In this issue, we introduce various ways to address advocacy through multiple lenses. What it looks like in our art room will range on how we address topics or issues such as cultural perspectives, equity, diversity, identity, art appreciation, embracing mistakes, and creating an inclusive curriculum. Designing an Advocacy Toolkit is an effective way to make all student voices heard. Reading this issue is a great start!
UW-Milwaukee student teacher Mackenzie Ellefson and cooperating art teacher Frank Juárez at Sheboygan North High School.
The National Art Education Association (NAEA) asserts that the visual arts are fundamental components of a comprehensive education, essential for all students. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, passed by the US Congress in 1965 and reauthorized in regular intervals, recognizes the visual arts as part of a comprehensive list of subject areas, providing all students access to an enriched curriculum.1
Advocacy is an integral part of an art education program and continues to be at the forefront of what we do as educators. The way we advocate makes a difference in how others perceive art education. I am amazed at how the teaching landscape continues to change. Our teaching practice must complement that shift.
A Call to Advocate
As art educators, we find ourselves always pivoting, modifying, and adjusting to new challenges, roadblocks, curricular ideas, and professional learning community goals. I admit that being an art educator has its ups and downs; the system is not perfect, and what makes sense to us may not make sense to others. It is our responsibility to make sure that what our students are learning and creating is amplified beyond the walls of our art rooms. Today, advocacy may look different than yesterday, but it will continue to evolve tomorrow.
In This Issue
In this issue, we introduce various ways to address advocacy through multiple lenses. What it looks like in our art room will range on how we address topics or issues such as cultural perspectives, equity, diversity, identity, art appreciation, embracing mistakes, and creating an inclusive curriculum. Designing an Advocacy Toolkit is an effective way to make all student voices heard. Reading this issue is a great start!
In the elementary lesson, “Masterpieces from Mistakes” (p. 36), Sarah Chaffee shares how mistakes can lead to new creations with a little bit of imagination and problem-solving. Students think about how mistakes are made and what we do as artists to turn an “oops” into a success.
Megan Giampietro’s middle-school lesson, “Abstract Modernism” (p. 17), explores the work of the late abstract painter Elizabeth Murray. Her big, bold, expressive, and painterly work inspires students to experience joy and engage in playfulness during their art-making process.
Oftentimes, students do not see the creative potential of what is in front of them. In “What Is Luminous” (p. 29), Kari Giordano’s high-school students become inspired to turn the everyday into a thing of beauty through digital photography.
If you feel that you are continuously spinning your wheels, you are not alone. I would like you to know that you are seen and your passion is felt. I would love for you to tell me how you advocate for your students by sending me an email.
This issue introduces various ways to address advocacy through different lenses, ranging from cultural perspectives to embracing mistakes and self-expression. Young students use art and creative thinking skills to connect with themselves and the world around them, elementary students turn mistakes like rips and smudges into beautiful works of art, middle-school students make clay puzzle pieces with symbolic objects representing their interests, high-school students create detailed fabric portraits of someone they look up to, and more.
