Like art, ethics can be a complex and scary mirror that forces us to consider, practice, and profess specific choices that speak to who we are and what we value. The author of this article observes that confronting specific ethical dilemmas within her work with young people has brought various tensions to the forefront of her practice as a…

For nearly 25 years, the author has driven the highways and back roads of Illinois, teaching dance to school children, leading family programs, performing lecture/demonstrations, and choreographing technically simple, conceptually complex pieces with and for young dancers. The author's home base is Champaign/Urbana (C/U), twin cities with a…

This research study, based on in-depth interviews, reveals the ways in which a select group of art education students and K-12 public school art teachers make meaning of their professional aspirations and career identity. This article focuses on the part of the study that examines the gender issues that were revealed during the interviews. It is…

The author learned that the book "The Catcher in the Rye," so important to him as a young man, had been challenged by adults and could easily have been barred from his school's reading list. He started thinking about who had the power to tell him what he could and could not read as a teenager and as a high school student. What were the reasons the…

This article looks at an inner city playwriting project that brought professional writers and artists into inner city classrooms to help students explore the cultural history of their community and begin to find their own voices as writers. This project was set up by Larry Hunter, an African American playwright who worked as a writer-in-residence…

In this article, the author provides five reasons why teachers should care about John Dewey. John Dewey was an "American Pragmatist philosopher, educator, reformer." Dewey lived a long and amazingly productive life, spanning the turn of the 20th century, from 1859-1952. In addition to lots of writing, he taught at the University of Chicago (where…

The residency about which the author writes was with students at The Roeper School in Birmingham, Michigan. This school is unusual in its support for a liberal arts and process-based education. In this article the author, an accomplished director and Teaching Artist, recounts the many engaging dimensions of a student production of "Henry V."

In this article, the author asserts that if Teaching Artists "must excel both as educators and artists, mastering the theory and practice of both fields, as well as the unique theory and practice that lies at their intersections" (Larson 13), then teachers who embrace the arts must master the creative process and experience what it is like to be…

Fifth grade students explore the public and private dimensions of poetry through the medium of poetry banners. The author maintains that poetry belongs in public spaces and serves as a counter to the "junk text" that surrounds us. A poetry banner is a nice addition to other banners and messages that students, teachers, school administrators, and…

In this article, the author describes the learning her students gained from their field trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago. On their trip to MCA, her fourth-grade students discovered new and surprising ways to approach the work of artist Dan Flavin.

The Artists' Collective for Social Change (ACSC) was established after the success of a multidisciplinary theater-dance project completed in March 2000 at a girls' residential treatment facility, Devereux Deerhaven, in Chester, New Jersey. The uncomfortable nature of this artistic adventure resulted in a model for teaching at-risk and underserved…

The many worlds of arts education began to grow into one worldwide community in March 2006. Twelve hundred arts education leaders, in delegations from 97 countries, attended the United Nation's Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO's) first-ever worldwide arts education conference, held for four days in Lisbon, Portugal. The…

In this article, the author describes a high school art teacher's experience in teaching big ideas with her high school graphics design class. The author's purpose is to offer an example of concrete instructional practice with artmaking that focuses on making meaning and incorporates the perspectives of contemporary culture, personal relevance,…

The author's students were an unhappy, skeptical group of middle school students. Many of them had emotional issues. Many had drug addiction and prostitution in their broken and poverty-ridden families. Her school, which is a small charter school in a remote Arizona town, was a place of last resort for these students, who probably would not…

Arts educator Gigi Schroeder-Yu and Arnold Aprill arrived in Seoul, Korea to participate in the International Arts Education Symposium and in the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference that are part of the wind up for the pitch of the UNESCO World Conference on Arts Education to be held in Lisbon in March 2006. In this article, they reflect on their…