Art teachers are constantly seeking innovative ideas, approaches and media to incorporate into fresh and inspiring lessons. In this article, the author describes how her class created relief or mosaic-like self-portraits by gluing or attaching multiples of any chosen objects or materials onto a surface.

This article describes how the author brings staff and students together through an art project that deals with caricatures. The author started with a lesson on caricature, and she made a PowerPoint presentation showcasing the work of Al Hirschfeld. Using photos of the staff, students created portraits and hung them in a main hallway after school.…

The author has always loved teaching a lesson on self-portraits to her eighth-grade students. Portraits raise the bar and, when they are successful, convince the students that they really can draw. Each year they explore the basic concepts of portraiture, but use different media, sizes and styles. The author likes to interject art history and…

The author has been deeply committed to shaping an art curriculum that offers students a more meaningful and authentic experience. In addition, she has been interested in the notion of students as victims of their popular culture. She questioned the ways in which cultural sources might impact their aesthetic choices with regard to personal…

The author of this article describes how her eighth grade art students heighten their awareness of differences between their public self and their inner self by: manipulating water bottles to create sculptural self-portraits; constructing armatures of the generic person in "The Scream" by Edward Munch; finding and collecting examples of images and…