NYU ART+EDUCATION CERTIFICATION

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My Journey, My Identity: How do our homelands, personal experiences, and journeys define who we are?

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Student Artwork from My Journey, My Identity unit. 

Starting in 2017, Gehan Habashy, art teacher at The International High School for Health Sciences (IHSHS) and Art + Education alumni, designed and implemented a curriculum unit as part of a long-term exploration of identity with her students. IHSHS works with new immigrant students that come from 30 countries and speak 20 languages. The unit was designed to help students build a deeper understanding of their identities as individuals and to explore the value and  importance of their culture and homeland. Through this exploration, students work on building a sense of identity, in conjunction with self representation.

Student Artwork from My Journey, My Identity unit.

Throughout the unit, Gehan introduced her class to artists that explore themes of identity and self representation, such as Faith Ringgold, Shirin Neshat, and Wendy Ewald. During their exploration, students considered questions such as: Who are we? What forms our identity? What is identity? How can I be proud of who I am and celebrate others? How do our culture and homelands shape our identity? How can our identities help us dispel stereotype? Students created photograph portraits with overlaid poems of their own creation that emphasize how homelands, cultures, and  individual experiences help make our identities unique as individuals, and powerful as a community. 

Student Artwork from My Journey, My Identity unit. Student Artwork from My Journey, My Identity unit. Student Artwork from My Journey, My Identity unit. Student Artwork from My Journey, My Identity unit.

Student Artwork from My Journey, My Identity unit. Student Artwork from My Journey, My Identity unit. Student Artwork from My Journey, My Identity unit. Student Artwork from My Journey, My Identity unit.

Fieldwork: Student Artwork from PS 267

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Barney office wall with student artwork on display.

Our office walls at the Barney Building have been updated with beautiful student artwork! Art + Education Initial Certification graduate student Yuanyuan Xu completed her elementary student teaching this fall at PS 267 and hung artwork created by fifth-grade students. 

Closeup of student artwork.

Closeup of student artwork.

By looking at and discussing the artworks of Shantell Martin, Keith Haring and Wassily Kandinsky, fifth-grade students from PS 267 gained an understanding of pop art and graffiti, and had an exploratory conversation examining the relationship between artistic practices and immediate surroundings, as well as transforming acoustic and invisible sounds into an abstract representation. Special thanks to the students of PS 267 for letting us enjoy their artwork and to Yuanyuan for her great work student teaching at PS 267!

Barney office wall with student artwork on display.

Closeup of student artwork.

Barney office wall with student artwork on display.

Alumni Meredith McDevitt class visit

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Alumni Meredith McDevitt visiting an NYU Art + Ed class.

NYU Art + Education alumni Meredith McDevitt visited students in the Race, Education, and the Politics of Visual Representation course. Meredith is an art teacher at Success Academy in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. 

Alumni Meredith McDevitt visiting an NYU Art + Ed class.

In addition to sharing her experience teaching about race, Meredith shared projects that she has implemented at her school, as well as a resource list including books, videos, and artists she uses and references in the classroom. 

A slide from Meredith McDevitt's presentation to NYU students.

A slide from Meredith McDevitt's presentation to NYU students. A slide from Meredith McDevitt's presentation to NYU students.

I am / I am not – How do we use art to talk back to stereotypes?

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By Alison Rutsch   Student artwork from I am / I am not project

During her fieldwork experience at Achievement First Middle School in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Alison Rutsch worked with art teacher Ruby Singh and designed a curriculum unit as part of a long-term exploration of identity with 8th graders. The project was designed to explore how stereotypes work and then give students the opportunity to subvert the ways that they and others are often reduced and mischaracterized. Students created a series of prints that replaced all too common stereotypes with complex, empowered images of their identities.

Over the course of this exploration, Alison introduced contemporary artists Kerry James Marshall and Lorna Simpson who use portraiture to challenge stereotypes. Students wrote poems about about their own identities and the expectations that others have about them using an “I am/I am not” structure. Finally, Alison taught a series of printmaking techniques to translate student ideas into a set of paired self portraits– an “I am” and an “I am not” view of themselves and powerful rebuttal to the ways they are perceived and diminished in the eyes of the media and larger society. 

Student work from poem activity titled, "Just because I am..."

Liza Torrence and Rhea Creado at the Children’s Museum of Art of Manhattan

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Liza Torrence and Rhea Creado always enjoy the time they get to spend at Children’s Museum of Manhattan — whether they are interacting with children and their families as they explore the different art materials, artist installations, and creative spaces in the museum – or facilitating workshops and introducing new materials and tools inspired by the artists in residence at the museum. Their teaching and interactions at the museum complement the ideas they are learning in the MA in Art+Education programs as future classroom teachers and community artist activists. From thinking about student-centered classroom design, to critical multiculturalism and backwards design, time spent teaching and learning in the museum becomes a laboratory for ideas they will bring to the work they will do after they graduate.two adults and a child sit around a table with art materials A child is weaving string and smiling while an adult looks on in the background adults and children sit around a table painting on a large canvas a wall of different handmade art images including portraits and funny faces

Emma Niwa’s Portrait Project

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NYU Art+Ed alumna and elementary art teacher Emma Niwa makes so much art! At her school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, her 5th grade students explore many media and materials but a staple project each year that everyone looks forward to are the self portrait and printmaking studies. In addition to creating a visual portrait of themselves that reflects their emotions and interests, students create a print to serve as their background to share other aspects of their lives and personality traits they want to highlight. Emma takes students to local museum exhibitions to see portraits by contemporary artists and always asks students to write about their experiences making the work and the choices they made along the way. 

Student artwork from Emma Niwa’s class:

Student artwork from Emma Niwa's class. Student artwork from Emma Niwa's class. Student artwork from Emma Niwa's class. Student artwork from Emma Niwa's class. Student artwork from Emma Niwa's class.

NYU Art+Education at NAEA

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NAEA 2017 – Boston 

Close up of signs from NAEA 2016 presentation

NYU Art+Education alumni and faculty presented several formal and informal sessions at the 2017 NAEA conference. Jungwon Park, Ariana Mygatt and Jessica Hamlin presented the panel: Art as Research: Investigating Education as Artist Educators. This session highlighted the work of pre-service teachers in the NYU Art+Education program, and shared examples of research-driven inquiry and artwork produced while working in urban public schools and community-based contexts.

Program alumni John Kaiser staged a protest sign making and borrowing station at the convention. 

Professors Joe Fusaro and Jessica Hamlin presented a session: Contemporary Strategies for Creative and Critical Teaching in the 21st Century based on an article published by Art Education magazine of the same name. This session paired classroom case studies and the work of contemporary artists who model critical and creative capacities and process-driven strategies across diverse subject areas and grade levels.

And finally, NYU Art+Ed alumni and faculty helped to organize a participatory art performance by Oliver Herring along with students from several high schools in New York City. Areas for Action (AFA) is an open ended participatory performance, improvisatory sculpture, and real-time collaborative artwork. Conference participants were invited to interact with one another and the environment in the spirit of creative invention, interpretation, and play. A follow-up discussion with Oliver Herring, educators and students from a variety of contexts  explored the possibilities for connecting AFA to classroom teaching and learning.

NAEA 2019 – Boston

In 2018, Program Director Dipti Desai received the Studies in Art Education Lecture Award for scholarly contribution to art education and gave a talk.

NYU Art+Education alumna, Tiffany Lenoi Jones and faculty, Jessica Hamlin presented the session, ‘Connecting the practices of socially engaged artists to student led social transformation‘ which shared examples of educator practice at high school and graduate levels that facilitate student-led artistic inquiry and social activism that were inspired by contemporary socially engaged artists.

In addition, NYU Art+Ed faculty participated in a two-part presentation. Part 1 of the presentation discussed how contemporary art and artists offer rich connections to students’ lives and explored different approaches to contemporary teaching practices. Part 2 of the session included a wide range of teachers who offered “flash” descriptions of classroom and individual teaching strategies using contemporary art and artists to engage students. 

Alumni Panel, Spring 2016

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Alumni panel and students.

Alumni panel

A panel of five alumni from the Art + Education Programs, currently working in schools, museums and the larger community, advocating for social justice, returned to the Barney building to share their work and discuss life after NYU, with current and prospective students in the program.  Individual presentations were followed by a question and answer session and a broader discussion around the importance of education and the realities of the profession.