Introduction
Constantly navigating misunderstanding and confusion in academic and non-academic settings, my students experience learning not as a process of discovery, but as a means of survival. Learning, both academic and cultural, can look very different for the adolescent newcomers in my Art classes. They are trying to understand culture and acquire language simultaneously while learning academic content. Often teaching at my school, Oakland International High School (OIHS), must focus intensively on those critical aspects of our students’ learning needs. One class taught at my school, Survival English, focuses on teaching our students basic English through learning experiences in reading, writing, and speaking English. This type of English instruction alone cannot prepare students for encounters with complex language and academic tasks; therefore, all teachers at OIHS imbed English development within their classes.
As an educator, I am humbled by how my understanding of learning is in a constant state of evolution. Why and how we learn, are just as significant as what we learn. The phrase “to learn” seems too simple to mean something so vast and complex. While learning takes place within us, it is also greatly impacted by our surroundings. We learn as we discover for ourselves, and we learn formally and informally from others. There are things we are curious about and want to learn, and there are things we are forced to learn at the discretion of others. We are innately learners. Infants learn to survive when they explore how to use their bodies to move, eat, and communicate. Young children learn how to navigate within their community when they watch and are explicitly taught by their elders. Through schooling, young adults are taught what they need to know for post-secondary learning and work experiences. Although as individuals our experiences and ways we learn may differ, within our Western way of learning, there is an order in which we are expected to learn as we grow and establish our role within society.
In my first year teaching Visual Arts to an entire English Language Learner (ELL) population, my approach was to integrate informational and reflective writing, speaking, and listening experiences to encourage my students to explain their learning to others. While these reflection exercises were beneficial in building my students’ understanding of Visual Art content, individual experiences in art making, and practicing writing and speaking English, still my teaching did not provide my students with enough depth in English language development.
In the upcoming school year, ninth- and tenth- grade students will read in their English classes an adapted version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with a focus on character, setting, and theme. The unit I will simultaneously teach in my Visual Arts class will center on reading a graphic novel version of the Shakespeare play with a focus on identifying verbal and visual metaphors. Deconstructing text and image to understand metaphors lends itself beautifully to teaching how to create art as well as how to look at art, and doing so is challenging for my students because both literary and visual metaphors require significantly more than a surface understanding of English language and culture to make sense of. Through the unit, my students and I will challenge ourselves as we explore Romeo and Juliet through an Art-Based Research Approach, focusing on deconstructing text and image by examining visual, auditory, and literary adaptations of Shakespeare’s play. While I hope to challenge my students academically through this unit, I also want them to explore literature that engages their intellect and imagination as they create artwork that reflects the richness of their experiences.
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