News
02/20/2026
Where Choice Meets Creativity: Inside Lower School’s Art Studio
“Our program is built around our students’ voices. Their ideas, perspectives, and creativity aren’t extras—they are the heart of everything we do. We celebrate who they are, we listen to what they wonder about, and we design learning experiences that honor their individuality and imagination.” —Heidi Zarou ’86, P’22, ’22
Down the hallway past the double-door cafeteria, the lower-level art studio of the historic Hulbert mansion opens into a series of connected rooms: a ceramics studio, a large, light-filled classroom with walls covered in student artwork, affirmations like “I am an artist,” an industrial sink, benches stools, and a low-lit front room with a “balm” chair for reading. Before students step inside, a rotating wall of inspirational artists and a “choices” board present a menu of creative possibilities. On studio days, students may select time sculpting in the ceramics studio, drawing, painting, and other activities in the main studio, create individual or collective projects or time in the balm chair—directing the course of their next 35-minutes creative venture as growing artists.
That invitation is the essence of choice-based learning. By selecting the materials and stations that speak to their curiosities, children move from passive receivers to active creators. Building on a belief in their abilities as artists and the recognition that those abilities are vastly diverse, Patti Smith P’20 and Heidi Zarou ’86, P’22, ’22 have built a curriculum for the Lower School’s young architects, ceramicists, illustrators, designers, and more.
Choice-Based Learning
Artistic choice gives structure without prescription. Students plan, revise, and innovate, then use reflective exercises such as video interviews and worksheets to tell the story of their process. The choice-based art curriculum is deeply personal for each student. They create work born from their own fascinations, identities, and lived experiences, while also strengthening confidence, executive function, and habits of inquiry that travel with them into other subjects.
While the choice-based curriculum was established more than three years ago, one assigned project remains. The “painted stool” project is a longstanding visual arts tradition, a culminating Lower School project where each student selects an artwork from a famous artist to paint on a personal stool. The stool becomes a beloved keepsake that alumni and alumni parents treasure for years.
Smith and Zarou have shaped the art program at Lower School since 2007 and 2000, respectively. The curriculum exposes students to a variety of media and skill-based concepts with a dose of art history and plenty of play. Developed from the Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) model, the choice-based studio invites students to work as artists and create on their own terms. It shifts the paradigm from traditional teacher-directed projects to student-driven artistic expression.
“There are so many ways to be an artist,” says Smith. “In a world where instruction and information is everywhere, the real question is how we [autonomously] use the tools at hand to create. This is their studio—the students are the artists and we are facilitators. Our job is to provide space, materials, and instruction, then step back so they can create.”
Nurturing Creative Expression
In this way, each class is a positive experience that prioritizes students’ unique set of interests and ways of learning and working. They are able to exercise a higher level of independence and decision-making as they work on their projects and socially, when working in groups.
Where does creativity come from? Students are asked to ponder this question: “What lights you up?” From there, students explore ways to be creative that are informed by each individual’s passions. It’s the spark that sends a child leaning into a material or an idea. Sitting and drawing a still life might move one student, while another finds joy building an architectural form. It’s not one size fits all. Our goal is to encourage those flames to grow. If a child thinks ‘I can’t paint,’ but then discovers, ‘I can construct a treadmill from boxes,’ that shift changes how they see their own abilities,” says Zarou.
Before final projects go home, teachers interview students about their projects. In a routine that deepens metacognition and executive-function growth, students gather together each month to share what they have been working on and to self-reflect about how they used their original ideas; learned new techniques; contributed to the classroom art community, and more.
The Benefits of Choice
“When children follow what genuinely sparks them, they build confidence, skills, and the belief that their ideas matter,” said Zarou.
Piloted after COVID-19 social distancing and deepened through professional learning, Poly Prep’s move to choice-based studio transformed the art program. The shift emerged from a desire to create a safe, healing space where students could process, imagine, and reconnect through making. The impact is clear: when students choose their materials and direction, the room hums with focus. Classroom management becomes less about control and more about coaching. Even cleanup runs more smoothly because students feel ownership over their work.
Creative Problem Solving
Beginning in Kindergarten, children take naturally to the responsibility of choice. As they plan, revise, and adapt, they learn to articulate their thinking, explaining obstacles they encountered and how they pivoted. They’ll often use language like, “I first planned to do this, but then this happened, so I tried something else.” That language signals resilience and creative problem-solving skills that mirror goals in math and other subjects.
Since the transition, student work has become more personal and expressive, with children following the track of their own imaginations. In the studio, they see themselves as artists learning to build their skills while their imagination serves as a limitless tool. This year has brought a variety of projects as diverse as each young artist. Students have found art in the every day whether crafting a pair of skis, constructing a treadmill, making a model of their mother’s office from cardboard boxes, needle-felting, and more. They have also developed the language to speak confidently about handbuilding techniques in ceramics or creating organic shapes in printmaking. The work reveals the individuality and growth of each student.
Zarou and Smith demonstrate the poetics of art-based curricular design. Both maintain a deeply-rooted belief in their young students as artists with powerful imaginations. In their roles as art studio facilitators, they teach art as a healing, communal medium where wellness is central to all self-sustaining creative practices. Providing students with an environment where they create with different materials and learn new skills, based on their inner lives and unique interests, shapes a studio experience that is open-ended, responsive, and nurturing.
Under the leadership of Smith and Zarou, the practice of art at the Lower School is an affirming process. It is an inspiring place to try things, test ideas, build skills, and discover their own unique voice. Intentionally designed to support well-being as much as creativity, the studio celebrates each child as both a learner and an artist.
