Spring is that time of year when anyone in school, students and teachers alike, are in a frenzied countdown, holding their collective breath until they are officially out for the summer.

Art21 is excited to announce that soon after the big exhale, an exceptional group of teachers will join us in New York City for the fifth year of Art21 Educators.

Art21 Educators is a program for practicing teachers, museum educators, artists, and university faculty from a wide range of disciplines. Our alumni and new participants comprise a dynamic community (75 and growing) who are curious and passionate about contemporary art, and committed to transforming education through the work of living artists.

All educators are required to apply with a partner who can provide additional support and feedback, as well as opportunities for collaborative and interdisciplinary teaching. Six pairs are selected annually. Our 2013-2014 Art21 Educators are:

Renee Bareno + Sara Fromboluti, The Aaron School, New York, NY
Carol Barker + Anna Grimes, Turquoise Trail Charter School, Santa Fe, NM
Thomas Dareneau + Domenic Frunzi, Boyertown Area High School, Boyertown, PA
Rebecca Belleville + Eric Pugh, Maritime Industries Academy, and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Baltimore, MD, respectively
Ryan Schmidt + Erin Shafkind, South Shore PreK-8, and Nathan Hale High School, Seattle, WA, respectively
Alyssa Greenberg + Rebecca Mir, Jane Addams Hull House Museum, Chicago, IL, and Voelker Orth Museum, Bird Sanctuary and Victorian Garden, Queens, NY, respectively

This July, the group will meet for the first time to participate in eight intense days of workshops and discussions about Art21’s films and curricular resources, which includes visits to galleries, museums, and artists’ studios for intimate conversations with curators and Art21-featured artists. After the summer, we’ll continue working as a group (though virtually) to share the different ways that we are introducing contemporary art and artists in classrooms throughout the country.

Congratulations to this year’s participants!

Editor’s Note: In the coming weeks, we’ll post in-depth profiles of our 2013-2014 Art21 Educators, telling you more about their interests and lives as teachers.

Last week we introduced Marni Kotak and Hugo Rojas. This week, in the last installment of Art21 Educators introductions, we’d like to introduce you to Dennis Greenwell and Salem Robert Limpert!

Salem is in his first year teaching Language Arts/English Literature at the Lancaster Christian Academy in Smyrna, TN. Dennis has been teaching high school art for the past 13 years and currently teaches at the Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro, TN. Based on their interest in collaboration and interdisciplinary education, Salem and Dennis decided to team up and apply for the Art21 Educators program this year.

Both Dennis and Salem describe artist Oliver Herring as an important source of inspiration for their work, in and outside of the classroom. Dennis was first introduced to Oliver Herring in 2010 at the First Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. Shortly afterwards, Dennis and Salem volunteered to participate in Oliver’s epic performance exhibition “Areas for Action.” More recently, Dennis joined Herring and Art21 for a day-long TASK party at the National Art Education Association conference in NYC this year.

Dennis and Salem have also introduced their students to Herring’s artwork and ideas in different ways. As a Language Arts/English Literature teacher, Salem is interested in incorporating interdisciplinary strategies into his curriculum. At the beginning of the school year he showed a video of the “Areas for Action” performance to his students as a way of introducing them to the first semester in his classroom.

“I firmly believe that making these connections enriches the experience and study of literature. One of my recurring themes in the classroom is that almost anything can be read and evaluated as a work of literature. This includes film, music, religious texts, popular science, and philosophy, as well as contemporary art.”

As a Studio Art teacher, Dennis is also interested in interdisciplinary possibilities. Dennis is currently in the process of developing a unit that will combine visual art with music through painting and jazz:

“I have just started planning a unit with the jazz band teacher at my school based on the work of musician Ted Nash. I just happened onto a video of the jazz musician one day on MOMA’s website. He has written a wonderful piece of music inspired by seven paintings at MOMA. I was inspired. The jazz teacher and I are planning, for next year, to pair jazz students and painting students together to produce joint projects reflecting each other’s work. We want to video document the creative process and have live performances by the students.”

Both Dennis and Salem are developing some exciting new programs and projects at their schools and we are looking forward to the year ahead with them.

* This post was written with Dana Helwick, Art21 Educators Intern.

Last week we introduced Dillon Paul and Angela Larsen. In this week’s installment of Art21 Educators introductions, we’d like to introduce you to Marni Kotak and Hugo Rojas!

Marni and Hugo are both full-time Spanish teachers for the Urban Assembly High School of Media Studies here in New York City. They are also members of the Media Department, which includes all of the arts. In addition, Marni also teaches a literary course for English Language Learners and is a performance artist herself. Although Marni and Hugo have integrated art into their curricula in the past, they are both interested in helping their students to further develop their cross-cultural understandings and gain a stronger sense of self-awareness through the use of contemporary art in their classrooms.

Marni defines contemporary art as “work that is being created by artists now or in the recent past and responds to current social, political, economic, identity, sexual and other relevant issues.” She admits that up until recently, she was mostly working from a Regents-driven Spanish curriculum. Her goal now is to get to a point where contemporary art is a fluid part of her curriculum. This upcoming school year, Marni plans to expand upon a project originally inspired by the work of Frida Kahlo to develop a unit around the issue of identity. She wants to incorporate contemporary artists such as Bruce Nauman, William Wegman, Kerry James Marshall, Louis Bourgeois and Maya Lin—as well as other important Latin American artists who deal with identity, such as Coco Fusco, Pepón Osorio and the late Ana Mendieta.

Hugo’s curriculum is based on developing the four major language skills – listening, reading, writing and speaking. Students work on different projects through which they learn and develop these skills, while creating visual art to demonstrate evidence of that learning and to share the processes involved. Hugo has found this method of incorporating the visual arts into the curriculum to be particularly successful in engaging his students and enhancing their learning. In one such example, Hugo developed a project inspired by “Acentos Perdidos,” artist Pablo Zulaica’s campaign to fix the incorrect use of accent marks in public signs in Mexico City. Through this project his students learned the rules and proper uses of accent marks (Palabras Agudas, graves, esdrújulas y sobreesdrújulas). Then, they took what they had learned on a field trip to Spanish Harlem to fix the incorrect use of accent marks on the public signs in that area.  (View a video of this project here.) In another example, Hugo created a project for his class using the zoetrope, which was inspired by a visit to the Museum of the Moving Image, to teach about verb conjugations in Spanish. (View a video of this project here.)

We are looking forward to meeting Marni and Hugo and the rest of the Art21 Educators here in New York City in just a few short weeks!

*This post was written with Dana Helwick, Art21 Educators Intern.

This is a three-part series that will share the experiences of three Art21 Education staff members (Jessica Hamlin, Joe Fusaro, and Flossie Chua) after spending a year with a group of 16 incredible teachers. Each of us has a unique perspective on the past twelve months and this series will ruminate on what it means to teach with contemporary art, specifically contextualized by our experiences this year working with the Art21 Educators program.

Many folks in the education world are breathing a huge sigh of relief, anticipating a well deserved and much needed summer break. Instead of heading to the beach, here at Art21 we are gearing up for the beginning of another year of Art21 Educators and a new cohort of teachers joining us from around the country. So this seems an important juncture to take stock.

I wanted to put together a collection of anecdotes and moments from the year and describe how they represent, for me, some of the most important ways that contemporary art can change the way we approach education – both in the arts and across disciplines. The work of the teachers in this program goes against the rising tide of standardization and bureaucratization of teaching and learning. In my mind, both of these acts – teaching and learning – can and should be the most magical and creative of acts….

1. I adore questions. I think of them as mini-universes for thinking. Throughout the Art21 Educators program we talk a lot about how ideas, rather than specific skills or products, should drive how and what we teach. Consider the metaphor of curriculum as a vehicle – one we can get inside and drive around in. This car (Honda, Mazerati, Ford—you pick) is an opportunity to travel around and investigate the important issues and events of the past and present – to road trip! And to road trip in that radically self-altering kind of way, to discover what it means to be human—to be an individual, and to be part of a complicated and expansive world. Here is a list of some of my favorite questions from the year:

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Last week we introduced Catherine Karp and Cheryl Vernick. This week, in the sixth installment of Art21 Educators introductions, we’d like to introduce you to Dillon Paul and Angela Larsen!

Dillon lives in Brooklyn, NY and has been teaching Media Arts at the Flushing International High School in Queens for the past five years. Angela lives in Seattle, WA and has been teaching Studio Art at Dimmitt Middle School for the past three years. After graduating from NYU’s graduate program in Art Education, both Angela and Dillon share an interest in teaching with contemporary art to inspire their students to become socially engaged activists in their communities.

One of the things Dillon loves the most about teaching high school is the opportunity to provide students with tools of media and technology to share their ideas and experiences with the world. Flushing International High School is one of nine in a network of International Schools in the NYC public school system that exclusively serves recent immigrants to the United States. The school population represents almost 40 different countries and 20 different languages. Every student arrives with a different story, but one of the most common reasons for their relocation is the opportunity for a better education. Dillon feels that her students know better than anyone else what it means to pursue the American Dream.

In addition to being a teacher, Dillon is also a performance and video artist. Click here to visit her website to view examples of her artwork and teaching materials.

In her application to the program, Dillon described an interdisciplinary stop-motion animation project she recently developed using the work of William Kentridge as inspiration for her students to be able to share their stories:

“In Humanities class, students interviewed friends and family members, and then wrote creative non-fiction stories set in the past, present, and future. In my Media Arts class, students animated selected stories using clay characters, painted sets, and a variety of props, toys, and other materials. The stories were edited in Final Cut Pro with soundtracks to match the action and emotion in the story. Some of the big questions involved included: What benefit is there in sharing our stories? How can we visualize our experience to help tell our stories? What do we learn about ourselves by telling other people’s stories? How does the audience and context for presenting art work create, or change, its meaning?”

Click the following links to view examples of these projects here: Role Call (2011), Immigration Animations, War Animations (2008).

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Last week, we introduced Caitlin Miller and Matthew Garza. This week, in the fifth installment of Art21 Educators introductions, we’d like you to meet elementary/middle school teachers Catherine Karp and Cheryl Vernick!

Catherine and Cheryl teach art to grades Pre-K through 8 at neighboring Montessori schools in Massachusetts. They also attended a variety of Art21 sessions at the National Art Education Association conference in NYC this year, including Oliver Herring’s day-long TASK party.

In her application to the program, Catherine described how the conference inspired her to think about contemporary art in new ways:

“I enjoyed hearing from Oliver Herring, Janine Antoni, and John Maeda. Each one spoke, in some way, about “where ideas come from,” in broad terms. I especially connected with Maeda’s idea of asking questions and solving problems… Participating in the TASK party with Oliver was just totally different from anything I’ve ever seen or done. I loved the open-endedness of it, the collaboration, the risk-taking, the experimental use of materials, and the JOY.”

Catherine is particularly interested in re-examining the “rules” in art education and discovering new ways to approach and break them. She recently developed a project inspired by Andy Warhol, in which she asked her students to re/define the terms “icon” and “self-portraiture.” Catherine’s goals for this upcoming school year are to improve her classroom discussions and encourage her students to dig deeper into the big questions, themes and ideas that can drive teaching and learning.

Cheryl also enjoyed the TASK party at NAEA this year and was excited about the possibilities for exploring TASK within her own classroom. Describing it as a “great way to stretch yourself in a safe place,” she hopes to use TASK as a tool for introducing her students to contemporary art, and how art can be used to comment on cultural, social, political and environmental issues. Cheryl was also recently inspired by a trip to MASS MoCA to see Leonard Nimoy’s “Secret Selves.” She is interested in further developing an interdisciplinary unit about identity and perception using Nimoy and other contemporary artists as a source of inspiration for her middle school students.

Catherine and Cheryl are both looking forward to collaborating with other arts educators this summer and exploring the interdisciplinary possibilities of teaching with contemporary art in their classrooms.

*This post was written with Dana Helwick, Art21 Educators Intern.

Last week we introduced Craig Newsom and Carl Anderson. This week, in the fourth installment of Art21 Educators introductions, we’d like to introduce you to friends and co-teachers at the Aaron School in New York City, Caitlin Miller and Matthew Garza.

This is Caitlin and Matt’s first year teaching at the Aaron school, a growing K-7 special education private school in Manhattan.

Caitlin says, “In our school, students learn best when they can learn a subject across disciplines. We often integrate social studies and social thinking lessons into our art lessons. Since contemporary art often deals with concepts larger than art itself, it is a great tool to help make those connections clearer.”

Focusing on the intersection of the humanities the arts, Matthew described his past experiences bringing the work of contemporary artists, such as the street artist and TED Prize winner J.R., into the interdisciplinary classroom in an exploration of Geography as a physical, social, political, and cultural construct. “Through contemporary art, I truly believe that youth can understand the power of arts to provoke positive change and gain a firmer grasp on communicating complex and nuanced ideas and disciplinary content.” Contextualizing his developing goals as a classroom teacher with a quote by Proust, Matthew also told us,

“As a classroom teacher, I am deeply committed to 1) strengthening my students’ disciplinary exploration of U.S. and Global History; 2) valuing time spent on relationships with my students and among my students through communal collaboration, assessment, and pride over exemplary work; 3) facilitating opportunities for my classroom to be civically and socially engaged in community and global issues through Engaged Scholarship as it applies to my curriculum; 4) utilizing the visual arts and creative performance, along with other areas of multiple intelligence theory, within and outside of my curriculum; and 5) translating and codifying my curriculum framework into mainstream state and national mandated assessment standards and disciplinary content.”

“Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.” -Marcel Proust

 

* This post was written with Dana Helwick, Art21 Educators Intern.

Last week we introduced Tricia Fitzpatrick and Don Ball, our first program participants from Canada. This week, in the third installment of Art21 Educators introductions, we present Craig Newsom and Carl Andersen! In addition to being educators, Craig and Carl are working artists and have exhibited together. Craig’s current collaborative project, Coalfather Industries, produces short videos that have been screened internationally. Both Craig and Carl described their unique experiences teaching with contemporary art in their classrooms.

Craig has been teaching studio art at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois for the past seven years. Recently, he introduced the work of William Kentridge (Season 5 of Art in the Twenty First Century) as a source of inspiration for his students.

“I like how all of it rises up out of drawing for him. Drawing is the foundation for everything he does and it informs everything. A couple semesters ago, one of my Seminar students really took to Kentridge’s work and began making videos based on his own drawings. One of his videos was eventually screened at an event at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis.”

Nine hours north by car, Carl has been teaching Language Arts and English to middle and high school students in Minneapolis, MN for the past twelve years.

Describing how he weaves together the work of contemporary visual artists with themes in literature, Carl told us about his use of the Matthew Ritchie segment in particular:

“I came upon the Matthew Ritchie film in ‘Structures’ (Season Three of Art in the Twenty First Century), around five years ago, first while teaching a unit on Naturalism to an American Literature class and later while teaching Hamlet to AP Literature and Composition students. Ritchie’s thesis of being imprisoned by our universe, one’s given situation, which offers a series of choices in terms of the possibilities offered by a set of limitations is a powerful metaphor for students understanding their own lives while glimpsing Hamlet’s predicament through the same lens. And the notion of having one’s life shaped and somewhat defined by a set of circumstances outside of one’s control—heredity, environment (time and place), socio-economic situation, family life, etc… is something stressed through naturalist writers like Kate Chopin, Stephen Crane, Emile Zola, and revisited by John Steinbeck. I see Ritchie’s work as a compelling investigation of this view, and I was taken with how Ritchie’s drawings-cum-sculptures investigate Hamlet’s paradoxical remark about his and the human condition: “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space.”

Welcome Craig and Carl!

* This post was written with Dana Helwick, Art21 Educators Intern.

Last week we introduced Shannah Burton and Linda Churchwell-Vega from the New City School in St. Louis, Missouri. This week, in the second installment of Art21 Educators introductions, we bring you Tricia Fitzpatrick and Don Ball, our first participants from Canada!

Tricia and Don teach 9-12th grade students at Cawthra Park Secondary School in Mississauga, Ontario, home to a regional arts program. The two had been working at the same school for over a year when they were each asked to attend a summer workshop for teachers. They quickly realized that they had similar approaches to education–valuing creative thinking, experiential learning, and the intersections between art and science. In a system that compartmentalizes learning, Tricia and Don think more holistically.

Over the past ten years, Tricia and Don have been developing and implementing a cross-curricular, international, Visual Arts and Science travel program. It began with a goal to show students how visual art and science are connected both here at home, and in cultures far away. Tricia and Don have traveled with students to Costa Rica (2003, 2005), Ecuador (2007, 2009), and Peru (2011), to experience the art and science of Central and South America through home-stay cultural exchanges (living with Spanish speaking families and working in the community), visits to contemporary art galleries and historical museums, and the exploration of diverse ecosystems. Additionally, their students have learned to appreciate the value of responsible travel.

Don, who is the art teacher, introduced Tricia, the science teacher, to Art21 a number of years ago. Tricia told us:

“…I have come to see contemporary art as a lens through which you can see the world as well as a tool by which artists communicate their ideas about the world. It is fluid and broad–it is more than just the art of our time, it is the art of expressing ideas, emotion, values, view points on the events and issues that frame our experience of the world around us.

I also believe contemporary art can be a tool for students to use to express their ideas and to investigate their surroundings. Like science, my own field, contemporary art makes observations, asks questions and looks for possible answers. It tests its subjects and its audience. It invites participation, not passive viewing. Contemporary art has a place in most classrooms. I want to explore how I can help students step outside the traditional lab report and written paper to express their understanding and questions about the science around them.”

Tricia and Don will continue to work together during the 2012-2013 school year as part of the Art21 Educators program. We are curious to see how Art21 will influence their curricula and cultural exchange programs!

* This post was written with Dana Helwick, Art21 Educators Intern.

Art21 Educators is both an intimate network of teachers and a year-long professional development initiative focused on leveraging Art21’s films and curricular resources to enhance teaching practice. The program brings together teachers from across the country representing a wide range of subject areas and grade levels. Over the course of a year together we develop our knowledge of contemporary art, artists and ideas, and to use this knowledge to support dynamic teaching and learning in the classroom.

As we embark on our fourth year of the program, we are excited to introduce our exceptional new group of educators. Hailing from St. Louis, MO; Minneapolis, MN; Carlinville, IL; Murfreesboro, TN; New York, NY; Seattle, WA; Cambridge, MA; and Ontario, Canada, these teachers will meet for the first time this July for a seven-day institute in New York City, and will then continue working together virtually throughout the academic year.

Congratulations to the 2012-2013 cohort!

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