Brave Spaces and Next Practices: Reimagining the Preparation of Art Educators

Throughout the fall of 2020, the National Art Education Association vigorously publicized the call for papers for this special issue of Art Education, “Brave Spaces and Next Practices: Reimagining the Preparation of Art Educators.” In composing that title and invitation as guest editor, I was mindful that this January 2022 issue would ring in the journal’s 75th year of publication. One of my goals, as described in the call, was to encourage art educators to submit manuscripts that highlighted how our then current realities of the COVID-19 pandemic might inspire new insights about ways of teaching art—like developing teacher and student flexibility and collaboratively learning new instructional approaches, in suddenly moving from in-person classes, workshops, and gallery tours to virtual and hybrid classroom spaces.

The call for papers also invited authors to consider how issues of equity and access and antiracist practices, among others, may impact art educators as they construct the what of their practice—that is, the concepts, skills, and ways of thinking and working (and of being in the world) that come into play as we teach art and prepare art teachers to do so.

The call yielded a powerful response, and the number of submissions accepted through the journal’s regular editorial review process was more than twice that which could be published in a single issue. While some art teachers and teacher educators described new strategies for online, hybrid, and hyflex teaching discovered during the pandemic, others explored issues of isolation, human contact, empathy, and hope in working with students during a period of monumental crisis. Many others took up issues of social justice—particularly antiracist teaching and learning, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and access and inclusion.

That concentration of themes is reflected in the articles in this issue. In “Getting Ready to Relate: Centering Radical Love in Art Teacher Education,” Marit Dewhurst lays a humanistic foundation for teaching—getting to know our students and building caring relationships with them—that should be (but too often is not) part of any teacher preparation program. Joni B. Acuff and Amelia M. Kraehe, in “Visual Racial Literacy: A Not-So-New 21st Century Skill,” describe another crucial aspect of teacher development, the “critical, creative, and ethical skills needed to interpret and respond to the visual culture of racism,” with a focus on analyzing images of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Three more articles continue the theme of cultural and political aspects of art education practice. In “Reimagining Art Education: Moving Toward Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies in the Arts With Funds of Knowledge and Lived Experiences,” Alexandra Overby, Janelle Constance, and Barth Quenzer describe how a student, a teacher, and contemporary painter Jordan Casteel examine social realities and students’ more localized experiences to reimagine both artmaking and curriculum through culturally responsive frames. Hannah Kim Sions, in “Preparing Antiracist Teachers: Reflections on an Antiracist Elementary Methods Curriculum,” writes about her experience helping future teachers to consider their work with elementary students from an antiracist, antibias perspective. In “An Anti-Ableist Framework in Art Education,” Alice Wexler advocates for a contemporary art curriculum that does not rely on skill-based learning and therefore invites the participation of a diversity of learners without the need for accommodation. In the final two full-length articles, Shari L. Savage (“Blank Squares: A Narrative of Disillusionment and Hope”) and Camilla McComb, Nicholas Leonard, Michael Letts, Amy Ruopp, Cindy Todd, Guey-Meei Yang, and Katalin Zaszlavik (“Zooming Support: Stories of How a Pandemic and SAMR Improved Preservice Art Education Instruction”) chronicle the ways that art teachers and teacher educators were forced to radically shift their in-person teaching to virtual platforms, the obstacles confronting them in doing so, and the successes and implications for future teaching drawn from lessons learned during this tumultuous and transformative period.

James Haywood Rolling, Jr.’s firsthand testimonial essay, “Why Antiracism Matters,” is the final piece in the issue and exemplifies, along with the other articles, how “brave spaces” can function, how they can matter, and how they can persist and grow ever stronger in facilitating work yet to be done despite resistance and challenge. Like Wanda B. Knight’s (2014) vivid account of teaching future teachers in a cultural diversity course, we may simultaneously understand and personally experience the hurdles in doing the work of antiracist teaching and hold optimism and hope for our eventual success, no matter how long that may take.

Clearly, the topics taken up in this issue are of great importance to the authors who submitted manuscripts for this special issue and to many other art educators. But, of course, there are community members who remain unconvinced that certain content—for example, antiracist practices—should be a central element of the preparation of art teachers, or of any teachers for that matter. I end here with the recent words of one of my former students, New York City art teacher Nicole Raneri.¹ Nicole shows us what grappling with her own teacher’s (my colleague’s) antiracist teaching felt like at the beginning of her personal journey in 2015. And she illuminates the kind of empathy and compassion—perhaps our greatest gifts as teachers and teacher educators—that evolving professional experience coupled with knowledge of antiracist practices can help engender, years after our students leave us.

This is going to be hard to say and admit who I was, but I grew up a racist. A white privileged racist.

I grew up to stay near mommy and hold her hand in “bad” areas.

I grew up to walk on the other side of the street if there was a “bad” crowd blocking the way.

I grew up to be angry when Obama won and not really understand why.

When graduating high school, I was angry about sharing a college course with someone who got a free ride, and me having to pay (but really my parents paid).

In my graduate year getting my masters, I was angry I had to take a cultural diversity and awareness course exposing myself as a racist with white privilege. I was in denial.

And then I started my first year teaching.

I was in an urban community with students who came from mostly poverty-stricken homes.

I watched students walk into class late everyday because they lived 2 hours away by train.

I watched students struggle to finish their SAT test because we didn’t have enough calculators for them to complete one of the sections.

I watched students skip days of school to work at their family’s restaurant because their dad was sick.

I learned about which students were in shelters and group homes that year, and school was the only thing they looked forward to.

I had students accidentally call me mom because I reminded them of her, and they missed her.

These experiences that year changed me. It was a gradual change, but it made me face my racism and my privilege head on.

I realized the change when friends and family would make comments about the environment I teach in. It would offend me and make me question why they are insulting me and my students. My kids. How dare they.

I’m writing this because now more than ever, we need to reflect on ourselves. Teaching has changed me as a person in ways I didn’t realize until recently. People grow up with beliefs that are not their own, and once exposed to new worlds, it is then that they can start growing as a person with their own thoughts.

I am proud to be the teacher I am today.

Today I can say I am still white and privileged, but I am no longer a racist.

To Nicole and to all the authors for this special issue of the journal, thank you for your profound contributions as we celebrate Art Education’s 75th year.

Author Note

Correspondence about this article should be addressed to the senior editor at: Art & Art Education Program, Box 78, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th St., New York, NY 10027. Email: [email protected]

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary Hafeli

Mary Hafeli, Professor Emerita, Teachers College, Columbia University in New York, New York. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 This essay was originally posted to the Art Teachers Facebook group page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/448592898504941) and then to the Art & Art Education Program, Teachers College, Columbia University Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/TCArtEd), both in June 2020. It is included here with the author’s permission.