Weaving Conversation Skills Into High School Art Class

Mindy Sizemore is an art teacher at Spring Mills High School in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Inspired to build on the strong tradition of fiber arts in West Virginia, she introduced her students to knitting. As they used cardboard looms to create friendship bracelets, Sizemore noticed something unexpected. With both hands occupied, engaged in a purposeful but repetitive action, her students couldn’t use their cell phones. More than that, they relaxed, opened up, and began talking easily with their classmates. For a generation where high school students are sometimes more comfortable with digital interaction than face-to-face conversation, Sizemore saw this as an opportunity to practice communication skills in a low-stakes way.

So Sizemore decided to build on her sit-and-stitch activity by adding an interview component. Now, she provides a list of questions to pairs or trios of students. Once they’ve gotten the hang of knitting using their cardboard looms, the students take turns asking each other the listed questions. For this class period, Sizemore chose to focus her questions on heroes, scaffolding the questions to ease the students into more vulnerable topics. Early questions ask about favorite superheroes, while later questions ask for personal reflections about a real-life hero.

The groups continue to knit while they listen to and answer questions, giving them a place to focus their energy and generating a low-stress format for conversation. Any kind of repetitive artistic or craft activity would be effective. Having the structure of prewritten questions also takes pressure off. “We think of teenagers as very stoic or closed off,” notes Sizemore. “So they always surprise me that they’re very open, and some of their answers are really touching.” Stepping away from their phones, they offer thoughtful reflections and get to know their classmates.

Students further advance their conversational skills by taking the project home. They teach a family member how to make their own cardboard loom. Once they’re both knitting, the student interviews the family member with the same hero-themed questions and records the audio. They learn more about each other, bond over a shared activity, and create matching friendship bracelets as a lasting reminder.

With the skills they gain in their knitting interviews, the teens build confidence and greater readiness for face-to-face conversations—skills that will serve them well in future settings, from everyday conversations to job interviews.

For more ideas on helping high school students build communication skills, read Lisa Schultz’s article for Edutopia, “Strategies for Supporting Students’ Speaking and Listening Skills.”