When we first found out that we would all of a sudden be moving instruction online and no longer be teaching in a way that I have only ever known (as both a student and teacher), I was a bit frozen with fear. How could I still connect with my students, teach them content that was both rich and relevant, as well as help them work through any feelings they may be going through, using art as an outlet and uplifter during this unprecedented time. 

I had a choice to make: completely overhaul everything and start anew or stay the course and keep moving forward using the processes, units, and activities I would have done if we had been face-to-face. 

I chose the latter. I was lucky in that I had already had my students in the art classroom for about a marking period of time and they had taken STEM the semester before, so they understood the process from which we could follow to create the works we were going to make. 

Design Thinking is something I have shared before and it has helped me shape my classroom into a place where students are able to make choices and stay organized and focused on results they are interested in obtaining. Finding ways I could adapt this process to teaching remotely was a challenge, but as you will view in the video, it was worth it. 

The graphic above is one I made last summer using the iPad app Procreate and my Apple Pencil. I had been using Design Thinking for years before coming up with this visual representation and now that I have it, I feel even more strongly about how important this organizational tool is for me and my students as we navigate the work created in the classroom (even when done remotely). 

By having a graphic to show go along with each step, it helps me better communicate to students the how of what we do when we try and solve visual problems. This can also be applied to other content areas (I see a lot of overlap with Science, for example) and it has been an awesome thing to share with my teaching partner in the STEM room so we can use common language about how we are going to help students walk through the work they do in our classes. 

I consider my classroom a choice-based place, meaning my students have the opportunity to decide what materials and processes to use when they create their final works. We work within a broad theme and use DICE as a way to organize the process. 

Usually we have enough time during the semester to cover four unit themes. I use the same theme for both 7th and 8th grade, understanding that because students are getting to select what and how they make their art, the results are always going to be different and the units change year-to-year. 

This year our themes were "You, Me, Everybody," "Spaces and Places," "Things You Leave Behind," and "Something Old, Something New." These themes allow me to cover some recurring subjects you will find in the work of artists like portraits, landscapes, and still life as well as focus on students demonstrating growth through a review of their Artsonia portfolio and reimagining what they had created before through the new lens of what they now know and can do. 

Each theme has a set of artists we use as reference who come from different backgrounds and use different media to address the topic and students also have a series of skill builders and bootcamps they complete to get a better understanding of art concepts and media they can then select from as they complete their work. 

By moving to a thematic structure that offers choice as a result of skill builders and mini lessons that give a variety of tools to use, students come up with dramatically different results that help them establish their own unique voice while also showing me they know and understand what is being examined through the process of creating the work. 

Here are some examples of the planning sheets I use for the themes we covered and continued to cover, even when moving to remote learning: 

For each of the challenges, I also created review sheets that students could use to house the information they learned in that unit and then we would have summative assessments based on that. In addition, students had standard-based rubrics that guided them through their creation of their works and artist statements when they posted to Artsonia (all of which fell under the category of the 4 C's when evaluating art: Creativity, Craft, Composition, and Content). Finally, students had the chance to be reflective of their own learning through a series of self-assessments, too. 

All of these components offer a chance to assess learning through lenses of what students were able to learn and retain through application, what students were able to produce and communicate through application, and how students felt about the learning, production, and application of the processes selected. I am still working how summative assessments, like quizzes the reviews were used to do in my face-to-face class, would work or look like when teaching remotely. Right now, I use the assessment feature on Schoology for this and hope to be able to adapt that to whatever our system looks like in the fall. 

If you are interested in a closer look at the final exam review I offer for students, you can check out the file below:

I am already planning for next school year. I am thinking about the themes we will cover and the artists we will reference. In addition to making sure I plan for ways to integrate the Design Thinking process within the way I teach Visual Arts remotely, I am also preparing myself for the potential that I will not have the same luxury I had this year where students were able to learn it face to face from me to start so we could continue it online. 

One way I envision myself organizing my online space is through the use of Google Slides and through the "Bitmoji Classroom." I also am really excited about SildesMania, where there are a lot templates that can be used for this and are offered for FREE! 

I also have been working on a series of works using Procreate on the iPad to illustrate images of the artists we reference in our classes. I started this during our stay at home order to better hone my skills with a tool we use in class and I am planning to continue it to complete the series for next year's set. 

I envision having something like the image you see above, which was created using Google Slides and allowing the images to be clickable that would then allow students to learn more about the unit. 

I am also working towards more diverse representations of artists we use as reference in the art classroom. People from different backgrounds and countries should be represented. This is something that is really important to me because I am a child of an immigrant. As an Arab-American, I have grown up experiencing and continue to experience what it can feel like to be seen through a limited lens. I share this because it is important to seek understanding within ourselves and each other and grow in the process. Being mindful and purposeful of inclusion when seeking out which artists I teach will help me be a better teacher. And seeing art made from different points of view helps us understand the world in new ways. 

I am excited and nervous about a new school year. There may be a lot of unknowns, but what I do know is I am so lucky to teach who I do and where I do and I cannot wait to get working with my students once we do start up this August! 

As with most things this semester, I have been inspired by other teachers and used past lessons to mash up ideas of what can work for students as we learn together, while a part. Every end of the semester, before saying good-bye to students, I like to offer a multiple-part final reflection/exam that asks them to use digital tools to demonstrate and reflect on what they learned this semester. 

To finish out this semester, we continued that approach with a digital poster and virtual gallery.  

The digital posters ask students to take an artist we studied this semester and select an artist from Scholastic Art Magazine to make a comparison to using either Google Slides or Adobe Spark. In doing so, it gives students the opportunity to look back at what we have learned and then make connections to what they select from the magazine to showcase that learning. 

Here are a few student examples:

For the second part of the final, students are asked to create a virtual gallery of between 3-5 of their favorite works using Google Slides. Students then save the slide as a JPEG image and upload it to Artsonia, so we can put it into our final art show for the school year. 

​Here are some of those results: 

Overall, this end of year activity is bittersweet. 

I am so proud of how well these students have jumped on creating this work, but so sad we cannot be back in the classroom to do it. I will definitely do this again in the future. And introducing the lesson using the published slideshow below was a GREAT way to share it with my students and get them engaged in the lesson.

You can click through the presentation below to see how to make both items! 

As I move forward in this new way of connecting with students, I plan to use this publishing function of Google Slides so that the remote learning lessons are more inviting (rather than just links in a folder). 

I even used it to celebrate our students for the end of year art show, too! 

I hope everyone has a safe and great summer! 

I will be spending some time in the coming weeks, posting work from my classroom this year onto this space. If you find something useful, use it and give me a shout-out.