Texas Trends in Art Education, 2010 Page: 15

                                
From Theory
to Practice,

"Much of the talk in teacher education, it is
,,ell known, has to do with discovery, plu-
Ilism, and what might be called
democratic" education; but this talk too
f)tten echoes hollowly when the teacher
tkes his place in the field without having
had an opportunity to come to terms with
discrepancy and conflict, without charting
his own life-world and deliberating on how
to choose for himself. (Greene, 1970, p.4)
Even though Maxine Greene penned those
words over forty years ago, they still reso-
nate today. As an art teacher educator, I help
preservice teachers make authentic connections be-
tween their university coursework and their future work
as art teachers. My work is accomplished as I help them
develop their teaching identity when they encounter
the realities of schools during field placements. In this
article, I will describe curriculum  I developed for a sen-
ior-level art education course at Texas Christian Univer-
sity (TCU) in fall 2008. This curriculum was a response to
current debate over addressing contemporary art in K-
12 classrooms'. In fall 2008, secondary art teachers in
Dallas Independent Schools were given the Public
Broadcasting System (PBS) ART 21 series for use in their
classrooms. Inclusion of works by artists Sally Mann and
Kara Walker were strongly protested by many art teach-
ers and parents. I asked TCU Art Education majors to
create secondary art curriculum that accompanied the
Kara Walker exhibition My Complement, My Enemy, My
Oppressor, My Love at the Modern Art Museum of Fort
Worth as part of their course requirements. Once their
curriculum was complete, I asked them to present it to
the art teachers they were observing for the semester
and interview them about using controversial images in
the classroom. My intent in designing this curriculum
was twofold: I wanted preservice teachers to explore
their beliefs about race and stereotypes and I wanted
them to begin to problematize some of the issues inher-
ent to teaching contemporary art in a public school sys-
tem.
THE (CRITICAL) THEORY
My teaching philosophy in the university is
heavily informed by my experiences as a
public school art teacher. I found that the
D)ublic school system of which I was a part often deskilled me
,Giroux, 1988) by providing ready-made art curricula focused on
lements and principles of design. While these are essential tools,
issues like race, gender, socioeconomic status and especially dis-
ability were eschewed by the administration at my school. As a
beginning teacher, I found that these were the issues that most
affected the learning outcomes of my students. I felt I needed to