EDUCATOR GUIDES

Browse by topic:
Dance | Music | New Media | Theater | Visual Arts

VISUAL ARTS

A Few Good Stories: Jaime Guerrero

This Educator Guide is about glass blowing, the dynamic work of Jaime Guerrero, Mayan and Aztec iconography, and the history of glass work in art and architecture.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

A Matter of Access: NIAD

This Educator Guide addresses the notion of "outsider art" and "art of the insane" amidst the larger question of artistic practice.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

All Natural: Jim Denevan and Chris Drury

This Educator Guide is about the history and tradition of artists making work in and about the natural environment.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Art Frees the Soul: Sixth Street Photography Workshop

This Educator Guide is about the history of photography.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Art Goes Back to School: Young Audiences of Northern California

This Educator Guide explores the history of arts education in California and the Bay Area and provides a wide array of local resources.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Art Meets Pop Culture: Keith Knight

This Educator Guide explores the history and form of the cartoon.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Artist in Search of a Medium: Jonathon Keats

This Educator Guide explores the history of Conceptual art and the role of science in contemporary art.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

By Hand: Gary Stevens

This Educator Guide is about the history and tradition of wood carving.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Collectors and Their Collections: Rene di Rosa

This Educator Guide addresses collecting as a personal preference, public tradition, and national obsession.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Educational Tool: Approaching Your Bias

This Educational Tool provides tips for facing the inherent challenges of teaching about contemporary artists and their work.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Educational Tool: Arts Assessment

This educational tool describes the role of assessment in a standards-based visual and performing arts classroom. This document also provides several options for substantive forms of assessment in the arts.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Educational Tool: Arts Classroom Tips

This educational tool provides classroom management tips, teaching strategies, and pedagogies for classrooms dedicated to Visual Arts, Music, Dance, and/or Theater.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Educational Tool: Connections, Relations and Applications

This educational tool provides direction for making connections between the various arts disciplines, between the arts and other subject areas, and careers in the arts.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Educational Tool: Developing Arts Programs

This educational tool is a comprehensive list of foundations and organizations offering funding for arts education programs in Northern California.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Educational Tool: Literacy-Based Instructional Strategies

This Educational Tool provides literacy-based instructional strategies that may be used in conjunction with arts media screenings in the classroom.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Educational Tool: Media Literacy

This Spark Educational tool is an informational document about media literacy providing ideas for engaging your students with media-viewing activities.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Educational Tool: Media Tips

This Educational Tool provides techniques for using Spark in the classroom including critical viewing tips, media production terms and concepts, and talking points about media production and media literacy.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Educational Tool: Multiple Intelligences

This Educational Tool describes Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences and how it relates to Spark's educational programming and resources.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Educational Tool: Visual Arts Vocabulary

This document is a comprehensive vocabulary list related to Visual Arts.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Elevating the Everyday: Garry Knox Bennett

This Educator Guide addresses the history of art furniture.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Elevating the Everyday: Laurel True

This Educator Guide addresses the history and traditions of mosaic art and mosaic murals.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Elevating the Everyday: Richard Shaw

This Educator Guide traces the history of the trompe l'oeil technique in art up through the Bay Area movement of realism in ceramics.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Fame: Chris Johanson

This Educator Guide explores the history and tradition of street-based works and the field of painting.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

From Life: Viola Frey

This Educator Guide is about the history of ceramics and the contributions of Bay Area artists, including Frey.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

In Respect of Nature: Roman Loranc

This Educator Guide is about photography, landscape photography and Romanticism as a creative approach in art making.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Legacies: Julia Parker

This Educator Guide traces the history of basket weaving in the West Coast Indian populations.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Looking East: Thai Bui

This Educator Guide explores the history and traditions of Bay Area Funk, Conceptual art and Minimalism.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Needlework: Anna Von Mertens

This Educator Guide traces the history of quilting from the early 18th century through the present day, including group quilts, slave quilts, and contemporary quilts.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Needlework: Don Ed Hardy

This Educator Guide explores the tradition of tattooing from the earliest civilizations to the present day.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

New American Landscape: Trevor Paglen

This Educator Guide is addresses activist art through Paglens work.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Out and About: Todd Hido

This Educator Guide introduces students to Hido's art and provides an historical and critical context for the artists� evocative images of Bay Area homes and posed female models.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Paint x 3: Hung Liu

This Educator Guide addresses the different techniques Liu blends in her work, including history painting, and the high photorealism employed by the Communist government of the Cultural Revolution in China.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Paint x 3: Robert Bechtle

This Educator Guide address the history and evolution of photorealism in painting.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Playing with Technology: Joe Mangrum

This Educator Guide is about land and envioronmental art, and the cultural significance of mandalas.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Preservation: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

This Educator Guide addresses the scientific and artistic issues of preserving and conserving works of art.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Remembrance: Ann Chamberlain

This Educator Guide discusses the history of public monuments and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Spark 501: Lawrence Ferlinghetti

This Educator Guide includes language arts lesson plans related to visual critique and poetry analysis.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Spark 504: David Hevel

This Educator Guide includes a hands-on subversive collage activity and discussion points related to popluar culture and the influence of historical art traditions on contemporary art practices.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Spark 505: Adam5100

This Educator Guide discusses Aboriginal art practices and includes hands-on activities related to political printmaking and a critical writing assignment.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Spark 505: Caleb Duarte

This Educator Guide includes writing activities related to the idea of home, and an art activity in which students will build small structures out of found objects.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Spark 510: Jesus Aguilar

This Educator Guide includes a brief history of media art and analytical activties related to audience responses to this ever-growing genre of visual art.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Spark 511: Seyed Alavi

This Educator Guide includes analytical activites based on the use of text in artwork and research and discussion-based activities about public and conceptual art.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Spark 515: Mitra Fabian

This Educator Guide explores the work of sculptor Mitra Fabian, her contemporaries, and pioneer female sculptor Eva Hesse. Students will participate in writing, visual art, critical thinking, and mathematical activities.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Spark 516: Favianna Rodriguez

This Educator Guide includes activities related to analyzing artwork that supports social change and discusses the history of the Chicano Arts Movement (El Movimiento).
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Spark 608: Victor Cartagena

This Educator Guide explores the history of the Salvadoran civil war and the concepts and themes in Victor Cartagena's art installations.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Spark 701: Wayne Thiebaud

This Educator Guide provides historical information about the Pop Art movement and how it relates to Thiebaud's work. Also included are hands-on and discussion activities.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Spark 705: Kerry James Marshall

This Educator Guide provides information about contemporary artists' reimagined forms of history painting. Also included are lesson plan ideas and handouts of line drawings of the murals for students to study and color.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Spark: Amalia Mesa-Bains

This Educator Guide provides information about the history of Dia de Los Muertos and includes hands-on and discussion activities for the classroom.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Taking Craft to the Limit: Nikolas Weinstein

This Educator Guide introduces glass as an art medium, historically situating glass work.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

The Family Business: Ruth Asawa

This Educator Guide is dedicated to highlighting arts education in the Bay Area and the model programs established by Asawa and her family.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

The Fine Art of Collecting: John Held Jr.

This Educator Guide explores the history and many forms of Mail art and stamps.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

The Grey Eminences: David Ireland

This Educator Guide explores the history of Conceptual art and Ireland's contributions.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

The Influence of Memory: Christopher Brown

This Educator Guide is about figurative painting and the evocation of memory in art making.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

The Puppet Show: Sandow Birk

This Educator Guide is about history painting and storytelling.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

The Young and the Restless: The Oxbow School

This Educator Guide is about Oxbow and its sister programs - intensives that involve high-level studio work and critique for students in an atelier environment.
more...

Watch Video

Download Educator Guide

* * *

Threads: Consuelo Jiménez Underwood