Impact to My Classroom

# of Students Impacted: 200

The materials provided by this grant were a big hit and a huge success!  Our goal was for the digital art students to improve their skills by following the design process from digital ideation and design to creation and it worked!! And then some!! The digital art teacher at PRHS, Adrianna Flores, agreed to pilot the program and she took the project a step further. Instead of just cutting the designs and heat pressing them onto t-shirts or bags, she taught the traditional screen-printing process and students couldn't have been more excited about their final projects.  The learning curve was high on this project for the teacher and the students and so we did not end up moving the equipment between schools THIS YEAR, but now that Adrianna has a system in place, she has agreed to conduct a training for all of the high school art teachers at our August Professional Development Day. Once we have everyone trained, we can transfer the equipment from one building to another or perhaps even inspire some buildings to purchase their own.

Here are the steps to the project, as shown in the photos below:

1. Students created a black and white design in Adobe Illustrator, image went through revisions to strengthen design and be 'printable'
2. Students and teacher worked together to transfer the design from the Adobe program to the Silhouette program
3. Once both approved design in Silhouette, it was sent to Cameo machine for printing and cutting
4. Students fed vinyl into Cameo machine to have design cut
5. Students used vinyl tools to remove extra vinyl from their designs
6. Students transferred design to screen using transfer paper
7. Students chose an ink color for inking and printing
8. After drying overnight, shirts were heat pressed to set the ink

Here is some student feedback about the project:

“I did enjoy this project; it was a new experience.”

“I enjoyed this project because it made me live out my dream of making a shirt with my personal design on it.”

“Yes, I enjoyed it, because at the end it was really nice to see my own design on something I can wear and show off to other people.”

“I loved this project because it’s something different and it’s something I can tell other people that I did.”

Budget narrative: Because the price had dropped on the two pieces of equipment--the Silhouette Cameo machine and the Heat Press machine, I WAS able to provide them with additional tools--vinyl weeding tools which are essential for removing those small bits of vinyl, a cutting mat, and a starter set of vinyl.

The document I uploaded from Adrianna Flores, the art teacher, has some great additional pictures of the finished shirts and the students wearing them :)