Juarez Hawkins

What egalitarian ideals have shaped our conception of public education? How has the promise of democratic schools been undermined by white privilege, racism, class-based discrimination, inequitable funding, colonialism, patriarchy, and disregard for the human impact on the natural world? This course builds a foundation for understanding the politics of schooling by exploring the struggle for democratic education in Chicago, contextualized by contemporary global decolonial practices in education. Students will consider how shifting conceptions of schooling are responses to the contemporary cultural moment¿recognizing how curriculum supports the beliefs and needs of the status quo as well as how curriculum might critique and propose new ways of being as individuals and as societies. The course explores a broad range of histories, philosophies, and approaches to schooling, including Freedom Schools, Native American boarding schools, transformative justice in education, play and free child movements, teacher-led movements, environmental studies, and the fight to defend ethnic studies programs as well as attempts to re-segregate and privatize public schools.

Artists, designers and scholars to be studied include Tonika Lewis, Eve Ewing, Elizabeth Todd-Breland, Jose Resendiz, Borderless Studios, Interference Archive and Alexis Rockman. Readings from the field of art education by Doug Blandy, Laurie Hicks, and Mark Graham will trace the emergence of eco-art and place-based art education curriculum. Field trips include visits to school sites, Chicago Board of Education meetings and exploration of CBOE archives.

Course assignments include short response papers and course readings. Students conduct and report on six hours of observations in schools, sites of school decision-making, and in places where people attempt to build democratic processes related to schools. Students will conduct independent research on topics related to contemporary issues and schooling. Each student will prepare and present a culminating project proposal for a school whose curriculum and structures address their political and social concerns and pedagogical vision.

This seminar is a direct application of the theory and conceptual framework for community-based art programming. Participants investigate new models for making art in the community, collaborating with a prearranged Chicago area audience, organization, and site. Collaborative art endeavors include indoor and outdoor site-specific work, installations, environments, performances, exhibitions, and special projects. Seminar sessions discuss and reflect the ethics, aesthetics, and challenges of 'public art' in community. Open to all graduate students.

This course provides teacher candidates with opportunities to observe, analyze, teach, and evaluate in elementary and secondary settings. Teacher candidates build constructive relationships with K­12 students, faculty, staff, and community members at two fieldwork sites through guided observation engagement. They develop and teach curriculum projects and learn methods of non-punitive classroom management. This experience provides groundwork, connections, and continuity to apprentice teaching. Apprentice teachers will complete a 5-week elementary/middle school placement and a 5-week high school placement as well as attend a weekly apprentice teaching seminar at SAIC.

Students will study examples of curriculum and pedagogy that cover all Illinois state mandated standards as defined by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE): NASAD Visual Arts Standards; Illinois Professional Teaching Standards; Social and Emotional Learning Standards; Literacy Standards. In the process, students will learn to create original art curriculum that encompasses these standards, and how to implement these standards in their pedagogical practice.

The course includes observation/teaching days at elementary and secondary school placements, as well as weekly seminars at SAIC. During each of their two 5-week placements, students spend the school day at their respective assigned school placements before attending the evening seminar at SAIC. Time in seminars is spent developing and critiquing curriculum projects, exemplars (teacher project samples), instructional materials and assessment strategies in preparation for teaching in practicum placement schools, and later in apprentice teaching.

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.