• Curated Connections Experience: 2021 Summer Art Teacher Workshops
• Webinar with Kris Bakke
• World Mosaic and Perspectives Curricula at Nasco
• “Things Said About Us: Art-Inspired Self Esteem Activity for Kids”
• Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast
• Be a Podcast Guest: Submit a Voice Memo of Your Art Story (Scroll to the bottom of the page to submit your story.)

Cindy Ingram: Hello, and welcome to the Art Class Curator Podcast. I am Cindy Ingram, your host and the founder of Art Class Curator and the curated connections library. We’re here to talk about teaching art, purpose, and inspiration from the daily delight to creativity to a messy mishap that comes with being a teacher. Whether you’re driving home from school or cleaning up your classroom for the 15th time today, take a second, take a deep breath, relax those shoulders. And let’s get started. When was the last time that you went to an art museum or took the time to make art for yourself? It is time to reconnect with art. reconnect with your purpose, reconnect with your peers and take back your teaching. This summer we’re hosting virtual and in-person professional development workshops, spend time looking at art, talking about art with your peers, making art, and learning new ways to engage and excite your students. You can go to artclasscurator.com/workshop2021 to reserve your spot. I look forward to seeing you there.

Hello, everybody. This is Cindy Ingram from Art Class Curator and I am happy to be with you here today on the Art Class Curator podcast. What we have going on for you today is a recording of a webinar that I did recently with Kris Bakke at Nasco Education. And in it, I talk all about social-emotional learning and how we accomplish that in the art room through working with works of art. So in this webinar, we talk about an overview of social-emotional learning the importance of social-emotional learning, as well as how our new curriculum the Art Class Curator perspectives curriculum that is available in partnership with Nasco. In it, I also give a little bit of an overview of that curriculum near the end. Now, because this was a webinar, we did have a visual component with some slides. So in the show notes for this episode, you will find a link to the recording of the video if you’d like to watch the video. So the artwork that we do the activity on in the webinar is portraits of myself and Lola Montez with things said about us by our contemporaries by Molly Crabapple in 2014. This is an artwork that’s available in the membership, the curated connections library as well as in the perspectives curriculum, and it is a fantastic artwork to share with your students. So if you go over to the show notes at artclasscurator.com, you will also see a link to our blog post about this artwork so you can look at the pictures and understand kind of what we’re talking about as we talk about that artwork. So I hope you enjoy my discussion with Kris Bakke at Nasco as well as the attendees that were present at the webinar, I think that you’re really going to enjoy this conversation. So let’s give it a go.

And I just wanted to give you a little bit of a warning here. I know we are talking about something visual at some point in this episode and with that artwork by Molly Crabapple. And I want to make sure that if you do decide to pause the recording and go look at the artwork, please do so safely. Don’t pull up the artwork while you are driving, or operating any heavy machinery. Okay, thank you.

Kris Bakke: Thank you all for joining us today. I know after a long school day it is sometimes the last thing you want to do is hang on more virtually, but it’s going to be fun and it’s interactive for everybody who wants to join. So good afternoon. There’s a ton of interest around social and emotional learning. Often it’s geared to elementary students. We all know that social-emotional learning is huge in the art room. And Nasco has partnered with Art Class Curator to offer perspectives high school art curriculum. It is outstanding. And I’ve never been more proud to be part of something that shows how art education is significant in supporting SEL in the school in the district. So here to take us through the perspectives curriculum with a focus on SEL is the founder and CEO of Art Class Curator. Thank you, Cindy. And I am so grateful and excited you’re here and willing to lead us through perspectives, you always do such a fantastic job.

Cindy: Hello, everybody. Thank you so much, Kris. I’m really happy to be here. And I’m excited that you guys have joined us feel free in the chat to ask questions. I will be doing a little activity with you guys a few times throughout the session. So be prepared for that in the chat. And just make sure we have you set as panelists so that we can see you and all of that. So when you do your chat, just make sure it says send chat to panelists and attendees and then everyone can see what you have to say. So I’m going to go ahead and share my screen really quickly. Alright, so today we’re going to talk about the perspectives curriculum that we have just recently developed. And we’re going to look at it through the lens of social-emotional learning. And so what I was hoping to accomplish today is not only to tell you about the curriculum, because we’re so proud of it, and why you’re so excited about it. But also to give you some tips on how to add more social-emotional learning into your classroom, especially through the lens of looking at and talking about works of art. I’m going to share with you a lot of examples of how to do that. And adding more art connection moments in your classroom with works of art, we call it art connection instead of art appreciation, because it’s so much deeper than appreciation. So adding more art connections to your classroom will add a lot more of those opportunities for social and emotional learning. So that’s how we’re going to approach it today, we’re going to talk about it but the ones I’m looking at are also through studio art as well. And I will be having you do one or two of the activities so that you can have the experience of what it’s like to be on the other end of these types of lessons. So I see we have people from California and from Buffalo from Kansas, so happy that you’re here and tell us what you teach. Also, tell us your favorite work of art. So if you have one that sticks to your mind, or even your favorite artists would love to hear that as well. I always ask the question, what artwork changed your life? And that’s such a fun question to hear, especially our teachers because there’s always one that just was a pivotal moment in their life where they really realize the power that art had. And so that’s such a fun buying question to ask if you have an answer to that question, I’d love to hear that as well.

Kris: And you have me completely thinking about that, Cindy, because in this role clearly, I’m the Customer Engagement Manager for art at Nasco. And in this role, I’ve always been focused on high school art and elementary art middle school art, and I love that art. I love it, love it, love it. It wasn’t until this connection to Art Class Curator that I really started truly understanding. And I have you to thank for that. And I am so appreciative. And so I giggle because, like William to hippopotamus is the one that I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is so great.” So that’s mine.

Cindy: Well, I love it because I kind of witnessed you discovering that artwork live and it’s so fun to see. And just even in an adult, when you see your student when you see another adult when you see someone connect with a work of art, and somehow it spoke to them like that, I just get chills even talking about it. That moment is so powerful. I get emotional about it. Because I just want I think one of our I guess I have a goal statement for our cluster writer. I want every single child to have at least one or every single person to have at least one powerful art experience in their life. By the time they leave school or as an adult just at some point, because it is even if it’s just one it is so, so incredibly powerful. So I love that I got to experience UX, learning about that artwork for the first time. So just to introduce myself, I’m a former museum educator. And I also am a former art teacher. So I started out doing museum education. And I really loved spending that time in the galleries with the students. I was a gallery teacher for I don’t know how long like a year where that was my only job was to teach all the school groups that came in. And it was so fun to have them come in to explore the works of art, it was a lot of energy, the kids are usually on their best behavior. I never had to deal with discipline or any of that they were just like delightful little people. And then they would leave and I would never see them again. And I always thought that I wouldn’t like to be in the classroom because I just thought I loved that new energy that I got with every single group until I actually got into the classroom, and realize the relationships and the connections and watching them grow and watching them have those experiences was just really incredible.

So going into the classroom was such a powerful experience for me. But what I wanted was to have learning experiences like I had in the museum in the classroom. But when you would when I would Google this, like how to teach art history that’s not lecture or what are some good works of art to teach this idea or that sort of thing. There was just nothing on the internet. I mean, there’s a lot more now than there used to be. But back when I started my first teaching job was in 2007 there was just nothing on the internet. And it was the diversity in the art that was just not there. You couldn’t find women artists like there was just a desolate internet. So I started to write the things that I wanted to see and created Art Class Curator back in 2014 step the lessons that I created for my classroom, into the website in the form of blog posts, and then eventually create our membership site which is secured to connections library. This year, we added the spark hyper learning curriculum, and then our brand new curriculum, the perspectives enrollment So I’ve always wanted to develop a full curriculum, and we’re so excited that we finally have met that goal. So, we’re so excited to tell you all about it.

So that’s what we’re all about is Art Class Curator is connecting with works of art in powerful and meaningful ways, and then weaving those into your teaching, because a lot of our teachers are so incredibly skilled at the teaching of the studio art that, you know how to teach that. And you’re really strong at teaching that, you know how to teach elements, principles of art, you know all that stuff. But it’s that art appreciation component that we weren’t often really taught in college. And we weren’t really given those skills, you’re only required to take a couple of art history classes as an art education major. So we’re really excited to introduce you all to new artists, new works of art, and new ways of teaching them. So to start a conversation about social and emotional learning, I would love to hear from you. What skills do you need in your day-to-day life? So if you think about as an adult, as you’re going through your world, you’re having relationships, you’re working your parenting, you’re managing your money, what are some of your sort of basic skills that you use? Now I can read everyone’s favorite works of art? Well, while you answer that. Oh, such good ones. I love Garden of Earthly Delights too. I only got to see it, I only got to go to the Prado for like, an hour. Because we were at we had a layover in Madrid for like a short time. And I was like, “Okay, we’re going to the Prado we believe in come back from the Guernica. At this one. And then we were going to go to the Prado.” I got to see it for like, a very short period of time, and it was devastating to like, look at it and then have to leave, I would have spent probably a good hour in front of it.

Okay, so with time management, we have effective can make communication skills. Classroom management. Yeah, and I wouldn’t think like what’s deeper than classrooms? What are some basic skills that you use in classroom management? Patience, emotional regulation. I love that one. I never think of the term emotional regulation, but I am going to use that one more often. I like that. And I asked this of myself the other day, when I was preparing for this question, I made this giant list of everything I could think of, and I made a slide. And I love humor, which you’ll appreciate my slide has all humor in it too because I was going to put a bunch of like people having different emotional expressions on the slide into this smart art but then I just decided to take outtakes from our photoshoot and stick my face in here.

Kris: I so want to do this. That just looks so much fun.

Cindy: Yeah, we did a photoshoot. Oh, thankfully we did. We needed a photoshoot for a new website. And we did it like a week before COVID head, I was so glad that we got it in. But yeah, the outtakes were pretty funny. But I have things like, and we have some more humor, empathy, focus, self-management. So none of these things with the exception of foster management, even though you can teach classroom management, you can’t really do classroom management till you lived it. But these are all these aren’t like things we’re taught in school. We’re not necessarily taught empathy. We are kind of taught time management and self-management, your degree, but most of our education is focused on learning skills, learning information, just our basic subjects. But really, as adults, we know that that’s not what we use to be effective adults need, how do you pick yourself back up when you fall down? How do you handle rejection? How do you listen? And how do you I’ve been really living these last few days? Because the just school district that I’m living in is having a big, there’s a big battle happening about diversity and inclusion, where there’s like a really loud side against it a really loud side for it. And they’re just not when no one is listening to each other. And I’m just like, gosh, we need to, we need to learn how to listen right now. And everyone’s being just terrible. It’s just really awful. But we don’t use these skills…

Kris: Cindy!

Cindy: Yes.

Kris: Hold on. I only interrupt because it is so unbelievable that that is happening. Because when we talked earlier this week, on the world mosaic side, I can’t tell you how moved I was, well, you probably saw that I posted on LinkedIn and other social media. What a dynamic way to just talk about those kinds of conversations in such a safe way. And I thought it was just powerful. So again, another amazing aha moment. And I know your high school students, and they’re not that more mature than I am so I know they will get it too.

Cindy: Yeah. I mean, it’s we’re going to talk about this as you know, you can practice all of these skills in your classroom in like Kris said, in a safe way with works of art. When you’re talking about something else. That’s not necessarily about you and your feelings, it’s easier to engage, it’s easier to talk about big issues, when you kind of take away the personal feelings of it. I mean, they’re still always involved. And I talk a lot about personal connection. But, it’s really important. So we’ll talk about that more as we go on. But you notice like dealing with uncertainty, problem-solving, decision-making connection, emotional fluency, emotional regulation, which I’m going to add to my slide. Now, I think I’ve been talking about that in a different way. But you’re all of those things are things that we use and that we need. And I’m really passionate about this. Because when I was younger, I was a little bit of a mess. I was one of your, straight-A students I was on top of things I was obsessive about my class rank, like, to a really unhealthy degree. I even know who beat me, I still know like 20 something years later, I still know who would beat me. But then when I became an adult, and I got out into the world, I didn’t know how to communicate with people, I didn’t know I lived my life, always being the smartest person that was around, I didn’t know how to communicate with anybody. And like and realize, I was very emotional sort of immature. I mean, there’s trauma. And there are other things when you do a psychological analysis, but I think most of our students are not really taught that they’re just taught, you get through school, you learn these things, you want to be this thing when you grow up, and then you follow that trail. And then when you get to be an adult, how are you going to survive?

So I think that we need to start building in our social-emotional learning so that we are setting our kids up for success, especially in terms of emotions, because so incredibly important. So I get on soapboxes about this because I’m just really incredibly passionate about it. But so social and emotional learning is sort of this bigger picture of an in your classroom of how you address the full student. And I’m sure you all know this, but it’s the process through which students learn and use knowledge, skills, and attitudes, develop a healthy identity, manage their emotions, and achieve goals. And so how we connect with other people, how we connect with ourselves, all of that is in court incorporated in social and emotional learning. And it’s something that we can do one on one in our classrooms, in our, our own classroom culture, we can do it in our lesson plans, we could do it in the way we organize our classroom, the way we manage our classroom. But when the whole school addresses it as a whole, that’s when it becomes really powerful. When all the teachers are talking about it, when you have the school-wide initiatives, community-wide initiatives, that’s when we’re going to lead you to know, we’re going to have fewer behavior problems, we’re going to have an easier time with classroom management, your students are going to be more motivated, they’re going to get better grades, they’re going to it’s just going to be an overall more caring and successful environment, it’s going to increase the academics too. And research has proven all of these things. We talked about SEL in terms of there are other things that it’s been called, like soft skills, but that implies that these skills are not that are weak or not as important or 21st-century skills, but we’ve always needed these skills as humans, and then college and career readiness, which is important, but also, there’s been science that says like, “Oh my”, that was funny. That was like a thought came and then it left. I’m sure y’all experienced that in your day-to-day life all the time as teachers. Oh, it was a good one, too. It probably will come back later. But all of that is super important.

Kris: I totally have been there a thousand times. So don’t you actually make me feel good that it happens to somebody as smart and organized and good as you. But yeah, that soft skill thing that always hurts my feelings? Because I’m like, “Oh, don’t say soft skills, like these are solid, these are things that we absolutely need now more than ever.”

Cindy: Yes. Need a lot of soft skills in my community right now. Also in terms of emotions, Bernie Brown has done some research and she says that most people can only identify in themselves three emotions, happy, sad, and mad. And that beyond that, people are really not very clear on how exactly they feel. And even anxiety is one of those things that it’s it’s there because people don’t necessarily understand how to recognize and work through their feelings. So the anxiety kind of takes over. But to be an emotionally fluent adult, Bernie Brown says you need to know and be able to identify 27 emotions. And so just learning the vocabulary for emotion is really incredibly important and be able to recognize it in yourself. Because you can kind of feel it in your body. Like, when I’m really nervous. It feels exactly the same as if I’m excited. So I could be really excited about something but then freak out because I think I’m actually really feeling bad about it. So it’s one of those things that we kind of need to learn how to recognize in ourselves. And also these things feel different for lots of different, like, people feel different emotions differently.

So we have in the curriculum, we call it the I feel wheel. And we use it in the art projects, when we’re talking about representing emotion, we use it when we’re looking at works of art, and we can look at the work of art and pinpoint the emotions that are in it. It just gives students the vocabulary to describe what they’re seeing. And I think that we actually do have really strong emotional fluency because of our use of animated gifts. Because, we use those to communicate so often, and even emojis too, we use those to communicate so often, because we don’t know the words to describe how we’re feeling, but we can recognize it and somebody else. And so really is finding the vocabulary to describe those emotions. And but I use the example of the Michael Jackson, what the popcorn, comparing it with the Jon Stewart eating the popcorn, they’re both very similar, they’re both kinds of the same very similar emotion, but they’re different. And in some situations, I would use one versus the other. And that process of choosing an animated GIF is actually really sophisticated if you think about it, like what we’re actually doing when we do that. And so we’re using art as a way to bridge that language gap to find the language to describe our feelings as well. And if you want to download that, I feel well, we do have that available for free on the website. It’s at artclasscurator.com/ifeel. And you can get a copy of that too because we think it’s really important, we want you all to have it, even if you don’t have the curriculum.

So the benefits of social-emotional learning, we’ve kind of already covered but it does, it has improved. Studies show that it improves students, social-emotional skills, attitudes, relationships, academic performance, perceptions of classroom and school climate decline and anxiety, a decline in behavior problems, a decline in substance abuse, and then improvement in your long-term skill. So very important to incorporate SEL into your curriculum. So we’re going to talk about it in terms of how we add it to our curriculum, through activities with works of art, there are lots of ways, we could do a whole course on SEL and talk about all the different ways that you could do it through your classroom management through how you communicate how you phone parents, I get every aspect of what you do, you could look at but we’re going to specifically kind of look at it through the curriculum. And I’d love to hear Jodie says that her district is developing an SEL curriculum. I think that is that’s amazing, so good. But I don’t think we can we could hit it enough. I think we need to hit it in all sorts of ways. But I do want to share the number one tip that I think is true for me anyway, which is the best way to improve your SEL in your classroom and for your students is to work on yourself and to improve your own social-emotional skills. So do your own self-development, read books, journal, you know all those different things to work on your own go to therapy, and all of those things that work on your own social-emotional skills that will rub off on your, on your students. I know just as a parent me working on my own social-emotional learning for myself, has improved my parenting and has improved my daughter’s social-emotional skills just because I know how to talk about it in a different way that I didn’t know before. And so she is going to be a little even better than me when she’s older, and then, her kids are going to be even better than her. And eventually, we’ve got this lovely world. I’m a little bit of an idealist.

The bigwig on social-emotional learning is Kasal. It’s the collaboration for academics, social and emotional learning. And they have five competencies, self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making, relationship skills, and social awareness. So we’re going to quickly go through each of those. And then we’re going to get into how to use artworks to address these things. So the first one is self-awareness. And so this is the ability to understand your own emotions, your own thoughts, your own values. And I like that self-actualization you’re really understanding who you are understanding what’s important to you in the world, understanding how you feel about things, understanding how to work through your own emotions, all of that is in your self-awareness. And that’s extremely important for a person and healthy self-awareness enables you to recognize your own strengths, and limitations give you more confidence gives you more purpose in life and just makes you a more overall happier content person.

And we can do that in art through a lot of different things. But I found I got myself caught up on these slides on Monday. So I’m going to go a little bit faster instead of going through each of these points. But we can do that through looking at networks of art and developing personal connections, we can do that in our artmaking by giving them prompts that are personal to them, where they get to explore things that they’re interested in. And they get to explore their own thoughts and feelings about things and create something that is meaningful to them. And really help them discover who they are in this world. self-management, I think, is really embedded already into the work that we do as our teachers, as students work on their art projects work on especially how to deal with frustration, making art is really frustrating for a lot of students because they feel like maybe they lack the skills or like the confidence. And I’ve seen a lot of kids really struggle there. And so working through that process is so important that the creation process is so very important to our students, I think I think our teachers of self-management pretty locked in with just the creation, just the art-making component. But there are other ways to do that through helping them achieve their goals, helping them reflect on the projects a little bit more after they’re over and really think through that creative process and really pinpoint their learning, something that we can add to our students learning experiences.

And then, [inaudible] responsible decision making, and I think that also is embedded into the work we do as art teachers as well. But we think about, how we make decisions. And do we make them through logic, we make them through emotions, or is it a mix of both, all of that, that we help them through. And we as teachers can model that for them, as we’re going through in our teaching, but helping them develop critical thinking skills, which looking at art and talking about art, and going to art museums and experiencing that has been a through studies have shown to increase critical thinking skills. So when you’re looking at and talking about art, they’re naturally going to be working on those skills, developing those skills, which will help them with responsible decision making, as they’re older, also, looking at talking about art will help them analyze various perspectives, they’re going to be able to see more clearly, other perspectives in the world, and also that are different from themselves learn how to communicate with those people, one of the most powerful experiences I had as a teacher was doing a project which is in the perspectives curriculum, which is a cultural presentation.

So they have to choose a culture from around the world. And then they study the art from that culture. They do research on it, they do a presentation for their classmates. And then they do like a visual for them as well. Like it could make like a poster and hanging in the hallway. And then in that lesson, I think it’s it’s in unit eight of the curriculum. I had a student who was Muslim, and this was back in 2007, or 2008. It was during the Iraq war. So it was pretty soon after 9/11, like within five years of 9/11. And so distrust of Muslims was really high. I mean, it’s still is but especially I live in Texas, and the student presented about Islamic art to the classmates. And then at the end of the presentation, he opened it up for questions. And so kids in the room while they were community college students, but I call them kids, because they even though I was not much older than they were, they were asking questions, and they kept we kept going like their presentation was supposed to be like 20 minutes long. And we just kept going, it was one of those three-hour classes where we had a break in the middle, and they just kept going during the break, because they just, wanted to know more. And he was able to share a piece of his culture and his religion, and then the rest of the kids in that class understood his religion better, they understood his point of view, they understood that not all Muslims are terrorists like it was such a powerful teaching moment. Because they were analyzing various perspectives, they were learning about something and learning to listen, and it was really it was probably the most powerful teaching experience that I’ve ever had was, I’m always telling people to do that project is so was just always so very good. I mean, not all the most of the time that kids weren’t presenting on their own cultures that just that happened to be, he really was passionate about wanting Islamic art to be his, the one that his group did. I’m so glad to let him do it. So that analyzing perspectives will really help them make be able to make those responsible decisions later in their life to or even the decisions they have to make our kids our high school kids have to make decisions that impact their future as kids.

And then, we have the next few social awareness and relationship skills. When we show students works of art and we engage them in conversation about it. They are working on these skills they’re working on how they share their point of view, how they listen to other people’s, how they add to it, how they disagree, how to do all of that. And really it’s so powerful to watch and Then you as the teacher, your job is just to facilitate the discussion. So it takes the learning out of the teacher teaching something and into the students, and they’re actually doing the learning. They’re practicing the skills that they think they’re just talking about a work of art, that’s really cool. They don’t know that they’re doing all of this deeper work. So I kind of talked about all those together. Oh, and one of the things that you can do for relationships, skills, and social awareness, is to have them work in groups. And I always hated working in groups when I was younger, because I was your introvert, and you’ve wanted to get a perfect and wanting to, you know, and so I hated it. But I know the value of working in groups. So I always say, do it.

Kris: And I always giggle because I was always the one who wanted Cindy in my group because I knew she was smart. And so I wanted to get all the answers, right. But I definitely loved it, whether it was performing or creating or coming up with a really cool way to present the thing. And I used to think until I started working with art educators, I used to think the value was in the smart kid helping either the less smart, or average kid get smarter. But then I realized, we actually help that student to grow and think outside of the individual box, and now you have to be in this collective situation. And so, yeah, I enjoy that. And I enjoy that Cindy always shares her perspective, because I’m like, “Not me”, I’m like, “Let’s make it a group.” Let’s go, go group thing.

Cindy: I would have never admitted that I needed it. But I need it because I can be very rigid because I see the way, I see the solution. And often it’s a long way, there’s a much faster way to accomplish what needs to be accomplished. But I get so set in my ways. So it’s I think it’s really important for me to, to be in group situations like that. I noticed much more efficient now that Art Class Curator happened. And we have a team. And it’s not just me, we get things done a lot faster. All right, well, maybe not faster, just more efficiently.

Okay, so all that said, hopefully, you’re on board with the social-emotional learning track here. I know you are because you’re here. But now we are going to do one of the activities that I love, and I’m personally, that’s one of my favorite activities that we do. So at Art Class Curator, we don’t just get you to discuss works of art, we want the students to actually engage with it in some way. So we do discussions a lot. But we’ll do writing and we’ll do kinesthetic work, we’ll do group work, we’ll do poetry, writing all sorts of things with the work of art so that your other students who maybe aren’t as into the discussion aspect can find ways in and find ways to connect. So one of my favorites is called the reflect Connect worksheet. It says world mosaic on this slide, but that’s our elementary curriculum, this activity happens to be in both with different works of art. So if you were here on Monday, we’re doing the same activity, but a different work of art. And I learned about this activity from a podcast I listened to it’s called Harry Potter and The Sacred Texts, and they read Harry Potter chapter by chapter as if it’s like the Bible, and they, they analyze the characters, they look at it through themes, and at the end of every episode, they do spiritual practice. So they have several that they do where they did help them dive deeper into the text and the symbolism of the text. And this one is called Lectio Divina, which is, whenever they do that one, that’s my favorite one that they do. But really, what it’s the same thing, when we’re looking at works of art, we can teach our kids to read them just as much as we can teach them to read texts, that it’s the same kind of skill set and this is always good to help your admin if your admins really, you want to help convince them to buy this or something like that. Show them like this will help your kids reading scores too because they’re doing the same thing like inferencing and all this stuff that they do in English.

So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take the step by step process that was adapted from the Lectio Divina, which is a form like the early on, I was like, I forgot it was like five or 100 or 600 AD that this one was that they first started using it. So our first step is we’re going to talk about just what’s going on in the picture. We’re going to kind of figure it out. And we’re going to do the narrative. So, in the chat, I would like to hear your thoughts on what’s the narrative here in this artwork, what’s this artwork all about? Yeah, this you got literacy down. And if you do stuff like this, because they’re not actually reading words, but they’re doing the exact same thing. And even the writing stuff, too. Okay, so Lindsey, notice right away the text across the eyebrow, you should be ashamed of yourself. So you notice it’s a woman’s face, and there is text on there, not kind of text. Her eyes are wide open, staring. And this would be a great time to pull in the feelings wheel and pick up you know, I really kind of analyze which feel, what can we tell about her feeling from this. Side note, the museum I used to work at had a program for med students where med students would come in, and they would learn from the works of art. And they would talk about like, what symptoms they can notice or how they this person feel like look at that sort of thing. So even med students do this sort of work to increase their observation skills. Okay, so Brooke says it’s more of an empty stare. Jodi says that she looks rather sad. And also it’s more blank or a blank stare.

Okay, so we got kind of what’s happening down here. Where do we think that these phrases came from? Like, why did they these particular things written? Well, that kind of gave it away because I put the title. I always don’t put the title intentionally for students because I don’t want to sway their interpretations. I’ll give them the title later. But again, I forgot to take it off this slide. Because I wanted you to know what the artwork was such a good one. But it’s called portraits of myself and Lola Montez with things said about us by our contemporaries and on the back. So this is a portrait of Molly Crabapple, the artist and on the back is a portrait of Lola Montez, it’s with the same thing. So it could be Jody says either thing said about her or things that she thinks about herself. This is a perfect work of art for your middle and high school students. Because this is these are things that we that’s one of the big lessons, at that age is how do we deal with what people are saying about us? How do we make it not mean anything? How do we make an impact is how we are in the world, some really great artwork for that. Okay, so that’s our first step. So we’re just kind of taking it at surface level, figuring out what’s going on. And then our next step for the reflect Connect activity is a symbol; so what symbols or hidden meanings can you find in the artwork? So it’s kind of like you’re at the top and you’re kind of digging just a little bit deeper with each one. So going a little bit deeper, maybe where can we find symbolism in her expression? This one might be a little bit harder on this one, but we’ll see what you have to say.

Kris: Every time I see this work of art in the times that we have been going through this it always makes me think of like when somebody says something ugly on social media, like instead of your Facebook wall it’s planted on our face you know what I mean?

Cindy: Yeah, a really powerful lesson that those things that are said about you and the things that you say about yourself become a part of you in a way alright fine yeah good the color of the text the black the white and the red that could have some symbolic meaning. I always look at this one and think about her body like in her you know her skin her eyes like how it’s kind of like armor in a way it’s like it’s protecting her but is it really but that kind of I get that vibe from it to the red draws you in a little bit and makes you want to like look about looking a little bit closer to read it. It is kind of hard to read the red what is the I what could the eyes be symbols for? Oh, good Jodie. So Jodie says the text could symbolize wounds. So they’re not visible wounds like when we look at a person although we can sometimes when you look at a person you can see how they feel about themselves by the way they move through the world. Not always some people are pretty good at hiding it but yeah, yeah, hard to react at reading. So it says, you should be ashamed of yourself. I actually have some close-up views, but they’re not on that let me pull up some close-up views. So this is the other side. So it says utterly subversive to all ideas of public morality, seriously psychotic, incorrigible liar, she is past all hope. Someone who has no claim on our respect, guilty of behavior that would make a crocodile tremble and blush. Evil. No Evil Eye. Oh, that red is hard to read. There are some zooms in. I hope you’re drawing your hand as mangled. An awful, social misfit, and embarrassment. So yeah, pretty awful. Awful stuff happening on this face.

Kris: Well, that is a great statement. It almost looks like how they mark out a cow for the pieces of meat like they’re cutting her up.

Cindy: Patty, you asked us to share the slideshow, we do have this on the blog, or this artwork. So if you ask me at the end, I will get that link for you where you go to Art Class Curator and search Molly Crabapple. We do have a blog post about this one. So yeah, so you notice we have some symbols that we are noticing the eyes, they look like wounds, all of that stuff. So our next step in the process is to find your own personal connection and you can share with us or you can keep that with yourself. We don’t, we don’t want to force you to make any vulnerable statements about her life. And I don’t force my students ever to share their response their responses on three and four because it’s sometimes it’s just personal. But we want them to learn to have these deeper connections with works of art. So the third question is, what does this artwork remind you of in your own life? So what personal connection is there for you? So you can share that? If you would like to? If not, I understand.

Kris: I do like the idea of the fact that they created this piece of art. And then by reading it, I feel defensive for this artist. And it almost helps to negate it, like by putting it out there instead of us, like completely agreeing. You’re almost defending. And so it almost makes it less powerful. Those statements, you know what I’m saying?

Cindy: Well, because they’re not saying it, you’re activating your defense mechanisms for that person you want to, but if they were about you, and that’s a good conversation to have with your students if that was said about you, how would you feel differently if it’s about one of your friends. And so, one of my good friends, like if you ever say anything bad about yourself, she’ll go, be nice to my friend, because it’s like when you say it about yourself, too. It’s like you’re being mean to your friends. And so it’s really interesting.

Kris: I love that.

Cindy: Yeah, so we have some great connections, especially women definitely can relate just being a woman. But I love Rick is here to share the male perspectives too, about being unfairly treated about being less masculine, I know that we’re judged for everything that we’re doing. And we have all these people, especially social media, who have all these voices, who can just share all the things. And that building our mechanism to support ourselves through that is really important. So we found our personal connection, and we can stop there, that’s really awesome that we found a personal connection to it. But I always challenge the students to like, what next? What can you do next? And so the fourth step is, what steps will you take now that you know this information now that you’ve made that personal connection? You’ve thought about that element of yourself? What are you going to do differently now in your life? moving forward? So you can share that with us or you can keep it again, keep it to yourself? I’m never going to force anyone to do that. But maybe you start to think about, oh, maybe I am you realize you’re not very kind to yourself in your head. And maybe I need to change that. Or maybe there’s someone who you know, that is dealing with people saying unkind to them, how can you support them? So there’s a lot of things that you can take forward and think about, and I even just, I shared with you what’s happening in my world, this whole drama, it’s about it’s mostly and be active on Facebook and district meetings, but like, I’m seeing a lot of just really, like, hard moving really cruel things happening through words. And it’s making me think about what is my role as an observer, how that sort of thing. So that’s what I’m thinking about currently because it’s going on, but I think that the self-talk thing is so, so important. So you can see just with one activity and one work of art, that we can get a lot accomplished, we can do vision literacy, we can do art analysis, we can do elements of principles. We all have that we touched on we did personal connection, we did societal pressure, all of this happens. And but it’s a safe space because it’s external to us. But it’s still we can find our way in. And so that’s really important to consider when we bring art into our students. And another thing that so moving forward, because we’re going to run out of time, I know we spent a lot of time on this. But I think this is important because it really shows you what’s possible when you actually get to experience the activity.

Kris: Do you know how large that piece of art is?

Cindy: I don’t know, off the top of my head. But I have seen the full view of it in the room. And it looks like it is probably five feet tall at least. But that’s just a guess.

Kris: So this is sitting on the floor.

Cindy: It’s sitting on the floor in the middle of a room.

Kris: Got you.

Cindy: I think it’s pretty big. But hopefully, I didn’t get that wrong. But that’s my that’s what how I see it my head, sometimes I’m wrong. But I have seen this, a lot of us have this. So we do and you know our lesson plans that Art Class Curator for our secondary curriculum, and in our membership, we do what’s called the curated connections framework of a curate, discuss, engage and extend. And in each of those, so it’s taking one work of art and really fleshing it out. And really taking inspiration from it really digging deep into it, using it as inspiration for projects, not in terms of like we’re not going to all go create replicas of this artwork. But we’re going to use some of the themes that we learned about and create artwork from it. And so in every step of the way, you can add more social-emotional learning. So in the curious step, that’s really an important step is picking the works of art for your classroom. Now, with the perspectives curriculum, we already have that covered for you, we’ve already chosen a lot of works of art. But in the lessons themselves, we have another like 10 artworks listed. So say we chose this work for this lesson. And you’re like, well, I don’t think my kids are going to really relate to that we’ve got another list of other artworks that you could use, because we want to make sure you’re choosing artworks that are specific to your students that your students are going to be excited by, that your students are going to be connected with. And finding artwork that they are going to relate to, you’re going to have a much better experience. So we make sure we build in a lot of artworks that are going to connect in a lot of ways. And then we give you a lot of options. But in the curriculum, every unit has two main artworks, and then a list of other artworks. And then there are activities with other artworks. There’s a lot we haven’t I haven’t actually counted how many totals there are. But this slide just shows you some of the artists and you can see we made sure to have artworks from across time and across cultures, we didn’t have pictures of some of the artists, we had to put the artwork up. Because if it’s like a cultural artifact or something like that, we don’t have a picture of the artist. And we didn’t want to just like put stock photos of people on the internet. So anyway, you can see we have a lot of diversity in our artworks is really important that we have a lot of representation of all of the worlds in our curriculum.

Kris: It’s fabulous, it’s a poster. I love this.

Cindy: Yeah. So that is a really important thing that you’ll see in our curriculum that isn’t your Monet’s, and you’re Da Vinci’s and you’re Leonardo’s, you know that it is women. And it is people of color. And it is people from around the world, in the represented that curriculum. And so I’m going to give you some information about our curriculum. And I have a lot of extra slides. So they didn’t know how long is the stuff at the beginning would take, I have actual things I’m going to have to like skip some things. So I apologize for that in advance. But if anything that I’m talking about, you want more information on, we have another webinar where we dove even deeper into the curriculum, and without the social-emotional component. So if you really want to see more, you also can set a meeting with Kris or with me, and then really dive into the curriculum even more. So you want to invite your principal, you want to invite the other art teachers at your district. We’re happy to set that up for you as well. So we’re going to give you sort of a basic overview. But we want to make sure that all of your questions are answered. So those are available to you as well. And then you also get a survey at the end of this webinar, which will give you the opportunity to put your contact information in and ask any questions that you have. And then we’ll get back to you with answers to those. So I’m going to give you a kind of a high-level view of what the curriculum is now that you’ve got to experience some of those activities. But it is a full year of art, as an art one class. So it is modifiable for your eighth graders, they could do that if you have sixth or seventh graders, you might want to consider our elementary curriculum and it can age that up a little bit. And it will also work for more advanced students as well. And it is on a thematic approach. So each unit has a theme and then we’ve chosen artworks to fit that theme. The project fits that theme. And it’s all kind of tied together. So we have it’s really about the student and relationship in the world, their place in the world, their identity, their community, and how artists see the world as well. And so you can see all of that represented on the themes here on the slide. And then I’m going to just X out of this and then flip ahead to the correct slide. So excuse me while I do that.

Kris: The resources are so impressive in perspectives because it takes a long time to search and dig up. And what can you use and what can’t you use and all that kind of stuff. So the fact that there is this list ready for you, outstanding.

Cindy: Yeah. So, in the curriculum, as we were developing it, one of the things that we, that was the most important to us, obviously, the art connection piece in connection with works of art is always number one with the work that we do at our class curator. But then also we the social-emotional learning, diversity, and then also creating flexibility for the teacher because we, everybody that works for me, we’re like when we’re teaching, we’re taking pieces of research resources here, and from here, or putting it together with our own thoughts, what we did last year, we’re changing it up. We like things to be more flexible. And me personally, like I can’t follow a plan to save my life. I just, I’m too. I like my own plan. So we made it really flexible so that you can pick and choose, you can move things around, you can sub in artworks. And that was really important to us too. But if you wanted a plan, you’ve got your plan to step by step plan. So that’s another thing that we wanted built-in. And so your art projects for the curriculum are, we give you two options, we give you a more structured option, as well as a more like a choice-based option, because we know there’s a lot a wide range of the types of projects that teachers like to do. And so we wanted to make sure that you had all of that covered in there. So it’s really customizable for your situation. And that those are some of the things that we were thinking about when we created this. And then each of these lessons, units include a full lesson plan that is National Art standards-aligned, so it covers all of your art one National Art standards, your states that don’t use the National Art standards covers most of those two, it’s only when you get to the study the artists of North Carolina, we that’s not necessarily covered in the curriculum, but you can use the same methodology the same that are the worksheets, the same, all of that stuff for those artists if you wanted to do that, too. And then we have any downloads, worksheets, PowerPoints, anything that you would need to teach the lesson. So you’re not going to have to get this curriculum, read the lesson plan, decide, okay, I need a worksheet for this, I need a PowerPoint for this, I need to go pull images. No, it’s all in there downloadable. It’s over 100 different downloads, any worksheet you might need, even if you’re doing in the sketchbook even if you know there’s we just wanted to make sure you had had it ready to go. And then for every artwork that we have in the curriculum, we have a discussion guide that has information about the artwork, discussion questions, and then multiple activities will in the lesson, there are multiple activities to really explore that work of art. And then it also has talking points about the artwork, biographies of the artists or the and or the culture that created the art as well. And then your project has a planning guide, it has reflections, it has all of that kind of stuff, too. It’s like anything that you might put in there a lot. So downloads. So it’s a full curriculum with just all of the goods.

So this is kind of what the PowerPoints look like, just to give you an idea that all of the activities have their own slide. Any the artworks like the zoom-in of that artwork of the Molly Crabapple artwork, you’ll have those of us I bet if we had images of the back stuff like that maps, where they’re located, and also where they are from and where they are currently at. Because sometimes that’s exciting. If you’re, if you’re teaching in Boston, and you happen to say, oh, look that’s at the museum in Boston, I’m going to go check that out. And so we have already kind of talked about this, but a lot of our engagement activities like writing poems, or doing some sort of activity, we’re going around the room with postage, a lot of group assignments and that sort of thing all in the curriculum built-in. This just kind of shows you somewhat of the worksheets look like. Just in this is what the lesson plans look like. They’re so pretty. They’re good content, but they’re just pretty too and that’s important to us as our teachers. And then lastly, we want to make sure that you’re confident teaching this way with a lot of works of art. And so we provide discussion training on how to lead in our discussion, because we know that’s not necessarily something that we were taught in college. So we have some training there for you some added worksheets like if you wanted to pull in your North Carolina artists and meet that North Carolina teak, you can pull in one of the worksheets, we have some added worksheets and stuff in there for you as well.

Okay, so that is our curriculum and it really is beneficial for everyone involved. So for your students, they’re going to get that social-emotional learning, they’re going to get diversity and representation, they’re going to find ways to connect. The lessons are fun because there’s a lot of really engaging activities, a lot of movement, a lot of energy with the activities, we don’t lecture, we don’t just sit there and tell you about the work of art, they actually get to explore and experience it themselves. And they’re using their different learning modalities, learning, multiple intelligences, all that kind of stuff. It’s great for you because it’s going to introduce you to a lot of new works of art, so your own personal professional development, and new teaching methods, but it’s going to have everything ready for you, your time is going to be you’re going to save so much time having everything ready to go, then you can focus on your teaching, and you can focus on the relationships with your students, and you can focus on all the other thousands of things that you have to do as an art teacher and for your district. And so your district, you want to convince them because they’ve got the money is your consistent, it’s going to be consistent across schools, that they get multiple schools. It’s aligned to your National Art standards, it’s going to support their diversity initiatives, and your their literacy initiatives, their social-emotional learning initiatives, all of those things that admins are thinking about right now, those are things that we make sure that we’re really heavily covered in our curriculum because it’s important too, there are initiatives for a reason we support all of that, that work that the school districts are doing right now. So that is our curriculum. And so I’m going to pass it over to Kris.

Kris: Thank you. And honestly, the reason that we don’t focus really heavily on the pricing in this particular webinar is because we wanted to make sure that we gave you a really good view of that social-emotional learning part, we have so many districts out there that are making it an initiative. And when you can show that you are supporting the initiative, it is valuable. It’s $1,000 for a full year of the curriculum, the subscription. And we know that this is not something in art teachers going to write a check for. What we have learned is that art teachers aren’t used to asking for a curriculum for art. And there’s a lot of districts that just rely on you to write that curriculum. Ironically, in talking to administrators, we’re finding them not at all even remotely concerned about the price when they hear what the price is it’s comparable out there to what they’re paying for science and math and, and another curriculum. So don’t hesitate to take it to your principal or to your curriculum supervisor if you need some help in doing some. So we are more than happy to help you. We’ve put that in the survey. We are also happy to take you on a little bit of a deeper dive where we can actually go through what does a lesson plan looks like? What does the presentation look like? And talk a little bit more on the classroom management part of it. It is housed on something called Nasco Educate, which is also a subscription. But that subscription comes free with this pricing. So I know our time is up. Absolutely fill out the survey. Give us any feedback or thoughts that you have. And if you’re interested in hearing more, more than happy to take time with you or anybody else at your school or district to go through that with you. Thanks, everybody for your time. Cindy, as always, thank you. I always mind map, which I learned from the Art Class Curator, there’s a worksheet in there that does mind mapping. It’s great note-taking so my mind map every single time I do these webinars and I learned so much, Cindy, thank you so so much for everything you do and for this partnership. Again, I can’t brag enough about it. And hopefully, you all will ask several questions. Thanks for coming today, everybody.

Cindy: Bye everybody.

Art Class Curator and Nasco have come together to create two incredible full art curriculums world mosaic elementary and perspectives for high school. These are so much more than just lesson plans. Your students will experience powerful social-emotional learning that’s integrated with language arts, social studies, history, and more, and they are totally aligned with National Art standards. World mosaic will take your elementary students on a journey around the globe as each unit features artwork from a different part of the world with our projects that explore various media and activities that will strengthen their critical thinking skills and expand their worldview. perspectives is a high school course that explores how art connects us with ourselves and one another through 10 idea-centered themes using diverse artworks, thought-provoking discussions, and engaging activities. perspectives also give teachers the option to create a choice-based classroom so it’s perfect for any type of teaching model. We are thrilled to be partnered with Nasco Education. They’ve been working with districts for years and are huge advocates for educators everywhere. You can learn more about these exciting curricula at artclasscurator.com/nasco.

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