Ms. Stedman Goes to Washington Her Affiliation with the Smithsonian Opens Up Their Resources to Holy Spirit Prep Students Ms. Stedman went back to school this summer! Her classroom? The Smithsonian American Art Museum. Ms. Stedman was one of 29 teachers from around the country invited to participate in the museum’s Teaching the Humanities through Art workshop. “I have to say - I was in awe every day, and it was truly inspiring that my classroom was a museum,” Ms. Stedman said. “It was an incredible experience.” During the week-long summer institute, teachers literally sat on stools set up in the museum’s galleries, in front of specific pieces of art, learning how they could be used to complement and enhance their English or Social Studies curriculum. “While teachers realize innately that students are engaged by visuals, they don’t necessarily feel confident teaching with art,” said Phoebe Hillman with SAAM. “What we do during this week is open that door for teachers and help them build the knowledge and skills they need to integrate art in a meaningful way, looking at it not just as illustration, but as rich, complex content in itself.” Ms. Stedman was already familiar with the core concepts of the program, having finished a semester-long study with Harvard Graduate School’s Project Zero program. The Harvard program teaches ways of visualizing student thinking, and encourages student inquiry about artifacts like art. “This built directly off of the work I completed last fall through the Harvard Graduate School. The SAAM workshop introduced me to additional Project Zero thinking routines and to works of art that directly relate to my courses.” Though she studied a wide swath of the museum’s collection over the course of the week, Ms. Stedman was required to select one art piece and build a lesson around it. She chose Ralph Fasanella’s The Iceman Crucified #4. “The lesson explores the impact of the changes in city life, specifically on immigrant communities, between 1900 and 1930,” she said. One of the most beneficial aspects of the workshop is that Ms. Stedman brought home an astonishing number of resources. “I also learned how to use the Smithsonian Learning Lab, which will give students access to a plethora of Smithsonian resources,” Ms. Stedman said. “I am really excited to share all that I learned with my students.”
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| ministrāre • FALL 2019
This October, Ms. Stedman was able to plan lessons for her AP United States History class in collaboration with the Smithsonian. “We crafted a two-part lesson that explores the eighteenth-century concept of ‘republican motherhood’ - how women both embraced and challenged its ideology - between 1770 and 1920,” Ms. Stedman said. “I created the first day’s lesson and activities using resources from SAAM, the Library of Congress, and several other notable institutions.” Peg Koetsch, a SAAM curator, taught the second day of the lesson by video broadcast from the SAAM studio in DC, using artwork from the Smithsonian collection to extend student understanding of the ways people responded to the ideology. Ms. Stedman said, “the most rewarding result of integrating Project Zero thinking routines, especially when paired with SAAM resources, into my instruction has been to watch my students work together to answer complex historical questions using primary sources, and then to hear them express confidence in their own growth and depth of knowledge. I love it when I hear a student say to their peer, ‘Wow! I never considered [the topic] in that way.’” Ms. Stedman stands by The Iceman Crucified #4 by Ralph Fasanella. Ms. Stedman built a lesson plan around the painting.
