Art for All

Planning for Variability in the Visual Arts Classroom

Liz Byron

• Publisher: CAST, Inc.
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781930583382
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

In this one-of-a-kind book, artist and teacher Liz Byron demonstrates how to design lessons and instruction in the visual arts using the inclusive principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

Art for All: Planning for Variability in the Visual Arts Classroom offers teachers classroom-ready advice on how to transform their practice in sustainable ways with UDL. Readers learn to set meaningful goals, measure progress, customize instruction, and engage all learners across grades. They also discover ways to help all students appreciate and embrace themselves as artists. "Liz Byron's reflections on the use of UDL along with her keen observation of how students learn provide useful insights into the process of designing rich, engaging arts-learning experiences for diverse learners!"—DON GLASS, The Kennedy Center, Washington, DC

“ Liz is at her best when she shares, often with humor, her own misgivings and classroom trials and errors. This highly readable, useful book is filled with lots of takeaways and good advice for teachers about how to implement UDL practices.” — LINDA F. NATHAN, Executive Director of theCenter for Artistry and Scholarship, and faculty member, Harvard Graduate School of Education

1
Start with Goals

In 2007, I was first introduced to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in a namesake course at The Harvard Graduate School of Education while earning a master’s in Arts in Education. David Rose, the “father” of UDL, taught the course. I was fresh out of undergrad and had only four semesters of student teaching under my belt. UDL seemed to be a repackaged method for “good teaching.” I resisted the thought that this “framework” was a neoteric way of thinking about teaching and learning. Needless to say, I earned a B+ in the course, and let’s be honest, taking into account grade inflation, a B+ is more like a D in graduate school.

Each year since then, I have grown from resisting UDL to accepting it to implementing it into every lesson. While I spent seven years teaching special education, English as a second language, and middle-school math, my passion had always been in the arts. In 2016, I was offered my dream job. My school—Gardner Pilot Academy—created a full-time visual art teaching position and I transitioned to the role.

Figure 1-1. Kindergarteners present their visual art portfolios.

I was ecstatic. I would finally get to use my undergraduate degree in studio art and my master’s in arts in education in combination with my special education experience. I would design and implement arts instruction using the UDL framework that I had spent the past 10 years learning, practicing, and teaching to my peers. I would do so in a challenging but also highly supportive environment. Gardner Pilot Academy is a full-inclusion, preK–8 public school in Boston, Massachusetts. As a full-inclusion school, we teach many students with disabilities in the general classroom who would otherwise be placed in a separate setting. In addition, more than 80% of Gardner’s 400 students are identified as “high need.” Most live far below the poverty line, and many have directly experienced or witnessed trauma. A majority are English language learners, and a quarter of students have an identified disability.

This book shares what I’ve learned about using UDL to teach the visual arts. To get the most out of this book, you should already have a fundamental knowledge of UDL. You know that UDL is a framework for teaching in which the curriculum and environment are designed to reduce barriers by providing learners with multiple options or means for engagement, representation, and action and expression (CAST, 2018). Those principles are fleshed out with Guidelines and checkpoints that show ways to reduce barriers and increase support so that all learners can reach their potential. This book does not cover the basics of UDL. Rather, we look at how to implement UDL in the visual arts classroom.

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Pause and Think

Reflect on your knowledge of UDL. Do you know enough of the UDL basics, or would it be helpful to review the Guidelines and other foundational material first? Read the UDL Guidelines at http://udlguidelines.cast.org.

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If you’re reading this, you also know that the arts teach specific habits of mind that uniquely contribute to expert learning. Hetland, Winner, Veenema, and Sheridan (2013) identify and describe the many “habits of mind” students experience when working in the arts. These include the ability to develop craft, engage and persist, envision, express, observe, reflect, stretch and explore, and understand art worlds. Arts educator and author Lisa Philips (2013a) has found that the skills students glean from the arts not only support students developing into artists but contribute to them developing into leaders and creative thinkers. These skills include perseverance, accountability, the ability to respond to constructive feedback, and nonverbal communications skills.

These skills, or “habits of mind,” dovetail with the UDL framework, which emphasizes helping students become expert learners who are resourceful, engaged, and strategic. Expert learners can formulate personal learning goals and self-regulation strategies, and they know what resources they need to learn as well as how they can most successfully express what they know (Meyer, Rose, & Gordon, 2014). Although being an expert learner has many generalizable characteristics, there are components to the visual arts that result in specific features of an expert learner. Later chapters of this book will explicitly examine these qualities in relationship to each of the three principles.

As art educators, we know how challenging it is at times to have our work recognized, validated, and adequately funded. This should make us more empathetic to those students who feel marginalized in school, including our art classrooms—those who face barriers in both the curriculum and the environment. Students who typically struggle to be engaged in art or who do not present “grade-level” skills can fully participate in visual art when instruction and the environment are universally designed. On the flip side of the spectrum, there are always some if not several students who present visual creations that far exceed developmental expectations. Our most prolific and creative thinkers, however, can be stifled when instruction is wedded to a narrow goal or specific outcome. Fortunately, UDL is designed to provide students in the margins with deeper, more effective access to learning.

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Smart Tip

Try using Novak and Rodriguez’s “UDL Progression Rubric” to assess your own UDL competencies and set professional practice goals that directly align with the UDL Guidelines. Visit http://bit.ly/ArtUDL.

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In many cases, visual art teachers are among the few educators in a school who work with every child. This is a special opportunity to immerse large numbers of students in content and an environment that is accessible and inspiring. It is, however, challenging to adequately support such a large number of students who do not have classes frequently enough to build teacher-student relationships or practice routines. In the case of my school, most of our “core” subjects have additional staff in the room to support our inclusion model. Very rarely do art classes receive the same support. Adding to the challenge, many art educators provide instruction to students who take our classes as a required “special,” not as an elective. These students do not enthusiastically enter the art room ready to learn and create. Art educators, however, are not helpless. We cannot use the circumstances of our work conditions as excuses for not quite reaching all students.

Using the principles of UDL can help us plan for all learners as we recognize that “disability” and “inaccessibility” are characteristics of the curriculum and the environment, not the person. Through this lens, teaching a wide range of learners becomes feasible. It may be beneficial to have multiple licenses or certifications to teach special populations, but if you become well versed in UDL, you will be able to systematically design and deliver instruction for all.

The Need for Clear Goals

In art instruction, as in any other subject, creating an inclusive and effective learning environment doesn’t happen through good intentions or talking a great game. It happens by design—and design begins with a vision of the outcome. What are our goals for a unit or a lesson? What do we want our art instruction to accomplish?

In planning art instruction, educators may be tempted to start by considering m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Chapter 1: Start with Goals
• Chapter 2 : The Art of Engaging All Students
• Chapter 3: The “What” of Art Instruction
• Chapter 4: How Artists Show What They Know
• Chapter 5: The Burnt Banana (And Other Professional Learning Moments)
• References>
• Introducing the CAST Skinny Books™