[June 5, 2024 | 7pm ET] NAEA is committed to supporting our current and future visual arts, design, and media arts educators. Pandemic burnout, early retirements, rise in school violence, lack of clear career pathways, and ongoing pedagogical cultural wars—among other challenges—make the recruitment and retention of art teachers increasingly more difficult. To better understand and address the obstacles that current and future art educators face, as well as the growing issue of educator staffing shortages, the NAEA Board of Directors has formed a national “Art Education Teacher Recruitment and Retention Task Force.” The Task Force is tasked with investigating the obstacles and opportunities to entering and serving the field of visual arts, design, and media arts education, and engage with the membership, peer organizations, and external experts to gather data and draft a report of findings and recommendations for short, mid, and long-term action to be presented to the Board. Join us as members of the NAEA Art Education Teacher Recruitment and Retention Task Force share their findings and recommendations for the association and the field.

[March 1, 2023] Join us as we unpack the meaning and characteristics of an inclusive learning environment through art while uncovering a variety of pedagogical approaches and instructional strategies to build inclusive communities in your learning spaces. Learn firsthand how inclusive community building has helped students develop a stronger sense of belonging and how studying a community’s local history and its demographic landscape helps to expand understanding of inclusive learning. Come away with strategies to align art teaching resources with cultural competence in order to address issues related to diversity, social justice, and inclusion.

[September 7, 2022] Current political situations can be difficult for art educators to navigate. Join us as we explore practical strategies for teaching social justice through a K–12 lens. Discover ways to include all learners in the process of developing, creating, and presenting social justice artworks while incorporating inclusive communication strategies. Use this process to develop a proactive approach to teaching potentially uncomfortable topics while facilitating difficult conversations in the art room. A Library of Congress representative will also share how primary sources in their collections can be valuable teaching tools—photographs, newspaper articles, posters, correspondence, and more can capture student attention and provide historical points of entry into social justice topics that resonate today.

[June 1, 2022] Join us for reflection on the trajectory of art museums in making authentic change in the realm of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Art museum educators have a unique opportunity and responsibility to foster meaningful, inclusive, and accessible learning experiences for K–12 learners. To enact this work, they continuously strive to deepen their understanding of the identities and needs of a diverse set of learners, prioritizing the needs of those who have traditionally felt the museum was not a place for them. In response, art museum educators have become very intentional about what (i.e., which artworks and which narratives related to them), how (i.e., the pedagogy), and who is involved in teaching, as well as how to approach and nurture relationships with schools. Museum educators are also committed to a continual process of reflection on and disruption of the ways that white supremacy culture informs the work they do with staff—including hiring, management, mentorship, team building, and retention.

[February 2, 2022] In second language acquisition, the integration of visual arts provides differentiated learning, bolsters confidence, and encourages students to appreciate their own cultures and heritages through experiential learning in a brave space. Discover how storytelling through individual journeys can help to empower English Language Learner (ELL) students and help them connect to personal identity.

[October 6, 2021] Three White members of an educator collective, formed around antiracist education and critical Whiteness studies, share their experiences and insight. “As a group, we talk, think, create, and denaturalize the ways that we are educated by and through whiteness—within our group and with others in our institutions and fields of practice. We have a shared commitment to doing this work with each other as a durational practice that allows us to create collaborative projects, revisit ideas, and hold each other accountable over time. We call ourselves ‘Not a Toolkit’ as a way of troubleshooting the one-off training, the objective-driven and quick-fix workshop, and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) professional development model aimed at checking off boxes and responding to urgent news cycles around racist violence. Rooted in long-term, embodied, sloggy, and uncomfortable engagements with Whiteness, we will describe a messy history of doing this work and offer creative prompts for thinking with, through, and against Whiteness within each of our specific, non-replicable classroom communities.”

[October 28, 2020] Each Latinx and Indigenous community is unique and multilayered. Honoring that individuality is essential to successful and equitable collaborations. Join us as we examine the ongoing journey of a museum education department located in a predominantly Latinx city as they continuously aim to become more culturally responsive and supportive of their community through school partnerships, a land acknowledgement initiative, and the reopening of their Latin American Arte Popular gallery. Strategies for empowering student voices through culturally responsive museum and studio art experiences, new frameworks for teaching with Latin American Arte Popular, and perspectives learned from students and their family visits to the museum will be shared.

How can art educators assist learners in appreciating what makes the place where they live special? Discover how the folk arts are uniquely suited to explore how traditional art forms reflect the history, aesthetics, geography, and values of different cultures and communities. Art educators and folklorists Doug Blandy and Paddy Bowman will introduce participants to strategies and resources for integrating local folk arts into art education curricula associated with schools, museums, and community arts centers.

This webinar explores how art educators can think through the permissions of cultural inclusion carefully, without erasing or stereotyping the often historically marginalized identities from which cultures originate. The presenters offer educators a framework that aligns with the NAEA Position Statement on the use of imagery, cultural appropriation, and socially just practices—intended to be a catalyst for respectful and relevant learning that makes connections to the realities or obstacles students may be facing. Supporting lessons and instructional strategies are transformative tools that are easily adapted to your context and presented in solidarity towards a greater shared understanding of individuals and cultures alike.

Unsure how to start a conversation about race in your art room? Join Patty Bode in this timely webinar to investigate the idea that "racism is not everybody's fault, but it is everybody's responsibility." Explore ways in which art educators can talk about race and racism in the preK-12 art room and art education college classroom to help advance our NAEA goals for equity, diversity, and inclusion. Strategies will include dialogue about contemporary art and studio practices that help unmute the discourse on race and racism.