In this essay Naomi Mulvihill uses vignettes from her bilingual kindergarten classroom to explore the dynamic processes by which young children make sense of language, focusing on instances in which she asks her students to compare texts presented in English and Spanish. Using Piaget's concept of disequilibrium as a guiding framework,…

In this reflection, Louise Pascale describes the evolution, development, and outcomes of the Afghan Children's Songbook Project, which is reintroducing children's ethnic songs to the children of Afghanistan and Afghan expats as well as to American schoolchildren. Her reflection highlights the potential for music to unify and strengthen…

In this reflective essay, Eric Booth utilizes his Habits of Mind for Creative Engagement to offer two suggestions for intensifying the impact of arts learning in schools. Booth's first suggestion redefines what artistic engagement really means and where it can contribute to creative learning. His second suggestion advocates for the use of…

The authors of this article describe themselves as a lucky group of older adults, ranging in age from sixty to ninety-two, who participate in an intergenerational arts program at their local senior center in Flushing, Queens, one of New York City's most culturally diverse communities. In their living history theater program, run by Elders…

In this essay, author Steven Ciampaglia reflects on the creation of a guerilla art course he and a colleague designed to engage students in the process of creating contemporary art relevant to them outside the traditional classroom setting. He examines how reflecting on his teaching practices led him to rethink the key objectives and design…

The author describes his job as pretty mundane. He is a low-level government bureaucrat who sends a lot of emails and works with spreadsheets. Occasionally, when he gets to do something creative, like put together a sign, pamphlet, or slideshow, he feels a sense of peace and wishes he could do it more. This past spring, the author finally decided…

The author first decided to take art classes out of curiosity, but art gradually changed her perspective on life and became a medium through which she saw herself. This hobby became a process by which she began to create an artwork of her own life. This article describes what the author has learned about her own life through art and how it has…

During the winter of 2011-2012, Weardale, England, was the setting for an ambitious informal adult education project. In this rural area in the northeast part of the country, the local arts collective, Jack Drum Arts, established a community play project entitled "The Bonny Moorhen." This dramatic undertaking aimed to retell the story of…

In this article, Michele K. Sommer recalls the struggles she experienced during elementary school with daydreams so real that she was lost in them. She reports using her artistic skills to complete school assignments to no avail, becoming keenly aware even as a child that the adults in her life regarded her daydreaming as a defect (she was a…

The author, Victor B. Almanzar, reports on his introduction to the arts while growing up in New York as a young teenager. He felt like an outcast from society due to his language barrier and numerous ethnic groups different from his. He became involved with other students who, like himself, were harassed and suffered from bullying due to their…

This article describes the profound changes experienced by the author during the two years she spent as part of the 52nd Street Project Teen Ensemble, playing the part of "Julia" in Shakespeare's musical play "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." The author reports the difficulty of playing the role, since the character was so…

This article describes John Kelleher's experience in observing the creations of his preschool daughter. Both he and his wife are formally trained in the arts, and looked forward to guiding their daughter down an artistic path. In his mind, what makes a great artist usually involves a great deal of technical ability and commitment to a complex…

This article describes how the author, Nicole Keller, found that her writing grew richer and more honest as her understanding of movement and her own body evolved through an Introduction to Modern Dance course. For the first time in her life as an aspiring writer, she felt connected to art, literature, and her personal history in ways that…

"Why should they stay? This is our land. We were born here!" The year is 2004. The class is at a fictional town meeting in a rural village in Cambridgeshire, England, debating whether or not a group of travelers who have pitched up in a field at the edge of the settlement should be allowed to remain. The debate is coming to a climax, and…

This essay examines the experiences of "lau hala" ("pandanus" leaf plaiting) weavers for the pedagogical philosophies and strategies embedded in this Hawaiian art form in an effort to broaden the ways in which we understand and practice art education in any setting. Drawing on personal experiences as "lau hala"…