MA
Matthew Adelberg
matthew.h.adelberg@gmail.com www.matthewadelberg.com
Teaching Experience
Student Teacher
Carver Center for Arts and Technology| Baltimore, MD
March-May 2016
Designed and implemented units with 9-12 grade students. Focus: Painting as a vehicle to unpack and discuss self, identity, and culture. th
Student Teacher
Commodore John Rodgers| Baltimore, MD
January-March 2016
Designed and implemented units with 2 , and 6 -8 grade students. Focus: Identity in relation to Community nd
th
th
Teaching Intern The Greenmount School| Baltimore, MD
October-December 2015
Designed and implemented arts-integrated units with 6-8 grade humanities students. Focus: How Belonging/ Not Belonging impacts our identities, as well as the identities and conditions of cultures and communities around the world th
Adjunct Faculty
The Wesley Theological Seminary| Washington, DC
August-December 2015
Designed and implemented an art course with college seminary students. Focus: The intersection of Art and Spirituality
Instructor
The Young Peoples Studio
The Maryland Institute College of Art | Baltimore, MD
June 2015
Designed and implemented two courses with 9-12th grade students. Focus: Portfolio Preparation: Observational Drawing and Oil Painting Techniques
Teaching Intern
Mount Saint Joseph’s High School| Baltimore, MD
January-April 2015
Designed and implemented units with 9-12th grade students. Focus: Internal v. External Identity, what decisions do we make to externally show who we are?
Instructor
The Creative Alliance| Baltimore, MD
June–August, 2012-14
Designed and implemented classes with K-12 students. Focus: Self-Discovery and Identity; Art as a means of critical thinking and questioning
Lead Instructor & Youth Director
Beth Am Synagogue| Baltimore, MD
January 2012-Present
Design and implement curriculum for a problem-based, choice-based Jewish education program with 2-10th grade students. Lead and empower a team of teachers and work closely with the Director of Education to ensure teacher, student, and program growth. Work with the Director of Education to plan, organize and run various youth group events and trips, mentoring and empowering students from 6-10th grade outside of the classroom setting. Focus: Ethics and Values, Hebrew, Social Justice, Jewish Culture, and Israel.
Education
Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) The Maryland Institute College of Art
Expected Graduation May 2016
Current GPA: 4.0
Bachelor of Fine Art (BFA)
The Maryland Institute College of Art
May 2015
Majored in Painting, Minored in Art History GPA: 3.8
The Nerdrum Institute
2014
Apprenticed with the famed painter Odd Nerdrum Presentations
Selected Awards
National Art Education Association National Convention Presented on a forum focused on Arts Education and Social Justice.
2016
Maryland Teachers of Promise Award
2016
Maryland Winner, Figure 50
2015
Marcella Brenner Scholarship
2015
First Place, National Juried Show, Batesville Art Council
2014
The Elizabeth Greenshields’ Grant
2013
First Place, National Talent Search, Behance
2013
Novice Teacher of the Year Award, Center for Jewish Education
2012
NFAA Young Arts Silver Medal Finalist, Painting
2012
Solo Exhibitions
Selected Group Exhibitions
The Peter Marcelle Project, Manhattan, NY Carver Center For Arts and Technology, Towson, MD, Visiting Artist
2015
The Alchemy of Art, Baltimore, MD, On Death
2014
The Dadian Gallery, Washington, D.C., Lineage
2014
Galerie Myrtis, Baltimore, MD, Consumption; Food as Paradox
2016
Gallery CA, Baltimore, MD, Xenos
2015
Gallery 1301, Baltimore, MD, Perfect Strangers
2015
The Peter Marcelle Project, South Hamptons, NY
2015
Gallery 1301, Baltimore, MD, Innumera
2015
Blank Slate Gallery, Saratoga, FL
2014
The Batesville Art Council, Batesville, AR
2014
Fox Gallery, Baltimore, MD, Mastering Painting
2014
Fox Gallery, Baltimore, MD, Juried MAT Show
2011-14
Fox Gallery, Baltimore, MD, Juried Undergraduate Show
2012-13
The Creative Alliance, Baltimore, MD, The Big Show
2012-13
The Brown Gallery, Baltimore, MD, Mask-u-linity
2012-13
The Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL
2012
Tuscany, Italy, The Landscape
2010
(Upcoming)
2
Transformative Art Education Matthew Adelberg A Dire Need for Transformation
While teaching Art in Baltimore, Maryland I have met a concerning large number of students (ranging from ages 7-18) who have expressed feelings of not being heard, not being valued, or not having a voice in their education. They don’t feel that the education system values them.
Educational inequality, linked directly with poverty, linked undeniably with race, is running rampant in our country (Kozal, 1991).
This sentiment is multiplied tenfold when I have spoken with urban students from low socioeconomic situations. I still believe (and hope you do too) that education should empower our youth. It breaks my heart that in many schools across the country, education does the opposite. Educational inequality, linked directly with poverty, linked undeniably with race, is running rampant in our country (Kozal, 1991). Research by Johns Hopkins sociologist, Karl Alexander (2014) suggests that students born into low socioeconomic situations all but have their future set out for them. They don't have access to fair education; an education that addresses their needs and empowers them. Our education system is, in many ways, still segregated and the disparity is monstrous. When there are schools that still use typewriters because they can’t afford computers and a school a few miles away has 200 new computers, we must know that there is a problem (Kozal, 2005).
1 2
Our education system is, in many ways, still segregated and the disparity is monstrous.
"The implication is where you start in life is where you end up in life…It's very sobering to see how this all unfolds." -Karl Alexander Research by Johns Hopkins sociologist, Karl Alexander, suggests that students born into low socioeconomic situations all but have their future set out for them.
2
When there are schools that ration pencils and paper, for fear that they won’t be able to afford paper mid-way through the year, but the high school I went to, a 20 minute drive away, just got an 11 million dollar new building, we must know something is wrong. The students getting the short end of this deal are suffering immensely.
better their situation" (SicklerVogt, 2006, p.158). They deserve to be equipped with tools and knowledge so that they may be agents of change. They deserve transformative experiences. They deserve more. I believe that Transformative Education (Freire, 1987) is the solution. Transformative Education is not an interest, but a necessity.
Many of our students don’t have a way to voice their pain and frustration and I believe our education system, as it stands, doesn’t provide them the needed outlet.
Learning and Teaching As a Practice For Freedom
Low socioeconomic, urban students need a voice. They need an outlet. They deserve to be empowered, validated, heard, and respected just as every other student does. They deserve a culturally relevant, responsive curriculum. They deserve an education that empowers and allows them to better their own situation because "all people [with the appropriate tools and knowledge] can work together to solve their problems and
Transformative education is generative, focuses on large, connected themes, and “problematizes”(Freire, 1985), or encourages, participants to challenge and think critically about ourselves and the world we live in. Based in mutual “creation and re-creation of knowledge” (Shor, 1987, p. 8), transformative approaches to education mean that teachers and students both need to be active subjects in their own learning.
“Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.”
Paulo Freire
Employing this approach to education creates a place where teachers and students can grow and be empowered together. In this way, knowledge isn’t something given but mutually discovered The Goal of through a dialogical method (Shor, 1987) and problem-based learning Transformative (Freire & Shor, 1987). In other words, genuine learning happens through discussion and critical dialogue, where we empower students Education is, in to ask questions, discuss, and think critically about themselves, their essence, freedom context, and society as a whole. Through dialogue, students are encouraged to problematize the world around them and to challenge (hooks, 1998). themselves, the social norms, and context from which they come. We, as a community, may then begin to discuss, investigate, research, and respond to the problems we have honed in on using art-making practices. The goal of Transformative Education is, in essence, freedom (hooks, 1998). This freedom can be attained by engaging learners in critical dialogue, questioning, researching, and problem solving focused on student’s lived realities. I believe that, through this approach to education, students will become empowered critical thinkers and gain greater confidence and understanding in their agency. One of the cornerstones to Transformative Education (Knight, 2006) is the idea that our approaches to education should be concretely situated within the community we serve, that we should view our students in the context of their reality. This enables the teacher to contextualize learning within the students’ experiences. In order to do this, students’ voices and input must be valued and taken into consideration. By remaining open to our students’ ideas and input in our practices as educators, we may allow students to take mutual ownership of their learning. Creating a culturally responsive approach, where curriculum and planning incorporates, responds to, addresses, and translates the student’s life experiences and cultural ways into relevant instruction and learning, is paramount to success in Transformative Education (Ladson-Billings, 1998). Transformative Education is generative, focuses on large, connected themes, and problematizes our context and ourselves. Employing this approach to education means creating a place where teachers and students can grow and be empowered together.
3
Roots of Transformative Education
Transformative Education, through the prompting of dialogue, encourages students to challenge themselves and the social norms/ context they come from.
Transformative Education developed out of direct opposition to the standardized, factory model of education. Standardized approaches (Stankiewicz, 2001), in an attempt to train students to be factory workers, essentially de-skilled them (Apple, 1982; Kincheloe, 2004). By only teaching lower and middle class students just enough to be equipped to work efficiently in a factory setting, denying them the more intellectually challenging education that their more wealthy counterparts received, Standardized Education denied students the questioning, problem solving, and critical thinking skills necessary for upward social mobility. Furthermore, the ideas and approaches of manual training in schools (where students who weren’t white, male, or in upper socioeconomic classes were only taught the skills necessary to do manual labor) introduced in 1880 not only preserved social and ethnic caste systems, but also reflected a desire to maintain the status quo in gender relations, assuming that gender differences, as well as racial and ethnic differences, were innate, not cultural" (Stankiewicz, 2001, p.56). In contrast with standardized models, Transformative Education asserts that knowledge isn’t something controlled and given at the discretion of a teacher, but mutually discovered through dialogical method (Shor, 1987) and problem-based learning (Freire & Shor, 1987).. Standardized models, in their attempts to address and meet the needs of society as a whole, leave little room for, and deny individual students the opportunity to formulate their own goals, and beliefs. In denying students this autonomy, Standardized Education encourages dependency and passivity and distorts student’s views by presenting absolute truths, further “undermining the kind of social consciousness needed to bring about change and social transformation (Eisner, 2002; Breuing, 2011). Transformative Education, through the prompting of dialogue, encourages students to challenge themselves and the social norms/context they come from in order to develop a critical social consciousness, empowering students to be change agents. As change agents, we (as students and teachers together) can begin to discuss, investigate, research, and respond to the problems we (both individually and as a community) face.
4
1 2
Critics would say that problembased, dialogical methods, and emergent curriculum scaffolded around students (as found in transformative education) would take too much work. This scaffolding and emergent curriculum doesn’t allow for the same predetermined destination set by the teacher that Standardized Models allow for. Instead, the destination is something mutually determined by students and teachers. This requires an incredible amount of flexibility and willingness to plan around your student's needs, which demands an enormous amount of work and time. However, “it holds out a potential of creativity and breakthrough which gives it unusual rewards, mutual illumination …[that] critically orients students [and teachers] to society and animates their critical thinking” (Freire & Shor, 1987). Surely, with those prospective rewards, any amount of work is worth it. What is learning and teaching in Transformative Education? Learning is mutually created. Viewed in this way, it has the potential to be an effective, validating, and empowering act. An act that happens through our interactions, investigations, and questioning. Learning comes out of questioning. Critical questioning of our surroundings, our world, our experiences, and ourselves generates student and teacher dialogue about our own realities and fosters deep, meaningful, 5
relevant learning. Through this dialogue, learning, knowledge, and understanding are “created and re-created by students and teachers in their classrooms" (Shor, 1987, p. 8). Learning comes out of engaging with different and diverse arrays of experiences. Each student in the classroom comes to the table with a different experience in some way. The difference in experience and viewpoint allows for more learning from each other (Davis, Sumara, & Luce-Kapler, 2015). Learning is constructed socially and within a communal context. To understand learning through the lens of Transformative Education, we must also understand what it is not. “[Transformative] Education is not carried on by “a” for “b” or by “a” about “b” but rather “a” with “b” (Freire, 1968, p. 82). Learning, in this sense, is not about memorization of facts, or the banking system of education. It is not conducted in a way in which learning, knowledge, or understanding is treated as if it is an object to be given to students. Transfer-of knowledge approaches to education are burdensome, because they can’t work (Shor, 1987). Knowing
something is not eating facts; Transfer-of-knowledge approaches to education have, and continue to, produce an enormous amount of student resentment and resistance because it denies students their own voice in their education. Learning is constructed, not passed on. Learning is not predetermined, and the educator’s job is not to necessarily prescribe the learning to students, but to ensure that the right conditions are present to grow the potential of their students individually and collectively. Specifically, we must cultivate a safe, nurturing, respectful, and challenging environment so that we may simultaneously learn from, and empower, student voices. Learning is supported by trust, care, and relationships. This relates to the ideas of Authentic Education (Davis, et al., 2015) in that we (as educators) should attempt to amplify and encourage individual student growth through knowing and nurturing their specific needs. In doing so, we create a culture that addresses, empowers, and encourages them.
“[Transformative] Education is not carried on by “a” for “b” or by “a” about “b” but rather “a” with “b” (Freire, 1968, p. 82). Paulo Freire, 1921-1997
1 2
A st udent is mor e like ly to be infl uenced b y “background dis course than the t eache r’s pedagogy, since those background discourses are the learner’s mean s for deciphering sch ool” (Davis, et al., 2015, p age 146)
Transformative Education takes Authentic Education (Davis, et al., 2015) a step further. Transformative Education (Rolon-Dow, 2005) says that learning not only involves individual’s unique interests and competencies, but also their context in the world. Their context includes from where (culturally, geographically, ethnically, socioeconomically, etc.), and what (experiences, family, etc.) they come from. Learning is relevant to lived experience. Who knows better about their lives and contexts than the students themselves? In order to learn from and include each student and their context, you must actively involve your students in your practice as an educator. Learning is cooperative. Context Matters Students do not exist in a vacuum, and as such, learning in transformative education cannot be approached without first addressing the context of each student and the student body as a whole. This attention to context is paramount because, as Brent Davis, acclaimed writer and education theorist says, a student is more likely to be influenced by “background discourse than the teacher’s pedagogy, since those background discourses are the learner’s means for deciphering school” (Davis, et al., 2015, page 146). In other words, the background from where the student comes is the lens through which they view their education; so, in order to effectively empower our students, we must first learn to
see through their lens. In summary, I believe that genuine learning is contextualized within a student’s experience, as proposed in Transformative Education. It’s about critical thinking, not memorization. Learning, through transformative practices, is not about test scores but about a relationship to how one lives (hooks, 1998). Transformative education responds to students’ actual personal lives and to the institutional barriers they, their community, and their culture encounter. It seeks to promote dialogue and questioning, and enables students to think critically through problembased learning (Shor, 1987). Using problem-based learning and dialogical methods in transformative education, genuine learning asks questions and encourage searching. If one does all of these things, learning is allowed to become liberating, cooperative, and relevant. REsearch community, culture, and individual student assets The most important part of implementing Transformative Education into your classroom is to investigate and learn about your students, their community, and the challenges they face as individuals, neighborhoods, cultures, etc. Just as your education practice in Transformative Education involves students in a way that allows them to become part of the process and gain autonomy over their education, your research into the community must involve community members as well.
This means that in your research and experience with the “A classroom that community and neighborhood, you start by actively involving the employs a more residents as a fundamental part of your research. In this way, you holistic model of may learn more about the community and its successes and learning will also be challenges through the lens of those who experience it, instead of through your lens as someone outside of the community. “Learners a place where from different backgrounds will derive different-perhaps radically teachers grow and different- understandings from the same situation”(Davis et al., 2015, are empowered in p. 146), so understanding the lens through which your students may the process. “ see and engage in their education is paramount to both their, and your success. Having an emergent, relevant curriculum is the first step in (hooks, 1998, p.12-13) engaging, respecting, and learning with students, as reflected in the tenets of Transformative Education. Now that we can approach education with a more holistic knowledge of our students, their backgrounds (culture, history, context, neighborhood), race, socioeconomic status, as well as the struggles, successes, and barriers that stem from these things, we, as a community of learners, can begin to identify (with the help of the community and the students) key themes, problems, and topics that are relevant to the context of our students’ realities. These themes, problems, and topics become the framework for curriculum. We can then begin to frame our art problems (prompts), essential questions, enduring understandings, and ways of being (and knowing) around these relevant themes, problems, and topics. In Practice A progressive school in Baltimore, Maryland is an exemplary example of this. They have meetings in which students share issues they are passionate about, things happening in their lives, concerns about their community and world, and general interests. The faculty of the school, using student feedback, begins to develop pointed and specific essential questions they hope to engage students with around the topics. Students are confronted with the questions developed and then spend an extended period of time meeting with experts in the respective field, researching the issue, looking at real life examples, formulating solutions, and then developing responses. These responses are then showcased, sent to experts, politicians, and community leaders. By having students show, discuss, and advocate their work, solutions, and responses to these cultural problems they’ve confronted, students are empowered and encouraged to be confident agents of change. Students from this school have protested, spoke at rallies, spoken at school board meetings, written to politicians, grappled with complex questions like “whose history is taught?” and much more. Dialogue between students and teachers Just as we have involved our students in our research and began to develop student centered, emergent curricula, we must also engage our students in their own learning. Dialogical method begs that we engage critically with our students; in which we allow (and encourage) them to question, discuss and think critically about themselves, their context, society, and the problems that emerged in our prior research. Through this dialogue, we can begin to hone in on further conflicts, problems, areas of inequity, successes, or areas that deserve more attention overall. Using a problem-based learning model (Shor, 1987) teachers can then begin to work with the students to research, learn, and create work that responds to, describes, or in some way seeks to address the issues, and questions that emerged from the over-arching theme or problem. A problem-based approach to learning provides the core structure for learning content and skills through student exploration, research, and response. Student involvement is integral in determining the direction of their project with “student-monitored organizational structures (e.g., calendars, checklists, rubrics, criteria)” (Expeditionary Learning, 2011, p.21). This dialogue, and Transformative Education (Freire, 1985; Shor, 1987; Delpit, 1988; hooks, 1998), though, is not just focused on student learning (Knight, 2006). Transformative Education asserts that the teacher must also become a student and be actively engaged with assessing and actualizing themselves.
In doing so, learning becomes new territory mutually discovered by both teacher and student. When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones asked to share and confess…[this pedagogy] doesn’t simply seek to empower students. A classroom that employs a more holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow and are empowered in the process. (hooks, 1998, p.12-13) Teachers, alongside their students, examine, grapple with, and dialogue about their own context and are “mindful of how they are complicit in constructions of rightness and normality… the teacher here [in transformative learning] is more than an agent of their society; they are a powerful shaping agent of culture” (Davis et al., 2015).
All of these pioneers, both historic and modern, of Transformative Education share the common goal of empowering and inspiring students and teachers to be transforming agents of change and social reform.
History to today One of the leading figures and philosophers of the transformative education movement was Latin American Liberationist Paulo Freire in 1970. Working with poor, often illiterate, impoverished people in Brazil, Freire developed ideals for education that would improve the lives of oppressed populations. Freire realized that schools were dehumanizing barriers to the authentic education of the poor, and began developing strategies for students to both be empowered and empower themselves. The goal of this intervention was to establish social consciousness and student confidence in their own agency, so that they would be able to work towards social change and justice. He called this liberatory action. In the 1970’s and 80’s United States scholars also began to incorporate Transformative Education practices, as a means toward liberatory action, in their practice. Inspired by John Dewey, a renowned social and education reformer, who believed that art is an experience that facilitates the reconstruction of knowledge as well as a means to transform society (Stankiewicz, 2001), United States educators like Henry Giroux, Roger Simon, Patti Lather, and Ira Shore (Breuing, 2011) began to critique the intrinsic and extrinsic messages that schools, teachers, and society transmitted. Their goal was to “ realize the possibility of more democratic social values in their classes” (Breuing, 2011, p. 4). These ideas of bringing democratic social values into classrooms and approaching learning as means to transform society have since been expanded upon by feminist theorists and educators like Caroline Shrewsbury, bell hooks, and Kathleen Weiler (Breuing, 2011). They have developed and worked with these ideas to “emphasize the importance of consciousness raising, the existence of oppressive social structures and the need to change them, and the possibility of social transformation” (Weiler, 2011, p.68 as cited in Breuing, 2011). All of these pioneers, both historic and modern, of Transformative Education share the common goal of empowering and inspiring students and teachers to be transforming agents of change and social reform. Conclusion In schools where student’s voices aren’t valued and students have very little opportunity to discuss, process, question and challenge their lives, a transformative art education is exactly what is needed. By having a culturally relevant, emergent curriculum centered around students’ lives and by giving students space to make artwork addressing their lives we, as educators, tell students that they matter. Transformative art experiences give “language to core experiences that may escape our full comprehension without artistic interpretation” (Harris-Perry, 2015). Making the art piece or artifact serves as a way of knowing, allowing students to take risks and learn through a different frame of reference (Lee, N.P. 2013). What is our goal as art educators, if not to allow students to explore (through making and creating) emotional associations and responses, and influence how they think about topics dear to them (Lee, N.P. 2013)?
Transformative art experiences are empowering and inspiring to both students and teachers. The questions and real world issues these experiences raise and focus on empower students to be agents of change and social reform. I believe Transformative art education is the voice students are longing for, and the one that they desperately need.
Transformative art education is the voice students are longing for, and the one that they desperately need.
References Alexander, K. (2014, June). The long shadow. Retrieved November 20, 2015, from https://www.russellsage.org/publications/long-shadow Center for American Progress. (n.d.). Child poverty by the numbers. Retrieved November 15, 2015, from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/poverty/news/2010/09/16/8346/child-poverty-by-thenumbers/ Davis, B., Sumara, D., & Luce-Kapler, R. (2015). Engaging minds: Cultures of education and practices of teaching. New York, NY: Routledge. Delpit, L. (1988). The silenced dialogue: power and pedagogy in educating other people's children. Harvard Educational Review, 58(3), 280-299. doi:10.17763/haer.58.3.c43481778r528qw4 Desai, D. (n.d.). The challenge of new colorblind racism in art education. Retrieved September 10, 2015, from http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-2131148991.html Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). London: Penguin. Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Harris-Perry, Melissa (2015). Black lives matter (PowerPoint) Hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. Knight, W. B. (2006). E(raced) bodies in and out of sight/cite/site. The Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, (26), 323. Kozol, J. (1991. Savage inequalities: children in america's schools. New York: Crown Pub. Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of the nation: the restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York: Crown. Lee, N. P. (2013). Engaging the pink elephant in the room: Investigating race and racism through art education. Studies in Art Education, 54(2), 141. Nieto, S. (2008). Nice is not enough: defining caring for students of color. Everyday antiracism: Getting real about race in school, 28-31. Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound. (2011). Expeditionary learning core practices: A vision for improving schools. New York, NY: Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound. Rol贸n-Dow, R. (2005). Critical care: a color (full) analysis of care narratives in the schooling experiences of Puerto Rican girls. American Educational Research Journal, 42(1), 77-111. Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). A pedagogy for liberation: dialogues on transforming education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Shor, I. (1980). Critical teaching and everyday life. Boston: South End Press. Sickler-Vogt, D. (2006). From out of sight to "outa sight!" collaborative art projects that empower children with at-risk tendencies. Retrieved September 20, 2015. Teacherlink.org. (n.d.). Child worker textile [Digital image]. Retrieved November 20, 2015, from http://www.teacherlink.org/content/social/instructional/industrialrevolution/childworkertextile.jpg Walker, M. A. (2014). From theory to practice- concept-based inquiry in a high school art classroom. Studies in Art Education, 55(4), 287.