Jazz grew out of the African-American community at the turn of the 20th century, a time when blacks were being denied their most basic rights. The music has since become a part of every American's birthright, a timeless symbol of American individualism and ingenuity, American democracy and inclusiveness. In this lesson students will learn about the social, cultural, and economic origins of jazz within the African-American community.

SPARK tails artists Jim Denevan and Cris Drury as they create large earth works. This Educator Guide is about the history and tradition of artists making work in and about the natural environment.

This site investigates what the American Dream has meant over the years to poets, politicians, comedians, musicians, photographers, lawyers, reporters, and others. Students may contribute to the Student Gallery and post their dreams on a Wall of Dreams.

Students will look at a variety of artworks and explain what tool or medium was used to create them.

SPARK follows photographers from the Sixth Street Photography Workshop as they take pictures of their lives and ideas in some of San Francisco's most depressed neighborhoods. This Educator Guide is about the history of photography.

For more than 40 years, Young Audiences of Northern California has been providing quality arts education programs to K-12 schools and communities - over 250,000 each year. This Educator Guide explores the history of arts education in California and the Bay Area and provides a wide array of local resources.

Artists are often particularly keen observers and precise recorders of the physical conditions of the natural world. As a result, paintings can be good resources for learning about ecology. Teachers can use this lesson to examine with students the interrelationship of geography, natural resources, and climate and their effects on daily life. It also addresses the roles students can take in caring for the environment. Students will look at paintings that represent cool temperate, warm temperate, and tropical climates.
In this lesson students will: Identify natural resources found in particular geographic areas; Discuss ways in which climate, natural resources, and geography affect daily life; Apply critical-thinking skills to consider the various choices artists have made in their representations of the natural world; Make personal connections to the theme by discussing ways they can be environmental stewards; Identify natural resources found in particular geographic areas; Discuss ways in which climate, natural resources, and geography affect daily life; Apply critical-thinking skills to consider the various choices artists have made in their representations of the natural world; Make personal connections to the theme by discussing ways they can be environmental stewards.

Dance and drumming company The Art of Black Dance and Music, under the guidance of Artistic Director DiAma Battle, performs harvest dances from Guinea, Gambia, Nigeria, and Senegal, and explain the seven principles of Kwanzaa (one for each day of celebration).

This activity, created by EDC's Center for Children and Technology, explores how sound is used to create meaning.

In this interdisciplinary seminar, we explore a variety of visual and written tools for self exploration and self expression. Through discussion, written assignments, and directed exercises, students practice utilizing a variety of media to explore and express who they are.

In Counting on Art, students will explore the paintings of Horace Pippin and Wayne Thiebaud and the mobiles of Alexander Calder to discover and practice math and visual art concepts.In Pippin's Story, young children (grades K–3) focus on a painting by African American artist Horace Pippin. They will learn how to "read" the clues in a painting and write a story about the work. Students will also solve counting and time problems and create their own "secret number" painting.Calder's Balancing Acts focuses on math in the mobiles of Alexander Calder. Elementary- level students (grades 2–5) will learn about the artist and write equations based on Calder's art. Upper-level students (grades 6–8) will discover patterns and the Fibonacci sequence. Both levels will make their own math mobiles.Cake Math, based on a painting by California artist Wayne Thiebaud, features math challenges of many varieties. Elementary-level students (grades 2–5) will practice fractions, addition, subtraction, word problems, sorting, and classifying. Intermediate level students (grades 6–8) will find volume and surface area in Thiebaud's cakes.

Intergenerational collaborative story creation lesson. Excellent for vocabulary building, speaking, imagination usage, team building. Can be used for all ages.

In this lesson, students will reflect on the ways they have been taught grammar. By composing original songs, dances, poems, skits or artwork, students explore ways to teach writing and grammar creatively and effectively.

This is a unit on Spanish master painters. The lessons presented here are a part of the beginning unit. Each lesson is composed of art, literature, poetry, politics and history. This is a cooperative mystery game that can be adapted for any lesson on culture, geography, art and history.

This module will introduce primary teachers in Trinidad and Tobago to the possibilities that digital storytelling holds for improved Literacy in primary school classrooms. With the increasing use of computer technology in teacher education and with both teachers and students as storytellers whose lives are filled with stories that are there for the telling, this initiative will enhance both creativity and Literacy among learners in an exciting way.

In 1931, a severe drought hit the Southern and Midwestern plains. As crops died and winds picked up, dust storms began. As the "Dust Bowl" photograph shows, crops literally blew away in "black blizzards" as years of poor farming practices and over-cultivation combined with the lack of rain. By 1934, 75% of the United States was severely affected by this terrible drought.The one-two punch of economic depression and bad weather put many farmers out of business. In the early 1930s, thousands of Dust Bowl refugees ? mainly from Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico ? packed up their families and migrated west, hoping to find work. Entire families migrated together (such as the men shown in "Three generations of Texans now Drought Refugees") in search of a better life. Images such as "Midcontinent ? Family Standing on the Road with Car," "Drought Refugees," and "Untitled, ca. 1935 (Worn-Down Family in Front of Tent)" offer a glimpse into their experience on the road, and show that cars provided many families both transportation and shelter on the road. About 200,000 of the migrants headed for California. The state needed to figure out how to absorb the thousands of destitute people crossing its borders daily. One of their tactics was to document the plight of the refugees. In 1935, photographer Dorothea Lange joined the Rural Rehabilitation Division of the California State Emergency Relief Administration (SERA), a section of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. She was assigned the job of using her camera to document the growing number of homeless Dust Bowl refugees migrating to California. She worked with Paul S. Taylor, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who was researching conditions of rural poverty in order to make recommendations on how to improve the workers' conditions. The work by Taylor and Lange played an important role in helping to raise public awareness of the crisis. The reports they made for the government included both data and striking images that revealed the desperate conditions in which the migrants lived and confirmed the need for government intervention. Stark images such as "Home of Oklahoma Drought Refugees" resonated with the public, and portraits of drought refugees like "Ruby from Arkansas" and others shown in this topic humanized the migrants for more fortunate citizens. In March 1936, Lange took what became one of her most famous images, "Migrant Mother." This image of a 32-year-old woman became an icon for the suffering of ordinary people during Great Depression.

Using the art of Andy Goldworthy as inspiration, Elders create mandalas using nature based materials. Focus on history of mandalas, use of balance, texture, color. Lesson created for Elders, but could be used for any age.

Students will be creating an original papier-mâché mask that expresses an emotion. In doing this, they will be expanding upon their knowledge of representing the human face while further developing technical skills in papier-mâché sculpture and acrylic painting.

Seminar on the creativity in art, science, and technology. Discussion of how these pursuits are jointly dependent on affective as well as cognitive elements in human nature. Feeling and imagination studied in relation to principles of idealization, consummation, and the aesthetic values that give meaning to science and technology as well as literature and the other arts. Readings in philosophy, psychology, and literature.