Ali Blake

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision.

Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

In the work of becoming and being an educator, it is necessary and important to comprehend the evolving ways human development is understood, engaged, and implicated in the teaching of children, adolescents and adults. Humans are, to put it simply, different. And it is these differences that present opportunities and challenges in teaching and learning. This course offers an interdisciplinary investigation into evolving conceptions of human development, including, but not limited to, psychological, legal, historical, and sociological frameworks. Additionally, students will explore the histories of childhood as they impact and have impacted the material culture of schools and school design.

Investigating evolving conceptions of human development will provide teacher candidates with interdisciplinary perspectives to build their own understanding of students as subjects in formation. This includes gaining theoretical, historical, and pedagogical knowledge on a range of developmental issues in education. Readings include works by John Dewey, W.E.B. DuBois, Tom Shakespeare, Cris Mayo, Deborah Britzman, Stephen Vassallo, Alexandra Lange, Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, and Maria Montessori as well as overviews of Disability, Race Conscious, and Queer Theories in education.

Course work includes an essay questioning & responding to human development, an analysis of childhood development as illustrated in children's literature, an interpretation of adolescence as represented through short films, along with a midterm and final project documenting the work of learning throughout the semester.

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.

This course explores current issues in museum education and audience engagement with an emphasis on implications for practice. Students will engage with concepts such as partnerships, accessibility, youth engagement, community outreach, public programming, and more. Students will also explore museum practice as it is shaped by legacies of colonialism, systemic racism, misogyny, and other forms of exclusion, in addition to addressing urgent questions about museums in the COVID era and beyond. Students will directly engage with museums in Chicago and elsewhere both remotely and in person (where safe and appropriate), and will regularly interact with practicing museum professionals, primarily at the Art Institute of Chicago. Discussions and projects will be supplemented and inspired by readings and other media, as well as museum visits and conversations with guest presenters. This course is based upon the premise that public cultural institutions must be seen as important sites for life-long and at-will learning (entertainment and pleasure). Along with libraries, public museums are one of our nation?s few institutions that offer all citizens access to essential opportunities and resources.

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.

This seminar examines and analyzes the American art museum as a teaching institution based on observation, analysis, and critique of current museum education practices. Themes explored include audience analysis, evaluation methods, and the use of media, exhibition concept and design, and teaching methods. Efforts by museums to reach out to various communities, collaborations between museums and other institutions, and the way artists interact with and comment upon museums are also examined. Participants gain a detailed understanding of museum education practices in contemporary art museums.