Several teachers gathered at Stabin Museum in Jim Thorpe earlier this month to take part in a workshop that pairs art with the classroom.

The workshop, titled “Innovative Images and Whimsical Words: A strategic, thinking in the classroom through arts integration” was conducted through a collaboration between Victor Stabin, owner of the Stabin Museum and author and illustrator of “Daedal Doodle: The ABC Book for the Ages,” and St. Jerome Regional School in Hometown.

Teachers throughout the Allentown Diocese were invited to learn ways to think outside the box to provide students with a new creative way of expression through their art.

“It was wonderful to share with other teachers how they can use the arts integrated curriculum to engage their students in creating artwork that is special and unique to them,” said Kathy Odorizzi, SJRS art teacher. “We hope the teachers enjoyed their time at the Stabin Museum and left the workshop refreshed and inspired.”

“Teaching students how to create, while building vocabulary always makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing,” Stabin said. “It’s a given that everyone is astonished when their inner creative monkey all of a sudden jumps out of the box. What I like most about the process is the self-esteem factor. Guiding students to realize their potential never gets old.”

The idea for the workshop began during the 2023-24 school year, when Odorizzi, invited Stabin to conduct an artist residency at the school. Odorizzi had previously worked with Stabin during her time as the arts in education manager at the Allentown Art Museum.

The residency consisted of eighth grade students working with Stabin to learn about art and create their own Daedal Doodle ABC Book. The class then partnered with fifth grade students to create a book of short stories based on the created artwork.

Odorizzi said that because the residency was such a success, she and Stabin wanted to share with other teachers in the Allentown Diocese what they accomplished so they too could create their own ABC books with their students.

During the workshop, teachers learned about the Daedal Doodle curriculum, which is based on Stabin’s ABC book and learned how to integrate the visual and English language arts and help students develop creating writing skills, artistic expression, conceptual thinking, problem solving and vocabulary acquisition.

“The Daedal Doodle curriculum enhances creativity and literary skills, but most importantly, it strengthens conceptual thinking skills,” Odorizzi explained of the process Stabin uses. “By using a dictionary, the students create a word list. From the list, they are taking two, sometimes three unusual, new to them words, learning what they are, making connections between those words, and solving the problem of how to visually communicate what those words mean together through illustration.

“They are using the words to create a visual narrative that conveys an idea.”

In addition to Stabin taking the teachers through step by step his artistic process, he and Odorizzi shared their residency experience at Panther Valley High School and St. Jerome Regional School. The teachers were also treated to lunch, and a tour of the museum and of Stabin’s studio.

“The Daedal Doodle Workshop with Victor Stabin was just the right balance between receiving, observing, sharing and making,” Chris Hennessy of Berks Catholic High School said. “As a teacher of both English and art, the workshop exercises bridge both of these worlds.

“I am empowered to bring back to my students the hands-on physicality of holding a huge dictionary and actually working from it, the playfulness of a doodle, the inventiveness of allowing language to guide the imagination and the doodle to direct the hand.

“It was like a perfectly choreographed left brain/right brain dance between the two hemispheres.”