Kari Giordano – Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching 2020

Priorsford Maps Peebles
Priorsford Primary is a small school in the Scottish
Borders - about 30 miles south of Edinburgh. Though it
wouldn’t be considered rural by most definitions, there
is a strong community presence at the school that one
would typically find in a more remote location. When
you enter the school, you notice the strong sense of
camaraderie right away. This congeniality is important
in a school like Priorsford since working together is
integral to providing robust opportunities for the students.
Despite being in a semi-affluent area, Priorsford
does not employ an art specialist. Pupils at Priorsford
rely on their primary classroom teacher to integrate art
into their learning as best they can. Strong leadership
and visionary qualities of the head teacher encourage
teacher collaboration to make use of each faculty member’s
strengths. In this way, P4 teacher Teresa Pickburn,
a classroom teacher who excels in the arts does her best
to help out teachers who are less comfortable with art
as best she can. Working with Teresa was a good fit for
my residency and I was pleased that our initial meeting
ended with the decision to collaborate on a project.
With a request to fill a large space on the wall with a
mural, Ms. Pickburn designed a gridded illustration of
Peeble’s landmarks that would display all of the places
the children connect with regularly, including the town
swimming pool, the local parks, and the river that runs
through it all. She and her class explored the town’s landmarks
via photographs and discussion when a scheduled
walk through the town was thwarted by a winter storm.
Pupils used photographs to guide their drawings and
they each chose a landmark that they connected most
with. While the illustrated components of our wall mural
were in the works, small groups of students ventured
into the town to photograph details of these landmarks.
These could encompass any bit of interest that captured
the pupil’s attention. For example, the stone work that
made up the castle or the residents of the nursing home
whom the children read to each Friday. The photographs
were used as additional details in the final map in the
way of flaps and pop-ups and added an interactive quality
to the two dimensional work.
For a project like this to be truly place-based it relies on
the teacher and students to be immersed in the location
that they are illustrating. Merely drawing a building
doesn’t offer an avenue for engagement or connection. It
is through the discussion, encouraged curiosity, exploration
of details, and shared stories that the students begin
to feel connected with the map they are creating for their
own small town.
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