Author note: I originally intended this blog post to be a resource for friends, family members, teachers, and others during the early months of the 2020 COVID 19 pandemic. As I put together my lists of resources (that follow the Preface below) it became clear to me that the most important thing I want to share here (other than my well wishes for readers, friends, fellow teachers and artists, and your families and loved ones) are my thoughts about the value of telling our stories and making special, now more than ever.
APA reference for this blog post:
Delacruz, E. M. (2020, April 14). Making special: Telling our stories through blogs, diaries, journals, artists’ journal/sketchbooks, memoirs, and autobiographic writings. E.Delacruz: Art Education in the 21st Century. https://elizabethdelacruz.blogspot.com/2020/04/making-special-telling-our-stories.html
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Preface
While working in the art education department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) a few years ago in the 2000s I had the privilege of working with Sandra Bales, the then Director of the Saturday Morning Art Program, aka, Saturday School. UIUC's Saturday School, then a beloved 40 year program serving both the art education department and the greater Champaign-Urbana community, was actually a pre-practicum course (ARTED 206) that art education majors seeking Illinois certification to teach K-12 art were required to take. In that course, we teamed up our graduate students as supervisors and mentors with undergraduate students who were learning to teach art, that is, to design and deliver art classes to folks in the community, pre-k-12th grade, who opted to come to the UIUC School of Art and Design (SAD) for Saturday morning art classes. A few times while I chaired the art education program at UIUC we also offered art classes to adults in the area, and one year we created and offered a parent-toddler art class in which parents and their toddlers came to the School of Art and Design (SAD) to make art together. These offerings, and most of all the Saturday morning art program were nothing less than wonderful.
Offered during Spring, Summer, and Fall semesters, Saturday School fulfilled all aspects of the mission of UIUC (Research, Teaching, and Service).Saturday School was a pre-practicum (meaning prior to student teaching) clinical course providing our certification seeking students some practical, real-world experience teaching art young people. It was a place where our graduate students who served as mentors and supervisors to our certification seeking students honed their skills in collaborative curriculum development (collaborating with our certification seeking students), evaluation (of the certification seeking students teaching on Saturday mornings), and, most importantly, mentorship. Saturday School was a rich, long standing community arts program (serving for over 50 years before a new administration at the School of Art and Design (SAD) decided to shut it down in the mid 2010s). Prior to being shuttered, each semester Saturday School enrolled about 150-200 young people in the area who came to the School of Art and Design (SAD) from numerous counties in East Central Illinois, some traveling as far as 50 miles to attend our art classes. Our young attendees were racially, ethnically, and income-level diverse. Parents who in their youth had once attended our Saturday morning art classes brought their own kids to Saturday School. Finally, Saturday School was a rich, robust research site for faculty and graduate students interested in researching pre-k-12 art education curriculum development and instructional delivery, how young people learn about and make art (artistic development), how emerging art teachers learn to teach art, how student teachers' teaching performance is assessed (educational assessment and evaluation), how mentoring programs work, and a plethora of other interesting, relevant avenues for research relating to art education.
Sandra Bales was nothing less that unique in her role as Director of Saturday School. Sandra thought outside of the box. She was creative and inventive in her leadership. One year, I wandered in on a Saturday morning and saw chickens hatching. Another year I saw a farmer shearing a sheep. The wool was then washed, spun, and woven into textile art by Saturday School students. They died their textiles using bugs and other strange things that Sandra special ordered for the program. Another year, Sandra brought in dancers and drummers. Perhaps the most interesting (or smelliest) art form that Sandra brought to Saturday School was the fish printing project, with real fish. To the delight of the Saturday School students, on any given Saturday morning they found themselves drawing live baby sheep, sketching live chickens hatching, drawing on the brown craft-paper walls in a huge installation that had been transformed into a Lascaux cave, or making images on light sensitive paper in a room that had been transformed into a giant camera obscura. They also made art with the usual line up of art with traditional media, they made digital art, videos, and stop-animation and claymation, and they frequently worked outdoors. Our Saturday morning art students also frequented the collections and galleries of the Krannert Art Museum, located next to the art building. In partnership with the Krannert Art Museum, we hosted an art exhibition twice yearly (at the end of Spring and Fall semesters) in the Link Gallery (located between the School and the Krannert Art Museum. At that same time, the Krannert hosted a Family Festival, with all sorts of fund activities taking place in their galleries. Each time offered, the entire event, both the Saturday School Exhibition and the Krannert Family Festival, lasted from about 9:00 a.m. to noon on a Saturday morning. Two to three hundred visitors typically came to our joint event hosted by the art education program at UIUC and the Krannert Art Museum. Our certification seeking students and their graduate mentors organized the Saturday School Art Exhibition, matted the 2-d works, displayed the 3-d works on pedestals and platforms, and everything was professionally printed and labelled with each student's name, age, title, and medium. Every student had at least one art work on display, and the exhibition was accompanied by descriptive wall texts that talked about the ideas and processes involved in each section of the exhibition. Visitors to our twice-a-year exhibitions were further delighted by beautifully decorated gourmet cookies made by a local baker and music provided by local string quartets and other musical ensembles. One year there was a magician performing magic tricks for visitors to the exhibition. There were often places in the exhibition for hands-on art making activities, hosted by our undergraduate and graduate students. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that Sandra, her graduate student supervisor/mentors and our certification seeking students didn't try, and the art and exhibitions produced under Sandra Bales' directorship of this amazing community arts program were stunning. Whilst Sandra maintained high expectations of everyone who worked with her and under her supervision, she was always soft-spoken, patient, and gentle.
Because licensure of our UIUC certification seeking art education majors was under the purview of the State of Illinois Department of Education, the art education program and its students were required to show how they met state standards for entering teachers. Typically, we used portfolio assessment as our means of providing this proof to the state. Students for each of the articulated state standards would assemble into their teaching portfolios (actually a binder) examples of work they had completed from art education methods and clinical teaching courses, along with self-reflective statements about these works that explained how the work example fulfilled a particular standard. Evaluation reports from clinical supervisors were also included in student portfolio/binders.
With support from a federal technology grant that I applied for and was granted through the UIUC College of Education, Sandra Bales and I experimented for 2 years with student electronic portfolios as evidence of meeting state standards. With extensive assistance, training, and support from technology expert and educator R. Scott Wennerdahl from the UIUC College of Education, our students each created a cumulative electronic portfolio that included their best teaching practices, work examples, self-reports about their works, and short movie clips of them teaching and them talking about their teaching. As the grant project came to a conclusion, Sandra and I noted the value collecting, archiving, choosing, arranging, and reflecting on selected experiences and artifacts, and the power of shaping that content into a coherent story about ones life. The electronic portfolios embodied a sense of the history (albeit a highly selective history) of these students while they progressed in our degree program. They contributed to students’ identity development as emerging art teachers and they had a communal character insofar as they were connected with a larger community of practice.
Telling Stories and Making Special
As Sandra and I observed at the time, the collecting and assembling of these artifacts and experiences into portfolios by our students, and the stories they told through these artifacts led us to wonder how personal histories and communal identities might similarly be constructed through creative processes utilized by individuals who artfully create other kinds of self-referencing forms of expression. We broadened our focus and embarked on a quest to find out more and using ethnographic interview methods, we conducted video-taped semi-structured interviews with new individuals, other students and artists who regularly kept artists' sketchbooks and journals, and students and other people living in East Central Illinois who made personal or family scrapbooks. We also photographed their work. We analyzed our video recordings and photographic documentations, probing for recurring patterns. Findings suggested intriguing themes that included notions about why humans collect things, about how and why they value their memories and objects of memory, about history and identity, and about the power of storytelling. A student's autobiographical portfolio that creatively conveyed a self-representation of individual accomplishments and identity, experiences, and aspirations; creation of a scrapbook or family heritage album that creatively arranged objects and writings that showcase personal and communal histories; and/or the keeping of a sketchbook/journal of insights and renderings captured in fleeting moments each served as a means of making sense of experiences and reflecting on and/or planning for the creation of new artworks. For Sandra and I, this archiving and highlighting of experiences and telling ones stories through portfolios, scrapbooks, and sketchbooks were prime examples what cultural anthropologist, Ellen Dissanayake, called “making special” (2003).
Dissanayake observes that humans throughout time have practiced and participated in "making special" in all sorts of ways, especially in and through the myriad of art forms created by people throughout time and place. In Dissanayake's anthropological explanation, these art forms (literature, visual art, dance, theatrical performances, oral histories, etc.) convey the stories, experiences, beliefs, and values of social and cultural groups, and collectively, of humanity. This view is reinforced in the extensive writings of Joseph Campbell, professor of literature and a leading scholar on the study folklore and mythology. Campbell studied the artifacts, art forms, myths, and stories of ancient cultures and civilizations. He investigated the transcendent and universal nature of myths (stories), metaphors and symbols, and artistic expressions of local cultures throughout time, finding these cultural expressions to contain universal human truths about the nature of existence, both physical and metaphysical/spiritual, and the phenomena, patterns (seasons and life cycles, for example), and challenges that humans encountered over their lifetimes. Campbell's writings, particularly his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (first published in 1949), his multi-volume series, Historical Atlas of World Mythology (1983-1989) and his book based on his six-episode PBS documentary with Bill Moyer, The Power of Myth (1988) further exemplify Dissanayake's anthropological views and explanations. Readers interested in such a framework for understanding the creative expressions of human experiences, beliefs, and values might also appreciate one of my mother's favorite books, psychologist Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols (1968) in which Jung explores the human psyche, dreams, the unconscious, and creative expressions (including art forms), and postulates the existence of what he called archetypes. For Jung, archetypes are universal, hidden, unconscious, innate, psychic formations that shape and order the themes and patterns of human life, and that are expressed in dreams, myths, spiritual beliefs and expressions, images, motifs, and other human expressions and behaviors.
As Dissanayake, Campbell, Jung and others have found, and as Sandra Bales and I noticed in our research with our art certification seeking art students making portfolios to showcase their professional experiences and aspirations, and in our subsequent inquiries about artists' sketchbooks and family scrapbooks, telling our stories is important. Telling them (artfully) is making special.
Examples of making special abound today. And although "universalist" explanations of human endeavors are not without their critics (for being reductionist and Western-biased, for starters) I find something compelling in the writings of Dissanayake, Campbell, and Jung. One only has to look at Quaker journals from Colonial America, the Civil War diaries of women in the mid-1800s, artists' and scientists' journals and writings, family heritage photo albums and scrapbooks of everyday people, and the myriad of art works, plays, movies, poems, novels, Instagram posts, YouTube videos and pretty much every form of creative cultural expression in existence, past and present, to see the universal in the particular.
Our Stories: Are They Universal and Collective? Are they Context-Bound and Culturally Specific? Or are they Individualistic and Unique? It Really Doesn't Matter.
I have long been a chronicler of my own life and that of my family. Mostly I have been put together family albums comprised of old family snaps and pics I have taken over the years. I also put together an album (pictured above) that captures my family trip to Washington DC in 1992 to add my brother's quilt panel to the AIDS Memorial Quilt Names Project. The making of the quilt itself was an act of making special. We wanted to tell the story of my brother, John Manley, and to have his story quilt connected to the now more than 48,000 individual 3 by 6 ft panels created by friends, family members, and lovers of people who have died of AIDS. Since becoming a mom, I have created family heritage albums for my now grown children. These heritage albums contain photos, documents, letters, and all sorts of memorabilia (ticket stubs, currency, maps, and anything relevant that fits onto a flat album page).
My interest in telling our stories artfully has spilled over into my teaching. I once taught a third grade project that asked students to create a memory box commemorating a family member. My daughter was in that class. She made a memory box for grandpa (Papa), pictured above. In my university teaching, I now include a "Family Migration" project in a course that I wrote. My "Family Migration assignment asks students to tell the story of how they or their family members or ancestors came to where they now reside. They accompany their story with an original work of art that they create that tells the story they have written (see my Pinboard "Globalization, Art, and Education. Family Migration Study" at https://www.pinterest.com/edelacruz/globalization-art-and-education/family-migration-study/). In another other course I teach ("History of Teaching Art") a project the asks the teachers taking this course to write their personal journey of becoming an art teacher, accompanied, of course, by an original work of art that conveys their story (see my Pinboard "Artful Journeys and Histories: Becoming a Teacher" at https://www.pinterest.com/edelacruz/artful-journeys-and-histories-becoming-a-teacher/
In keeping my own family history through albums and artful objects that convey family relationships, in asking my third graders or graduate students to commemorate family relationships and tell their own stories, and in embarking on my research project with Sandra Bales as we endeavored to understand how and why artists, scrapbookers, and individuals who create and maintain family heritage albums do what they do, I have come to a rather obvious and mundane conclusion. We all have stories to tell, and sometimes we do it in artful ways that Dissanayake recognized as "making special". Do these behaviors and the objects created reflect/convey "universal" aspirations and narratives? Do they reflect the culture and context in which their makers presently live? Are they unique, individualistic, and idiosyncratic? Yes, yes, and yes. These behaviors and art-i-facts both transcend and remain embedded in their specific times and places. With such thoughts in mind, I have been collecting Pins that I use both as personal inspiration and as a resource to my students. If you are interested in seeing them, see my Pinterest boards "Telling Stories and Making Special" at https://www.pinterest.com/edelacruz/telling-stories-and-making-special/, "Book as Art, Artists' Journals" at https://www.pinterest.com/edelacruz/book-as-art-artists-journals/, and "Visual Bios, Visual Resumes, & Artist's Statements" at https://www.pinterest.com/edelacruz/visual-bios-visual-resumes-artists-statements/
As Sandra and I observed at the time, the collecting and assembling of these artifacts and experiences into portfolios by our students, and the stories they told through these artifacts led us to wonder how personal histories and communal identities might similarly be constructed through creative processes utilized by individuals who artfully create other kinds of self-referencing forms of expression. We broadened our focus and embarked on a quest to find out more and using ethnographic interview methods, we conducted video-taped semi-structured interviews with new individuals, other students and artists who regularly kept artists' sketchbooks and journals, and students and other people living in East Central Illinois who made personal or family scrapbooks. We also photographed their work. We analyzed our video recordings and photographic documentations, probing for recurring patterns. Findings suggested intriguing themes that included notions about why humans collect things, about how and why they value their memories and objects of memory, about history and identity, and about the power of storytelling. A student's autobiographical portfolio that creatively conveyed a self-representation of individual accomplishments and identity, experiences, and aspirations; creation of a scrapbook or family heritage album that creatively arranged objects and writings that showcase personal and communal histories; and/or the keeping of a sketchbook/journal of insights and renderings captured in fleeting moments each served as a means of making sense of experiences and reflecting on and/or planning for the creation of new artworks. For Sandra and I, this archiving and highlighting of experiences and telling ones stories through portfolios, scrapbooks, and sketchbooks were prime examples what cultural anthropologist, Ellen Dissanayake, called “making special” (2003).
Dissanayake observes that humans throughout time have practiced and participated in "making special" in all sorts of ways, especially in and through the myriad of art forms created by people throughout time and place. In Dissanayake's anthropological explanation, these art forms (literature, visual art, dance, theatrical performances, oral histories, etc.) convey the stories, experiences, beliefs, and values of social and cultural groups, and collectively, of humanity. This view is reinforced in the extensive writings of Joseph Campbell, professor of literature and a leading scholar on the study folklore and mythology. Campbell studied the artifacts, art forms, myths, and stories of ancient cultures and civilizations. He investigated the transcendent and universal nature of myths (stories), metaphors and symbols, and artistic expressions of local cultures throughout time, finding these cultural expressions to contain universal human truths about the nature of existence, both physical and metaphysical/spiritual, and the phenomena, patterns (seasons and life cycles, for example), and challenges that humans encountered over their lifetimes. Campbell's writings, particularly his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (first published in 1949), his multi-volume series, Historical Atlas of World Mythology (1983-1989) and his book based on his six-episode PBS documentary with Bill Moyer, The Power of Myth (1988) further exemplify Dissanayake's anthropological views and explanations. Readers interested in such a framework for understanding the creative expressions of human experiences, beliefs, and values might also appreciate one of my mother's favorite books, psychologist Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols (1968) in which Jung explores the human psyche, dreams, the unconscious, and creative expressions (including art forms), and postulates the existence of what he called archetypes. For Jung, archetypes are universal, hidden, unconscious, innate, psychic formations that shape and order the themes and patterns of human life, and that are expressed in dreams, myths, spiritual beliefs and expressions, images, motifs, and other human expressions and behaviors.
As Dissanayake, Campbell, Jung and others have found, and as Sandra Bales and I noticed in our research with our art certification seeking art students making portfolios to showcase their professional experiences and aspirations, and in our subsequent inquiries about artists' sketchbooks and family scrapbooks, telling our stories is important. Telling them (artfully) is making special.
Examples of making special abound today. And although "universalist" explanations of human endeavors are not without their critics (for being reductionist and Western-biased, for starters) I find something compelling in the writings of Dissanayake, Campbell, and Jung. One only has to look at Quaker journals from Colonial America, the Civil War diaries of women in the mid-1800s, artists' and scientists' journals and writings, family heritage photo albums and scrapbooks of everyday people, and the myriad of art works, plays, movies, poems, novels, Instagram posts, YouTube videos and pretty much every form of creative cultural expression in existence, past and present, to see the universal in the particular.
Our Stories: Are They Universal and Collective? Are they Context-Bound and Culturally Specific? Or are they Individualistic and Unique? It Really Doesn't Matter.
I have long been a chronicler of my own life and that of my family. Mostly I have been put together family albums comprised of old family snaps and pics I have taken over the years. I also put together an album (pictured above) that captures my family trip to Washington DC in 1992 to add my brother's quilt panel to the AIDS Memorial Quilt Names Project. The making of the quilt itself was an act of making special. We wanted to tell the story of my brother, John Manley, and to have his story quilt connected to the now more than 48,000 individual 3 by 6 ft panels created by friends, family members, and lovers of people who have died of AIDS. Since becoming a mom, I have created family heritage albums for my now grown children. These heritage albums contain photos, documents, letters, and all sorts of memorabilia (ticket stubs, currency, maps, and anything relevant that fits onto a flat album page).
My interest in telling our stories artfully has spilled over into my teaching. I once taught a third grade project that asked students to create a memory box commemorating a family member. My daughter was in that class. She made a memory box for grandpa (Papa), pictured above. In my university teaching, I now include a "Family Migration" project in a course that I wrote. My "Family Migration assignment asks students to tell the story of how they or their family members or ancestors came to where they now reside. They accompany their story with an original work of art that they create that tells the story they have written (see my Pinboard "Globalization, Art, and Education. Family Migration Study" at https://www.pinterest.com/edelacruz/globalization-art-and-education/family-migration-study/). In another other course I teach ("History of Teaching Art") a project the asks the teachers taking this course to write their personal journey of becoming an art teacher, accompanied, of course, by an original work of art that conveys their story (see my Pinboard "Artful Journeys and Histories: Becoming a Teacher" at https://www.pinterest.com/edelacruz/artful-journeys-and-histories-becoming-a-teacher/
In keeping my own family history through albums and artful objects that convey family relationships, in asking my third graders or graduate students to commemorate family relationships and tell their own stories, and in embarking on my research project with Sandra Bales as we endeavored to understand how and why artists, scrapbookers, and individuals who create and maintain family heritage albums do what they do, I have come to a rather obvious and mundane conclusion. We all have stories to tell, and sometimes we do it in artful ways that Dissanayake recognized as "making special". Do these behaviors and the objects created reflect/convey "universal" aspirations and narratives? Do they reflect the culture and context in which their makers presently live? Are they unique, individualistic, and idiosyncratic? Yes, yes, and yes. These behaviors and art-i-facts both transcend and remain embedded in their specific times and places. With such thoughts in mind, I have been collecting Pins that I use both as personal inspiration and as a resource to my students. If you are interested in seeing them, see my Pinterest boards "Telling Stories and Making Special" at https://www.pinterest.com/edelacruz/telling-stories-and-making-special/, "Book as Art, Artists' Journals" at https://www.pinterest.com/edelacruz/book-as-art-artists-journals/, and "Visual Bios, Visual Resumes, & Artist's Statements" at https://www.pinterest.com/edelacruz/visual-bios-visual-resumes-artists-statements/
Refs for the above essay
- Campbell, J. (1949). The hero with a thousand faces. Pantheon Books.
- Campbell, J. (1988). The power of myth. Anchor Books.
- Campbell, J. (1983-1989). Historical atlas of world mythology. Harper and Row.
- Delacruz, E. M., & S. Bales. (2010). Creating history and making special: Scrapbooks, sketchbooks, and professional portfolios. Art Education, 63(1), 33-39. This article is available on my website at http://www.elizabethdelacruz.com/research.html
- Dissanayake, E. (2003). The core of art: Making special. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 1(2), 13-38. This chapter appeared as Chapter 4 in the book Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Came From and Why. This chapter is available as an article in the Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies. Google it.
- Jung. C. G. (1968). Man and his symbols. Dell.
That was then, this is now. Our lives are consumed by the COVID 19 global pandemic.
At the time of the writing of this blog post, our lives are consumed by the COVID 19 (SARS-CoV-2, aka "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2") global pandemic. We are asked to stay-at-home, practice social distancing, wear face masks (there are none for sale, so we have to make them), sanitize everything we touch (you can't find hand sanitizer anywhere), keep our hands away from our face (try it, it's really hard), be meticulous in our personal hygiene, and quarantine deliveries to our homes for a period of time (how long apparently depends on the packaging materials). Toilet paper and disinfecting spray are hot commodities in the stores. Teachers, pre-k through college, have been tasked with moving all of their courses online for e-delivery to their students. School districts are scrambling to meet the needs of these teachers, and to meet the needs of low-income students who don't have access to computers or the internet at home. Schools are also providing meals to students who qualify for free and reduced lunch in their school districts. Regarding transmission of this novel coronavirus, we were first informed to worry only about touching infected objects (door knobs, etc.) and suspended droplets that remained airborne for up to 3 hours or that fell onto surfaces when infected people coughed or sneezed. Now, the very breath exhaled by infected individuals and remaining airborne in aerosol form places us at risk. Asymptomatic individuals unknowingly spread this dreadful disease. Advice about the means of transmission of this novel coronavirus is constantly changing.
Currently, according to the medical establishment (virologists and epidemiologists) the most effective means of controlling transmission of this novel coronavirus, testing and social tracking, is not going to happen anytime soon. The US just hasn't gotten the test kits we need for our population, and at the time of the writing of this blog post, wide scale testing and tracking in the US is not going to happen anytime in the near future. The reasons we are in this dilemma (lack of much needed wide scale testing or tracking) depends on whom one listens to, and apparently whom one listens to appears to be dependent on one's political affiliation. Because of the lack or available test kits, nobody really knows the extent of COVID 19 infections in the US. The daily reports of hospitalizations, positive tests (for those able to get tested), and death rates due to COVID 19 does not tell us anything other than who tested positive for or died from the virus, what the infection-rate curve(s) currently look like on any given day in any given locale, and various projections about the spread of the disease based on modeling from the scientific community. The facts that one can be completely asymptomatic and still have and spread COVID 19 and that currently some tests are producing false negatives (meaning that the person actually has COVID 19, but the test indicated that he/she does not have it) is distressing to say the least.
You can't turn on the TV or open your NEWS app on your smartphone these days without being bombarded with a competing cacophony of talking heads, politicians, scientists, epidemiologists, news broadcasters, first responders, individuals who have Coronavirus, individuals who have recovered from Coronavirus, and individuals who have lost loved ones to Coronavirus. The stories being shared by our caregivers on the front lines, the nurses and doctors and other first responders, are both uplifting and alarming. They don't have what they need (personal protective equipment, test kits, and ventilators) to do their jobs. Their stories are heroic and harrowing. Seeing images of doctors wearing ski masks for personal protection would be funny if it weren't so tragic. Hearing about how people all over the country are making masks and sharing them with first responders is inspiring. At the same time, I am disheartened to hear the stories of Asian Americans who as a result of the labeling of COVID 19 as the "Wuhan-Flu" or the "Chinese Virus" by some governmental officials are now the targets of hate. People of color and low income communities are disproportionately afflicted with COVID 19, and some are living in food deserts, without access to well-stocked grocery stores. One of the most alarming thing I've seen discussed regarding treatment of COVID 19-ill people who have to be hospitalized is the rationing of respirators, and the basis for potential denial of life-saving respirators to some individuals in US hospitals. As a society, we have not had a rational conversation about ethical decisions regarding providing life-saving treatment to some, but not to others. The most harrowing thing currently being discussed by some individuals, influential public figures with large television audiences, is the notion of a acceptable mortality rates (presumably of school age children and old people) for opening up the economy and sending our kids back to school as soon as possible. This willful ignorance and blatant disregard for human life...for ratings, and for personal and political gain...is unforgivable.
What stands out most for me within this constantly changing scenario is that COVID 19 is a particularly nasty disease with extraordinary human-to-human transmission capabilities, that precious time was lost in dealing effectively with the pandemic when COVID 19 first entered the US in January of 2020, and that COVID 19 is here to stay until there is a safe and effective vaccine, after this first current eruption subsides, and a second and third wave are yet to come. A safe and effective vaccine, virologists and epidemiologists inform us, is 18 months away. And as of this week, there are projections that we will not be reasonably safe until 2022.
This blog post just scratches the surface of what we are experiencing at this historic time. Like the Civil War diaries, in the years to come, individual personal documentation of this historic moment will provide an inside peek of how individuals, ordinary people, have experienced this historic moment. So I return here to my Preface about being keepers of our histories, telling our stories, and making special. How will we, ordinary people, remember, archive, and retell this historic moment? As an art educator and a student of history and multi-cultures around the world, I am drawn to the diaries, artists' journals, and personal memoirs of those who have lived through historic times in the past. These diaries, journals, and memoirs are special.
As is my practice in blogging, I have assembled below a plethora of resources for telling our stories and making special. I organized my resources into four main categories: Being at Home with the Kids (Homebound), Teachers and Artists Navigating Coronavirus, Expressive Art Making, and being Keepers and Tellers of our Histories.
Home Bound
How Parents Can Keep Kids Busy (and Learning) in Quarantine. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/03/activities-kids-coronavirus-quarantine/608110/
Home With Your Kids? Writers Want to Help: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/books/writers-entertain-kids-virus.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/books/writers-entertain-kids-virus.html
CDC: Stress and Coping. CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/managing-stress-anxiety.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fprepare%2Fmanaging-stress-anxiety.html
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/managing-stress-anxiety.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fprepare%2Fmanaging-stress-anxiety.html
How to talk to children about the coronavirus. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/how-to-talk-to-children-about-the-coronavirus-2020030719111
How you and your kids can destress during coronavirus. https://www.pbs.org/parents/thrive/how-you-and-your-kids-can-de-stress-during-coronavirus
How to talk to your anxious teen about coronavirus. https://adaa.org/learn-from-us/from-the-experts/blog-posts/consumer/how-talk-your-anxious-child-or-teen-about
Vancouver company offers free book to help kids manage stress during COVID-19 outbreak. https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/vancouver-company-offers-free-book-to-help-kids-manage-stress-during-covid-19-outbreak/
100 Awesome Kids Crafts for Creative At-Home Fun
https://mommypoppins.com/100-awesome-crafts-for-kids
School work, baking, exercise, online resources... Help is out there, even if you can't go anywhere. https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/parenting/coronavirus-how-to-keep-children-happy-learning-and-entertained-at-home-1.4202320
School work, baking, exercise, online resources... Help is out there, even if you can't go anywhere. https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/parenting/coronavirus-how-to-keep-children-happy-learning-and-entertained-at-home-1.4202320
Self-Care in the Time of Coronavirus. https://childmind.org/article/self-care-in-the-time-of-coronavirus/
Helping Children Cope with Changes Resulting from COVID 19. https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/resources-and-podcasts/school-climate-safety-and-crisis/health-crisis-resources/helping-children-cope-with-changes-resulting-from-covid-19
Parenting During Coronavirus: Tips and Resources. https://unitedwaydallas.org/u…/parenting-during-coronavirus/
Talking to Children about Coronavirus. https://www.aacap.org/App_Themes/AACAP/Docs/latest_news/2020/Coronavirus_COVID19__Children.pdf
Supporting Kids During the Coronavirus Crisis. https://childmind.org/article/supporting-kids-during-the-covid-19-crisis
Activities and online resources for homebound kids: A coronavirus guide. https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-kids-activities.html
Avoid Cabin Fever With These 125 Ideas to Keep Kids Entertained During the Coronavirus Crisis. https://parade.com/1009774/stephanieosmanski/things-to-do-with-kids-during-coronavirus-quarantine/
Science at home with the kids. https://mommypoppins.com/family/stem/guide-to-science-experiments-for-kids-and-fun-stem-activities
What To Do With Kids At Home On Coronavirus Break For Who Knows How Long (Without Losing It). https://www.cpr.org/2020/03/17/what-to-do-with-kids-at-home-on-coronavirus-break-mental-health-for-parents-too/
Coronavirus: How to keep children happy, learning and entertained at home. https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/parenting/coronavirus-how-to-keep-children-happy-learning-and-entertained-at-home-1.4202320
How Parents Can Keep Kids Busy (and Learning) in Quarantine. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/03/activities-kids-coronavirus-quarantine/608110/
A therapist’s advice for helping pre-teens in a coronavirus lockdown. https://qz.com/1823522/how-to-help-pre-teen-kids-in-a-coronavirus-lockdown/
OK, Teens: What’s Your (Coronavirus) Plan? https://www.bayareaparent.com/Article/OK-Teens-Whats-Your-Coronavirus-Plan/
Teach Teens Life Skills when Everyone is Home thanks to Coronavirus. https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-life-bucket-list-life-skills-teens-20200317-klpxjooa5zdvhlpjxpllj4ufwa-story.html
How to survive having teenagers at home: Experts share advice for parents in lockdown with grown-up children - including having daily 'check-ins'. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8155559/How-survive-having-teenagers-home-coronavirus-lockdown.html
Supporting Teenagers and Young Adults During the Coronavirus Crisis. https://childmind.org/article/supporting-teenagers-and-young-adults-during-the-coronavirus-crisis/
How to keep your kids educated and entertained during lockdown. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-to-home-school-and-exercise-you-kids
The Ultimate Parents’ Lockdown Guide. https://www.bostonmagazine.com/ultimate-parents-lockdown-guide/
Home With Your Kids? Writers Want to Help: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/books/writers-entertain-kids-virus.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/books/writers-entertain-kids-virus.html
Teachers and Artists Navigating Novel Coronavirus
Teachers
Snelling, J., & Fingal, D. (2020, March 16). 10 strategies for online learning during a coronavirus outbreak. ISTE. Retrieved from https://www.iste.org/explore/10-strategies-online-learning-during-coronavirus-outbreak
Horn, M. B, (2020, March 23). COVID-19’s long-term impacts on education in 2020 and beyond. [Blogpost]. Edsurge. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-03-23-covid-19-s-long-term-impacts-on-education-in-2020-and-beyond
Guiding principles on the COVID-19 pandemic.(2020, March 27). Education International. Retrieved from https://www.ei-ie.org/en/detail/16701/guiding-principles-on-the-covid-19-pandemic
Resources to Support Teachers from https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/support-teachers-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak
4 ways COVID-19 could change how we educate future generations. (2020, March 30). World Economics Forum. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/4-ways-covid-19-education-future-generations/
Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Guidance & Resources. (n.d.). Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Retrieved from https://www.k12.wa.us/about-ospi/press-releases/novel-coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-resources
Resources by Content Area: The Arts.(n.d.). Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Retrieved from https://www.k12.wa.us/about-ospi/press-releases/novel-coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-resources/resources-continuous-learning-during-school-closures
COVID-19 Resources Serving the Arts Education Field in the Time of COVID-19. (n.d.) Arts Education Partnership. Retrieved from https://www.aep-arts.org/covid-19-resources/
Facebook Group: Online Art & Design Studio Instruction in the Age of "Social Distancing". https://www.facebook.com/groups/onlineartanddesigninstruction/
Schaffhauser, D. (2020, March 26). Updated: Free resources for schools during COVID-19 outbreak. The Journal. Retrieved from https://thejournal.com/articles/2020/03/13/free-resources-ed-tech-companies-step-up-during-coronavirus-outbreak.aspx
Arts Resources During COVID-19. (n.d.). Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Retrieved from https://culturela.org/programs-and-initiatives/arts-resources-during-covid-19 < fantasitc list of links!
Blackburn, S. (2020, March 25). Updated: 73 free K-12 resources during coronavirus pandemic. District Administration. Retrieved from https://districtadministration.com/coron
Teaching & Learning Editors. (2020, March 24). Free online learning resources for schools affected by coronavirus/COVID-19. Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from https://www.techlearning.com/resources/free-online-learning-resources-for-schools-affected-by-coronaviruscovid-19
Turner, C., Adame, D., & Nadworny, E. (2020, April 11). Teaching without schools: Grief, then a 'Free-For-All'. Teachers from around the country share their stories with NPR amid the Covid-19 pandemic [NPR Video Broadcast and Written Transcript]. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2020/04/11/830856140/teaching-without-schools-grief-then-a-free-for-all
Berwick, C. (2020, March 12). During Coronavirus, a teacher describes the scramble to go digital [Blog post]. Retrieved from Edutopia at https://www.edutopia.org/article/during-coronavirus-teacher-describes-scramble-go-digital
Ostashevsky, L. (2020, March 24). TEACHER VOICE: From the remote trenches of the nation’s largest school system. Online, students still need 'the proverbial pat on the back' [Online]. The Hchinger Report. Covering Innovation & Inequality in Education. Retrieved from https://hechingerreport.org/teacher-voice-notes-from-the-front-lines-of-online-education/
Artists
Coronavirus resources for artists, creative workers, and organizations. (n.d.). Minnesota Springboard for the Arts. Retrieved from https://springboardforthearts.org/coronavirus/
Carter, F. (2020, March 29). Artists respond to coronavirus — See some of their artworks. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/felicitycarter/2020/03/29/artists-respond-to-coronavirus---see-some-of-their-artworks/#4d0de4964e96
MoMA and Louise Lawler launch #DrawingWithMoMA to stoke creativity in quarantine. (2020, March 30). The Art Newspaper. Retrieved from https://www.theartnewspaper.com/blog/moma-and-louise-lawler-launch-first-drawingwithmoma
Angeleti, G. (2020, March 27). Arts organisations produce face masks and other medical equipment to help slow the spread of coronavirus. The Art Newspaper. Retrieved from https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/museums-donate-face-masks-and-supplies-during-coronavirus-crisis
Nasari, S. (2020, March 27). Iran's art community wades into coronavirus fight. Al-Monitor. Retrieved from https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/03/artists-in-iran-join-in-fight-against-epidemic.html
COVID-19 & Freelance Artists. (n.d.). Retrieved April 5, 2020 from https://covid19freelanceartistresource.wordpress.com/
CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE AND RESPONSE CENTER. (n.d.). Americans for the Arts. Retrieved from https://www.americansforthearts.org/by-topic/disaster-preparedness/coronavirus-covid-19-resource-and-response-center
Davis, B. (2020, March 23). How we should reimagine art’s mission in the time of ‘social distancing’. Artnet.
Dee, E. (2020, March 23). We don’t know what a post-coronavirus art world will look like. Here are 6 ways we can come together to build the one we want. Artnet. Retrieved from https://news.artnet.com/opinion/social-distancing-art-1810029
Lin, M. (2020, April 3). Art in the time of Corona [Online]. Spike Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.spikeartmagazine.com/articles/art-time-corona
Museum asks people to recreate paintings with stuff they can find at home, Here are the results [Online]. (n.d.) Sad and Useless: the Most Depressive Humor Site on the Internet. Retrieved from https://www.sadanduseless.com/recreated-art/?fbclid=IwAR14FgNoJwDUrJN4UqiY9izOcWCXgyh_ssBO1Dnm2kwskR2IQ6bK1wyEx50
Roe, M. (2020, March 27). How LA's street artists are responding to Coronavirus. LAist, a Website about LA. Retrieved from https://laist.com/2020/03/27/coronavirus-la-street-art-artists-covid-19.php
Tundra, M., & Burinskas, T. (2020, April 3). Here’s some of the most truthful graffiti related to Coronavirus (Add Yours!). Boredpanda [Website]. Retrieved from https://www.boredpanda.com/coronavirus-themed-street-art-around-the-world/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
Expressive Art Making, aka Expressive Arts (titles for the below sites to come)
Being Keepers and Tellers of our Histories.
Blogs, Memoirs, Journals, Sketchbooks, & Scrapbooks
Blogs, Memoirs, Journals, Sketchbooks, & Scrapbooks
Alvine, L. (2001). Shaping the teaching self through autobiographical narrative. High School Journal, 84(1), 5-12.
Ayers, W. (2001). To teach: The journey of a teacher. Teachers College Press. Available from https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Journey-Teacher-William-Ayers/dp/0807732621
Barnes, S. (2017, October 11). How to combine drawing and writing into deeply personal art journals [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://mymodernmet.com/art-journal-ideas/
Bergland, C. (2017, May 21). Narrative expressive journaling could help your vagus nerve [Online article]. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201705/narrative-expressive-journaling-could-help-your-vagus-nerve
Berwick, C. (2020, March 12). During Coronavirus, a teacher describes the scramble to go digital [Blog post]. Retrieved from Edutopia at https://www.edutopia.org/article/during-coronavirus-teacher-describes-scramble-go-digital
Bergland, C. (2017, May 21). Narrative expressive journaling could help your vagus nerve [Online article]. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201705/narrative-expressive-journaling-could-help-your-vagus-nerve
Berwick, C. (2020, March 12). During Coronavirus, a teacher describes the scramble to go digital [Blog post]. Retrieved from Edutopia at https://www.edutopia.org/article/during-coronavirus-teacher-describes-scramble-go-digital
Baratt, H. (2008). Diary of a school teacher (Translated by Sharada Jain). Azim Premji Univesity and New Horizon Media Private Limited. Retrieved from http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/diary-school-teacher-eng.pdf
Center for Journal Therapy. (n.d.). It’s easy to write (a personal journal) [Online]. Retrieved from https://journaltherapy.com/journal-cafe-3/journal-course/
Clyde, L. A. (2005). Digital scrapbooking. Teacher Librarian, 33(2), 53-55.
Clyde, L. A. (2005). Digital scrapbooking. Teacher Librarian, 33(2), 53-55.
Sr. Craig, T., & Dillon, D. A. (1983). Self-Discovery through writing personal journals. Language Arts, 60(3), 373-379.
d'Estries, M. (2016, August 10). 8 famous visionaries who kept a journal. From Einstein's travel records to da Vinci's wondrous illustrations, these personal documents add dimension to some of history's biggest names [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.fromthegrapevine.com/lifestyle/famous-people-who-kept-journal-albert-einstein-marie-curie-mark-twain-charles-darwin
Ehrlich, G. (1990). The illustrations in the Lewis and Clark journals: One artist or two? Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 134(2), 95-110.
Ehrlich, G. (1990). The illustrations in the Lewis and Clark journals: One artist or two? Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 134(2), 95-110.
Fox, G. (2020). Quaker journals. In G. Durham (Ed.), The spirit of the Quakers book (pp. 50-70). Yale University Press. This chapter is available in JSTOR.
Fuentes, C. ( 2005). The diary of Frida Kahlo: An intimate self-portrait. Abrams.
Horrigan, R. (2020, April 6). Finding comfort and calm in remote teaching. A Marymount school teacher reflects on the coronavirus classroom [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.independent.com/2020/04/06/finding-comfort-and-calm-in-remote-teaching
Jawad. (2017, May 22). What Einstein's journals teach us about focus, play, and creativity [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://journalinghabit.com/4-insights-einsteins-journals/
Katriel, T., & Farrell, T. (1991). Scrapbooks as cultural texts: An American art of memory. Text and Performance Quarterly, 11(1), 1-17.
Katriel, T., & Farrell, T. (1991). Scrapbooks as cultural texts: An American art of memory. Text and Performance Quarterly, 11(1), 1-17.
Kessler, J. (2018, July 13). How to tell your family history in a keepsake photo album [Online]. Retrieved from https://www.picturethisorganized.com/family-history-album/
Klein, S. (2010). Exploring hope and the inner life through journaling. Encounter, 23(2), 48-52.
Klein, S. L., & Miraglia , K. M. (2017). Developing visually reflective practices: An integrated model for self-study. Art Education, 70(2), 25-30.
Kelchtermans, G. (2017). Studying teachers’ lives as an educational issue: Autobiographical reflections from a scholarly journey. Teacher Education Quarterly, 44(4), 7-26.
Lee, J. (2018, Feb 22). 18 Life-Changing tips for keeping a journal. Maybe you should write these down...in your journal! [Blog post]. Buzzfeed. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeed.com/jarrylee/life-changing-tips-for-keeping-a-journal
Lexington, T. (2017, October 14). Artist’s sketchbooks that will change your life …[Blog post]. Retrieved from https://thebluereview.net/artist-sketchbooks-that-will-change-your-life-or-at-least-inspire-you-to-start-drawing-6ae04103838c
Lexington, T. (2017, October 14). Artist’s sketchbooks that will change your life …[Blog post]. Retrieved from https://thebluereview.net/artist-sketchbooks-that-will-change-your-life-or-at-least-inspire-you-to-start-drawing-6ae04103838c
Manuscripts of the American Civil War [Webpage]. Diaries and Journals. (n.d.) University of Notre Dame Rare Books and Special Collections. Retrieved from https://rarebooks.nd.edu/digital/civil_war/diaries_journals/
Motz, M. F. (1987). Folk expression of time and place: 19th-Century midwestern rural diaries The Journal of American Folklore, 100(396), 131- 147.
Oakley, A. (2014). Mrs. Titmuss’s diaries. In A. Oakley, Father and Daughter: Patriarchy, gender and social science (pp. 67-80). Bristol University Press, Policy Press. This chapter is available in JSTOR.
Ostashevsky, L. (2020, March 24). TEACHER VOICE: From the remote trenches of the nation’s largest school system. Online, students still need 'the proverbial pat on the back' (Online]. The Hchinger Report. Covering Innovation & Inequality in Education. Retrieved from https://hechingerreport.org/teacher-voice-notes-from-the-front-lines-of-online-education/
Richard E. Ocejo, R. E., & Tonnelat, S. (2014). Subway diaries: How people experience and practice riding the train. Ethnography, 15(4), 493-515.
Rose, L. E. (2019). Women artists’ diaries In L. E. Rose, Suffragist artists in partnership: Gender, word and image (pp. 127-156). Edinburgh University Press. This chapter is available in JSTOR.
Sellers, A. P. (n.d.) What is a visual journal? [Online presentation]. Retrieved from http://amandapowellsellars.weebly.com/uploads/2/6/9/1/26910614/visual_journals.pdf
Sokol, D. (n.d.). 1000 Artist journal pages, Dawn Sokol Video Book Review [YouTube Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI2XqL3YdjE
Sokol, D. (n.d.). 1000 Artist journal pages, Dawn Sokol Video Book Review [YouTube Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI2XqL3YdjE
Teacher Memoirs. (n.d.) Goodreads Featured Lists. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/91853.Teacher_Memoirs
Turner, C., Adame, D., & Nadworny, E. (2020, April 11). Teaching without schools: Grief, then a 'Free-For-All'. Teachers from around the country share their stories with NPR amid the Covid-19 pandemic [NPR Video Broadcast and Written Transcript]. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2020/04/11/830856140/teaching-without-schools-grief-then-a-free-for-all
Tucker, S., Ott, K, & Buckler, P. B. (2006). Scrapbooking in American life. Temple University Press.
Women's Diaries during the War [Webpage]. University of Maryland University Libraries. Retrieved from https://www.lib.umd.edu/civilwarwomen/primary-source-evidence/diaries%C2%A0
WikiHow Staff. (2019, Oct.27). How to keep a journal [Online tips]. Retrieved from https://www.wikihow.com/Keep-a-Journal
