A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

Niema Qureshi

Assistant Professor, Adjunct

Bio

Education: BA, Visual Studies, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK; MA,Fine Art, Chelsea College of Arts, London, UK. Exhibitions: Chicago Academy for the Arts; West Chicago City Museum; Hinsdale Center for the Arts; Marwen, Chicago; Chicago Cultural Center, Tabla Rasa Gallery, NY; Queens Museum, NY. Awards: Chicago Artist Coalition FIELD/WORK Resident; 3Arts Award Nominee, Presented at International Teaching Artist Conference 4 (ITAC4), NY; Teaching Artist Development Studio (TAD) Resident, Columbia College Chicago. Publications: School Arts Magazine, Questioning Contemporary Art.

Personal Statement

I'm interested in investigating the intersection between art, electronics, and physical computing within my arts practice and in various educational settings. How can technology extend or transform what is possible in art making? Rather than being passive users of technology, how can we be makers of technology that engage with the world? Combining materials from the computational world (i.e., micro controllers) with soft circuits (i.e., conductive fabric) and textiles, I'm attempting to bring the abstract or unseen into the physical realm. I collaborate with educators to develop inquiry based arts integrated curriculum to make technology more accessible to diverse learners and underrepresented youth.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

Relating contemporary and traditional artmaking approaches and culturally responsive pedagogy with curriculum, project, and instructional design methods, this course provides prospective teachers and teaching artists with knowledge and skills needed to structure learning experiences through which children and youth in elementary schools, middle schools and community settings enhance their creativity, develop technical skills, understand a range of artmaking practices, make personally meaningful works, and explore big ideas. Course participants will structure teaching plans that identify students� prior knowledge, scaffold learning, use multiple teaching and learning strategies to promote student engagement and differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all students. They will learn to articulate clear and verifiable core learning objectives, select relevant national and state standards and design assessments that capture essential student learning without standardizing students� artworks. Teacher reflection based on critique, student input and assessment data will be used in an iterative process of editing and redesigning curriculum. Connecting visual and verbal literacies, prospective teachers will make use of reading, writing and speaking activities that engage students in interpreting art and analyzing visual culture as well as using picture books as a source of inspiration for their personal storytelling and artmaking. Teachers will learn to select and/or develop reading level-appropriate art and culture readings to support learning. Studying a range of art education practices will provide teacher candidates with theoretical perspectives from which to build their own unique pedagogical approaches. Readings include works by Maria Montessori, Viktor Lowenfeld, Anne Thulson, Lisa Delpit, Vivian Paley, and Sonia Nieto as well as overviews of Reggio Emelia, Teaching for Social Justice, Teaching for Artistic Behavior, Studio Habits, Visual Thinking Strategies and Principles of Possibility Course assignments will include readings and discussion responses and researching artists, artmaking approaches and pedagogical practices as well as writing project and lesson plans accompanied by teacher artwork examples, image presentations, readings, assessments, and other instructional materials, as well as documenting plans and student artworks. Participants will teach small groups of students in elementary schools with English Language Learners. All student must complete and pass Chicago Public Schools Background Check.

Class Number

1085

Credits

3

Description

This course provides teacher candidates with opportunities to observe, analyze, teach, and evaluate in elementary and secondary settings. Teacher candidates build constructive relationships with K�12 students, faculty, staff, and community members at two fieldwork sites through guided observation engagement. They develop and teach curriculum projects and learn methods of non-punitive classroom management. This experience provides groundwork, connections, and continuity to apprentice teaching. Apprentice teachers will complete a 5-week elementary/middle school placement and a 5-week high school placement as well as attend a weekly apprentice teaching seminar at SAIC. Students will study examples of curriculum and pedagogy that cover all Illinois state mandated standards as defined by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE): NASAD Visual Arts Standards; Illinois Professional Teaching Standards; Social and Emotional Learning Standards; Literacy Standards. In the process, students will learn to create original art curriculum that encompasses these standards, and how to implement these standards in their pedagogical practice. The course includes observation/teaching days at elementary and secondary school placements, as well as weekly seminars at SAIC. During each of their two 5-week placements, students spend the school day at their respective assigned school placements before attending the evening seminar at SAIC. Time in seminars is spent developing and critiquing curriculum projects, exemplars (teacher project samples), instructional materials and assessment strategies in preparation for teaching in practicum placement schools, and later in apprentice teaching.

Class Number

1074

Credits

3

Description

The Apprentice Teaching course continues learning experiences begun during practicum placements in the fall semester. This course provides licensure candidates with experience investigating significant, contemporary concepts and themes within a contemporary art and design context in elementary and secondary Chicago-area schools. Apprentice teachers will complete a 7-week elementary/middle school placement and a 7-week high school placement as well as attend a weekly apprentice teaching seminar at SAIC. Apprentice Teachers will be challenged to maintain high ideals of creative, critical, and relevant curriculum as they engage the complex realities of public school teaching. Students will read a selection of texts that ground curricular theory within teaching practice. This will assist them in learning how to translate their curriculum development knowledge into pedagogy. Apprentice teachers will plan, teach, assess their students� work, and evaluate the effectiveness of their lessons and teaching strategies. Apprentice Teachers will teach a culminating curriculum project, video-record their instruction of this project, and submit these videos along with written analysis to the nationally standardized, Illinois State Board of Education-mandated edTPA assessment.

Class Number

2120

Credits

12

Description

The focus of this course is to support a sense of purpose and agency in prospective art teachers, teaching artists, and cultural workers by exploring how individual and collaborative cultural production reflects and influences conceptions of race, class, ethnicity, geography, sexuality, and physical/cognitive abilities in a diversity of communities and settings. Students will interrogate the cultural contexts�aesthetics, artmaking approaches, social, political, historical, theoretical, technological, and pedagogical�that frame the making, interpreting, analyzing, sharing, and teaching of art, design, and visual culture in school and community settings. Students will develop content for art and culture projects and curriculum sequences based upon contemporary topics, issues, and themes. Students will explore the work of contemporary artists and cultural workers who integrate diverse artmaking approaches, cultural histories, theoretical orientations, and psychological perspectives into their arts-based practices. Artists and readings will be chosen based upon timely and emergent issues, concepts, and themes affecting a diversity of communities. Methods and strategies for integrating various literacies--verbal, visual, media, technological, computational--into cultural projects and curriculum will be explored. Yes course will ask students to understand how individual and collaborative cultural production reflects and influences conceptions of race, class, ethnicity, geography, sexuality, and physical/cognitive abilities in a diversity of communities and settings. Students will also Understand how cultural contexts frame the making, interpreting, analyzing, sharing, and teaching art, design, and visual culture in school and community settings.

Class Number

1077

Credits

3