Visit to the Met Enriches Sixth Graders’ Study of History

1/15/2025

For the sixth grade class, a trip to The Metropolitan Museum of Art on January 10 was an epic journey through their history, Latin and art curricula.

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It was a day designed to deepen the students’ understanding of what they’re learning in class. Just ask Shiv Padmanabhan.

“I really enjoyed the Roman exhibit, where we could apply our knowledge of Latin to translate tombstones and short scripts from thousands of years ago,” he said. “It was interesting to observe their huge collection of ancient Roman statues depicting anything from political leaders to gods and demigods.”

Mina-Marie Coquillot shared her classmate’s excitement. “I had never seen a tombstone written in Latin before and it was exciting to see the many colors and carvings of people on them.”

Chaperones included sixth grade faculty Brittany Farrar, Mark Tamucci, Bruce Robbins, Katie Meadows, Dan Russo and Jen Rathkopf.

Farrar said, “Trips like these are essential in illuminating the process that archaeologists and historians use to reconstruct Roman life — a process that involves much of what we do in class every day: the reading and comparing of texts, the analysis of artifacts and ecofacts, and the crafting of reasonable arguments based on the evidence we have.”

In preparation for decorating their Minecraft Domus projects, students explored Roman paintings, mosaics, furniture and everyday objects. They viewed the “Art of Native America” exhibit for their social studies class and participated in a scavenger hunt through paintings by Hudson River School artists that have inspired their recent work in art class.

Kole Kweku was impressed by the “massive” paintings and cited “Washington Crossing the Delaware” by Emanuel Leutze as one of his favorites. “If I closed my eyes, I could imagine that I was in the painting and watching the artist paint it,” he shared.

Equally moved was classmate Nicole De La Cruz, who was drawn to the Tiffany stained glass piece, “Autumn Landscape.”

“In the back was a sunset by a lake with a waterfall and then right in front of you were the trees and grass and scenery,” she said. “It was just very calming and it almost looked real.”

Sixth grade art teacher Bruce Robbins finds it exciting that “the students take a lot of time to enjoy and discover so many things — things that we've been looking at just in slide presentations in the classroom are finally coming to life.”