ART
Lessons
Creative Outlets Help
Three Shaker Heights High School
Seniors Weather the Chaos of 2020
By Jennifer Kuhel
Photography by Gus Chan
Adults turned to everything
from breadmaking to exercise to
binge-watching “Tiger King” as
distractions from the disruptions of
2020. But what could high school
students, who are still very much in
the throes of emotional development
and whose lives tend to rely on social
experiences, do to escape?
In the spring of their junior
year, Shaker Heights High School
visual and performance art students
Emie Coffman, Max Carroll, and
Isaiah Finley experienced the
pile-on of navigating a shift to
remote learning, dealing with
social isolation, and accepting that
the college tours, sports seasons,
and school plays and concerts just
weren’t going to happen.
“It was a rough transition for me,”
Coffman admits. But since March of
last year, Coffman, Carroll, and Finley
have made it to the other side and,
even better, learned something about
themselves along the way.
And they say that’s due in no
small part to the role that art and
music plays in their lives and in their
social-emotional health.
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