Literacy in the Art Classroom

How could I use journals, zines, blogs, and comics in my art room to improve literacy in the classroom?
Art and literacy are related in a plethora of ways. Just as in the art room we practice, practice, practice to become better artists, reading and writing skills develop in much the same way. Children need opportunities for their literary skills to flourish in a nonthreatening atmosphere. The art room is a perfect place for children to use writing to reflect their ideas and to read the thoughts of other people. If a child has a distaste for reading and writing, they tend to avoid them altogether. In art class there is typically less stress on proper grammar and spelling, which relieves the anxiety many kids have towards writing.  To give them the chance to use reading and writing in ways that do not emphasize mechanics or grades is to permit them to foster a personal appreciation for literacy. In time, my students may just realize how much fun reading and writing can be!

I will use journals, zines, blogs, and comics to give students the chance to develop their literacy skills. The best way to use them would be for reflection, research, personal exploration, and collaborative projects. I could use journals as sketchbooks, reflection tools, and note-taking devices. Zines could be used to publish mini-excerpts about artists, art movements in history, careers in art, social activism, and more. Blogs can be used to integrate technology, make out-of-classroom assignments more interesting, share artwork images, and otherwise collaboratively publish reflections and ideas between the entire class. They are a useful tool for portfolios and class discussions. Comics are also important to integrate to express thoughts and ideas in a less threatening way. Students can easily relate to comics when comparing them to cartoons and other media. All video media typically begins with some sort of drawing board of frames and text similar to comics. There are some great computer programs out there for making comics nowadays.

Reading and writing are necessary skills to be work-ready and productive in today's society. By encouraging the growth of these essentials in my classroom, I am helping them in more ways than skill-building. I am making my students more influential and effective communicators, as well as more employable citizens.

Which one am I most likely to use?
The tool I am mostly regularly going to use will be journals and/or blogs. They are simple and can carry over from one lesson to the next. Both can be integrated into every lesson regardless of what the students are doing. If I had to choose between the two, I would likely pick journals because they are low-tech and would not require computers. Using computers regularly is not always an option in every school, and in addition opens the doors to technological malfunction or error that bring stress to all involved. Not to mention, you can draw in journals as well. A downfall of using journals instead of blogs would be that it eliminates the ease of sharing things with peers. The quality of their writing skills would also be effected because they would not feel the pressure to work as hard at their writing if it is not going to be read by their classmates. However, they would be able to share private thoughts and feelings more easily in a journal than a published webpage.

Which one seems the most challenging and why?
I would have to say all of these forms have their challenges. Journals are expensive to buy outright, take time to make handmade, and require space for storage. Zines take time to cut and fold if many are made and are at the mercy of the copy machine used to mass-produce them. They are difficult to produce with the right level of contrast to make them reproduce legibly. There also comes the issue of where to distribute them. Not everywhere is appropriate for every zine. Blogs, as mentioned before can become a hassle if there are not enough computers to go around or the class must move to another location in the building to use them. This can waste valuable class time to be transitioning a lot. Computers also require maintenance and have a high margin of error the older they get. Comics can be challenging to teach, especially with my lack of knowledge of the field. Due to the level of specificity, i.e. commonly accepted conventions of comics, they may not be of interest to some of my students. All of these factors prove challenging, but what is life without some obstacles? They will only lead to divergent problem-solving on my part and reflection to strengthen their ties with art and literacy. Every problem has a solution!

Advocating for the Arts

Why is it essential to be an advocate for the arts?
The most important reason to be an advocate for the arts is because if we as art educators do not stand up for what we do and why we do it, how can we expect others to do it for us? We are one of the most impacted by a lack of advocacy for the arts in our communities. I am a strong believer in setting the example for others so that they may see their possibilities for action. That is why I enjoyed the two articles, The Business of Art Education: A Fairy Tale Adventure and Advocacy for Art Education: Beyond Tee-Shirts. Both of them provoke action and determination to serve as a spokesperson for the arts. They both established a relationship we as educators must have with advocacy, being informed and well-spoken so as to strengthen the impact of our leadership. We must foster support for what we do by actively communicating and seeking allegiance with anyone and everyone who has something to gain through arts education for all.

What are some of the things happening that could effect the arts?
Commonly in this our age of high-stakes testing students' time spent engaging in the fine arts is dwindling. A strong emphasis on attainment of satisfactory progress in core subject areas puts art education programs on the back burner. The first program to go when schools must play "catch-up" with their students is typically the art program. If there is no one there to speak out when these injustices occur (even sometimes to the extent that federal and local regulations for the fine arts are not being followed) the art programs are shortened or cut entirely. Art teachers' time and patience are worn thin by frequent inter-school, sometimes even inter district travel. On a brighter note, as the Iowa Core Curriculum is being revised, some prominent players in the fine arts in Iowa have devoted great effort to see these important subjects included in the Iowa Core. It has been met with some resistance thus far, but with all of our support, we can make it happen!

How can you as an art teacher communicate the importance of the arts to your students, faculty, parents, and community?
I see myself as a facilitator for important experiences to happen between others and the arts, not necessarily exclusive to my students, but the community as a whole. If I keep my students, faculty, parents, and community informed and, with any luck, engaged in the arts, I will create an atmosphere of advocacy to draw upon to instigate more meaningful, community-based projects that smear the boundaries between the classroom and beyond. To keep them informed and engaged means letting them know about opportunities to interact with art in the community such as at plays, festivals, art shows, galleries, classes, workshops, and so much more. Part of my method for encouraging participation will be pitching the positive impact art has on communities, by bringing us altogether, expressing and challenging important ideas, and fighting for justice! Not to mention the arts are just sooooo much fun! All of these parties will be informed on how to get involved with the arts, how to be an advocate, and opportunities to volunteer and contribute to the classroom through newsletters, brochures, and other simple publications. Word of mouth will also be a strong tool for communicating with these parties, as not all of them will read every paper that comes home or grab handouts when they visit their child's school. I would also like to maintain a website that provides the same information for those who prefer not to contribute to paper waste. At meetings with appropriate administrative figures and at school conferences, I can advocate for the arts with parents and faculty. I will rely on partnerships with other teachers and staff to create an interdisciplinary learning environment that will not only strengthen my students' understanding of multi-faceted learning, but also justify the existence of art in schools. Forming bonds with parents, faculty, and the community are some of the most important things I can do as an art teacher to ensure the fine arts thrive in my school and community! With a strong foundation of support, I am able to do even more that demonstrates how necessary the arts are. I am reminded of a snowball. Once it gets rolling down the hill, it only gets bigger and bigger.

Community Art Projects

Chapters 9 & 11 of Art Education for Social Justice highlighted several important considerations to guide the experiences we set up for our students. These include intergenerational mentorship, dismantling stereotypes, and achieving empathy through first-hand encounters.

While it holds true that "youth seldom interact with individuals (other than their teachers) who come from other generations", it had not struck a chord with me until now. The reality is that children spend the majority of their days with a specific few mentors. The variety and breadth of knowledge we gain when sharing dialogue with those of other generations has gotten lost somewhere in our routine, day-to-day lives. We should embrace intergenerational learning opportunities to enrich the lives of all those involved! Every one gains a new perspective into the life of someone else. This has the potential to snowball into an appreciation for diverse peoples, empathy for those facing adversity, and active justice-seeking/ advocating for the oppressed. The world could be a better place if we all learned the valuable lessons others around us have to teach and grew to appreciate mutually each other as valuable members of society.

The reflections the students and others involved in the community mosaic and school garden gave provided insight on the effect these activities had on their perspectives of others. The participants' biases and presumptions about the populations they would be working with were challenged as they worked side by side and learned from one another. The college students in chapter 11 found it surprising to have learned so much about the wetlands from a retired woman in her 80s, and with so much enthusiasm! The gentleman who knew concrete was shocked by how easy and fun it was to work with young kids. Even assumptions people had against themselves were revealed, such as in chapter 9 when one of the clients of the center couldn't believe what they were able to accomplish on the mosaic. Some were surprised because they anticipated the collaboration would be simple and easy. People learned so much more about working with people of different generations by first-hand experience than they ever could have from a textbook or lecture.

Along their journeys, the participants in both the experiments grew exponentially in their ability to relate to one another. I see that reflected in the comments recorded from the mosaic project. While several were discouragingly negative, others expressed enlightenment and a realization of what it takes to relate to an estranged group of people. Students had to let go of reservations and try to place themselves in the lives of those at the shelter. One student commented that they did not think they should design the mosaic to look joyful because it wouldn't accurately reflect the community it was being created for. They worked together to come up with the idea of hope. Hope was something everyone could relate to.

I enjoyed both the mosaic project and the wetlands lessons. The things I liked about the mosaic project were the amount of reflection that everyone did (including the instructor), the participation of the mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar, the collaboration with the community center, and the immediate impact it had on the lives of those effected by poverty. The mosaic was keeping clients busy and involved, and it gave them a sense of purpose and pride in their new skills. I appreciated that the professor incorporated the hurricanes and disaster relief issues as they became relevant. I thought the project as portrayed in the chapter seemed a little weak in participation. The students seemed to detach themselves from the process quickly after it started. I wonder if there isn't some way that the students could have been more enthused about the project. Perhaps they needed to choose the topic themselves, instead of being told that homelessness and poverty was their only choice. The students did not take ownership over the project the way they may have had they had more of a say in its planning and implementation.

The wetlands project in particular I can relate to because I am a nature enthusiast. I would love to replicate this project in creating a rain garden some day with my students. The parts of this lesson I would keep include collaborating with experienced naturalists, an outdoor experience relevant to the project, and impacting the environment in a positive way. I wonder how much collaboration was done with homeroom teachers for this project. The project could have been timed so that students could have been studying wetlands in class as well. That way, they could have also planned what plants to put in the garden! Just one more way to make it hit home. I have a friend that teaches environmental science in higher ed. that would love to work with youth to transfer some of her enthusiasm for the environment to another generation. Not to mention, I have another acquaintance who is the biggest insect enthusiast I have ever known! She could visit my classroom to talk about insects, and we could have a field trip to capture and release them before drawing or otherwise creating insects ourselves.

In developing my service learning project, the ideas that I have taken from these two chapters include finding and using a mentor, making the project relevant and intergenerational, and including lots of reflection activities and ways to document the experience.

Discovering Service Learning Projects

I am thrilled to be collaborating with the Boys & Girls Club for my service learning project. I e-mailed the Waterloo Unit Director, Ashley Stewart, proposing an interview in the near future with her volunteer coordinator. At this interview, I would like to discuss the ways that the Boys & Girls Club uses mentorship as a tool to build communities. I will use this information to formulate a secondary level lesson plan targeting mentor and leadership roles. This lesson plan will incorporate service learning through social service with the organization. While the specifics of my project have not been laid out, my objectives for this lesson are that students review mentorship in their own lives before experiencing the impact of being a mentor firsthand. I am partial to using the media of photography or clay, similar to the Finding Oral Culture and Urban Stories or Eco-Wall of Hope projects from our Art Education for Social Justice textbook. Key ideas I am keeping in mind while planning my service learning project are: discovering the needs of the population I am working with, ensuring both sides gain something significant from the experience, building art skills in the process, and the students reflecting on what they learned. Confidently hitting these four targets will justify my lesson's creation, and demonstrate the value of using service learning in the classroom.

The Significance of Artist Trading Cards

Growing up in the large urban community of Des Moines, I have encountered a wealth of diversity in life and livelihood. Iowa has quite a few significant things to offer that I have come to appreciate in life, from quality educational programs to the rolling hills of prairie grasses that greet the sun at day in and day out. I value the adversity I have experienced living here over the years, because without all those obstacles to overcome, I would not be as wise as I can say I am today. In all difficult things, there has been beauty to be sought. It was my goal to express that idea in the artist trading cards I am working on. I wanted to portray my gratitude for opportunities and support others to relinquish the fears or doubts that inhibit their self-expression and living a life rich in meaning. My artist trading cards reflect many of my personal values that developed under the circumstances of my upbringings. Regularly, I embrace the necessity to evolve, compromise, or contradict my values to bridge understanding between my past, present, and future. We are all objects of change and require nurturing guidance to broaden our horizons. A strong spirituality and connectedness with nature frequents my work.

The issues I foresee secondary students to be encountering relate to identity issues and interpersonal relationships. At that age, we all seek acceptance by our like-minded peers. We want to figure out who we are, why we are here, and what are we going to make of our lives. At the same time, we are strongly guided by our emotions to make complicated decisions that impact our daily relationships with others, including our peers, families, and authoritative figures. During the secondary school years, change is rapid and sometimes dramatic. Strong insecurities erupt during this time, as personal image is influenced and challenged by the media and our surroundings. Life for students at this age can be fairly complex. Social structures within schools and communities both confine and uplift students. Relationships with others can be debilitating or progressive. My job as an educator is to guide students towards better decision making and a greater sense of purpose in life.

Becoming a Transformative Teacher through Social Justice Arts Education

The divisions that make up the Emerging Qualities Continuum diagram vary as a teacher evolves from representing traditional to responsive to transformative qualities in their pedagogy. We see four distinct characteristics of curriculum and instruction under transformative teacher qualities that identify with the educational needs of students in our classrooms.

Firstly is to integrate global citizenry into our classroom's agenda. To be a global citizen in the classroom is to tend to the well-being of the individual, their social and emotional necessities, in order to promote in them the empathy and courage to contribute to and defend the needs of others. It is to advocate for a world without boundaries, where people can make a difference in the lives of those who need it, regardless of their location on our planet. In chapter 8 of Art Education for Social Justice, we witnessed these teacher and student qualities firsthand when classrooms took on the challenge of creating safer and healthier environments for those people living in poor-living conditions, with limited access to food or safe drinking water. The Empty Bowls and Potters for Peace projects both used ceramics to address social justice. They provided a service for those who would otherwise have gone without. Through means of learning about social issues, creating solutions to the problems, and reflecting on their impact, the students who involved themselves in these projects made a difference as a global citizen. By using this example, I can myself implement curriculum and instruction that challenges students to see beyond the confines of the classroom and community, to creating a better life for themselves and others across the world.

Secondly is to address rapidly changing content. While specific information that we teach may be relevant to the era we live and teach in, those skills that are eternal must be reconciled to sustain the variable living situations we will all find ourselves in. The content we teach should be applicable in a medley of circumstances. It should attend to the global community and our commonalities; to universal skills that will help students to succeed wherever they go. This puts a strong emphasis on interpersonal and communication skills, making connections across disciplines, and supporting student success with technological access that will broaden the scopes of their learning. In chapter 19 we saw this connect across time and cultures when the author, A. Zettler, addressed Tom Anderson's previous writings about art history as a social construct, relevant to its time and place or origin. In our classrooms, we can learn about the history of the relationships between diverse groups of peoples to bring about a deeper understanding of their relationships today. We can also incorporate other disciplines to solidify the multi-faceted reality of knowledge construction and application.

Thirdly is to tend to the multiple ways of learning and teaching that best support student needs. This quality focuses on diverse approaches to attaining information and a greater demand for student-centered inquiry. When I look at the Emerging Qualities Continuum, I see this as the most substantial difference between being a traditional or responsive teacher. The relevance of a quality education extends the boundaries of the lesson at hand. Learning opportunities present themselves everywhere in everyday life as teachable moments that could seriously impact the drive we all want our students to attain to be lifelong learners! Being innovative, clever, and fun are ways to adapt what would be a dull and forgettable lesson into something students will value for years to come. We want our students to play a great role in developing their education, as much as is appropriate. Giving them choices and functioning as a guide and mentor creates a more sufficient environment for lots of important learning to be done. By using many means of representing the same idea, we ensure that the diverse learners of our classroom have a fair opportunity to grasp and understand the curriculum and draw bigger ideas from it. In chapter 18, students were given a plethora of relevant practice activities to enable them to have a greater understanding of the final project. Some students may have connected more with some assignments than others, but the point was that they were diversified so that students could relate in a significant way to some part of the practice before they were expected to demonstrate deeper meaning. This is a great idea to borrow in my own teaching- to ensure that students have plenty of opportunities to grasp a concept before moving forward. I could use warm-up activities and other ways to reflect on objectives before they create their final products.

Lastly is to promote leadership, collaboration, and advocacy. Students learn how to work as a team, what it means to be a team member, a leader, an advocate, and contribute their unique skills. The students are involved in the learning process by having a substantial role in deciding what to learn about. They engage in issues that are significant to them, and thus connect more with what they learn. The classroom functions as a collaborative body. Students work together to solve problems and learn more form one another than they could ever have learned by their lonesome, or by solely the teacher delivering instruction. We see this demonstrated in chapter 13, when students collaborated to create an Eco-Wall of Hope. The students chose what endangered animal they related to personally, and together they built the wall of hope from ceramic tiles depicting their animal. Each student had a role in making the project successful. It involved a lot of problem-solving and cooperation. In the end the wall represents something much bigger than just their individual tile-something that they could not have created by their lonesome. It was a team effort that made the project more meaningful. I hope to incorporate many opportunities for students to collaboratively advocate for things that are important to them in my classroom.

All of these factors that contribute to transformative teaching intertwine in a complex relationship between both teacher and students, allowing for students to play a greater role in their own education. Being a transformative teacher means being a teacher and a learner. My hope is that representing these qualities will elicit a similar response to education in my students: that learning is multi-dimensional and can occur anywhere and everywhere!

Social Justice in the Elementary Art Classroom

How do you imagine teaching social justice issues in elementary school?
In Chapter 18, "We Begin Again After the Tabula Rasa", the thoroughness and complexity of veteran art teacher Anne Thulson's plans for incorporating social justice in her elementary classroom seem quite intimidating. She has collaborated with classroom teachers to coincide what she teaches with what is already being taught outside the artroom. Preparing the focus of her lessons requires a significant amount of coordination between the parties involved. The intricacy undertaken in her planning is ideally what I would like to take on someday. In the meantime, with less experience and not having encountered the numerous tribulations yet to manifest themselves that will shape the kind of art teacher I will inevitably become, I have what I have learned thus far in my teaching career to guide me. My intended course of action for educating my elementary students on social justice issues relies heavily on collaborating with classroom teachers, pulling from historic and current events and issues that have the greatest impact on the communities in which my students live, and drawing parallels between their lives and other inhabitants from all over the world. Teaching students empathy, as is the focus of chapter 13, will allow my students to recognize and overcome adversity not only for themselves, but for others as well. This is a necessary component of teaching social justice at any age level. 
 

What strategies and ideas emerge in chapters 13 and 18 of Art Education for Social Justice that would help plan realistic and meaningful projects for kindergarten through fifth grade students?
Reading chapters 13 and 18 has equipped me with several additions to my teaching strategy toolbox. I would like to incorporate the use of field notes, photographs, and film to document and study student participation and interests, as was used by Michelle Creel in chapter 13 when studying students for the Eco-Wall of Hope project. This information can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of my planning and instruction, as well as assisting to direct the course of the students' studies over time. The partnership between schools and grade levels when working on the project was also inspiring. It gave deeper meaning to the project to give students role models and the opportunity to be a role model themselves. It builds on a sense of community and common ground between students of different age levels. Students could use more chances to interact with peers that are not of the same walk of life. The creation of works that exist beyond the walls of the classroom was also employed in these chapters. Using this approach, students see more of the bigger picture and how art relates to everything we learn about and do. In chapter 18, students learned about the war between Spain and Mesoamerica in their homeroom and the art room. This creates a more holistic representation of not only the history that was taught, but education itself, by showing learning can be achieved through diverse processes. We can and should use what students are learning elsewhere to fuel what we teach them as well. Tapping upon resources that are available to us is an excellent beginning for teaching social justice. Anne Thulson used documents that are all too real, videos, photographs, etc. to convey the meaning she was hoping her students would find.The point was that students should find and develop their own significance in what they are being taught. The teacher again becomes merely a guide towards an end goal. This exponentially effects the way students connect with what they learn.

Creating Authentic, Reflective Experiences for Students

The issues addressed in chapters 17 & 19 of Art Education for Social Justice focus on tapping into a student's history and experiences while in the artroom to enhance their understanding of and relationship to the artwork they create. In these two chapters, students were confronted with the need to express and share their thoughts and ideas on important issues, sometimes requiring research in order to do so. Perspectives were awakened and reformed. They reacted to the assignments with increased involvement and a drive to want to make art. These projects had been reinvented to address the social conditions the students were living in. A self-portait project evolved into a drawing of a soldier killed in the war currently effecting all our lives. The famous and generally well-received PostSecret project began by Frank Warren became the basis for a school-wide junior high project about hopes, wishes, and regrets. Students were guided to make more authentic work that reflected themselves. Alexandria W. Zettler expressed this idea in chapter 19 when she wrote, "we should create art about what we know, about who we essentially are. We should address our own social, cultural, political, and emotional points of view" (146). Creating assignments with these aims in mind means students will learn to be more reflective of their beliefs and reflect on the beliefs of others.

How can you get your students to move beyond the everyday issues to think more critically about their community and the world they live in?
To get students tuned into their environments is a daunting task. Depending on their level of development, they will have varying concerns encompassing their minds and distracting them from the realities of their society. Thus, to stimulate them into that proactive mindset required to engage in the curriculum requires a lot of planning on our, the teacher's, part. We must incorporate activities into the curriculum that allow the students to research and discover for themselves what is happening in their communities and society at large. They need the opportunity to reflect on what they are learning and develop informed opinions. By providing experiences where many viewpoints are represented, they will challenge their perspectives and become more aware of the concerns of other peoples. After building a foundation of mutual respect and understanding of others' viewpoints, we can channel those ideas into a greater understanding of the human race. With any luck, we will foster in our students the want to contribute what they can to make life better for all the world's people.

What did these teachers do to help them reach success?
These teachers were striving to build a deeper connection between students and the work they were creating. They made what the students were doing meaningful, and the students in turn put more of themselves into the projects. I enjoyed in the student's response to the project "Hopes, Wishes, and Regrets" when she said, "When we make a piece of art out of someone's secret, we have to try to figure out what the person was feeling so we can express it through the artwork. I also tried to put my own personal feelings into the artwork to help me connect with the person that wrote the secret" (131). The teacher made it possible for the students to experience empathy first-hand, and in doing so, build stronger relationships with their peers. The students' reactions to the project, their greater enthusiasm and motivation to continue making art, is very rewarding as an art educator. I hope to elicit such responses from my students when I begin my career.

Beyond the National Art Standards

How can I still meet the National Art standards while also moving beyond merely artmaking in the classroom; to creating community-based art projects that connect to the 21st century skills? Furthermore, why is this essential?

Our drive to create meaningful experiences in the arts with our future students has been cultivated through a diverse array of foundations. Perhaps our convinctions to become art educators ourselves came from an art classroom prior to a higher education, but whether or not we credit our beginnings to such, we must be critical of our perceptions of what makes a quality art teacher. Entering into teacher preparation coursework was an eye-opener for what constitutes "quality" in an art teacher. To create works of art in the classroom is not enough. A lack of substance behind what students do in the art room encourages misconceptions about the significance of art and its role as a valuable tool for communicating and bridging cultural boundaries. While we have standards established to guide our practice, we should take careful consideration to not rely solely on these to develop criterion for the classwork we provide. The success of our students beyond school depends on so much more than our National Visual Arts Standards. The incorporation of those skills outlined for the arts, the sciences, and all other core curriculum must guide our practice. We want to help our students to be well-rounded, to contribute their skills to society, to share healthy relationships with other people, and to foster self-worth. These goals should be at the heart of what we do. The 21st century skills help these characteristics to flourish in our students. Making the curriculum we develop relevent to the lives of our students outside of school will help empower them to make contributions necessary for improving the world they live in. In doing so, we enhance their ability to recognize and utilize their strengths. Without community-based art projects and socially-relevent content in the classroom, we encourage students to detach themselves from finding meaning and value in an education and contribute to the depression of society as a whole.

Social Justice in Art Education

What does social justice mean to you as a future art teacher?

Social justice is a broad concept that pertains to our perceptions of other human beings and the choices of action or inaction we make in regards to our relationships with them. In an ideal world, there would be social justice for all, where each and every one of us possessed some innate sensitivity to people of all cultures and stood up for the integrity of others. The reality is that each member of a society is exposed to representations of their culture and the culture of other peoples in a unique way.  To be cognizant and critical of often misleading and weighted portrayals is essential to developing a thorough understanding of human relationships. In the text, Christine Ballengee-Morris and Patricia Stuhr contribute the success of "understand[ing] the multifaceted cultural identities of others," to a keen awareness of our own sociocultural identities and preferences. We can overcome the obstacles posed by learned prejudices and stereotypes in the art education classroom by meaningfully engaging students in a non-preferential curriculum that embraces the human concerns that pertain to us all. What better to make art about that issues that are prevalent in our lives? Art has the power of sparking social change through demonstrating, defying, and reconceptualizing our preconceived notions of just about anything.  As an art educator, I have the opportunity to teach the profound role of visual culture and how to use such to promote or challenge social reform.

Why is it important to consider social justice when planning your curriculum?

As art teachers we have the choice to approach the formal or conceptual qualities of creating art or the two integrated while guiding students to meet the National Art Standards and standards of our districts. In the text we read that the foremost of these options is frequently dismantled as the focus in preference to conceptual artwork with a secondary emphasis on aesthetics. Art needs to be about something meaningful and true to the artist. If we provide for our students opportunities to explore theirs and others' cultures, identities, and biases, we provide the chance that they may overcome their prejudices and stereotypes. At the very least, they become more socially aware of the world that surrounds them. This evolution of global thinking is an essential part of living in and promoting a democratic society. Those who form an awareness of social justice are more inclined to participate in social reform. As educators, we also want to consider social justice when planning our curriculum to ensure we provide a fair and unbiased account of other cultures. Being ignorant of social justice when planning curriculum perpetuates ignorance in our students. 

How can it benefit adolescents as they develop their identities?

Adolescence is a time in one's life when one becomes more conscious of themselves and others. The book shares, "[f]rom a social justice perspective, artworks and visual culture can be used as sensitive instruments to guide us to human understandings that engage both the intellect and the emotions". With the heightened sensitivity to feelings that frequent the teenage years, it would be doing students a disservice to detach the artwork they make from reality via neglecting to incorporate personal expression. We can assist students on their journey to discovering themselves and their place in society through significant experiences addressing multiculturalism. Teaching these students to reflect on themselves and think critically about what they perceive versus the reality of a given situation will help them to become better decision-makers in life. They will develop a sensitivity to those who are initially regarded as different. In this fashion, we have the power to reduce bullying in our schools and make our building a safe place for all to learn and grow.

'The New Conversation'

I am interested in the blog's potential to be used to network and share information. Students could use them to save and share links to artist websites, for either a specific project or routine tasks. They assist in the reflective process, providing an outlet for the sharing and expressing of ideas in a simple and relative way. Those who may feel hindered by social expectations during a class critique can find relief in the informality of blogging. Blogs can be useful in keeping parents aware of what their child has been up to in the art room and build the credibility of one's school's art department.

This means of sharing ideas is beneficial to those who prefer written expression. The ideas become concrete and can be reflected on over time. Encouraging students to use these blogspaces to develop skills in thinking about art can increase awareness of the role reflection plays in learning. Learning and thinking are recursive processes. Reflective, metacognitive thinkers are highly capable beings.