Michelle Clifford Enhanced Annotated Bibliography Athanases, Steven Z., Christiano, David, and Lay, Elizabeth.

Fostering Empathy and Finding Common Ground in Multiethnic Classes. The English Journal (1995): 26-34. Web. I read this article because we are just at the beginning of our lesson on empathy and I thought it would help me to gain insights. I also have a strong affinity for multicultural/ethnic studies and believe that attention to multiculturalism should happen in any classroom, even a fairly homogeneous one. The article mentioned early on that a conceptual failing of multicultural education has been its lack of attention to points of connection (26). I think that for educators who have little knowledge of cultures beyond their own, this can easily happen. Art classes seem to be especially susceptible to this teachers can accidentally appropriate cultures by having students create an art project taken from an other culture, such as rainsticks, African tribal masks, sombreros, or tipis. Finding those points of connection can help to stop this. Students can learn about another culture and then relate it to their own. Their artwork can be a point of connection, rather than an appropriation. Looking at American culture in the exact same sort of way studying it, as if it just as unknown might also help to keep projects from becoming culturally and or ethnically insensitive. A point of fault that I found with this article seemed to be along the same lines of making a culture seem like the other. The authors note with importance that looking at what are other cultures for a teacher might include looking at a culture that is represented within their classroom. They attempt to reconcile this by saying, we have also found that tailoring literary selections to represent the student body of a class can help ensure that all students, if they wish, can emerge as cultural experts (27). Again, unless American culture or even white culture is looked at through the same lens of other, this only serves to distance students. The authors do note that students will act as cultural experts only if they wish, but we should never expect a single (or even small group) of students to act as the voice for an entire culture. This is simply because one white, American student would never be asked to represent all of white America. We need to be conscious of singling out these other students, even if it seems to be in a positive manner. It can send them to the fringes of the classroom, there as cultural tokens, and that is the worst way to foster empathy and community within a class. There were other aspects of the article that I appreciated, even almost 20 years after its publication. The authors ask teachers to invite students to share personal and family experiences around a common theme to forge common ground (28). I find this to be so incredibly true. Almost all people can find commonalities in our social functions, specifically family ones. Across the world, through language barriers, people can understand fighting with a parent or sticking up for a sibling. To bring this back to the previous paragraph, the idea of a common theme can combat the problem of tokenism and other-ing a culture. In literature, teachers do not have to select books from a certain culture and group them together. In art, teachers do not have to select artists or works from a certain culture as the basis for a project. Rather, if a universal theme (life, death, love, family, empathy, identity, community, etc.) is chosen and artists or authors from across time and cultures that deal with that specific issue are chosen, a lesson becomes significantly more sensitive and applicable to all students. The last point of focus comes back to empathy in general with a quotation from a teacher: I think we have to beware that action needs to come out of empathy though (33). As teachers,

we need to make sure that our empathy goes somewhere. We cannot just feel bad about our students problems; we must attempt to lessen the burden of those problems for the future. Students struggle with many things, but a big problem is the lack of empathy and connection with their peers. If we can create generations who are more sensitive, emotionally intelligent, and connected with others around them, we can help ourselves and our students. Greene, Maxine. Values Education in the Contemporary Moment. The Clearing House 64.5 (1991): 301-304. Web. This article was about how to teach values in classrooms today. Even though it was written several years ago, I still found quite a bit to think about. Greene explains that core, universal values are not found much anymore, namely due to peoples declining confidence in abstract ideals [and] universal principles (301). Rather, with a society that is growing more diverse and pluralistic every day, we turn to contingency and relativism, which allow us to look at morality as ever-changing, just like our world. She notes that relativism is also a response to postmodernist points of view that are critical of total explanations and fixed monological frameworks (301). I agree with this point completely, and think that teachers need to let students know that vagueness is not always bad. Many of our deepest questions have no set answers being comfortable with that lack of total explanations is important in finding ones own morality and adjusting to our world. Greene calls for a moral education that involves[s] naming, storytelling, and the deliberate creation of communities, as well as reflecting back upon our life situations in the sociopolitical contexts that impinge upon them (302). Since values can no longer be seen as solely universal rules, people must be able to find their moral purposes in their own lives and their own stories. There is certainly still a need for influencing some of what can be seen as right or wrong on students, but, again, these are not set rules and definitions for them to memorize and learn. Rather, they are ideas that students need to integrate into their actions, words, thoughts, etc. as they recognize the importance of values to their own lives. Students must be moved by the injustices that they find in their own lives or in the lives of others around them to recognize values. They do not need to be coached in how to solve hypothetical moral problems, but to actually put their ideas into practice. Most of this at first will come through reflection was what I said or did moral? When have I been hurt by another through their lack of values? How do I know when I did something wrong? How does it make me feel? Putting their own experiences into the larger context of our society and questioning why people behave as they do will help them to create their own value code with time. As Greene notes, without an orientation to some framework, some human and ideational surround, we are likely to find our lives to be meaningless (302). Students do not have to find their values through religion or spirituality, but unless they are thinking in a context larger than themselves (not just me, but my gender, my age, my race, my country, my sexuality, my world), they will have difficulty thinking that they serve any purpose. They will not see that their morality can change anything or that being a moral person is worth anything. They will not be seeing in the larger focus of humanity. Students must be moved to a bigger picture than themselves: To envisage a better condition of things, to imagine things as if they could be otherwise it is this mode of thinking that may move persons to create values. To decide that things are intolerable is to be moved to

fill the voids, to repair; and it is at moments of such consciousness that people become morally alive (303). People feel powerless as just one students feel this way especially. They must see themselves as part of a community as well as individually if they are to create their personal value system especially if they are to act on that personal value system. Eliot, Lise. The Myth of Pink and Blue Brains. Closing Opportunity Gaps 68.3 (2010): 32-36. Web. Gender roles are something that seem to be draining from our society through a very clogged pipe. Plenty of people, male and female, perpetuate these its impossible not to in some ways. I have always been a supporter of the idea that gender is a social construct very few of our differences are actually biological. I thought this article was very interesting in the ways that it showed how small actual differences are grown and exaggerated through our perceptions. Boys have a slight physical advantage and that is cultivated to the point that far fewer girls are interested in sports by the time they enter high school. I also thought it was very enlightening that higher female performance in math correlates with higher levels of gender equity in individual nations (33). This fact does not come as a surprise to me, but there are plenty of articles and research that try to paint a different portrait of equality (i.e. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/magazine/does-a-more-equalmarriage-mean-less-sex.html?_r=0). It does not come as a surprise to people to find that ethnic minorities in any country perform better academically when they are not oppressed by their nation why should it come as a surprise that girls scores are also higher when they are given equal treatment? What did come as a small surprise to me was the fact that Students develop more stereotyped attitudes in classrooms that emphasize gender (such as by lining up boys and girls separately) and more egalitarian attitudes where its deemphasized (34). Its interesting to note that just pointing out gender can create this attitude. A teacher may not emphasize any differences verbally, but the sheer act of categorizing points out differences. As James Britton says, Experiments have shown that even the lightest touch of the classifiers hand is likely to induce us to see members of a class as more alike than they actually are and items from different classes as less alike that they actually are (Robinson, 183). A physical separation is enough to play up the idea of difference segregation can never end in equity. I also was drawn to the notion that we need to reward boys for behaving like girls, just as much as we reward girls for behaving like boys. I have always thought it backwards to dismiss feminine traits when we reward girls for things like math and sports. We need to still celebrate their abilities for reading and emotional intelligence. And even more, we need to stop the constant dismissal of those things as girly and of girly as being a negative word. Boys need to be rewarded for their abilities in these subjects as well. We do a lot of this in small ways media, families, friends, and teachers support the idea of men hiding their feelings and portray women as being too overcome by those feelings. In a project under the theme of empathy, we had many girls talk about how much they appreciated the project, while boys gave answers such as, Empathy does not apply to me. I only need to worry about myself now. Those answers have nothing to do with an innate lack of empathy or emotional abilities in boys they have been raised to see empathy and emotion as emasculating qualities.

Not only do we have to promote traditionally female abilities in our male students and traditionally male abilities in our female students, we also have to let them know that they should have all of these abilities to be a well-rounded person. We cannot let it seem that we are fixing a deficit that they have because of their sex, but encouraging them not to succumb to the pressures of their gender. Five Standards of Effective Pedagogy. Teaching Tolerance. Southern Poverty Law Center, n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2014. Effective pedagogy is such a broad term, but there were several points touched on in this article that really do summarize what all effective pedagogy should incorporate. The article opened with the idea that all learning stems from conversation between a novice and an expert. From Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato teaching and learning from one another as teacher and student, to a mother and her child, they point that this happens in all education, except the common K-12 tradition. While many teachers strive for conversation and collaboration in their classes, actual conversation is incredibly difficult to reach. Few teachers can engage with an entire class in true conversation there are simply too many students and too many situations beyond the lesson at hand that need attendance (an uncooperative student, tardiness, emotional problems, SPED students, general chaos, etc.). However, teaching as cooperative conversation is still an idea every teacher should strive for. There were quite a few points that could and should be implemented into K-12 public schools, even those of 25 or more students for one teacher and no paraprofessional assistance. Some of the suggestions included arranging classroom seating to accommodate students individual and group need to communicate and work jointly. A classroom of perfect rows of seats does not encourage students to talk to one another as does a conversation pod of three to four desks. An alternative seating arrangement also allows a teacher to speak directly to a few students at once this allows for something closer to individualized instruction it is not quite one-on-one help, but it gives closer attention to students than speaking to the entire class. Another point that I found helpful and important was that students ought to see the whole picture as a basis for understanding the parts for each lesson. At any grade level students question why they are asked to do a task if they do not understand its broader importance. Rather than saying, youll get it in a few days, teachers ought to be transparent with their students. A lesson should have a large goal comprised of multiple steps, and the relevance of each step should be communicated to the students. Making sure that each step remains relevant is also important for teachers to keep lessons interesting and on-topic. I liked the idea that joint activity between teacher and student can foster a community and deeper understanding. I always do a project before I assign it or as the students are working I use this to make sure that the project is something I would want to learn as a student, and I also use my work to give demonstrations of lessons. I think that students appreciate these demonstrations on another level as well I am doing that work with them, they can see my process and learn from it for their own. The article also touched on contextualization. Personally, I think that this is one of the most important parts of teaching. If students do not see a relevance of learning to their lives, they will think it too unimportant and abstract to care about. They need to be able to connect learning to what they know this article points to home, family, and community as specifically

important areas to touch on. This is a way to build upon knowledge that students already hold and to grow universal themes. Contextualization also gives students pride in their work. They sense its importance and meaning. Without this, there is little motivation for a student to work, and there can be no real learning. Without universal and human ideas behind learning, there is no guarantee of learning through conversation. Eisner, Elliot W. What is Art Education for? The High School Journal 41.6 (1958): 263-267. Web. Eisner is a great authority on art education, and his justification for art education has been key to my own thinking and understanding. One of the main goals of teaching art is to teach students how to solve problems. Eisner says, The solution of an art problem is unique in that it requires the use of both the intellect and the emotional sensitivity inherent within each personality. There is little which is more problematic than a white sheet of paper of a lump of clay (263). This quotation says it all art education asks students to solve problems with no one correct answer in mind. We ask students to see where their own ideas and abilities can take them, and the outcome is rarely what we may have had in mind. We allow students to inspire us and surprise us in art specifically because there are so many potential solutions. Along this same theme of problem solving, Eisner talks about the creative process as similar to the scientific method. There are several steps to get to any solution and students may have to double back on their attempts. When attempting to express something through a medium say, human suffering through wood a student can create a hypothesis of the steps it will take to get there. Yet that student will have to constantly respond to what is happening during their creation and will have to revise their actions to accommodate the limits of the material. As Eisner says, the basic creative process in any field, whether art or science, differs little in process (264). My goal as an art teacher is to not only give students an understanding of art, but also a deeper understanding of the world around them. Art is a form of communication, and effective communication requires an understanding of people. Eisner tells us that artistic learning can have an impact on our social learning as well: In learning how to respond to form in its abstract sense, the student may develop a keener appreciation of life generally as it relates to people and ideas. Humanitarianism must have at its very foundation the humanities (264). I love this idea and I think that it should be a basic goal of any humanities teacher. What we teach students should not exist solely in our content area students will take what they learn and apply it to all the areas of life. We should create curriculum around the idea that teaching and learning do not happen in a vacuum. What we teach students is important because it is about our world, it is about people and ideas. Students should be able to clearly see the relevance of what they are learning to all other facets of their life. We should not be teaching for the real world (as if students live in some alternate universe), but for the world that is around us and that students will continue to grow in. The last point that Eisner made that struck a chord with me was that the creative teacher must do what the creative artist does. He must assimilate experiences, reorganize them in terms of his own personality structure, and then formulate these experiences in a way which can be experienced by others (266). Teaching is as much a creative enterprise as creating art. To effectively teach, we have to problem-solve. We have to learn how to pass on our understanding

and our experiences to others in an active way that engages students and which asks them to use their own creative abilities to problem-solve. Duncan-Andrade, Jeffrey. The System. What a Coach Can Teach a Teacher. 212-231. Web. There is no progress without change (212). I hope to keep this always in the back of my mind I have such a passion for learning now and I do not ever want to become a teacher who is set in her ways for lack of new knowledge, growth, and change. I can understand how it could be easy to forget though you spend so much time learning what works, its hard to want to start from square one again. However, its also easy to understand that teaching without change is not consistent, but stagnant. The world is constantly changing, we are constantly changing, students are constantly changing how could our teaching stay in one place? DuncanAndrade also reminds us of connecting philosophy to social and academic outcomes our teaching must grow as these outcomes change (213). Educational goals and social goals should always align in some ways education is not removed from the rest of the world. What we teach has to reflect our society as it actually is and more importantly as we wish it to be. And if teaching is about enacting social justice and change, we have to be hopeful. Audacious hope stares down the painful path, and despite the overwhelming odds against us making it down that path to change, we make the journey, again and again (215). Change is slow and arduous, and the likelihood of seeing real, significant change over the course of a few semesters is small. But the chances of seeing that change and knowing that you helped create it is completely possible over the course of a teaching career. This article was helpful philosophically and practically when speaking of change, Duncan-Andrade specifies two levels of pedagogical adjustment: day to day and change over time (216). He also talks about his system of revision and change, which includes a process of reflection where I list out things I would do differently if I had another shot with that same group of students (221). I have been fairly consistent in noting revisions I make and later ideas for possible change within lesson plans, but I also plan to be consistent in noting how and why things change within a lesson or teaching practice from year to year. It seems that it could be easy to lose the practice of note-taking, actual lesson-writing, and reflective writing after student teaching and the first few years are over. But consistent activity discussions with colleagues, professional events, etc. seems like an effective way to keep the scholar alive in the scholarpractitioner. Duncan-Andrade notes, Yang (2009) explains this ability to adjust our pedagogical system over time as the boundary between the humanization and mechanization of our work the difference between teaching as craft and schooling as industry (216). If for no other reason, this is why we need to remain active in our learning as teachers. School is not an industry, but in so many ways is treated as such. We need to practice reflection and judgment those are two very strong qualities for a teacher, but not often noted as such. In the same vein, Duncan-Andrade argues that teachers must remain competitive. Some may dismiss that idea, but he states it is my position that this is a stance of convenience that excuses us from the dedication to improvement that our students deserve I would also argue that teachers working with wealthy and elite children are not afforded this luxury of choosing whether they will continually improve their systems (219). We have to learn more, grow our lessons, expand our thinking, and market ourselves just as much late in our teaching careers as

we are doing in our pre-service time. I like this idea of retaining a competitive edge but as an internal competition, rather than seeing other teachers as opponents. There are two final points from this reading that stood out to me. The first is about explaining to a student why they have to do something. If a teachers practice does truly reflect this, I love the answer that if they learn the skills they are being taught, they will be in a better position to think and act critically for themselves and for their community, two essential components of freedom (221). I hope that my practice helps students to understand their rights and their potential in society, to advocate for themselves and others, and to strive to change the things that inhibit them. I also enjoyed the quotation: Every time a child walks through the doors of a classroom, they look into a mirror. Eventually, they come to believe what we teach them to see (223). We are so important in shaping the lives of our students, and sometimes we downplay the affect we can have on them. What we tell them is what they believe, what they see in school is what they know of the world. They need to be respected and cared about so that can always be respectful and caring people too. Matthews, Miranda. How can we Create the Conditions for Students Freedom of Speech within Studies in Art? International Journal of Art & Design Education 27.2 (2008): 133-143. Web. Allowing for student autonomy is extremely important to me as an educator I am always looking for opportunities to allow for voice and choice. This article centered on an artist-teacher collaboration. Students explored the idea of creating art (created around the notion of freedom) to use as the subject of photographs which was a new concept to those used to pure photography. The teacher, Miranda Matthews, expressed an interest in learning about how to promote students independence through artwork, while the artist, Thurle Wright, wanted to work with hearing students opinions on artwork. Matthews came to the conclusion that there is potential for a balance between the ideal of autonomous free creativity and the pragmatic realism of a structure for learning (138). This is a balance that I strive for in my own teaching, and reading about her philosophies, as well as actual student work, was insightful. One of the first points that Matthews makes is that if one doesnt believe that it is possible to meaningfully challenge the prevailing structure, the insightful voice can be stifled (134). Students often come to us with previous experiences that tell them that they do not hold power or authority in their own lives. They have little faith that their voice counts or that they can do anything to change the things they disagree with. I think this is where communitybuilding within a classroom plays a big part. Students must honestly believe that their voice matters where they are before they will put it out there. As Matthews states, student voice and participation should not be enforced, but must be voluntary in order to be meaningful (141). Consistent communication and allowance of expression is necessary before students will ever speak up when you ask them. Matthews also notes that when student voice comes out it may be angry: Other students are so accustomed to dodging obstructions to their path that they rise to attack when they are encouraged to speak (140). She says that teachers have to offer alternative choices of response without shutting students down or dismissing their ideas (141). Allowing for so many diverse voices is difficult we do not want to promote only one opinion to students, but those who actively and angrily dissent or try to hurt others with their words need to be shown more

possibilities. The fact that Matthews project centered on the idea of freedom was an interesting way to open students up to the possibilities of freedom within their artwork and freedom in their classroom responses. Matthews quotes Sartre in saying, If no obstacle, then no freedom (140). I think that this is also a lovely way to open discussion of freedom with students and allow for freedom of voice. Students have to know that there are barriers to everyones freedoms, yet those barriers are the exact reason to strive to change things. I think this is a potential way to bring new ideas to the angry voices. Another point of hers might elicit responses from quiet students: The apparent safety of staying quiet in a learning situation is a choice that in effect privileges already dominant voices (142). Overall, student choice allows for them to participate in decision-making, a very real part of life that young people are often sheltered from (sometimes for their safety, but sometimes at a disservice). Matthews states that The ethos of self-respect provides the young with a positive grounding for autonomy (139). In addition to an environment of mutual respect and safety, students have to feel confident enough in themselves to advocate for their beliefs and independence. This is a hugely difficult thing to achieve in some students, but I believe that providing for voice and choice within the art room, this is possible. After all, freedom is an action or a way of being a practice of making the best of life that does not arise through passive learning (142). Students need to be able to take hold of their own education to care about it, and they have to be offered choices about things that they care about to even want to take hold of it.