Submitted by: james french

The Visual Arts Department came together to discuss a series of questions that had been poses during our prior meeting time. Members of the department were asked to consider:

1) What do you value in your art teaching practice? Personally? Professionally? Institutionally?

2) How do you share these with your students? Do you try to instill these values in your students? How so?

3) What does equity in the classroom mean to you? How is it reflected in your student’s work? How does meeting those goals manifest in how you guide students through their practice?

Jeremiah, Rohan james and Shauna shared their thoughts on the questions raised. We discussed the ideas through personal and school practices, projects and materials. There was consensus in students doing work in their voice, work that relates to their self and having a broad range of tools, materials and arts examples that are equitably distributed and reflective of our student’s identities. While we agreed on desired outcomes there was some debate of how to achieve those ends. Unfortunately with the shortened meeting time as the conversation heated up our time ran out. We intend to pick up from and build off of this discussion in our next full meeting.