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I created a Day of the Dead altar for the 2013 Dia De Los Muertos event at the Atlanta History Center.  It was dedicated to Jose Posada.  My 6th graders did the 2D Posada inspired work, my 7th graders made the Calavera Skulls, and my after school art club kids made the large paper skulls.  I also made a block print in tribute to Posada which I gave out at the event.

I have been using my Keith Haring project with my 6th graders for a while now.  They start out learning how to write their first art critiques focusing on finding the symbols in Haring's work and explaining their meanings.  They then do their own Keith Haring emulation.

This very complex project involves first cutting apart an old pair of shoes to see how they are made.  There is then an extensive design phase that involves drawing multiple views of their shoe design.  They build a mock up of their design out of card board.

This 8th grade assignment is based on the work of artist Kara Walker.  This is a very challenging project as a teacher because it involves discussing racial stereotypes.  Some of Kara Walker's work is not appropriate for school so I had to choose very carefully what to show them.  I am very proud of this work though because before this project many of these students did not truly understand the concept of stereotype.  Some of them even applied negative stereotypes to themselves.  I truly believe that this work helped open their eyes, at least a little bit.  DISCLAIMER: There is some challenging language in these pieces.  Please understand the context.  For the written aspect of this lesson I asked them to first explain a stereotype that they had experienced or observed in their own lives.  So each piece has one part which explains what the stereotype is and another part that explains why that stereotype can't be true or is not always true.

This is my editorial cartoon lesson.  This lesson is one of my strongest conceptually speaking and I am very proud of it.  The conversations I have had to have with my students during this project really helped me to grow as an educator.  I came upon the idea for this lesson when I found this archive of civil rights era editorial cartoons from the library of congress.  I start the lesson by holding a long class discussion about these 1960's political cartoons, which I throw up on screen in a power point.  Please go check them out HERE. With this lesson it is important to spend time making sure they understand visual metaphor. Without that metaphorical piece they just start drawing pictures of unfortunate events without that important ironic or comic element that makes it a political cartoon.  Once we have reviewed the old cartoons I have them start researching current day issues that deal with civil justice.  We brain storm some issues as a group so they have some idea how to get started.  I am very careful here not to endorse any particular political view.  This is all about cultivating their own political awareness.  Some of the pics you will see in this gallery are of the conceptual work and research that I make them do before they begin their final cartoon.  I think you will be able to tell which is which.  

These 6th graders did this project in conjunction with a social studies unit on the age of exploration.  You will see some famous figures from the period such as Henry Hudson, Queen Isabella, and Montezuma.

I have only done this assignment once so far but I really want to try something like it again.  These 7th graders were doing a unit on India in their social studies class.  I showed them examples of the 10 incarnations of Vishnu using some very amusing Indian TV clips.  They had to come up with an 11th incarnation of Vishnu using some of the Hindu themes that they learned about previously.

This is a very long and involved project for 7th graders.  It involves researching an architectural style/movement.  After they prove to me that they understand the fundamental elements of that style of architecture they build a model to exemplify it.  This project is done in groups of 3 students.

This 8th grade project starts out with viewing selected clips of the documentary about Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child.  It gives them a sense of the modern art scene in the 1980's and also introduces them to the rise of graffiti as a modern art form.  After they write an art critique about some of his work, which introduces them to the concept of expressionism, they do their own Basquiat style self portrait.  I have them include symbols and poetry in a manner that pays tribute to Basquiat.

I do this assignment with 7th graders.  It center's around grid drawing and the artist Kehinde Wiley.  You can see how I have them mimic the pattern work that he includes in his paintings.  I start them off with an art critique writing assignment in which they have to look at his work and write about the ways in which the artist is addressing black empowerment and the African American experience in general. 

I have done portraiture projects with my 6th graders as well.  This project is all about teaching them anatomical proportions for the head and face.  I do not use the grid method in this as I do with the 7th grade portrait project above.  We spend several classes practicing before I allow them to start working on portrait paintings of them selves and of their teachers.

When I visited Guatemala in 2015 with the Westminster School we visited two schools where they graciously allowed me to teach a drawing lesson.  At both schools I did my standard head/face proportion drawing lesson.  The first classroom you will see was a 7th grade class at La Excelencia School. The second classroom you will see was a 4th grade class at Kemna’oj school in Santa Maria de Jesus.  Even today, many months after the trip, I am still digesting this experience.  These children live in conditions that most Americans would find deplorable and yet they picked up my drawing methods just as quick, if not quicker, as any of my classes in the US.  They even managed to learn all of the proportions despite my horrible spanglish.  

These robot puppets were built by my after school art clubs between 2013 and 2015.  You can see the videos that we used them for in my video section.  The first art club video I worked on was hand puppets.  Latter on I changed this project to be stop motion animation based.