Melita Morales

What are the concerns that drive one's creative practice? How does one set the terms for its future development? Sophomore Seminar offers strategies for students to explore, reflect upon, and connect common themes and interests in the development of an emerging creative practice that will serve as the basis of their ongoing studies at SAIC and beyond. Students will examine historical and contemporary influences and contextualize their work in relation to the diverse art-worlds of the 21st Century. Readings, screenings, and field trips will vary each semester. Presentations by visiting artists and guest speakers will provide the opportunity for students to hear unique perspectives on sustaining a creative practice. One-on-one meetings with faculty will provide students with individualized mentorship throughout the semester. During interdisciplinary critiques, students will explore a variety of formats and tools to analyze work and provide peer feedback. The class mid-term project asks students to imagine a plan for their creative life and devise a self-directed course of study for their time at school. The course concludes with an assignment asking students to develop and document a project or body of work demonstrating how the interplay of ideas, technical skills, and formal concerns evolve through iteration, experimentation and revision. Prerequisite: Must be a sophomore to enroll.

Relating contemporary and traditional artmaking approaches and culturally responsive pedagogy with curriculum, project, and instructional design methods, this course provides prospective teachers and teaching artists with knowledge and skills needed to structure learning experiences through which children and youth in elementary schools, middle schools and community settings enhance their creativity, develop technical skills, understand a range of artmaking practices, make personally meaningful works, and explore big ideas. Course participants will structure teaching plans that identify students’ prior knowledge, scaffold learning, use multiple teaching and learning strategies to promote student engagement and differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all students. They will learn to articulate clear and verifiable core learning objectives, select relevant national and state standards and design assessments that capture essential student learning without standardizing students’ artworks. Teacher reflection based on critique, student input and assessment data will be used in an iterative process of editing and redesigning curriculum. Connecting visual and verbal literacies, prospective teachers will make use of reading, writing and speaking activities that engage students in interpreting art and analyzing visual culture as well as using picture books as a source of inspiration for their personal storytelling and artmaking. Teachers will learn to select and/or develop reading level-appropriate art and culture readings to support learning. Studying a range of art education practices will provide teacher candidates with theoretical perspectives from which to build their own unique pedagogical approaches. Readings include works by Maria Montessori, Viktor Lowenfeld, Anne Thulson, Lisa Delpit, Vivian Paley, and Sonia Nieto as well as overviews of Reggio Emelia, Teaching for Social Justice, Teaching for Artistic Behavior, Studio Habits, Visual Thinking Strategies and Principles of Possibility Course assignments will include readings and discussion responses and researching artists, artmaking approaches and pedagogical practices as well as writing project and lesson plans accompanied by teacher artwork examples, image presentations, readings, assessments, and other instructional materials, as well as documenting plans and student artworks. Participants will teach small groups of students in elementary schools with English Language Learners. All student must complete and pass Chicago Public Schools Background Check.

In the work of becoming and being an educator, it is necessary and important to comprehend the evolving ways human development is understood, engaged, and implicated in the teaching of children, adolescents and adults. Humans are, to put it simply, different. And it is these differences that present opportunities and challenges in teaching and learning. This course offers an interdisciplinary investigation into evolving conceptions of human development, including, but not limited to, psychological, legal, historical, and sociological frameworks. Additionally, students will explore the histories of childhood as they impact and have impacted the material culture of schools and school design. Investigating evolving conceptions of human development will provide teacher candidates with interdisciplinary perspectives to build their own understanding of students as subjects in formation. This includes gaining theoretical, historical, and pedagogical knowledge on a range of developmental issues in education. Readings include works by John Dewey, W.E.B. DuBois, Tom Shakespeare, Cris Mayo, Deborah Britzman, Stephen Vassallo, Alexandra Lange, Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, and Maria Montessori as well as overviews of Disability, Race Conscious, and Queer Theories in education. Course work includes an essay questioning & responding to human development, an analysis of childhood development as illustrated in children's literature, an interpretation of adolescence as represented through short films, along with a midterm and final project documenting the work of learning throughout the semester.

Relating contemporary and traditional artmaking approaches and culturally responsive pedagogy with curriculum, project, and instructional design methods, this course provides prospective teachers and teaching artists with knowledge and skills needed to structure learning experiences through which children and youth in elementary schools, middle schools and community settings enhance their creativity, develop technical skills, understand a range of artmaking practices, make personally meaningful works, and explore big ideas. Course participants will structure teaching plans that identify students’ prior knowledge, scaffold learning, use multiple teaching and learning strategies to promote student engagement and differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all students. They will learn to articulate clear and verifiable core learning objectives, select relevant national and state standards and design assessments that capture essential student learning without standardizing students’ artworks. Teacher reflection based on critique, student input and assessment data will be used in an iterative process of editing and redesigning curriculum. Connecting visual and verbal literacies, prospective teachers will make use of reading, writing and speaking activities that engage students in interpreting art and analyzing visual culture as well as using picture books as a source of inspiration for their personal storytelling and artmaking. Teachers will learn to select and/or develop reading level-appropriate art and culture readings to support learning. Studying a range of art education practices will provide teacher candidates with theoretical perspectives from which to build their own unique pedagogical approaches. Readings include works by Maria Montessori, Viktor Lowenfeld, Anne Thulson, Lisa Delpit, Vivian Paley, and Sonia Nieto as well as overviews of Reggio Emelia, Teaching for Social Justice, Teaching for Artistic Behavior, Studio Habits, Visual Thinking Strategies and Principles of Possibility Course assignments will include readings and discussion responses and researching artists, artmaking approaches and pedagogical practices as well as writing project and lesson plans accompanied by teacher artwork examples, image presentations, readings, assessments, and other instructional materials, as well as documenting plans and student artworks. Participants will teach small groups of students in elementary schools with English Language Learners. All student must complete and pass Chicago Public Schools Background Check.

This independent study requirement for candidates for the MAAE (Master of Arts in Art Education) or for the MAT (Master of Arts in Teaching) follows either the MAAE course ARTED 6109--Art Education: Thesis I: Research Methodology or the MAT course ARTED 5290--Graduate Art Education Thesis: Research as Social Inquiry. Students produce a thesis that demonstrates a student?s ability to design, justify, execute, and present the results of original research or of a substantial action research project. Students work closely with an assigned thesis advisor, in addition to participating in supporting workshops, presenting at the annual symposium, and defending the work at a final defense panel.

The Apprentice Teaching course continues learning experiences begun during practicum placements in the fall semester. This course provides licensure candidates with experience investigating significant, contemporary concepts and themes within a contemporary art and design context in elementary and secondary Chicago-area schools. Apprentice teachers will complete a 7-week elementary/middle school placement and a 7-week high school placement as well as attend a weekly apprentice teaching seminar at SAIC. Apprentice Teachers will be challenged to maintain high ideals of creative, critical, and relevant curriculum as they engage the complex realities of public school teaching. Students will read a selection of texts that ground curricular theory within teaching practice. This will assist them in learning how to translate their curriculum development knowledge into pedagogy. Apprentice teachers will plan, teach, assess their students’ work, and evaluate the effectiveness of their lessons and teaching strategies. Apprentice Teachers will teach a culminating curriculum project, video-record their instruction of this project, and submit these videos along with written analysis to the nationally standardized, Illinois State Board of Education-mandated edTPA assessment.