This mixed methods case study research evaluates the outcomes of a place-based experiential environmental education curriculum that incorporated environmental art and muralism to teach fifth to sixth graders about the Hudson River Watershed, environmental issues, and ecosystem recovery. Students showed a statistically significant improvement at…

The author's school is only 30 minutes from New York City, so every year when second-graders study towns and cities, the students do a project based on New York City landmarks. This year was the Statue of Liberty. The author introduced Peter Max's famous Pop art to her students, and explained that, as the art world kept changing, artists decided…

In their 2005 exhibit of John Biggers' work, the New Orleans Museum of Art described it as being inspired by "African art and culture, the injustices of a segregated United States, the stoic women in his own family, and the heroes of everyday survival." In this article, the author describes how her students reinterpreted Biggers' work.…

Listening to people complain about the hardships of winter and the dreariness of the nearly constant gray sky prompted the author to help her sixth graders recognize and appreciate the beauty that surrounds them for nearly five months of the year in western New York. The author opines that if students could see things more artistically, the winter…

Blue collar doesn't have to mean drab and dull. At least, not to Troy, New York, historian Mike Esposito, who is a member of a neighborhood revitalization movement seeking to celebrate the people and events that brought diversity, prosperity, and vitality to this upstate New York community more than 100 years ago. Esposito and others invited…

Spry Middle School's annual eighth-grade trip to Washington, District of Columbia, coincided with the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum, with its distinctive curvilinear architecture covered in Kasota limestone, stands as a wonderful testament to the rich culture and history of the many and diverse Native American…

Teens have issues! They talk about suicide and war. They experiment with drugs, drinking and smoking. Their lives may have been touched by abuse, gangs, or guns. Young people worry about these issues and many others as they work out their emerging identities and race toward their futures. This article discusses how the teachers in Voyager House…

The author had just begun Ann Johnson's "Friendship Fence" lesson from the February 2007 issue of "SchoolArts" with her third graders. In this lesson, students created self-portraits on individual fence pickets that were then combined to make a fence. In this article, the author describes how this idea was applied to the wall…

This brief article describes the life and the art of Horace Pippin. It focuses on one work called "Christmas Morning, Breakfast" that is part of a series of works based on Pippin's childhood memories. The painting depicts a very modest room, including exposed wallboards where chunks of plaster have fallen off. The room is very tidy, but…