Place-based education incorporates local communities into school curriculum, recognizing the importance of local traditions, communities, and ecosystems, and emphasizing content that has reference to community life and local ecology. One elementary art teacher worked to connect place to her own artistic identity and to her work teaching elementary…

This brief article describes how Dawn Southworth, upper school art teacher at the Glen Urquhart School (GUS) (Massachusetts), devised the White Shirt Project to engage eighth-graders in art and society. Each year, Southworth purchases white shirts for her eighth grade students to transform into original works of art. Prior to the culminating art…

Art can provide a vehicle for animating learning. Teachers bring ideas to life through curriculum, while artists realize their ideas through images, often translating between forms, media and spaces. This paper describes the context, content and format of a residential Summer Arts Academy for gifted and talented middle and high school students,…

It is no secret that America is overweight. A record number of children are obese and are showing signs of adult diseases such as high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. Fortunately, people are recognizing this and beginning to do something about it: (1) restaurants and markets are offering healthier options; (2) menus are starting to list…

Many painters use lines to express powerful emotions. Both Vincent van Gogh and Jean-Michel Basquiat had difficult lives filled with hardship, and died at a young age. They both used art to deal with their emotions. It seems like the stronger the feelings were in them, the faster the strokes were put down in their work. In this article,…

The author's art program includes students from kindergarten through eighth grade. In pondering the "nearly impossible," he wondered how the entire student population could work together on one art project that could be exhibited at the same time. He wanted each of his 700 students to create an original artwork that would display individual and…