ABSTRACT
Jodi Heiser is a practicing visual arts educator in the Ralston School District in Nebraska, located in the Midwest of the USA1. Ms. Heiser is committed to providing the highest quality visual arts experiences possible for all of her students. She takes tremendous pride in these eorts and advocates for the necessity of the arts in education. Such advocacy eorts insist that visual arts education is understood by her students, colleagues, and greater community to be demanding of serious study and participatory engagement. One way she models this is through the use of over-arching themes across each teaching year. Her most recent theme is, Art around the globe: Understanding art as a human capacity. Her classroom is organized in part as an art museum exhibiting varied art products of specic units of study with accompanying artist statements articulating the learning connections students are making. A large world map reveals the many places, cultures, and experiences these connections have elicited for students with sticky notes, ags, and arrows documenting the tales. Ms. Heiser nds students genuinely interested and invested in these connections. Students seem to value sharing with and learning from others, continually situating themselves in ongoing discussions given their personal backgrounds and experiences. Ms. Heiser describes how a recent immigrant student from China assigned to one of her classes paid close attention on his rst day in the classroom to works of art and learning connections regarding the art of his home country. e next class, he arrived with a carved jade necklace of a dragon from China to share with the class. ough his communication eorts were not in uent English, there was shared interest in the dragon necklace and its connections to the new student’s life experiences. Ms. Heiser was able to build on this interest, and a common understanding that cultivated an important opening for continued investment in communication was achieved. is
initial point of interest contributed to the new student gaining more condence as he talked with the class about some of his life experiences in China.
