MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — For the past three weeks Oak Hill Middle School eighth-graders have enjoyed the company of a special visitor.

Jeff Mather, a community-based public artist based out of the Atlanta area, has been working with students on a collaborative STEAM project that will soon be on display for all to see inside the school. Also during his time at Oak Hill, Mather worked with a group of 17 teachers that are part of a STEAM Ahead cohort teaching them how to create STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) projects and curriculum to be integrated in their classrooms. 

“I’m a leader in a field a lot of people don’t know about,” Mather said. “It’s called the teaching artists field. A teaching artist is not an art teacher, although I do a lot of partnerships with art teachers.”

Mather described what he does as “co-teaching.” His residency was paid for in part through a Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) grant received by the Baldwin County School District about two years ago. Mather has served as an artist-in-residence at more than 150 schools, including Drew Charter School in Atlanta, for half of each semester. Drew Charter is the first charter school in the state to be STEAM certified by the Georgia Department of Education, so a lot of emphasis is placed on the STEAM curriculum. 

Baldwin County Schools Superintendent Dr. Noris Price and other local school officials were touring Drew when she recognized Mather from his time doing a residence at a school where she served as principal. She expressed an interest in having him come to Baldwin County, which led to his visit to Oak Hill.

He has spent the last three weeks taking students through a collaborative project where they painted wooden rings and created foam sculptures that will be mounted and integrated into the architecture at Oak Hill. Students unveiled their work for their classmates during a ceremony Thursday afternoon and even added in some music and dance.

“What I hope the students got out of the project is the hands-on component because the whole maker movement and STEAM are very much enmeshed … I hope I’ve contributed to STEAM having traction. One of the biggest things that an artist-in-residence can hopefully leave is a bunch of students who have caught the bug and have had a taste for the freedom to design and make what they design,” Mather said. 

Mather added that he wanted to stress to his students that art is not just a project to be graded at school, it is something the artist can take pride in creating.

“That’s really great when they put in all that effort, but it’s when you give yourself an assignment — when you have something you want to make and have to figure out what materials you need and where to get them — that’s what I want to nudge them towards,” he said.