Applying Standards to an Emerging Art Curriculum

In the preschool at Mustard Seed we talk about emergent curriculum, a curriculum that develops from exploring what is relevant, interesting and personally meaningful to children.

When Ms. Galarza decided on this year’s theme for the 8th grade homilies, she spoke to me about the students interest in, and the relevance of, social justice issues. We talked about creating an art project that reflected their work on identity, and this term’s self-portrait project grew from that conversation.

Throughout this project I documented the essential questions, desired understandings, learning plans and resources used, writing the curriculum as it emerged. As we reached the end of the project, the students and I looked at the National Core Art Standards. We read through them, checking which standards we had met in this project. 

The National Core Art Standards frames its standards around the four artistic processes of creating, presenting, responding, and connecting. The students noted we had “Documented early stages of the creative process visually and/or verbally in traditional or new media.”, Anchor Standard 1 for 8th grade, in our sketchbook work. The 6th grade met Anchor Standard 7, “Analyze ways that visual components and cultural associations suggested by images influence ideas, emotions, and actions.”, through individual writing on the breaking of stereotypes in contemporary portraiture. Through small and large group discussion on the development of photographic portraits, 7th Grade met Anchor Standard 10, “Analyze how response to art is influenced by understanding the time and place in which it was created, the available resources, and cultural uses.”

We realized that, while we had covered many of the standards for creating, responding and connecting, we were missing the three standards for presenting:

Select, analyze, and interpret artistic work for presentation.

Develop and refine artistic techniques and work for presentation.

Convey meaning through the presentation of artistic work. 

I brought this challenge to the students and, within each team, a small group of students took on the responsibility of presenting the work. All three groups chose to display the original art pieces. Additionally, one group created an iMovie and another a slide presentation. Some students organized their peers to give artist statements about their self portraits. This was the first time I have tasked students with this responsibility and they quickly discovered practical problems; How do you photograph the artwork without including shadows? Where do you put the artist’s name? Can the shortest students view the art?

This was a learning experience for the students, and for me as the teacher, and the exhibits are a first step. I appreciate teaching at a school that allows for development of new curriculum in response to students' (and teachers') passions, while challenging teachers to hold themselves and their students to high standards.

PS. For our next project we need a lot of newspaper. If you have access to any, we would greatly appreciate if your child could bring it in for us to use. Thank you!