Share Your Resources

Americans for the Arts
A wonderful organization based in D.C. that promotes and supports arts opportunities on national, state, and local level. This nonprofit organization serves as a vehicle of advocacy and policy making, but also is joining with local communities to keep the arts alive.

Animating Democracy
This is a branch of Americans for the Arts that focuses in on utilizing the arts as tools for civic engagement. Events and publications are centered on the important link between using the arts as a voice for critical issues in today's society.

ArtsEdge
ArtsEdge is dedicated to providing tools and resources that promote the integration of the arts and technology into ALL academic areas for a more interdisciplinary approach to teaching. The website offers lesson plan ideas and articles that support arts in education. The unique objective of the organization is to connect educators to the resources they need to be successful teachers, and for their students to be successful learners.

Boston Sculptors Gallery
This gallery continues to grow in members and space. Located on Harrison Avenue in Boston, it serves as unique venue for only sculptors and offers large amounts of space for exhibitions to occupy. New and different exhibits of sculpture go up about every month or so and is certainly worth checking out what these Boston area artists are up to.

DeCordova Museum & Sculpture Park
This wonderful museum is well known to even the general public of greater Boston. Particularly for teachers and students, it is a valuable platform for hands-on exploration of the arts. The outdoor sculpture garden is spectacular and gives kids a different kind of "playground" for their imagination and discovery. Also worthy of noting is the annual Art in the Park held at DeCordova every summer. The day involves good art, lots of hands-on art activities, and performances. This year it is being held on June 10th - check it out: Art in the Park

Fuller Craft Museum

MFA Boston

Museum of Modern Art, New York

National Art Education Association
This large organization is made up of students, K-12 teachers, Higher Education/Teacher Prep. professionals, retired teachers and professionals, and museum educators. NAEA is a resource all art teachers should at least be aware of as a place to go for publications, ideas, job openings, and news on advocacy and research in the field. Every year NAEA holds an annual convention that brings together educators from all over the country for 5 days of discussion and presentations of what's happening in the field. It's a wonderful gathering of ideas and sharing of resources.

Radical Teacher
This is my all-time favorite. Radical Teacher is a magazine that only publishes about 3 issues a year, but each one is packed with relevant issues such as gender in the classroom, bilingual education, integrating the arts, and feminist views on education. The articles are always thoughtful and provocative in a way that keeps you thinking until the next issue of Radical Teacher arrives.

Rethinking Schools
A small nonprofit started to help change the way we think about K-12 education and address such issues of inequality and diversity. The website and Rethinking Schools magazine has lots of articles on every issue you could imagine. Most appealing, is real educators who know the field are writing these articles. The articles have an air of experience and firsthand knowledge of the issues being discussed.

Teaching Tolerance
This organization promotes integrating tolerance into your classroom curriculum. The website offers useful ideas and incredible resources to help you get started. It is a wonderful resource for today's teachers who need to constantly address issues of diversity and tolerance. Teaching Tolerance suggests proactive ways to foster acceptance of differences in your classroom.

VSA Arts
The mission of VSA Arts (Very Special Arts) works to give artists working with physical, emotional, and mental disabilities opportunities and access to the arts. The organization strives to educate and support individuals and communities so that the arts may be enjoyed and participated in by all. The website hosts an incredibly extensive artist database where you can search artists by name or by medium in which they work. An important resource for the art teacher and any teacher to start thinking about incorporating artists with disabilities into the curriculum to model for students that all people are capable of great ideas and creativity.

Feed it back: the lesson plans

Feedback on the lesson plans...

Is the connection from expressing public/private message to the use of sketchbooking and blogging clear?

Is the concept of selecting materials and a format/medium that complements the content confusing and/or not age-appropriate?

Any suggestions of other artist books, journals, sketchbooks, blogs or other related resources?

What were the lesson’s weaknesses?

What did you find most challenging about the lesson or what do you imagine students would find most challenging?

Sketch Blog: The Lesson Plans

Sketchbook Blogging:
Observe. Document. Share. Reflect. (Grade 6-8)
"I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle. " ~Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing.

Objectives:
General: Complete a class criteria list on how to notice art - reference during discussion of exemplars as well as during individual sketchbook work/direct observation
Sketches: Closely observe and document scenes/spaces both indoors and outdoors, use a variety of line - thinking about type of line and quality of line to capture selected elements in a greater environment, Complete a series of quick sketches that capture space and movement, the complete a sketchbook that uses a wide range of medium and reflect expressive qualities and experimentation, discuss the purposes, practices and different uses of the artist sketchbook
Blog: Create a digitalized sketchbook that can be shared with a greater audience. Combine sketches with written reflection and utilize the blog as a venue for critique. Give and share ideas, feedback, or suggestions. Use the dialogue that happens as a springboard for further investigative observation and documentary inquiry.


Lesson One:
Duration: 1 45-minute period
Supplies: exemplar sketchbook reproductions, computer/internet connection, chart paper and markers, self-evaluation forms
Summary: An initial conversation invites students to think in discuss the ways in which we notice, not only art, but all things - people, places, and other happenings. Invite students to think about people-watching, watching movies, forms of advertising, etc and challenge students that we don’t take the time to notice. Question what we do and do not notice. Why do we notice some things and not others?
A community criteria is agreed on the ways in which art will be noticed and talked about.

Things to think about when noticing {art}:

- What do you see?
- What do you assume?
- What do you learn?
- What else do you wonder about or imagine?
- What else does it make you think of?

The concept of direct observation is emphasized. Selected exemplars from a variety of artists are studied and discussed as well as compared and contrasted in regards to theme (portraits, collections, scenes from a specific window, landscapes, etc) and approaches taken. The functions of the exemplary sketch books are examined in order to better understand the purpose of sketch booking: studies for final compositions, expression, journaling, documentation and observation. Types and quality of line are examined and discussed. Students are encouraged to take a close look at how the artists create movement, implies space, and uses value on the sketchbook pages.

Lesson Two:
Duration: 1 45-minute period
Suggested sketching supplies: Faber-Castell PITT artist pens (F, S, M, B), General’s charcoal pencils (HB, 2B, 4B, and 6B), flat sketching pencils (2B, 4B, 6B), Faber-Castell, General’s layout/ebony pencil, black, white, sanguine, and sepia conte crayon, Grumbacher compressed charcoal SOFT, General’s graphite pencils (HB, 2B, 4B, 6B and 8B), Speedball super black india ink and quill, CARAN d’ACHE water-soluble wax pastels, Strathmore Sketch paper, kneaded eraser
Summary:
Sketch: Introduce students to a wide range of materials used for sketching in this lesson. Demonstrate each medium and tool used. Explain the qualities and effects of inks, pencils, and charcoal. Give students the opportunity to experiment with the materials. Demonstrate a minimalist use of color in the sketch book, explaining color to be used as means of enhancement and not just to “fill in the page” like a coloring book.
Reflect: Discuss written reflection and the significance of writing in the sketch book. Referencing the exemplars, invite dialogue about the ways in which processes, discoveries, learning, and personal thoughts are documented through writing that intertwines with and compliments the sketched images.
Homework: Students are asked to become investigators of public and private spaces and places. Demonstrate to students how to create viewfinders by cutting 2 “L” shapes from sturdy cardstock and securing with paper clips to form a little window in the center. Have each student make their own viewfinder to use for their investigation. Challenge the students to capture in their sketchbooks images of both private and public places in their lives. These are most likely places and spaces that are relevant and a part of their every day. Ask students to sketch at least three or four public spaces/places and three or four private spaces/places. Challenge students to use written reflection directly on the sketchbook page.

Lesson Three:

Duration: 1 45-minute period
Supplies: Digital camera and/or scanner, blog account
Summary: Discuss the medium of blogging as means of collecting, displaying, sharing, and critiquing art works. Talk about the homework assignment that addresses public and private places and its relevance to the internet and how the blog makes public what might typically stay private (i.e. the artist sketchbook). Have each student set up their own blog account. Students will either take digital photos of their sketches or scan their sketches directly from their sketchbook. Use each sketch as a separate post and in addition to the image, include written reflection for each.
Homework: Reflect and respond to classmates’ sketchbook blogs.

Massachusetts Standards Addressed:

Standard 1: Methods, Materials, and Techniques/ 1.3
Students will demonstrate knowledge of the methods, materials, and techniques unique to the visual arts.

Standard 2: Elements and Principles of Design/ 2.2, 2.8, 2.11
Students will demonstrate knowledge of the elements and principles of design.

Standard 3: Observation, Abstraction, Invention, and Expression/ 3.1- 3.5
Students will demonstrate their powers of observation, abstraction, invention, and expression in a variety of media, materials, and techniques.

Standard 4: Drafting, Revising, Exhibiting/ 4.1 - 4.3, 4.6
Students will demonstrate knowledge of the processes of creating and exhibiting their own artwork: drafts, critique, self-assessment, refinement, and exhibit preparation

Standard 5: Critical Response/ 5.1, 5.3
Students will describe and analyze their own work and the work of others using appropriate visual arts vocabulary. When appropriate, students will connect their analysis to interpretation and evaluation.

Standard 6: Purposes and Meanings in the Arts/ 6.1 - 6.3
Students will describe the purposes for which works of dance, music, theatre, visual arts, and architecture were and are created, and, where appropriate, interpret their meanings.


Resources

“The Sketchbooks of Picasso” edited by Arnold Glincher and Marc Glincher

“Large Boston Public Garden Sketchbook” by Maurice Prendergast

http://www.anthonyzierhut.com/blog/

http://susancornelis.wordpress.com/

http://blackwingsketch.blogspot.com/

http://blogger.com

http://wordpress.org

http://flickr.com

Art is...

Teaching Philosophy

I believe a classroom to be a haven of learning. An incubator of inspiration and movement. I hope ideas fly like color and take the form of terms you can understand and make sense of and connect with. I meditate on respect and community and the fact that our differences are what keeps us the same. I hope you make connections and make decisions and risks you don’t regret, but revere. I hope you embrace mistakes with gratitude and acceptance of their gracious happening. I hope you see in colorful mappings of your process and find your way to the bigger idea.

I hope I influence you not to mimic, but to work within your internal and external sacred space. To stand your own and grow into your own. I hope some of you will find that when you have nothing else, you have art and through close observation, all of life can be beautiful. I hope this space moves you and keeps you safe. I hope you find safety in art. I hope you’re confused by art. I hope you are brought clarity from art. I hope art brings confusion again. I hope you slow to observe. I hope you slow to document. I hope you reflect and reflect on the reflection. I hope you find your visual sense a powerful tool and everyone’s hands the machine of expression. I hope you feel free to create independently, but more so, I hope you find the energy of others in meaningful collaboration. I hope we have community. I always hope for community.

I hope you feel a part of yourself and the greater global family when you’re processing visual inquiry. I hope you learn a new language. I hope you learn the personal, visual languages of others and realize the potential for peaceful co-existence. You’ll realize the power of a medium and develop a reciprocal relationship of trust and loyalty.

In my classroom, you are significant and you all belong. Unconditional. You are an artist. A being capable of a original thought and a vessel of creation. May you always wonder. May you always discover and uncover and manipulate and re-work and find a way. Find your way.

Why Art?

Using multiple modalities, dance/movement, music, visual art, drama, and other similar modes of delivery, children learn by having a wide range of their capabilities tapped into. Individuals, specifically children in school, are learning at rapid rates. Information is coming at them at great speeds and somehow they either have to find ways to take it in, make sense of it, and translate it into relevant terms or else, they miss it. The arts help children make important connections, develop critical thinking, decision making and problem solving skills. The arts involve children and welcome them as active players in learning and mingling with the world. Regardless of age, we instinctively connect to things we can directly relate to and are relevant to out lives, inside and outside the classroom. For children of this century, technology continues to integrate itself more and more into their every day happenings. As educators, it is our responsibility to make our classrooms mini “labs” of the real world in which we are able to teach students to be active observers and consumers of life outside the realm of school. By integrating technology into our curriculum, we offer students a consistency inside and outside the classroom of exposure to the technological advances of our day. The duty of the classroom holds the time and space that other settings do not to slow and understand our relationship to the messages, imagery, and infinite uses of the technology medium and its communicative and functional presence in students’ every day.

Corporate Ghosts

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