With guidance from Molly the work produced by 8th grade students at the end of their graduating year was thoughtful and personal. Students explained work they had done in relation to a reading, I have Lived a Thousand Years. One student explained, doing this design made me really feel the frustration and sadness of the girl in the book in a way that I would never had, if I had just read the book.

Program: Designing Engaged Learning
Artist: Molly Gaston Johnson
Type: Professional Learning
Program Availability: In-PersonVirtual
Description
In this virtual professional learning program teachers will learn how to use basic elements and principles of design as a means of communicating ideas. Through designing their own artworks in a series of exercises that build from simple and quick, to more intentionally social-emotionally driven, and then curriculum-driven, teachers will be able to share a design language with their students. These experiences invite students to express their understanding of curriculum concepts and/or social-emotional concepts by employing the elements and principles of design. Teachers will learn to create abstracted visual representations of ideas and use those visual creations as a starting point for verbal and/or written explanation of concepts represented.
Location
In-Person or Virtual
Recommended Participants
- Teachers
- Visual Arts Specialists
Learning Intentions
Participants will:
- engage first-hand in the excitement of learning the language of design.
- analyze the meaning of a concept and appraise options for how to create an abstracted visual design that represents that concept.
- assess their work in comparison with responses on the same topic.
- differentiate the nuance of meaning created in small design choices.
- engage in guided reflection.
- analyze the visual work of others and draw clues from these creations that connect to meaning.
- state how personal reflections connect visual facts in the work they are analyzing to the meaning they have understood.
- examine nuance through comparing one design to another.
YA Connections
- NJSLS-VPA: Artistic Process; Creating; Anchor Standard 1: Conceptualizing & Generating Ideas
- NJSLS-VPA: Artistic Process; Responding; Anchor Standard 7:
- Perceiving and Analyzing Products
- Social Emotional Learning
Professional Standards for Educational Leaders
- Standard 4: Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment