One of the author's favorite things to do is ride her bike. She finds bike riding to be a therapeutic outdoor adventure. In this article, the author describes how her students made their self-portrait bicycle collages. (Contains 2 online resources.)

The author's art program includes students from kindergarten through eighth grade. In pondering the "nearly impossible," he wondered how the entire student population could work together on one art project that could be exhibited at the same time. He wanted each of his 700 students to create an original artwork that would display individual and…

Art students have different learning styles. Some are visual learners who need to see the information. Some are auditory learners who need to hear the information. Others are tactile/kinesthetic learners who need to move, do, or touch in order to learn. Looking over her curriculum and lesson plans, the author realized almost every art lesson…

In this article, the author describes a lesson that evolved from being based solely on observation to incorporating images from imagination. The challenges involved in this lesson span a multiplicity of skills while encouraging students to trust and develop their own creativity. Incorporating both versions--the observed and imagined--into a single…

The purpose of this study was to assess children's images of scientists by using the Draw-A-Scientist Test (DAST) and to determine if differences in these images exist between grade levels. The DAST was administered to 243 children who were enrolled in kindergarten (aged 6) and grade 3 and 5 (aged 9 and 11). Findings obtained from the study…

This paper emerges from a qualitative case study that takes place in a US preschool setting and explores teachers' influences on the construction of children's gender identities. According to postmodern theories of gender, identity is constructed and constituted through social interactions and performances. This study focuses on the gender…

The author's school is fortunate to have two therapy dogs, Daisy and Rosie, both West Highland terriers (Westies). Daisy is such a comfort to students when they are sad, scared, or just in need of a quiet friend. She assists students with special needs as well as students whose needs are special. In this article, the author describes how she…

When he painted a portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (1552-1612), Giuseppe Arcimboldo used his imagination, and portrayed him as "Vertumnus," the Roman god of vegetation and the seasons. It's fun to find the different fruits, vegetables and flowers he used: pea-pod eyelids, a gourd for the forehead. Court painters of the time usually…

An estimated 30,000 drawings remain of the concentration camp artworks generated over the course of the Holocaust. Fabricated in a reality conceived to eradicate not just life but the very will to live, concentration camp art raises the question of the persistence of creativity in traumatic situations. This article explores the witness function of…

In this article, the author describes an art lesson that was inspired by Andy Warhol's mass-produced portraits. Warhol began his career as a graphic artist and illustrator. His artwork was a response to the redundancy of the advertising images put in front of the American public. Celebrities and famous people in magazines and newspapers were seen…

This study uses an interdisciplinary framework inspired by Ranciere (1991, 2009, 2010) ideas such as "intellectual equality," "redistribution of the sensible," and "aesthetic heterogenesis" to analyze the production of video-narratives of self and place within a group of Latino eight-year-olds attending public school…

In the period from roughly 1915 to 1935, many African Americans undertook an ambitious campaign to remake their image in mainstream (white) American society. This New Negro Movement (NNM)--a term that the author uses purposefully in contradistinction to "Harlem renaissance"--can be studied in the classroom, allowing history teachers to introduce…

The author is not a visual artist. At best, she can draw a heart. But it stops there. When her middle school students asked her if they could do an art project, she quickly made an excuse. The author had planned out a four-week poetry unit on exploring identity. She had to find the best poems to spark her students' interest and get them motivated…

The author travelled to Jaipur, India, in June 2009 to run a project with a group of 12 young runaways at the Bal Basera Centre, a transitional shelter for boys under the age of 18. The Centre sits within the Jaipur Municipal Police force compound, just a few yards away from the City Railway Station. Bal Basera, or "transit home" in…

The author noticed that, when painting self-portraits, her students struggled with size relationships between the head, neck, and shoulders. In order to address this without having to deal with facial proportions, she had her second-graders take turns drawing a partner from the back. Students began this project by learning about Mary Cassatt,…