Finding Sacred Spaces: The School as Community

Cultivating belonging & action through visual arts. Story 2

At the International School of Uganda (ISU), visual arts teacher Jill Pribyl is creating transformative learning experiences. Through thoughtfully designed projects, she connects students to their sense of identity, place, and global citizenship while fostering deep community engagement. I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Jill to explore how visual arts can amplify belonging, well-being, meaningful connections and community. By LeeAnne Lavender, AISA Community Engagement & Learning Coordinator.

For third-grade students exploring communities, Jill created a unit focused much closer to home – the school campus itself. In “Shapes, Places, Colors, Spaces,” students identified their favorite places at ISU, photographed them from multiple perspectives, and transformed those images into abstract canvas paintings using lines, shapes, and colors that expressed their emotional connections to the spaces.

“I thought, we have a community within our school that is really important to the students, especially if they’re from overseas. The school is a big part of their social life and their well-being,” Jill explains.

The project culminated in an art exhibition where students proudly displayed their work, engaging with peers and parents who asked about their creative process and inspiration. To preserve this meaningful work, Jill created a professional gallery brochure that documented the exhibition.

“We do this amazing work, and then it’s just gone, and everyone takes their painting home and we have no record,” she says. “So I decided to make a brochure, which the students were also excited about.”

The brochures (which Jill made for both the grade 3 and grade 5 exhibitions) are artifacts that serve multiple purposes: they celebrate student achievement, create a permanent record of the students’ artistic journeys, and advocate for the vital role of arts education in the school community.

See Story 3: The Forever Forest: Art as Environmental Activism

Please enjoy the full interview with Jill about the grade 3 and 5 units, as well as a grade 4 unit that features the community partnership with the Kiteezi Women’s Centre.

• About Jill

  Jill arrived in Uganda 20 years ago as a Fulbright Scholar in Makerere University’s Performing Arts Department. “I came to Uganda as a practicing artist—both visual and performing—and transitioned into education from there,” she explains. “My experience in teaching comes from a very strong arts background into education, not education to be an art teacher. So I think that’s a different inroad.”

  This artist-first approach informs everything about her teaching philosophy. When discussing strengths of the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme (PYP) curriculum, Jill notes: “I’ve really loved working in the PYP because it is so flexible and open, and it allows for teachers to have a lot of agency in how they’re approaching the subject matter, and what lessons or units they decide to develop.”

  Perhaps most powerfully, Jill models what it means to be a practicing artist alongside her students. During a recent Literacy Week at ISU, she worked on illustrations for her upcoming children’s book, The Brush, while her students tackled realistic art projects of their own.

  “[The students] were really engaged in my process, and of course, I was also engaged in their process of drawing realistically,” Jill reflects. “Being vulnerable by sharing something that isn’t perfect yet, and that they had a say in some of the creative decisions I made – that kept the students excited.”

Examples of grade 3 student art about favourite places on the ISU campus.