Professional presentations at workshops and academic conferences
Approved Continuing Professional Education (CPE) Provider for the State of Texas. CPE#: 902-756
Keynote Speaker for Idaho Art Education Association Conference
Keynote Topic: The Sky’s the Limit: Elevating and Energizing Your Art Program
Additional workshops: ‘Chart your course: arts advocacy,’ ‘Is it real? Developing a pedagogy of empathy,’ and ‘Opening Act: First years and transitions in the art room.’
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, October 5-6, 2019
InSEA: International Society for Education through Art
Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 2019
Workshop: Re/viewing Art Educator as Maker: Identity, Materiality, and Text
Panel Discussion: Is it real? Questions of place, creativity and conflict
The Phenomena of Discovery: Stories of Kinesis, Creativity and Lostness
National Art Education Association Conference, Boston, MA, March 2019
Accepted for presentation at the NAEA Research Commission Preconference.
What Can Art Do?
Texas Art Education Association Conference, McAllen, TX, 2018
Workshop Description: This workshop challenged participants to see conflict as a source for meaningful and relevant curriculum. Directly inspired by dissertation findings, the presentation included tensions revealed in New Orleans visual cultural practices followed by instructional methods developed in my courses related to channeling issues of school conflict into useful design projects. Teachers were then challenged to consider the question, ‘What is wrong with your school?’ Using text related to education, they repurposed and reformed these into visual investigations (artworks) through collage, calligraphy and painting.
The First Two Years
Texas Art Education Association Conference, McAllen, TX, 2018
Fort Worth ISD Art Educators, January, 2019
Workshop Description: This workshop was designed for educators in the first two years of teaching as well as pre-service and student teachers. The presentation focused on practical, real-world strategies for setting up a classroom, developing effective classroom organization, and managing materials as well as student behavior. While utilizing the texts of educational instruction for reflection and art making, a collaborative discussion emerged with my formal presentation and idea sharing between participants for a fruitful and meaningful workshop experience.
Where Creativity Thrives
Texas Art Education Association Conference, McAllen, TX, 2018
Workshop Description: This presentation generated philosophical discussion about the nature of creative places, from personal to global, and creative communities. Acknowledging that the artist’s studio holds the aura of creativity, the presentation reviewed a variety of qualities of creative places (such as a history of creative achievement) and the nature of creative stimulation as tied to geographical places. We then applied these ideas to school and classroom environments as related to creativity and invention for our students.
Art Talks! Building Identity and Leadership Through Art
National Art Education Association Conference, Seattle, WA, 2018
Workshop Description: An extended session exploring opportunities to support students struggling with issues of self-confidence, identity and goal setting. Art making (painting, drawing, graphic journaling) is offered as a creative expression that encourages reflection and revelation through hands on experiences for art educators in practice as well as a wide range of project ideas that are applicable for their own unique students. By request, this workshop was also presented to Fort Worth ISD art teachers in Fall 2018.
Creative Teaching and Teaching Creativity
Art Educator In-Service sponsored by the Onstead Institute, University of North Texas for Mabank ISD Educators (all subject areas), June 2018
Fort Worth ISD Educators (all subject areas, 6-8th grades), February 2018
Dallas ISD Art Educators, at UNT Dallas, June 2016
Presentation description: Rise above the clamor for creativity from the corporate economy to seek authentic creative practices. There is increasing pressure on educators to provide creative instruction; STEAM programs at times expect art educators to provide the solution. This workshop begins with examining art educators’ own beliefs about creativity, considers new research and philosophy, and then opens the door for educators to discover and develop strategies for teaching our students how to bring out their own unique creative attributes.
Who Am I? Building Identity and Leadership Through Artmaking
Texas Art Education Association Conference, Galveston, TX, 2017 (two sessions)
Workshop Description: This workshop presents four student projects focused on the themes of Identity, Self-Esteem, Goal Setting and Independence. Discussion topics included the benefits for students and variations that can be tailored for unique groups (young women or men, race or ethnicity, LGBTQ, and other communities). These activities are designed to encourage reflection in the participants and pave the way for increasing personal agency, wherein the artistic process will inspire students to imagine and then create their futures with intentionality.
Feed Me: Nurturing Creativity in Advanced Studio Art Programs
Texas Art Education Association Conference, Galveston, TX, 2017
Workshop description: Teaching advanced art students brings many unique joys and challenges to art educators. The rigor of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs often brings out the best and worst in our developing art students. This workshop addressed instructional challenges such as nurturing creativity while fulfilling the requirements of AP and IB programs, motivating students through a ‘slump,’ supporting university portfolio development, and challenging highly talented students. Artmaking activities explore identity and personal motivations through painting and multimedia. The outcome of these discussions and artmaking empowers teachers with tools to meet instructional challenges and share in the victories of their most accomplished art students.
Un-Purposing the Art Room…With Purpose
National Art Education Association conference, New York, 2017
Workshop description: Materials and tools in the art room are ripe with meaning and use, but what happens when we un-purpose those objects? Releasing art media from its intended purpose also frees the phenomenological encounter of the artist and art educator for unfettered creative expression. This presentation challenges art educators to cultivate their own creativity and that of their students as we approach an entirely new way to work with school art media.
Creativity Unleashed
Texas Art Educators Association conference, Dallas, 2016
Workshop description: Processes and theories of creativity are examined while being creative in this hands-on workshop for art educators. Through the experiences of Play, Experimentation, Making and Reflection, participants consider philosophies of creativity as related to their classes.
New Orleans: America’s Creative Crescent
University of Texas Africa Conference, Austin, 2016
Presentation description: Challenging traditional views about creativity as the purview of the lone genius, this article and presentation explores the phenomenological experience of creativity as an embodied experience that is geographically located, further proposing that creative places such as New Orleans are highly impactful upon creativity.
In & Out: Bringing the World to Your Classroom
Texas Art Educators Association conference, Galveston, TX, 2015
Workshop description: Research and strategies for culturally rich and culturally sensitive art instruction. Reaching beyond superficial or food-related classroom events, the workshop modeled researching authentic and specific cultural groups while making two art projects.
Creativity Across the Curriculum 2015
This teacher in-service workshop for Northstar School faculty connected current research in creativity (Sir Ken Robinson, Csikszentmihayli, Howard Garner and others) with the curriculum of all subject areas, validating the creative teaching practices already in place and providing practical strategies to inspire teaching for creativity in their students.
Art Thinks! Workshops, 2014-15
Conducted for International Baccalaureate classes in Arlington ISD & Northstar School.
Exploratory workshops examining the intersection of aesthetics and IB Theory of Knowledge with Art History objects and perspectives.
Art Around the World: Introduction to Student Travel
Texas Art Educators Association Conference, San Antonio, TX, 2014
Presentation description: Introducing the practice and benefits of international student travel with art students, particularly as it relates to the enhancement of the art curriculum.
Cultivating Creative Practices in the Art Room and Beyond
Texas Art Educators Conference, San Antonio, TX, 2014
Presentation of current research on creativity at the Graduate Research Forum.