Knowledge in art and art education is only one aspect of my students’ learning—experience is paramount. The heart of my teaching emphasizes the importance of being embedded in the discipline of art and art education. Believing that students are responsible for their learning, I promote collaboration, personal reflection, and lifelong learning. I develop innovative projects that offer students opportunities to combine their school experiences with experiences in the world outside the classroom to facilitate an iterative learning process of inquiry, research, and self-reflective practice. My art education curriculum bridges theory and practice through conversations about contemporary, educational, and artistic practices and dispositions, as well as connections to current issues, such as digital visual culture, local and global understanding, and political and policy issues impacting teaching and learning in today’s world.

Integrating theory and real-world knowledge is an integral part of being prepared for a professional career in art education. The contemporary art educator is now, more than ever, a versatile individual, exploring and synthesizing knowledge from a variety of sources. The co-development and the implementation of an online Master of Arts in Art Education program are built upon my extensive repertoire of teaching. Specifically, I have gained insight into how to best leverage the advantages of contemporary technologies in service of teaching and learning. As a result, I use a blended approach to learning with technology, demonstrating the best aspects of face-to-face and online instruction to expose students to the possibilities and limitations of technology in art education. At both the undergraduate and graduate level, I provide students with the following:

• challenging objectives
• practical experiences in a variety of art educational settings,
• opportunities to reflect with their peers, and
• encouragement to participate in professional practice through exhibition and conferences.

These challenges, opportunities, and encouragement should hopefully inspire students to reach their personal educational and artistic potential. Research, innovation, and reflection directly influence teaching practices by encouraging students to build a repertoire of instructional strategies. I encourage students to be innovative because teaching remains a dynamic and ever-changing field. I do not conceal my own struggles with innovative teaching. Failure should be valued as well as success, as long as the mistakes are recognized, analyzed, and acted upon to make informed decisions. Reflective processes further develop critical thinking and cognitive skills through constructing hypotheses and collecting and evaluating evidence to gain insight. For example, in a field experience at the Expressions Learning Arts Academy, which is a charter art focus elementary school in Gainesville, I guided art education students through the collaborative creation of art lessons, the implementation of those lessons to a group of third graders during the semester, and then through a daily reflective assessment of the experiences. Practical field experiences seamlessly immerse students in creative, critical, and reflective processes, which are all integral to building their identities.

Technology’s revolution in knowledge, perception, mediation, and representation of culture through expressive forms demands different art educational approaches from art educators, and a reorientation of technology within art education. The ubiquitous nature of the human-computer cultural-interface is the frontier in which technology (new digital media) and culture (beliefs, values, and assumptions) converge.

“In short, we are no longer interfacing to a computer but to culture encoded in digital form.” –Manovich (2001)

In response to digital communication, visual art education and real-world context personal expression coalesce in my classroom as part of the foundation for empowering students through critical inquiry, technology, and visual culture—a continual process of action and reflection on visual learning and digital communication in the 21^st century.

Mentoring Style. I describe my mentoring style as holistic, empowerment-oriented, cross-culturally informed and responsive, inspirational, compassionate, and excellence driven. My contributions to mentoring are to relate to student research interests, career goals, and practical applications of developing capabilities, and providing through questioning critical and constructive feedback. Quality mentoring happens through active listening and the acknowledgement by mentor and mentee of the need to learn about each other. This along with giving mentees encouragement, support, and priority, whether they desire to become a researcher like me or not. This style of mentoring has enabled many of my mentees to achieve success under the many conditions that exist in their lives.

“In order to be a mentor, and an effective one, one must care. You must care. You don’t have to know how many square miles are in Idaho, you don’t need to know what is the chemical makeup of chemistry, or of blood or water. Know what you know and care about the person, care about what you know and care about the person you’re sharing with.” – Maya Angelou

I having been a mentor since beginning my career in art education, I have peer mentored which is mentorship that often takes place between a person who has lived through a specific experience (peer mentor) and a person who is new to that experience (the peer mentee). I have learned that academic/research mentoring must include giving the personal support and care that mentees often need to manage the challenges of feeling professionally isolated in their programs and institutions.

I am also passionate about the academic and research training aspects of my mentoring. These mentoring aspects include my continual academic and research growth, actively and deliberately creating “real world” opportunities for my graduate students to engage in an active and sustainable development in professional practice of art education. Many of these real-world opportunities occur as part of grant-funding and publishing opportunities to promote the research they are conducting. These are experiences that cannot be learned in just the academic environment but are important for the emerging generation of researchers and national leaders in art education who will have the desire to grow with their research accomplishments whether that is in their teaching practice, advocacy, policy, or future research.

My mentees gain the benefits that come from years of my experience in art education as an artist/educator, member of professional communities such as FAEA, VAEA, PAEA, AERA AP Portfolio, curricular committees at the local and state level and as an administrator who developed and implemented program such as The Governor’s School for the Arts (1982) and the UF Online MA in Art Education (2009).

Evidence of Mentoring Effectiveness. I consider mentoring and advising a major part of my appointment at The University of Florida, that is to be accessible to students and mentees for advising, mentoring, and discussion. There is much evidence of the effectiveness of my mentoring style, including the following: (a) the many graduate students whose research I have chaired, (b) awarded by a student the 2019 Anderson Scholar Faculty Honoree, (c) active engagement of my graduated mentees in art education research or job-related or profession-related leadership roles, and in community service roles

Magic lies in challenging what seems impossible. – Carol M. Braun

My style is grounded in a self-empowerment model of achievement (Tucker, 2000) which asserts that the goal is to promote self-motivation to learn, self-control in the learning process, self-praise of success efforts and outcomes, skills and experiences for reaching goals and harnessing success, and asking for wanted and needed support.

I engage research in terms of the theory of useful applications of art education practices to which the research can be applied. Thus, my mentoring provides my mentees with guidance and insights from my collective experience as an artist and art educator across the K-12 arena and higher education in diverse settings. I want my mentees to utilize these insights to discover new avenues of study, explore potential arenas for their work experience and cultivate research interests. I am an advocate for mentees and students, sharing their research and interests to the professional community to further their goals. I am extremely proud of the research and careers that I have empowered that will further enable my mentees and research associates to continue to do their life’s work.

Resources:

• Argente-Linares, Eva; Pérez-López, M. Carmen; Ordóñez-Solana, Celia (2016). Practical experience of blended mentoring in higher education. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 24(5): 399–414.
• Phillips-Jones, L. (2003). Skills for successful mentoring. In The mentor’s guide: How to be the kind of mentor you once had—or wish you’d had. The Mentoring Group, CA. Retrieved from https://my.lerner.udel.edu/wp-content/uploads/Skills_for_Sucessful_Mentoring.pdf
• Tucker, C. (2000). Promoting success in math among African American female children: A self-empowerment approach. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 28(1/2), 143-157.