Episode 48 - Orlando Bolaños - Balancing Cultural Relevance with Social Engagement

(upbeat music) - Hi everyone, I'm Laura Grunler. - And I'm Matt Grunler, and today, on K-12 Arch at the podcast, we are going to be talking with Orlando Grace Bilanos and talking about balancing cultural relevance with social engagement through practice and pedagogy. - So, I'm just, - You're so excited. - I know, well, it's always great to have friends on the podcast and on the chat. And Orlando is a friend that I met in Sal, school for art leaders back in 2018. It doesn't seem that long ago, but. - It seems like forever. - I know it doesn't, but I will tell you, if you go to Sal, you make these truly lifelong friends. It's this amazing experience through the National Art Education Association. And I've wanted to have Orlando on the chat and the podcast forever. And it just hadn't worked out and we got into this, like we need somebody this week. And he was a last minute like, can you do this? And he said yes, and so here he is. So Orlando, thank you for being here. If you could introduce yourself and then tell the listeners a little about who you are and who you are as an educator, we would love for them to hear all about you. - Certainly. So this is the part that I feel really uncomfortable about, but I'm gonna jump on the Sal bandwagon and say, yes, please, if you haven't thought about it, please apply to school of art leaders, transformative experience. And I think that's why Laura and I really feel like, okay, friends for life, but then also yes, such a transformational step into the world and what it means, you know, for me it meant, actually going back to school. So my experience in Sal was, I need to go back. And so I'm now at about, oh, I guess I'm 70% of finishing a doctorate in curriculum and instruction. It centers around art education and I'm really interested in the study of cognitive flexibility. So changing your mind, how do our children, how do our students change their mind and cognitive dissonance. So when they're feeling uncomfortable, when they feel frustrated, that's a child or an adult or any of us when we're hitting up against things that we don't understand. So those are sort of the things that came out of Sal for me. And then if we sort of backtrack, I'm an art educator. I've been in the field for my whole career. I graduated from high school in Dallas, Texas. And I had the opportunity to go to abroad for a year. So I went to Madrid, Spain with the blessing of my mother and that ended up being 26 years abroad. And I studied fine arts in Madrid, in Biasat, this. And I followed a dream that I couldn't even imagine that that was my dream, but I studied art. I studied fine arts and then my two sort of things are art is my passion, my calling. And then from a vocational perspective, both of my parents were educators. So I got very quickly, I transitioned from teaching languages. That's how I paid for college. I transitioned to teaching art. So I've always been on the sidelines of formal educations. I've always worked for nonprofits. And so my story has taken me abroad and then has brought me back here to the United States. And presently, I'm living and working in San Antonio, Texas where I work at the Children's Museum at the, at the Museum. And there I'm director of, of gallery experience and facilitation. And so that's, that's a nut shell, my journey. - Well, that's pretty good synopsis of it all. - And when we were talking the other night, I had this moment where I was like, oh, I can't believe I forgot that. That your master's degree is in Hispanic. Would tell me again. - So yes, I did some, I did a thesis on Latino art. Latino and Latin American art. I had to make that distinction. - Yeah, you know, I, yeah, there's so many facets that we could probably go down in that conversation. But you know, we were so blessed to have you host a chat and the topic of the chat was balancing cultural relevance with social engagement through practice and pedagogy. And you know, we really, I think it was an important conversation to have and it was a very deep conversation to have as well. And so, you know, a lot of teachers, they want to include so much of balancing cultures, balancing, you know, relevance in it all. And, you know, you started out really with hard hitting questions from the, from the very beginning. And you said, when you're preparing to showcase an artist in your class, how do you choose your artist? How do you choose the kind of direction that you might want to go in? And I would be curious what kind of advice, what kind of direction or even yourself when you're choosing something? What is your direction that you go with that? - You know, Matt, I think all of my questions came out of just a real desire to hear more and listen more and to be just thoughtful that it's not about me, but about what everyone else has to say. So really, that's where the questions we're coming from is just like wanting that. And then, and then, you know, preparing for the Twitter chat and then preparing for today, I think one of the things that I think sums up a lot of things is something that we are, that we already do, I think, as art educators, which is, you know, I put on what I call a curatorial hat and I'm connecting to different things that need to happen. You know, we might be thinking about institutional things, so like, you know, from a museum educators perspective or from a classroom perspective, we might be thinking of like, what are the teaks that are lined up for this fall? So, you know, we have roles and responsibilities and levels and layers of things that we need to be thinking about. And so we do that all thoughtfully. I have no doubt about that. You know, when we were discussing the week, we said, well, you know, this is Hispanic Heritage Month, we're kicking off the month. So I was, you know, thoughtful about the examples of artists that I wanted to share. And I was thinking about things like gender. So I wanted to make sure that there was representation there. I was trying to also think about things that had, that sort of took us down a timeline historically of maybe what social engagement might have looked like, you know, in the '70s and what it looks like now today as a contemporary art style. So those were things that I was sort of thinking about. And then most importantly about our audience. So I was also thinking about artists that are touching on subjects and themes that are part of present day reality. And, you know, particularly South Texas reality. And so I think that that process of just being thoughtful about all of those different layers of elements that we need to sort of hit as educators is like that starting point for me. And I would imagine for many. - One of the things that I just, I'm looking at our Twitter chat because you shared so many amazing resources. And one of the very first things you shared was an artist, Minerva Cuevas, and I wanted to hear a little bit more about her. Can you share a little bit about her? - Certainly. So Minerva Cuevas was like part of that, you know, that thesis that I worked on. And her work, like in the '80s, you know, I think like that foundational piece was and really introduced to me to something that I think is that idea of social engagement practice. Like social engagement practice, what I'm saying when I say that, and there's lots of terms for that. So we talk about social practice, community arts, participatory arts, all of those are sort of terms that more or less mean the same thing. And it means we're using social interaction as our brush, it's our medium. And so we're gonna do things that have to do with process and that's the art versus maybe a product. And her piece, the one that I showcased on the chat, is she created a company. And she used some scholarships and grant money to do that. Created a company, like a full-fledged company with, you know, like an office and everything. And then from there, it was just about brainstorming ways that simple ways for people to have a little bit better life. And hence the name of a company better life organization or something or company. And so it's just like simple things. Like, hey, you've aged out of your college years and you need a student ID to get a discount when you go to museums. So you could write to the company and get a free student ID. You know, they did all sorts of really things. Like pirated coupons to go to a supermarket and get discount on fruits and vegetables. There was a kit for women that felt unsafe in the metro of Mexico City Capital. And so, you know, all of these things were just about just small little gestures. And I found that fascinating and have followed her since then. And now she does maybe more traditional installation work, which will take a subject matter. One of the more recent ones that I thought was really fascinating was around chocolate. And so she talked about the colonial history of chocolate, you know, you know, the system of chocolate. Like who wins with, you know, our companies that run in control worldwide, the cocoa industry, but at the same time, you know, who's harvesting these things? So going into agrarian rights, which is a subject matter that she has frequented a lot over the years. And these are things that just resonate with me just because they're experiences. And so you can see the work, even if you're not even there, you still kind of can experience just the powerful gestures that she's making. - You know, I think the more you were talking about that with creating an NID and creating coupons for certain things, I really started thinking about, you know, a design process and going through that, having a social interaction with people and kind of seeing what they need or what they want. And then kind of designing a piece of art for them based on that need or that want. - Well, I think that that's, I mean, ultimately the topic title, this idea of social engagement and pedagogy and merging those things together is so powerful. And I want to just dig into that a little bit more. Where did merging those ideas come from for you? - So, you know, we came up, Matt, thank you so much for hitting the nail on the title. You know, I would probably say that now that we're speaking about it and reflecting over the week, maybe it's not so much about balancing in the sense that feels like, oh, that this is a hard thing to do. And I think that they're actually like really well layered on top of each other. So, you know, when we, when we sort of go on that other end and talk about culturally relevant pedagogy, I think we can go back to sort of the start, you know, the question one, which is, you know, if I'm thoughtful, if I'm, if I love to use that term curatorial or curate something, I think it elevates this idea of selecting, of choosing. I think it insinuates the empathy, the thought process that I'm doing this thoughtfully. This is, this is work. And I know that our educators do that. And then they might not want to call it curation. But I think we're doing that for our kids. And so the, so the layers that I'm kind of thinking in my head about are, okay, so we're doing that process and we're already, there's an emotional element, there's empathy. We're already connecting with our kids. When we, when we go back to what is culturally relevant teaching or culturally relevant pedagogy, what we're saying, you know, like when you look back at the, at sort of the foundational text around that, it's being thoughtful about who are the kids that I have in my room creating relationships with them that establish their success or, you know, our relationships based on their success. I am your ally. And I just don't, I just don't know our educators that don't do this. I, it's really hard because there's already so many things that are, that our classrooms provide, which is getting to know our kids. So they're doing those self-portraits. They're telling us their stories in ways that they don't necessarily get to share in other classrooms. And so that right there is like, we're all, we're already practicing those, these layers of curating for our kids. We're already doing culturally relevant pedagogy. And then I would go even one step further, which is, you know, social engagement practice might not, it's, I think I'm bringing it up because I want to push it to the forefront of our classroom. I would love to be, to help move that idea forward. But, but I think what it does is, you know, if we, when we start to think about these examples of social engagement and we start to think about our classrooms, we start to see, wait a second, this is kind of like project-based learning. But elevated, but elevated to art. And that is like all of a sudden, it's like, no, no, I'm not only an art educator, not only do I talk about art, we make art. And we make art and we can, and it's not always, it's not always that individual piece. It might be us collectively making pieces together. - With that idea that there is purpose and meaning behind how we can support our community as well. I think that that's the really important piece there is that, you know, going back to the process and product conversation, you know, I'm a, I think anybody that listens to podcasts knows that I am a process first kind of person because I think that the learning happens within that process and, you know, that is where you can really be transformative and make meaning for kids, right? And if you're tying in that social engagement and giving them to do what Matt was talking about, like even if you just go to the design process and you, who am I designing for, why are we designing? You know, and creating, you know, of course there will be an end product, but really digging into that process, first creating environment where we're really thinking about our why, that that is transformational for, for everyone in that community of that classroom, right? - Yeah, definitely. Amen, amen. (laughing) - You know, I'm thinking just kind of to take you back off of that. I mean, I have found students to be more engaged when they're making something for someone else. When you're making, when you have that purpose, not just, okay, we're gonna make a random face of a person when we're making something for someone else. I think that, you know, there's a lot more engagement that's placed in that, so. - Definitely. You know, your second question, Orlando, was about the traditional, I think that I was talking to a friend today and she said her son was in continuous line contour right now. Like, if there's, it's fall, it's like, you know, you kind of, you start, you have like a, we're gonna start with the drawing techniques and you always start with contour, you know? Like, there's just that, we kind of have this, this technique process that we go through as teachers and we, you know, if you're starting at the beginning, you go through these, these processes, really the techniques, you know, the drawing techniques, print making techniques, whatever it is. But I'm wondering, you know, your question was, who do you choose when you want to highlight subject matter themes or processes? Because we tend to, as our teachers, going back to your curatorial hat, we tend to align a lot of our artists to the technique, you know, if I want you to, I'm trying to think of it, now I can't think of an artist to align to a technique, which is crazy. But, you know, I think that thinking about matter and themes and processes is sometimes difficult or a transitional thinking for an art teacher in a way. Tell us more about that. - Well, yeah, so like, you know, I'm just thinking like contour goes into my head and then, and I think of an artist, their name is Francis Elise. And Francis Elise, I want to say is European by birth but has lived a lot of their adult practicing life in Mexico. Did a lot of a lot of the work you see in the origins, so like in the 80s was documentation. There's photographs of him doing, practicing his work. But one piece that sticks out originally was, he would walk around Mexico City with a big magnet on a, like a little trolley and he would pull it. And as he pulled it, it would collect all of this stuff from the street. And so the treasure was all of these things collected randomly by him walking the streets. And he did another one which was like a block of ice that you know was like so heavy. And so you know, you're really sweating and really like it's a real big effort to pull it around until it finally melts, you know, and he walked the streets. And that is evolved into just recently, like he's done pieces where he's like walked the Gaza Strip, you know, he's walked like borders of conflict. And he, and in that one, I want to think, saying particularly, he carried, he painted a line. And if you can imagine some runners and some artists have done experiments, well, they'll run around the city and then geolocate the drawing and it'll say, "I love you, mom," or whatever, right? And, but he would, you know, like actually walk this, this sort of dangerous strip of, you know, Palestine and Israel and would walk, you know, literally get out and walk it and then pour this little, you know, drizzle this little line out of a can of paint. And it's not so much about the can of paint, it's about this experience that he's having, forcing himself to, the discipline to actually do it. And so I'm kind of thinking about that and going back to contour drawing. So like there's ways, I think that we can, we can break with maybe some traditions. And, and I don't think everything needs to be broken. And I think also let's, let's give ourselves the grace to know that sometimes we have to just go back to those, sort of those origin stories that we all have. I was taking some notes about something called a apprenticeship of observation, which is something that I'd learned in my doctorate and it's something that I'm interested in and by no means am I an expert on but, but a apprenticeship of observation is basically a, a research concept, which is, we as teachers spent so much more time as students. And then we go into our pre-service teaching and we get our, you know, we get our teaching certification. But all of us, really the habits that we acquired when we weren't met as cognitively thinking about being a teacher kind of came into place. We do what we know and what we've already exercised. And so we all go in with this apprenticeship of observation and then, and then we get a few years, but we're in such a hurry to get into the profession that, and then there's so many different ways now that you can get into the profession that it's really hard to then say, what are, what are our teachers walking into the classroom? What skills do they possess? But one is going back to this idea that our habits of that, you know, 16, 24 years of study have, are going to unknow the three years or the two years of the six months that we were a practicing teacher. And so I think my only proposal here is just to say, hey, let's think about that, let's give ourselves permission to use the power of our creativity, the power of the arts and rethink that. And maybe there's somebody out there that, you know, an artist that we can use that breaks this conversation up in a different way this year. - Wow, yeah. - Well, I mean, again, I think before we were, we actually started recording, Matt said, we could go all kinds of, all different rabbit holes here 'cause my brain is somebody who is part of the hiring process for teachers and supporting new, you know, new teachers, you know, who've never taught. And seeing that a lot of them are coming from an alternative certification or different avenues, you know, this, that, you just kind of blew my mind. Just thinking about it. And then I was having thoughts, I'm like, you know, for people like Matt and I and you who were raised by educators, I wonder how much of that, you know, I saw my mom teach my whole life. I wonder how much of an impact that made on me, I don't know. But I'm having, again, rabbit holes. - I see my influences of my dad who was not only a teacher, but he was also a coach and a lot of his coaching mentality, philosophy played into how he taught in the classroom. And it, you know, rubbed off on me and that's, that's so interesting, so for sure. - Well, you know, we're reaching a moment where we're, you know, I think if you can break through, I guess what is it? Let's say just a decade for sake of argument. You break through the first decade and then you know that you're in this for the long haul. We're all fortunate to sort of be in that spot. And so there's a joy and then there's also, there's also, you know, you're relaxed. You're no longer worried necessarily about, you know, classroom management anymore. Those, all of those things come naturally. And so it's a sweet moment too to also just give ourselves space to reconsider, right? Like, I mean, that's for me studying again is giving myself permission to say I don't know anything. I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna learn from scratch again. And so we just kind of are able to sort of throw some of these things out and hopefully some of our ideas are good enough to stick. So, you know, Orlando, one of the, we did start to scratch the surface on this already. But when it just back up to one of the other questions, which was what place does social engagement practices or participatory arts have in the classroom? And I know, like I said, I know we started to scratch the surface, but maybe we can expand on that just a little bit more. - Yeah, I think, you know, we did touch on a little bit on this idea that it looks a lot like a project-based learning. And so, and I think that that's a wheelhouse that we all feel comfortable sort of what is project-based learning. So we're gonna have a project and it's gonna, there's a problem and we're gonna look for solutions together and we're gonna collectively build together something. And so those are, that kind of coincides with with those characteristics of social engagement. And so, you know, we're gonna work together. So teamwork is part of that. I think that this gives us an opportunity, an opportunity to let the skill sets that are inherently part of the art classroom thrive. - Mm-hmm. - And I will give a shout out to our brothers and sisters, our colleagues of the STEM world, the steam world, the maker world. As we all know, libraries have really taken on that role as makers and all of that is great. And we are all, I just wanna start off by saying we are all allies. But one of the things that's, what's happening there is that we're seeing, we're seeing an expansion of where these skills can be practiced. But what might, you know, worrying about our space, so going back to our collective, art educators, we need to be thinking about how can we showcase and allow for the maximum expansion of skills in our classroom, regardless of whether our students will become artists or related to the arts in the future. And so I think by bringing in these components, we do a couple of things. We first, we allow the space for those inherent skills to be practiced more and amongst peers. This is really, really important. Maker has really, you know, really, really drilled into this component. And so we know that the future 21st century skills is about social emotional skills, you know, so soft skills, good communication and good teamwork. These are like the core of what, you know, what is gonna help you be successful, regardless of what you do in the future, whatever that subject is. So that's one thing. I think an additional one is for me, personally, when I was, you know, when I finished my art studies, I was really poor, you know, if I'm not, if I'm still, you know, if I have embraced our education, it's because I did, I wasn't successful as a professional artist. I need to, we need to recognize that I wasn't. I really tried, I gave it a decade. I worked really hard. But I didn't have the skill sets. My educational journey, even though it kind of exotic, I know how to paint a classical painting. I know how to use rabbit glue and all sorts of really odd things from traditional painting. But I was poorly prepared for contemporary art and for the art world that we live in. And so my argument is, if we're not showing kids what started in the '70s and continues to, to this day, but is a really strong, vibrant community of art that is that people are using and consuming and as part of the art world. And then it's not part of our art education. We're not communicating, you know, if they go to university thinking that painting is the way out or the way through, it might be. But they have to know that there are other languages and other mediums that are being used in the art world. And so that's kind of that secondary component. - Yeah. (laughs) Well, I was just sitting here thinking about, you know, talk about contemporary art. Matt and I were having conversation about people earlier and NFTs and, you know, they're the art world. If you're not keeping up with contemporary art and all the new mediums that are out there, we are doing it a service for our kids. But I was also thinking about in our school district we're working on a thing called portrait of a graduate and there are six components and thinking about them, you know, their creativity, communication, curiosity. I can't think of all of them right off the top of my head. Those are the first three that come to my mind. Empathy is one of them, you know, and this engagement practice of participatory arts speak to all those portrait pieces of what we want to graduate to look like when they move out into the world. And, you know, I did, I will say though, that I did say something in the Twitter chat that I probably ought to bring forward. I think that for some reason, this can be really scary for teachers. And, you know, Orlando were the three of us are all in Texas, which, if anybody's following the news, there's a lot going on in Texas. And I think when you get into the idea of social, and when you put the word social justice or social engagement in front of things, it makes people a little nervous that somebody's gonna come, you know, say that we're indoctrinating students or we're doing this or we're doing that. But there is, I think the key is to allow the students to find their path, you know, what is it that they're trying to make a difference in? And I think that's where that idea of choice and giving an open assignment where they get to determine what kind of difference do I wanna make in my community or do we wanna make in our community? And not giving them a, here's the platform that we're gonna go, you know, does that make sense? I don't, I said it in 240 characters in the Twitter chat. I'm not saying it very well right now. But I just wanted to put that out there that it doesn't have to be scary. - Correct, yes. And I think that's one of the reasons why contemporary art can, the things that are happening right like in the immediacy of the past year and a half, feel fresh and feel dangerous. And I, you know, my career has been affected by this issue. So I can, you know, I'm thinking firsthand that my personal experience as an educator has been affected by, you know, like pushing this too far too fast. So I'm certainly someone that has felt that pain and also feels the responsibility, right? Like if we're working with youth, we need to be thoughtful. So looking 10 years back, that's not a bad thing, right? Like, you know, there's a way of doing that. And I think also, you know, if we're doing this thoughtful curation, if we're selecting artists, I'm thinking right now in my head about a non-Latino, we, you know, I presented a number of that war Latino, but I'm thinking of Kerry James Marshall. - Oh yes. - And Magnificent Public Art. Like there, you can't ignore these pieces. Let Kerry James Marshall speak for themselves, speak for himself. He can speak for himself. We don't need to speak for him. And all of the, most of the artists that I showcased are all artists that, that you would find on art 21. You can, you know, you can find a video and interview with them. That's a proper interview. That's, you know, educationally appropriate. And so, so we don't have to go out on big limbs. There's a lot, there's a support community around us that's helping sort of pave that way. So that's a helpful thing. I, you know, hey, I just, just remember one, maybe like a third thing that I think is important, you know, like just to advocate just, like, if I'm here to sell it, then let me sell it. So I'll say, I'll say to you, I think there's another reason why the group holiday, right? Like getting our kids to maybe do something collectively is a good thing to do is, you know, is, I think we need to learn how to work with each other with or without the diversity present. - Yeah. - And we need to practice that. We need to practice it in say schools. You're in a school that doesn't have a lot of diversity. Go for it. You know, it doesn't make it necessarily any easier to work everybody together. There is always diversity in our conscience. Whether we can recognize it quickly or not, right? We might all be the same skin tone, but that doesn't mean that the diversity is not underlying. But what I guess what I'm saying there's, we need to practice this. This is part of democracy. Like this is at the core of practicing living in society. And we're, you know, I feel concerned that I've been, that I'm in some way responsible for a society right now that is not doing that. We need to learn to live and work together. And so that's an important thing. I also think that it helps counteract a part of popular culture where everything is about a sole protagonist who does great work. And I will include, you know, sort of that, that trope on artists, right? You know, you're the lone genius, you're Batman, right? You, you do it all on your own, you're super intelligent, you're well versed, you've got the money and you solve the world and save it all by yourself. Contrary to maybe, you know, other cultures where they are sending out in their popular culture, the idea that, you know, teamwork is gonna get rid of the villain. And so culturally, we, we're, we're spiting ourselves. We're, we've sent out these messages. You gotta be special, super hero. And, and, and maybe we need to rethink that. And I think our, our way of doing that in the classroom can be, you know, let's create spaces. Let's show that artists are no longer sole authors. That through social engagement, we are co-protagonist. We are co-authoring with the public. I'm, I mentioned Mark Menjivar as one of a colleague of mine, a friend of mine and one of the artists that I showcase. He's working in all sorts of subject matters. Some of them are appropriate for kids. Others aren't, you know, he, he touches on some really hard subject matter. The death penalty is one of them. But he's got some other work. He did some great work with a school here in town. What do you want the city to be in the future? What is, what is the city for you? And he created a manifesto with them. And then there are work and their words was to piece the installation. So he was a technical, he provided them with the technical effort, you know, and the, the know-how. But it was there, it's their work. They shared that together. And that's a really powerful thing. - You know, one of the, throughout the chat, there were, there were lots of terms and we kind of mentioned this earlier as well. That kind of all mean the same thing. There was, there was one that I had never heard before and I, I was very honest in my response. I was like, okay, I have no idea what this term means. But then the more we, you know, we talked through it or did that, we all kind of had a conversation around it. We started realizing that it was just based on where we were that it was the same, the same kind of thing. And that was culturally relevant pedagogy. And if a teacher is wanting to consider to use this, you know, to achieve whatever their goal, their teaching goal is for the year. How would they go about this or how do they even begin to look to find resources for that? - Right, so CRP, culturally relevant pedagogy or culturally relevant teaching. These are, you know, all of our favorite education websites, share primers on that on how to kind of get started. This comes from Lats and Billings. And Dr. Lats and Billings, Gloria Lats and Billings was a bilingual teacher. And part of a larger movement that might be, you know, critical multicultural education. So how do we make diversity, the diversity of our nation, the diversity of our society, something at the core of the classroom and of the educational system. And so here we are, we're working, we're working hard. We're working hard. And so I think there's some components that are helpful for, you know, to without going into, like what does that mean on an academic level? I think some of the things are things that we already do in the art classroom. So I think that's important to sort of like restate. You know, we need to be solid on our own identity and who we are. We need to be, you know, I think we need to be honest with ourselves, but also honest and transparent with our, with our students. So that's, that's sort of a starting point. And then, you know, we have a component which is equity. And sometimes equity can be a slippery slubbing. If you're dangerous, I have caught myself maybe lowering a standard because my bias has positioned me in a spot where I'm thinking, I need to lower the, the difficulty of the activity in favor of the child instead of, instead of striving for excellence, striving for both equity and excellence are some, are things that we have to have highest standards for and that we have to, I think, hold ourselves personally accountable too. And then, and then if we're in a community that supports our work, then these things, we, we do them together and we help each other. You know, developmentally appropriate is something that I think we would all consider. Like, yeah, we don't show, I don't know. I'm just, like, I'm trying to think of an artist. I was thinking of, on this Serrano, do you remember him? He was the, the, the famous 80, like in the 80s, 87. This was the, the artist that got the grant from the, from the National Endowment for the Arts. And then after that, the, the culture wars of the 80s were enacted because his piece, title, his Christ, was so controversial that there, since then, no individual artist has ever received a grant again. So, like, you know, you're not going to discuss that with your students. That's not the developmentally appropriate. But those are, so like those, but, but we're thinking, okay, well, what's, what, where, where can I, where can I introduce some of these things? You know, and then each of us has a different comfort level. And we know, you know, we have to be responsible with where we're willing to, to, to where we want to showcase things. I'll go back to Carrie James Marshall. I think an incredible artist with an incredible mission of, of black representation in the museum with excellence. I think that that goes back to sort of this example. So, so that would be an artist, you know, that I think would be developmentally appropriate and then open that door, maybe through a VTS, through a visual thinking strategies conversation about what's going on in this painting. What do you see that makes you say that, et cetera, and so, so those are some things. And then, and then finally, I think something that does happen more often in the art classroom, maybe I'm biased, maybe I'm, I, I love our community. I really appreciate our community. So, just to be really clear, all of these things I think we already are doing. We're just sort of naming them. We're giving them like a name. And that would be, you know, developing developing those student teacher relationships. Based on, you know, work, I'm an advocate for you. I am here to support your growth. And, but I'm, but as an ally to you, I'm, I'm here to support you as a whole person. - Mm-hmm, yeah. - You know, I was actually, I've kind of been scrolling back through the chat a little bit as we're talking. And it's perfect timing because I just saw Kelly Quinn McGee's answer to question five. And she was, she said exactly that. And she is a K through five elementary art teacher. So that developmentally appropriate kind of piece came into play. But she said knowing the culture of our students, their stories and heritage is an important aspect of connecting and building relationships. But also a way to help students create art with meaning in their lives. So, and to their lives. Our students' lives and stories are relevant to their learning. And that it's, you know, truly, if you want to know the whole child, that's exactly it, right? And I think you nailed it on the head. We've been doing this for a while, but to name it and to be more purposeful and, and I don't even know what purposeful definitely, but to transparent about it, I guess it's the word, to be more like overt. This is what we're doing. We're making sure that we're being inclusive of all children and knowing truly that inclusivity is about them bringing their heritage into the classroom as well and representing who they are. I think that that's really huge, but I thought that was a good statement that Kelly tweeted and I just wanted to share it. Plus, she's a really good friend of mine. (laughing) - Another one. (laughing) - Oh, so. - Absolutely, Laura, I think you're on to something there, like definitely, and you know, whether you're, like curation for me might be, okay, you know, go out on a limb and choose somebody that's out there in the universe that you're not familiar with, even if you're going back to sort of our standards, right? Like those artists that, you know, we all know are part of our practice every year, but just going back and being softful, you know, I think one of the things I said in the chat was like about clustering, like choosing, choose the Frida Kahlo, choose the Remedios Vado, you know, painting, choose two or three things that might be connected in some way that open up that spectrum, right? I chose all three women. I chose all three Latino women. I'm choosing sort of within those connections so that I'm, I have, there's some threads that are connecting them, and that's the BTS. - Yeah, and I just did a, I just wrote an artful thinking routine with Beesa Butler, Faith Ringold, and the Guy Bend community. So like there you go, right? Like that's-- - That's right, yeah. - Yeah, like, and honestly, it was the quilts that connected them more than anything, but that's the kind of thing. I don't, I don't wanna ever give my students one artist, right? Like I wanna give them multiple artists, and I want the artist that I'm sharing with them to reflect my classroom as well. Like the students in my classroom, so. - Well, I mean, I think what I was thinking about there, at least on a smaller version of that is, you know, we ask from our students when they are looking for reference photos that are looking for things to pull inspiration from. We don't say, okay, just choose one, don't just choose one photo and go from there. - True. - We say, okay, find several different photos of different kinds of things that might be related, and that's where they start, you know, kind of pulling those things together. And so I was just thinking about that from the teacher aspect of what we expect from our kids, so why shouldn't we be expecting that for ourselves when we're engaging these students? - Yes. - I think it's important for us to think about those things as work. I struggle with that, right? Like there's some aspects of study or some aspects of work that other people that are not part of our field don't see as real work. And they require time and they look like you're just surfing on the internet, but you have purpose there. And that requires visual literacy. Not everybody has visual literacy. I mean, everybody might be able to scroll and swipe and like, and that's part of visual literacy, but this is like the next step. So we have to use that, and we also have to give our sales permission to understand, hey, this is work, I'm doing work right now. - Definitely. - I love the fact that you keep talking about curation and curating things because last year when I was teaching high school kids, we spent a good chunk of time just curating. And we had to really talk about what is curating. And even, I mean, I'm not trying to diminish it at all, but I said, how many people have just gone through your closet and gone through some things that maybe were older or clothes that weren't your style anymore? So that's curating, whether you wanna call it or look at it that way, that's still curating. You are making a conscious effort to pair things up to eliminate some things, to do something else with them. And so it's just, and all of a sudden, kids are like, oh, oh yeah, I kinda am, huh? So that's a really great analogy actually. - You know what I'm like? Okay, kids are gonna have lots of their closets. So, you know, why not? - Yeah. - It was a reach, but they, they, they, - I don't think it was a reach. I think it makes perfect sense. - I think it's a great, I think it's a great connection. - Yeah. - Oh, Orlando. - Now I'm gonna go do that with our closet. - Yeah. - Now you've got a honey do. - Yeah. - Yeah. - No, I know better than you. - Actually, we have separate closets. Yes, which, which is the key to lots of things. You see, we don't have to share everything. - I'm, I'm nodding. - Oh man. Orlando, we, we could talk forever. But we've, we've been talking for a little while. So we've kind of got to come to a close. And I'm wondering, I like to, we like to ask this last question. - Do you want me to ask this? - Yes, please. - All right. - I'll break it up. - Okay. - But basically our question that we love to end with is what is some kind of last wisdom? What is some kind of advice or something? You'd like to share with our listeners that we may not have already talked about today. - Yeah, I'm gonna go on, I'm just gonna go on a real small tangent, but I'm, I'm wrapping it up. You know, going, going back to study at, at my age is a little crazy and, and, and totally worth it. And, and one of the things that a lot of, a lot of the work has, has brought me as sort of like, you re-initiate yourself with issues of educational issues that we're all living. We don't have to go into those, but you, you, you, you challenge yourself, you know, critical race theory. I'm reading about that. Like, I, I have a class about that, right? And so, so I, I certainly go in knowing, I don't know anything. Teach me. I am, my, my head is bowed, right? Like, my self-esteem has, has lowered a couple of notches and I'm, I'm okay at that spot. So, very humble. And, and so, so, so from there, like to explore everything, I'm always thinking about the system. Like, what's the system? How do we, how do we fix the system, right? As if it's always broken and that's not true either. But, you know, we, we, we could get into that. That would be another podcast. But the going back to, to your, to your question is, is, I, I don't feel I'm wise. What I do, do want to share with everybody is that, I've come to the, like, I was talking about, we need to create associations and networks. And then I'm like, wait a second. I'm already, you know, I, I just this past, this, this weekend, I, I, I, I re up my membership to the National Art Education Association and to the Texas Art Education Association. And, and, and I'm already in my community. And I was like, wait a second. I'm fighting thinking in my head that I need, that there, there's something that doesn't exist. And it actually does exist. So my response is, I, as an individual of this community, wish you I'm, I have solidarity for you. I have appreciation for you. And, and I would say, take care of yourselves. We're in this for the long haul. This is, we're doing important work and also difficult work under difficult circumstances. So I, I want you to go away thinking, I appreciate you. I hope that this, that the podcast is useful. But regardless, take care of yourselves. That, that's, that's how I want to find ones. - That's beautiful. - Awesome. Thank you so much. That was fantastic. - Orlando, I want to hug you. I hope we get to see you at a conference soon. You're just joy to know. And I appreciate you being a friend of ours. And I appreciate you participating in K-12 Art Chat. Thank you. - Lovely, thank you. It was a lot of fun. And I got to kind of clear some things in my head. And, and then look at artists for a while. (laughing) - Well, and all of the artists that you share, just so our listeners know, will be on the Davis Web site. So DavisArt.com. So all your resources that you share will be there, as well as a archive of the Twitter chat. So, just so everybody knows, 'cause you shared some good resources. - You hit that one out of the park. - Well, it was one of those things where we had somebody scheduled and it didn't work out. And I was, you know, I stress about these things. And I was thinking in the middle of the night and I was like, oh, Orlando, he's perfect. So. - He was, he was, he was awesome. And he is such a deep philosophical thinker. And I love all the resources that he shared. - So many artists. - Yeah. - Latino artists that I, a lot, most of them, I'm not familiar with, I just keep going, I keep scrolling through the Twitter chat and like clicking on all the links that he shared. And I'm like, this is amazing. - Yeah. - So. - And so many to contemporary artists, to really dig into. And I just can't wait to really start digging and letting more. - And I love the idea of the social engagement and just being culturally relevant for our students, you know, and blending those things and layering those things, you know. I like how he clarified the fact that it's not a balance because they're not two separate things. They are just layers of things. And, you know, that makes so much sense to a visual person like myself and many others. - I think that's what art teachers do. In general, we layer a lot of things together to make it work for our students, you know. And so. - It was just a fantastic, fantastic discussion and hope you enjoyed it as much as we do. And I hope that you go check out those resources on davisart.com. - Matt. - Laura. - You know, this is one of my favorite parts of the podcast, right? - It is. Who doesn't get really happy? - During happy teacher moments. - Oh yeah, that's right. - Sorry, I forgot to finish that part, right? - So we share out these happy teacher moments and we look them up on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and I just found one from Sandra Mones. Woo, woo, woo, she is in the South Texas area and we really like her. But anyways, this one says, one of my happy teacher moments was creating a collaborative wall mural and watching my little ones point jump and say, I made that. They were so proud of helping create our school art masterpiece. - That's awesome. I love that and I love when everybody has a chance to feel like they have ownership in making something that the whole school gets to see. - Totally, right on Sandra, good job. - So please remember to share your happy teacher moments using the hashtag #HappyTeacherMoment, happy teacher moments as well and share them on social media and we'll be sure to share them on the podcast. - Thanks everyone. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - If you've been listening for a while, then you know that we are always looking for new ideas and inspirations. So if you have any suggestions, comments, or info to share with your peers, find us on Twitter and Facebook or through our partner with Davis Publications at davisart.com. (upbeat music)