Using Art Critically Volume 1

By Vivian Vasquez, Jerome C. Harste and Peggy Albers

Rather than seeing art as a curricular extra, or a fun break from the curriculum, the authors of Using Art Critically position art, as a tool and toy for learning, rethinking, and outgrowing oneself. Vasquez, Harste & Albers' intent is to position art as a seamless and integralpart of the educative process that creates space for exploring important social issues, events, and injustices from a critical literacy perspective. In so doing working with art from a critical perspective becomes an opportunity to understand curriculum as one way to explore opportunities for change. This book is the first in a series of books on creating critical curriculum. It includes details and examples for 10 art response strategies, for use in the classroom and in teacher education settings, including painting, creating art cards, using collage, puppet making, and creating art pieces made from everyday objects and discarded technology. Table of Contents: Introduction to the Using Art Critically/ Who We Are/ What We Have Done/ Creating Learning Opportunities / Using Art as a Response/ How to Use the Series/ Culminating Class or Workshop Experience/ Artistic Record of Thinking/ Organizing Instruction Around Social Issues/ Using the Series with Young Learners/ Online Teaching/ Eric Carle Workshop/ Art Cards / Jump Start Art/ Postcards/ A Street Called Home/ Critical Zentangles/ Everyday Objects/ Satire Art Using Discarded Technology/ Found Puppets/ Metaphorical Art/ Resource Appendix/ Key Tenets of Critical Literacy. 159 pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781716075131

Book preview

Using Art Critically

Copyright Page

Using Art Critically: Volume 1 - First Edition

Copyright © 2021 by Jerome C. Harste, Vivian Vasquez, and Peggy Albers.

All rights reserved.

All photographs that are not from the authors’ private collections were in the public domain.

ISBN: 978-1-716-07513-1

Dedication

Our sincere thanks to all the teachers we have worked with through the years who suggested the idea of creating the Using Art Critically series, and who have generously agreed to share their wonderful art pieces. This book is for you. It would not have happened without you.

Jerry, Vivian, and Peggy

Cover Art

The goat that appears on the cover, and other goats that appear in the book, were done by Jerome C. Harste who shares this about his use of goats.

"As a literacy educator, I am concerned about literacy instruction. Rather than create critically literate individuals who can and do talk back to print, we have created a generation of consumers."

In the UK, to act the goat implies behaving in a silly way. In the US, to get someone’s goat is to disrupt their calm. As such, each goat, in our book, is a metaphor for thinking about getting serious and disrupting our own complacency and that of others around us, and the need for us all to rise up and do our part to engage in teaching for a better world.

Who We Are

We are a group of teachers who collectively have over 90 years of experience working with students from preschool to graduate school, as public school teachers, and as university professors. We share a passion for framing our teaching, regardless of the age of our students, from a critical literacy perspective, and we share a passion for making and creating as part of our teaching and learning, and as part of our lives. The Using Art Critically series combines these two passions.

Rather than seeing art as a curricular extra, or a fun break from the curriculum, art in the Using Art Critically series is used, like language, as a tool and toy for learning,