November 29, 2018

The Onstead Institute provided professional development workshops for the Northwest ISD Art Conference which took place at the scenic Northwest ISD Outdoor Learning Center. Approximately 80 art teachers took part in the two-day conference. The 1.5 hour workshops were each repeated three times to include all of the teachers.

Visual Journaling Workshop

Assistant Professor Brian Scott Campbell, who teaches drawing and painting at UNT, led a workshop on Visual Journaling for the conference. Professor Campbell discussed the sketchbook as a sequential space for developing visual language and notation which can become a highly personalized and indispensable tool for exploration and critically aware expression. Encouraging students to maintain a sketchbook and visual journaling practice provides for opportunities to enable inter-media discourse, conceptualizing, and ideation. In this workshop, teachers engaged strategies for visual experimenting, documentating, reflecting, and evaluating based upon the methods of iterative design. Teachers explored various pictorial genres, modes of abstraction, and methodologies in observation and representation that they could take with them back to the classroom.

Artful Thinking Workshop

Carolyn Armbruster, an experienced art museum educator and the founder of Artful Thinking DFW, introduced teachers to Harvard Project Zero’s Artful Thinking methodology which helps develop students’ critical thinking skills. The scaffolded structure of Artful Thinking routines gives educators the tools to foster deep thought in their classroom, all by using learner-centered discussions of artwork as catalysts. During the workshop, Armbruster facilitated several routines allowing the teachers to experience the methodology as their students would, engaging in several artworks through close observation, open-ended inquiry, and even some movement!