Science Museum Display & Video: The Layers of the Atmosphere

Our local Museum of Art and Science received a grant to make STEAM exhibits more accessible to people with disabilities. Who should they ask for help in creating the display? A few teachers, myself included, from the Georgia Academy for the Blind. The middle and high school science teachers (Cheryl Moore and Neel Bennet) picked the subject for our exhibit based on the standards that overlapped in their classes: The Layers of the Atmosphere. 

It was decided that science students would build a tactile display. During our discussions on including sound as a component of the display, I remembered of how School House Rock was so instrumental in my learning as a child. Why not incorporate music? I had a student who was about to turn 22, and age out of the school system. I thought one last hoorah with him improvising on his guitar would be appropriate. So I wrote lyrics to six jingles: One overview and one for each of the 5 layers of earth's atmosphere. Because Kameron is blind, I just handed him a guitar and would say the lyrics to a song multiple times and then have him start singing. It would take a couple tries to get the words right (or close enough), and then he'd try a few melodies. It ended up being about six or seven versions for each of the six songs. I weeded out the ones that were too long or incorrect before classmates voted vote between the remaining drafts for their favorite version of each song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLhj0-dXPsQ&t=12s

That's when the magic started. Students would create clay or foam visuals and move them little by little using the Stop Motion app on the school iPad. By the end of a very stressful week (since we had other projects going simultaneously), the film was finished.

The museum bought a TV just for our video. They have 80,000 visitors a year, which means almost 40,000 could see our film in person. The science classes did a great job with their wood, chickenwire, and plaster display, each layer of the atmosphere having some tactile element to show what makes it special. I added art and science student interviews into the video to document the process. 

It just goes to show that art can be used to teach any subject and that collaborations between teachers and the community build bridges in which everyone wins!