Classes & Workshops

COURSES:

Integration of Handmade Books Across All Content Areas
Instructors Betty Luz and Sheila Foley

Course description:
This course looks at the integration of handmade books in the classroom and its relationship to learning theories.   Hands-on sessions give participants an opportunity to construct these books for any discipline or grade level.  In addition, participants obtain an insider's view of the children's book publishing process.  Hand-crafted books integrate Frameworks content and foster critical thinking skills.(K-12).
Participants should have resources for their own content areas on hand in order to produce useable book prototypes.

Medieval Immersion
A 3-credit graduate course
Instructors: Hope Luder (history) & Sheila Foley (arts)

Course description:
Travel back in time through history and art in this interdisciplinary, hands-on course. Increase your knowledge of medieval lifestyles, individuals, inventions, architecture, legends, and new research on women. Emphasis on frameworks topics. Sing, dance, feast, and create a "medieval" play, make coats-of-arms, illuminated manuscripts, simple costumes, and more. Share lesson plans and present your medieval "autobiography."

Native American History and Culture
A 3-credit graduate course
Instructors: Sheila Foley and Hope Luder

Course description:
In this interdisciplinary history/art course, participants will increase their content knowledge (with emphasis on the frameworks) and replicate artifacts. Topics include: Native American influences on the larger society, heroes and heroines, analysis of media stereotypes and prejudices, attitudes toward nature, community and women. Participants will develop and share curriculum units, write an essay as a Native American, and create craft items including: paper bag moccasins, "birch bark" canoes, corn husks dolls, weaving, pottery and baskets. Adaptable to K-12 classrooms.

Understanding Mexico
A 3-credit graduate course
Instructors: Hope Luder and Sheila Foley

Course description:
This course will examine Mexico's culture and look at how Mexico is very different from the U.S. HISTORICAL TOPICS emphasized: social revolution and struggles for social justice, heroes, (from Sister Juana to Zapata to Cesar Chavez to subcommandante Marcos). Mexico as a Latin American and third world country, Mexican-American history and influence on the U.S.
CULTURAL TOPICS include: holidays, recipes, indigenous crafts, great art and architecture, mutual stereotypes. HANDS -ON ARTS AND CRAFTS ACTIVITIES may include: ofrendas, bark paintings, tin ornaments, paper flowers. One hundred and fifty pages of handouts including primary sources and instructions for hands-on activities teachers may wish to use in their own classes.

The Wild West and the Frontier
A 3-credit graduate course
Instructors: Sheila Foley and Hope Luder

Course description:
Natural wonders, pioneer sagas, violent heroes, native resistance, Mexican influences, Crazy Horse, Daniel Boone, Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Annie Oakley. This interdisciplinary, multi-cultural course will examine these topics and more, including art & literature, recent scholarship on the effects of the frontier on the American character and cultural stereotypes. Emphasis on frameworks topics. Activities to be practiced include: music, dance, costumes, paper quilts, role-playing, weaving, brands/logos, wanted posters and more.

American Roots: Art and Music of the Heartland NEW
Instructors: Frances Sacco (music) and Sheila Foley (art)
A 3-credit graduate course

Course description:
This course stirs the melting pot of American culture to allow its core ingredients- folk art and music - to surface. Participants explore, through primary sources, oral/aural tradition, and hands-on crafting, the road that colonists, pioneers, and slaves traveled in search of their American dream. Teachers of art, music, science, social studies, literature or elementary classrooms benefit from this study of American cultural heritage. Art and/or music skills are definitely not a prerequisite.