Nancy Holter, Vance Benton, Amelia Marchewka, Christopher Baron, Michael Pes, Caroline Brett, and Kelly Hope

The team’s innovative teaching idea, “Zen Doodle Journal Project,” focuses on implementing a style of patterned doodling and the habit of journaling within a new curriculum unit to increase the academic competencies of 100 highly diverse students. Zen Doodles combine simple lines and shapes to create intricate patterns through a process that has been shown to provide students with cognitive benefits. In this project, students will create artistic Zen Doodle bindings for their own journal booklets and fill them throughout the year with artworks and written entries that enrich the academic curriculum and develop artistic craft. Holter and her team seek to forge bonds between foreign-born and native-born students, as well as the school and community, to increase awareness of cultural artistic traditions and human similarities.