Art teachers encourage students to explore and express empathy. High-school students construct narrative photographs that express an emotional mood, middle-school students design personal map compositions inspired by a meaningful place, elementary students share an important message about human rights through collage, young students create vibrant canvas paintings inspired by artist Jeff Hanson, and more.
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Empathy is the ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of others. How can the power of art be used to both express and explore empathy? To explore the concept of empathy, there is no better resource than Brené Brown, a well-respected research professor at the University of Houston who has worked for decades studying, writing about, and presenting on empathy, courage, vulnerability, and shame.
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After the class engages with the picture book Kindness Makes Us Strong by Sophie Beer, students are introduced to the work of Jeff Hanson, who created striking, vibrant garden paintings and was known for his generosity and kindness. Students then paint miniature gardens on small canvases. Their gardens are their own interpretations of kindness, informed by the book and the artist.
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How might a children’s book inspire an art project? Wishtree by Katherine Applegate (Macmillan, 2017) sparked two community-wide collaborations – one in-person at the South Shore Charter Public School (SSCPS) in Norwell, Massachusetts, and the other virtually through the Saratoga Springs Public Library (SSPL) in Saratoga Springs, New York. Students cut out and colored leaves and wrote meaningful wishes on them.
My fifth-grade team wanted to give their students an opportunity to form a deeper understanding of human rights, the theme they were covering in their EL unit, so we collaborated to have students create an artwork on that theme. The fifth-grade teachers provided me with their human rights unit and the novel Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan (Scholastic 2002). This book follows the journey of fictional character Esperanza Ortega, a young girl who was born into a comfortable life in Mexico during the 1930s. She is forced to flee to California and encounters difficult circumstances along the way.
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Where is home? What places matter? Is it places we love? Places we’ve been? Places we play? Maybe it’s places our families and ancestors lived, or places that hold important memories. Maybe it’s places where we feel safe. In this lesson inspired by a map of meaningful places, students design interesting compositions and use watercolor techniques to paint their artworks.
Doug Baulos’s work inspired me to think about idioms or phrases that use the word hand. I felt this might be a meaningful opportunity for students to combine word play with clay. I found a list on the internet by searching for “hand, phrases and idioms.” I put this information into a handout (of course), along with a photo and link to Baulos’s work. I told students they could either use some of the phrases I listed or brainstorm others they would like to use.
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Who among us remembers the Forgotten War, as the Korean War is sometimes called? My high-school students might know of it from a history quiz or television special, but the significance of the war or why it was called “forgotten” is not relevant to their daily lives. It’s certainly not showing up in their stories on social media. For our fall portrait project, I decided to raise this topic with my advanced art and AP students.
In our AP photograph class, I start one of my favorite projects in the middle of the woods at sunset. Why? Dramatic, eerie fading light! Students are armed with a soft box (a type of photographic lighting device that creates diffused light) and digital cameras. Students sometimes show up for our demo shoot with a prop. I remind them that timing is everything, as is the fleeting gift of just the right light.
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With ongoing global conflicts and the need for compassion and respect for all human beings, empathy is once again in the forefront of our minds. Stanford University psychology professor Dr. Jamil Zaki stated, “Modern society is built on human connection, and our house is teetering.” Now more than ever, empathy has become an increasingly important trend in education.
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Known for her stream-of-consciousness drawings and paintings, London-born Jersey City-based artist Shantell Martin believes that the meditative intuition at the core of her art practice can inspire everyone to make art or become a more centered individual. Drawing plays a central role in her immersive installations, choreography, fashion design, and hand-painted objects that explore identity, the interconnectedness of humanity, and play.
