Ingleside, Coronado students express themselves with Bare Your Sole project

From flip flops to heels to tennis shoes, 95 students in Shirley Johnson’s eighth grade Language Arts and Humanities class at Ingleside Middle School are reflecting on their elementary and middle school days by writing poems, narratives, letters and creating art with old shoes.

“The Bare Your Sole project helps students learn more about themselves and have a chance to reminiscence about good times, get a smile when they think about special moments, or work through the pain of tragedy and sad situations. This is a time of reflection and transition as their ‘elementary’ years are ending and they are moving to high school,” said Johnson.

Johnson, who has been teaching in the Scottsdale Unified School District for the past 33 years, has creatively incorporated visual arts creation and writing with the Bare Your Sole project. Armed with $100 from the Ingleside PTO, Johnson purchased little decorative items to get the students started on the project, and asked students to bring plain old shoes to class after winter break. Students decorated their shoes with items from their childhood, including Pokemon and Harry Potter items, Wilson antenna ball, pins, cards and sport memorabilia. The symbols reflect aspects of their childhood, their teen years and/or their goals for the future. From this tangible decorated shoe, students begin the writing process based on their personal preferences and interests expressed by their peers.

Janet Vickers, an English teacher at Coronado High School, used the Bare Your Sole project with her students and Johnson decided to try it as well.

Vickers initiated the Bare Your Sole project in the first quarter of this school year as a means of getting to know her students, and a way to meet state writing standards.

“I varied guidelines provided by Charlotte Rogers Brown, one of the authors of In Our Shoes, so I decided to vary the name to reflect the change, hence it became ‘Bare Your Sole,’ a play on words my sophomores enjoyed. The guidelines were designed for creating a ‘Shoe Group,’ but needed only a few changes so they would meet the needs of district curriculum, and be age appropriate for my students. I also varied some of the methods; the shoe stage requires students to bring items, including the shoes themselves, which might be outside the capability of my students, particularly the parting with an actual pair of shoes. I provided cardboard with which some students made two-dimensional cutouts of shoes,” said Vickers.

The mission of In Our Shoes centers originally on women coming together to share experiences through the writing process. Although this differs from what Vickers would need in the classroom, she was enchanted by the foundation of mutual respect that can be built through the project, as well as its potential to help her students become better writers. Vickers also appreciated the project's potential to help students learn to criticize or judge product, without being critical or judgmental of the person behind the product.

"In their first semester evaluations, many students identified this as their favorite, and most valued assignment of the semester. The reasons given varied from students saying it was the first time they actually completed an extensive writing assignment, to others who expressed a more in-depth understanding of the writing process, and ways to reach greater depth in writing, using input from other students. Again, the emphasis the authors placed, which I also stressed, on reading and listening to the writing of others free of judgment or criticism seems to be the key. Students' writing was evaluated according to the six traits, but the personal connections students made with their writing, as a result of the unique decorated shoes, took this out of classroom assignment and into 'real life' writing," added Vickers.

For more information about the Shoe Woman’s Network, please visit http://www.shoewomansnetwork.com/index.htm