Art for All: Planning for Variability in the Visual Arts Classroom

Bulk discounts available: For details, email [email protected] or visit www.castpublishing.org.

Copyright © 2018 by CAST, Inc.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018947885

Paperback ISBN 978-1-930583-37-5

Ebook ISBN 978-1-930583-38-2

Published by:

CAST Professional Publishing

an imprint of CAST, Inc.

Wakefield, Massachusetts, USA

SKINNY BOOKS® is a registered trademark of CAST, Inc.

Cover and interior design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

All photos are taken and copyrighted by the author except Figure 5-1, which was taken by Ms. Kat A-P and used with permission.

Cover art by Besime Shehu, 4th-grade artist at Gardner Pilot Academy, Allston, MA

Printed in the United States of America

About the Author

Liz Byron is a practicing artist and the preK–8 visual art teacher at Gardner Pilot Academy, a full-inclusion Boston (MA) public school. Liz is a Massachusetts professionally licensed teacher in visual art, special education, ESL, middle school math, and elementary education. During her career, she has taught almost every subject, working with students from preschool through graduate school.

Liz earned her bachelor’s degree in studio art and elementary education from Boston College. She received a master’s in arts in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an MEd in special education (moderate disabilities) from Lesley University.

She is a CAST cadre member who leads various education professional development workshops and courses on Universal Design for Learning (UDL). Liz is continually working to enhance her instruction by applying UDL and is perpetually inspired by her students and the arts.

Acknowledgments

Pen to paper, fingers to keys, publish, print, show them

dyslexic writing, while wanting what Whitman yearned,

my very flesh shall be a great poem…

so you, go now re-examine all you learned…

you the reader, first appreciated in this list

written with you at the center, educator, colleague, the artist

the student, all of us, always students.

Built with many hearts and hands

Erica Herman, eternal respect for yeses and not yets

with gratitude GPA art was planned

Parent Council, art lovers, reviews of budgets

Thank you to the families, guardians, parents,

teaching a greatest joy and learning process,

students: my purpose transparent.

Debbie O’Shea: managing middle school looks effortless

every day. Dear friend, great teacher inherent.

Thanks to the makers of Grammarly

CAST’s cast of dedicated educators

WPS teachers in the Art of Variability

You: inspiration and UDL creators

while composing this little tome, unexpected experience

Dr. Jenna C., your unmatched compassion and honesty

anchored me, no moral lassitude or variance

Sheila, your skill, our meetings, guiding attitude

thanks to all, this was composed

and the third to last word, life’s composed.

If you know, thank you for sharing yours,

you’re my bookends,

love opens doors.

Caroline, sisterhood-best friend defined,

Tom, Elise, Claire, Madeleine, and more…

Support, secure, memories, on rewind

Family is forever, for this I am grateful.

With gratitude and appreciation

to a Greater Being above

Genetics, Eternal Education, thanks Mom and Dad,

Always all my love

1

Start with Goals

In 2007, I was first introduced to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in a namesake course at The Harvard Graduate School of Education while earning a master’s in Arts in Education. David Rose, the father of UDL, taught the course. I was fresh out of undergrad and had only four semesters of student teaching under my belt. UDL seemed to be a repackaged method for good teaching. I resisted the thought that this framework was a neoteric way of thinking about teaching and learning. Needless to say, I earned a B+ in the course, and let’s be honest, taking into account grade inflation, a B+ is more like a D in graduate school.

Each year since then, I have grown from resisting UDL to accepting it to implementing it into every lesson. While I spent seven years teaching special education, English as a second language, and middle-school math, my passion had always been in the arts. In 2016, I was offered my dream job. My school—Gardner Pilot Academy—created a full-time visual art teaching position and I transitioned to the role.

Figure 1-1. Kindergarteners present their visual art portfolios.

I was ecstatic. I would finally get to use my undergraduate degree in studio art and my master’s in arts in education in combination with my special education experience. I would design and implement arts instruction using the UDL framework that I had spent the past 10 years learning, practicing, and teaching to my peers. I would do so in a challenging but also highly supportive environment. Gardner Pilot Academy is a full-inclusion, preK–8 public school in Boston, Massachusetts. As a full-inclusion school, we teach many students with disabilities in the general classroom who would otherwise be placed in a separate setting. In addition, more than 80% of Gardner’s 400 students are identified as high need. Most live far below the poverty line, and many have directly experienced or witnessed trauma. A majority are English language learners, and a quarter of students have an identified disability.

This book shares what I’ve learned about using UDL to teach the visual arts. To get the most out of this book, you should already have a fundamental knowledge of UDL. You know that UDL is a framework for teaching in which the curriculum and environment are designed