January 2021

Compassion

Art teachers share lessons that encourage empathy, honor kindness, and inspire positive change. Students participate in a series of activities to imagine a brighter future for a blighted neighborhood; design posters to foster awareness of timely issues; create art to celebrate black artists, activists, and changemakers; sketch and color personalized mandalas during a mindfulness activity; and more.

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Highlights From This Issue

Editor's Letter: Compassion
Editor's Letter

Editor's Letter: Compassion

Has there ever been a time in your memory when compassion and kindness were more needed? What does it mean to have compassion? Compassion is active. To have compassion is to show kindness and empathy to others. To have compassion is to recognize the suffering of others and then taking action to help.

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Eye Spy Kids in Glasses
Early Childhood

Eye Spy Kids in Glasses

You’ve likely heard the expression, “The hardest part in learning to draw is learning to see.” How do you help your students learn to see? Teaching them to slow down and observe details is key. This experience was designed to help students build on their creative natures while inspiring pride in making a beautiful self-portrait.

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Planting Acorns
Elementary

Planting Acorns

Flint, Michigan, has seen better days. Loss of manufacturing coupled with the Flint water crisis has taken its toll. In 1913, General Motors attempted to build 1,000 houses in one year for the influx of workers in its bustling factories.

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The Art of Healing
All Levels

The Art of Healing

On September 11, 2001, firefighter Brenda Berkman was called to duty and went to the Twin Towers after the terrorist attack. Ten years later, she began to create lithograph prints about her experience.

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Honoring Kindness
Middle School

Honoring Kindness

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted,” is one of my favorite quotes from Aesop. It’s from the fable The Lion and the Mouse, where the spared mouse later frees the lion by chewing through the ropes of a trap. Social media has chronicled a trend of random acts of kindness leading to things like a chain reaction of paying forward at Starbucks drive-through lines.

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Looking Back, Looking Forward
Middle School

Looking Back, Looking Forward

After years of celebrating Black History Month by focusing on racial discrimination and Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy, I realized that students were detached from the historic image of Dr. King and very interested in current African American artists and influencers.

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Helping Hands
High School

Helping Hands

Who doesn’t need a helping hand at some time in their lives? It could be the support of professionals, family, friends, or an organization. How do we increase awareness of those who are in need that we see in the world today? How can we encourage our students to create images that foster greater awareness of current issues and those who are in need?

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Practicing Mindfulness
High School

Practicing Mindfulness

When choosing art lessons, I aim to create something that will not only be of interest to my students, but also challenge and help them in a setting outside of my art room. I’m incredibly happy to be teaching in a time when students are receiving the accommodations they need: whether it’s an IEP or 504, or something as great as the Teen Center that is offered at my high school.

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Anti-Racist Art Educators
Managing the Art Room

Anti-Racist Art Educators

Facebook has very active art education communities, some with more than 18,000 members. Numerous teachers wanted to use these groups to share and discuss anti-racist art education pedagogy and lessons, but the response in these spaces made collaborative conversation nearly impossible.

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Unheard Histories
Contemporary Art in Context

Unheard Histories

Antonius-Tín Bui (b. 1992) is a gender-nonbinary Vietnamese American artist. Bui’s works in drawing, cut paper, upsourced textiles, photography, and performance explore issues of self-identification, race, gender identity, and intergenerational misunderstanding.

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