Funday Sunday!

Hi Everyone!
It's Kristin here, guest blogging for Kathie who is diligently working on her presentation for tomorrow. So far, so good!

Today was a busy day. We woke up early and got some serious breakfast that pretty much sat in our bellies until dinner time. It was such a busy day that we would not have had time to eat anyways, but no complaints!

This weekend for me has been really fun because it has been a great chance to refresh and revitalize my own art education practice, and I was able to meet some of my most favorite art education thinkers. It is really exciting to be with so many people with similar research interests. This is not your typical conference. Everything here is in Technicolor, right down to the lanyards we wear with our name tags. Color makes you happy, so how could you not be happy here?!

I started off the day with Corrie to see Karen Kiefer-Boyd and Debi Smith-Shank talk about wrinkles...making wrinkles in research, wrinkles in aging and disrupting the expected norm through a feminist perspective. They talked about visual representation of women and aging, and how to disrupt this thinking. Long story short, it was really great. Seeing them really has recharged me to get back to my writing. Thank god!

We then went to a workshop on job-hunting, which was really informative. Then we went to the vendor's fair to collect some serious swag. Kathie, Corrie and I really took our swag collecting to a new level! Tons of cool stuff, and lots of cool materials to possibly use in classes. I recommend that all art ed students should go to the conference as soon as possible. It is chalk-full of opportunities.

Overall, it was an awesome weekend. I am fairly exhausted, as is everyone else, but I feel refreshed spiritually and academically and ready to go! This was my first conference, and I can't believe I waited this long to go.

I will leave you with my Top 5 experiences:
1. People watching! Too awesome.
2. Oliva Gude's presentation on re-thinking boring curriculum. So essential.
3. Debi Smith Shank and Karen Kiefer Boyd's Visual Culture and Gender presentation.
4. Presenting on Friday was really exciting.
5. Getting to share the experiences with art ed friends from past and present, from Syracuse University to Columbia University, was invaluable.

Toodles, and see y'all back in Syracuse!
kristin:)

Patty Bode and Multicultural Art Education

Hey All! This is Corrie Burdick, your guest blogger for today. Wanted to share with you some infomration about a great session that I attended yesterday. The presenter was Patty Bode and she talked about what art teachers need to know to teach in today's urban art classrooms. It was a great session because she addressed it from the perspective of the students. Bottom line, they want to do things that are relevant to their lives. One of the best quotes from the kids was "dead guys and alive ones too." Also, the role of visual culture in the art classroom as a way to understand how students make meaning about images. They want to be asked about their thoughts, their understandings of the world around them and how they are to make sense of all the media they encounter. She has a 2008 publication that sounds like it would be a good thing to read about how we can reconceptualize multicultural art education for today's classroom. She was dynamic and I left feeling very inspired! So she's definitely on my radar now as someone to watch!

Also, I attended the technology session by our very own Nate Nottingham and Kristin Goble. It was fabulous and they packed the house. Obviously an important topic for teachers based upon the number of people in the room and the great conversation that ensued from the presentation. Great job Kristin and Nate! They really represented Syracuse University Art Education well!

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's presentation from Judy Chicago and the introduction of her art curriculum. I saw the prelimianary presentation for this at the conference in chicago two years ago and it was like a religious experience for me so I can't wait to see where how far it has come....more on that later. You all need to make plans now to attend next year in Baltimore, totally driveable and this conference will rock your world! See you all!~

Day 1- Friday

Well, we've all arrived in Minneapolis safely and enjoyed our first day of the conference. After conference check-in, Kristin & Nate went off to polish their presentation and Corrie and I tried to cover more ground by going to two different sessions.

My first session was "Re-searching Art Education from 1959-1969" and included comments by Elliot Eisner and Arthur Efland on the Art Education Journal, Studies in Art Education. I will take any and every opportunity to listen to Dr. Eisner speak...he is truly one of my Art Education heroes. My favorite quote from his remarks:

"At our very best, what we're (art educators) are all about, is transferring experience into art." WOW.

Corrie asked a question about Art Education professors facing the challenge of staying true to our field while trying to gain respect by connecting our ideas to other fields in terms of publishing, Dr. Eisner gave a lengthy response and then..."Let's have some easier questions." Indeed.

Another session I attended was titled "Preparing Reflective Art Teachers," presented by Dr. Kathy Unrath. She discussed several reflective projects that her Art Education students engage in in order to consistently reflect on their teaching and to stay open to and aware of those pivotal moments in the journey to becoming an art educator. All of the projects had a visual component that I felt our own SU students would enjoy. I would love to get a chance to include some of these assignments in course to come.

Corrie saw a really great presentation she raved about and I hope to get her to "guest blog" about it tomorrow.

We went to the annual Crayola party, which is always fun but seemed scaled down this year, perhaps because of the economy. As always, there were many tables available for attendees to try the latest Crayola products and have some fun. A giant sculpture was being constructed by many people using Crayola's new papier-mache product. There were also glittery watercolor paints (Julianne!) and paint mediums and also colored pencil pigment sticks without the wood. A fun, jump/swing quartet played some great music. There were some free goodies and we met some really nice colleagues from oregon and California as well as caught up with NYSATA pal Cindy Wells.

Tomorrow our plan is to head over to the Walker Art Center and climb the Claus Oldenburg sculpture...only kidding. Stay tuned!

NAEA 2009!

OK Syracuse University Art Ed Nation.....I'm going to try and be a better conference blogger this year! Although Minneapolis no doubt pales in comparison to New Orleans in terms of culinary adventures, funky photo ops and musical history, it should be a stellar showing by your Art Ed Nation colleagues! In attendance will be our fearless leader Dr. James Haywood Rolling, Jr., Doctoral buddies Kathie Maniaci (that's me) and Kristin Goble, alum Corrie (now Professor!) Burdick and alum Nate Nottingham. Emeritus and former Chair Dr. Hope Irvine will be giving her annual "Laughterpiece" lecture as well.

I promise you, I will (in between polishing up my still-incomplete powerpoint presentation) blog some highlights of the conference sessions we all attend and present. If there are culinary adventures to find and funky photo ops to shoot, I'll bring those to you as well.

Perhaps I can con my compadres into guest-blogging...maybe Pop Culture maven Kristin Goble will give her insights...you never know!