I visited a class of 11th grade students in the Academy of Hospitality and Tourism at #GalileoHighSchool. The students were working on revising their resumes, giving each other advice. They had a homework assignment due the following week to create a 90 second advertisement about themselves.

They were at a point where they needed to take a new look at their skill sets and experience to decide what about themselves they want to advertise - a good point in the process to use art.

I showed this students two KQED Art School videos featuring David Huffman discussing his process for taking a topic he is interested in and abstracting it. I found it also useful to show the students other art by Huffman from KQED’s slide show. The works in the slide show demonstrate more examples of narrative emerging from the abstraction.You can make something abstract, then find new meaning in the strange images you’ve created. This is a fantastically useful routine for the classroom and the studio.

I told students that this is an experiment and that I was looking forward to seeing what they would create. When they asked, “Can I…” I said “yes.”

To help clarify  expectations, I gave students a self-assessment rubric to fill out. I gave this to them after they started, but at the beginning of the period on the second day of the assignment.