art Castle."
The Beethoven project is an homage to Kandinsky, one of Menkes' favorite artists. "Every color had musical meaning to Kandinsky," Menkes explains, a poster of the artist's Little Painting With Yellow on the easel next to her.
Heaven Mitchell, 11, sees an "upside-down cat" in the piece, which "makes you dance with your eyes."
Daniel Schneider, 10, calls it "unusual art." Menkes clarifies: "It's non-representational art."
But that doesn't mean it's not thoughtful or emotional, Menkes explains. Impassively swiping at her sheet, Menkes demonstrates what not to do when Beethoven flows from the boom box. "Your thoughts aren't messy, your feelings aren't messy. So your paintings shouldn't be messy."
After the children gingerly walk over to the drying rack, palms balancing their works like hot pizzas, Menkes asks them to describe their Kandinsky-channeling. Voices call out: "Calm!" "Relaxed!" "Free!"
"It felt peaceful," Daniel says, sitting cross-legged on the rug.
"So it ties into the theme today," Menkes points out. Heads nod in recognition.
Says Menkes: "I want to inspire them so they have confidence. I'm hoping each will develop as an all-around person by the time they leave here."
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