UA Little Rock Students Empower Young Artists at Easterseals Academy

In a unique partnership between the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Easterseals Arkansas, a dedicated group of college students have taken on the role of art educators to provide art classes to the students at Easterseals Academy.

Students in the art education class Differentiation and Inclusion have spent 10 weeks during the spring semester teaching art classes to K-12 students at Easterseals Academy, a private school for children with disabilities.

In the Differentiation and Inclusion course, Emily Hood, assistant professor and coordinator of art education at UA Little Rock, teaches art education majors about different ways to integrate students with disabilities into the art classroom, ensuring that the opportunity to learn about and create art is open to all students.

"All students bring their own experience and interests to the table," Hood said. "Everyone is capable of creating art. One of our aims is to help these pre-service teachers have the confidence to work with all children and see that kids are capable of many different things. We want preservice art educators to know how to differentiate to meet each child's needs.

Karye Brockert, director of Easterseals Academy, said the private school reached out to the UA Little Rock School of Art and Design for help with art classes since the school does not have an art teacher.

"I think it's a win-win for both Easterseals and UA Little Rock," Brockert said. "It's given our students opportunities in art that they wouldn't have, and they love having visitors. On the flip side, UA Little Rock students get the experience of teaching our students. This is something you can't learn in a book. The hands-on experience of teaching to students is a powerful thing."

The 10 UA Little Rock students split into groups of two and spent five weeks teaching art classes to K-8 students and four weeks teaching high school students. They learned about a wide variety of artistic techniques, including 3D design, printmaking, painting, and collages.

"I am a printmaking artist by trade, so I developed a plate printmaking method where you draw on a plate and create a press that makes a perfect copy of the drawing," said Landon Tabor, a junior art education major. "I thought it was a huge success with the students. They loved pulling the print and seeing the image transfer from the plate to textile. Printmaking is an artform they probably won't get to do again until high school, so I think the students liked learning a bit of advanced artmaking."

Before the students began teaching at Easterseals Academy, they researched artists with disabilities and created lessons and a website based on this research. The website is meant to serve as a resource for the art education community. Emme Huey, a senior art education major, researched the artist Jesse Darling and created several lessons based on his work.

[Link]These are some of the art projects Easterseals Academy students created during art classes with UA Little Rock students.

"Jesse Darling is a disabled artist who completed art inspired by disabilities," Huey said. "He mostly had the theme of depicting animals in ways other than normal, so our lessons had the theme of animals. We did construction paper animals with precut shapes for our first lesson. We watched a video explaining the different types of shapes and how the students could create their own animals based on shape. It was a lot of fun for the students and something they could all participate in."

Huey said the class has been an invaluable learning experience for her future as an art educator.

"I've learned a lot about how to keep children engaged in learning and how to assist students who aren't able to create art projects with their hands," Huey said. "We've been learning about how to integrate students with disabilities into the art classroom. It has been really helpful."

With passion and enthusiasm, these budding art educators are not only sharing their skills and knowledge but also inspiring a new generation of young creatives to explore the world of art. Their commitment to enriching the educational experience of these students serves as a shining example of the transformative power of mentorship and community engagement.

"This experience has completely opened my eyes to teaching," Tabor said. "If you asked me four months ago, I would have told you I'd only be happy teaching high school. Seeing their happy faces really tugged at my heart. I want to do that every day for my job."

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