Schools
Students Embracing New Art Teacher's Project
WHRHS students are helping children with serious illnesses collect "Beads of Courage."
Michelle Ravettina, newly-appointed to fill the position of just-retired Mary Lewis, Watchung Hills art teacher, has added a dimension to students’ art education: supporting an “arts-in-medicine” project which assists children with serious illnesses, a 501(c) 3 charitable organization called “Beads of Courage.”
Not only are fine arts students learning to craft attractive beads (whose simple raw ingredients include colorful scrap paper, a craft adhesive and thin wooden skewers), but they are also helping kids with cancer and other life-threatening conditions to track and celebrate their own steps to recovery.
The beads they make are sent to Beads of Courage, a project founded in 2004, that touches the lives of more than 10,000 children in 60 hospitals in the United States, Japan, New Zealand and Ireland. It “rewards” kids undergoing treatment for serious illnesses with beads for each procedure, hospital stay or milestone, so they may form a visible chain of hope as they endure life-threatening illnesses.
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The use of beads as a device for helping remember, record or remind is an old and well-honored custom. Anyone who has dealt with pre-teens as students, campers or household members will be aware of the passion this age group has for beads in any configuration.
Ravettina’s teaching menu of Fine Arts I and II and Jewelry includes all of the traditional elements in those curriculum areas as well.
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A North Jersey native (Montclair and Livingston), Ravettina received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Hofstra University (Long Island, NY) and the Master’s in Art Education from New York University.
She comes to Watchung Hills from one-and-a-half years of teaching in a charter school in Jersey City, where her day included seven classes as well as breakfast and lunch duty. It’s not hard to understand why she “loves it here” and pronounces her new venue “an amazing place.”
Ravettina has spent three-and-a half years as a museum educator at the Newark Museum, heading the summer program for the Junior Museum’s Art Education program.
Out of season, out of school activities include snow-boarding and running—anything out of doors, she says.
