Exceperts from Teachers incorporate Frisco art into lesson plans by Jessica Rush:

"Artwork around the city has become part of Frisco’s culture and identity, and Frisco ISD is working to even further integrate the unique art elements into the curriculum for students. This week, a group of elementary and secondary school representatives met with Frisco’s Public Art manager, Richard Oldham, to fine tune lesson plans that will integrate the city’s art collection with the school district’s curriculum for the upcoming school year.

The groups started the process of creating lesson plans a year ago that concentrate on artwork around the central part of the city near buildings like the George A. Purefoy Municipal Center, the Frisco Heritage Center ... and Pizza Hut Park. The pieces are within walking distance of each other, which will be ideal for field trips and extra credit projects.

“Our hope and expectation is we’ll be doing the docent guided tours,” Oldham said.

A favorite lesson plan so far has been for a 30-foot sculpture that will be installed by the end of the year on the west side of city hall. “Prairie Bells” will be an abstract sculpture symbolic of Frisco’s first 100 years.

Forwark explained that after the art teacher educates students about the piece of art that will be visible from the mayor’s window, students will construct their own kinetic wire structures with bells that can be suspended from the ceiling.

Now, Frisco Public Art wants to go back and really introduce these works to the community. Once the lesson plans are finalized, they will be implemented into Eduphoria, an online database that all Frisco teachers can access. The city website will eventually include much of the information for home-schooled children, and they expect to create lesson plans for the entire collection.

“We’re not just teaching them art history,” Oldham said. “We’re trying to inspire them to create their own work based on local artwork.”