Contemporary art educators design artmaking experiences around questions, ideas, and themes to help engage students in personally relevant meaning-making (Anderson & Milbrandt, 2005; Gude, 2004, 2013; Walker, 2001). Preservice art teachers are trained to plan lessons and curriculum to move beyond the so-called school art style (Efland, 1976; Gude, 2013). However, "school art style" lesson structures still cast shadows over contemporary art practices (Gude, 2013). Efland (1976) identified the school art style as product-centered art that occurs under teacher instruction and is executed with little student choice. As teacher educators, the authors noticed "school art style" and other outdated curriculum structures are still implemented in field experiences and follow novice teachers into their future classrooms. Preservice students understand theoretical approaches to designing contemporary art curricula, like using big ideas (Walker, 2001), embracing Studio Habits (Hetland et al., 2013), Teaching for Artistic Behavior (Douglas & Jaquith, 2018), and referencing contemporary artists (Hamlin & Fusaro, 2018). However, they have trouble implementing them in practice. Therefore, the authors asked, How can we provide opportunities for students to experience what and how these contemporary ideas look and feel? Addressing this disconnect, the authors structured an art education methods courses to better model contemporary art education practices (Gude, 2004, 2013; Hamlin & Fusaro, 2018; Walker, 2001) that can be passed to the next generation. Drawing from collaborative autoethnographic methods (Chang et al., 2013), this article shares their analysis and critical reflection as they attempt to address this issue.