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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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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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.
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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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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"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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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.
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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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.
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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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.
