Art Club members paint a mural in the McNary High School cafeteria.
At the beginning of the year, McNary High School switched to having clubs during school hours instead of having them after school. The clubs are either 6, 9 or 18 weeks long.
One of those clubs is The Art Club which is led by Mark Kohley, an art teacher at McNary. The Art Club, along with the other clubs at McNary, meet every Wednesday from 2:25-3:20 p.m.. The switch to having clubs during school rather than after is to get students more involved in activities.
“We really emphasize trying to have every student involved in one sport, one activity or one club throughout the year,” Kohley said.
In the art club, students can work on their own projects or work together on murals around the school.
“Our goals in the art club is to come up with mural ideas to strengthen educational ideas and to simply beautify and kind of connect different parts of the building together,” he said.
Teachers reach out to the art club with their mural ideas, from which students can then choose. Kohley suggests that members only pick the murals that interest them.
A group of students in the club are working on a mural of the world that will be in the school cafeteria. Another group is doing a nature themed mural above a teacher’s classroom door.
Kohley has also noticed that the art club has given members a chance to meet new people while working on projects.
“I think they’ve [the students] become not just interested in the type of subject matter in a club, but the people themselves,” he said. “What we’re trying to accomplish is to create a culture where students are getting involved with each other and the educational process, and this is kind of a different direction to take it.”
Kohley encourages students who are interested in joining the art club to talk to him and learn more about it.