From the Archives: Advocating for Art Education

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz. Today we are going to talk about advocacy strategies for the art room, and my guest will be Dr. Theresa Haugen. Dr. Haugen is an art teacher. She’s a curriculum specialist and associate professor at AOEU, and she’s involved with the Center for the Advancement of Art Education here at AOEU. A lot of people may not know about the CAAE, but it is an amazing resource for advocacy in art education. They’re working on advancing research and empowering educators, and they have a lot of great resources and tools that are available for everyone. So my favorite is the Visual Arts Advantage report. It’s kind of a comprehensive look at the arts that utilizes a ton of research and is wonderful for advocacy.

They also have research on specific topics like visual literacy and fine motor skills, and they run the State of Art Education survey, which AOEU has been doing for quite a few years now. Just getting responses from thousands of art teachers across the country to see what we all have happening in our art room. So all of that information for you is to kind of set the stage for today, and we’ll explain those things a little bit as needed in the conversation. But if you hear us today talking about the CAAE or the State of Art Ed survey, that is where we’re coming from. So a little context for you, but I want to get started on the actual conversation, the actual advocacy strategies. And Dr. Haugen is here, so let me bring her on and we will get the discussion going. All right, Dr. Teresa. Haugen is joining me now. Dr. Haugen, how are you?

I’m good. How are you?

I am great. I’m really looking forward to chatting with you today. We’ve worked together for a long time. You were on the Everyday Art Room podcast once upon a time. You’ve never been on Art Ed Radio though, so I’m very excited to have you here. So appreciate you joining me. We have a lot to talk about with advocacy, advocacy strategies. Before we do that, can you just give listeners an introduction, talk about what you’ve done as a teacher, what you do for AOEU now?

Absolutely. It’s funny, when I started in high school teaching, listening to Art Ed Radio and not realizing at some point I’d be on it.

I know! It’s exciting.

It’s exciting. So I came a rather unconventional to get to art education. I went to school to be a graphic designer. I worked as a graphic designer. And then back in graduate school I started working more with curriculum instruction department. And then, so I’ve taught both college and high school. In high school I did a lot of digital because that was my college background was graphic design. There was a lot of photography and graphic design, but I also taught painting and drawing a little bit of ceramics. Not wheel throwing, that’s not my forte, but everything around that. And then I came to AOEU as both associate professor. So I love teaching, as well as a research specialist in this Center for the Advancement of Art Education, which is through the Art of Education.

Yeah, and so can you just mention real quick the Center for the Advancement of Art Education? Can you just talk real briefly about what that is and what you do there?

Oh, absolutely. So what the Center for the Advancement of Art Education does, is it provides academic research and resources and support for innovation. We’re really looking at art education as a profession, what trends are there, trying to be on the pulse of what’s going on. And then also trying to kind of forecast where we want to be.

Yeah. Okay. I like that. That’s a good explanation. Thank you. And I guess we should just dive right in for the discussion on advocacy. I am personally a huge fan of advocacy because I think it works toward the sustainability of your art program. Making art and creativity and the great works that your kids are creating, making those visible. Making your program visible, making it feel like an essential part of the school, showing that art is something important for your students, art is something important for your school. And I guess I would just love your perspective on that too. For you, why do you think advocacy is important?

Yeah, I think that covers a lot. I mean, that visibility piece is so important. I think advocacy is our path toward validating our art discipline, and it creates meaningful change when we need that change. So as you mentioned, it takes all that fabulous work that happens in our classrooms. We know all the great stuff that we’re doing and all the great stuff that’s happening, but sometimes I feel like we’re the only ones that know that. So we want to make that visible. We want to make it known. We want to have our voices heard. So we know that too often, art programs are lacking funding and support. And we need to be seen and we need to make that learning visible.

Yeah, absolutely. And I guess my follow-up question to that is, how do we make that visible? And I would love to hear from you just what you’ve seen or what you’ve done as far as what kind of forms that advocacy can take. Just thinking about successful initiatives that you’ve done or that you’ve seen, what does advocacy look like for art teachers?

The great thing about advocacy is that it takes so many forms. It can be presented at a national conference. It could be advocating at the district level for change, or could just be taking a few minutes a day to create art and share that with your students. I feel like because we have that broad range, that people’s skills and abilities and interest and really personalities can sort of fit in where it fits in. So there’s a lot of opportunity there. I’ve presented at NAEA, I’ve done national conferences. I’ll be in Louisville excited about that.

And that’s a great way to connect to art educators directly and encourage them with initiatives. But there’s also ways that we can do it on a smaller scale. So during the pandemic, I spent a lot of time just looking at new art mediums. I did some coffee painting. I started knitting these chunky yarn hats. I’m not even a hat person, but I started doing these hats. So not a big surprise, a lot of those that were holiday gifts, but it was kind of a way to try new things. And it was great then to go back to the classroom and say, we’re painting with coffee today, my student, what? And some loved it, because it smelled so much better, they said than the paint.

That’s true. You can get some nasty-smelling paint sometimes. So that makes sense.

Yeah, especially when it’s been in that cupboard for a while and then you pull it out, starts separating and mix it. But those are ways too, so we can advocate in smaller ways if we need change in our classrooms, we go to districts obviously and advocate for those. I haven’t done anything beyond kind of setting a budget and really pushing for new equipment. But I’ve come into schools where I was the teacher that was going to move the digital program into art from the career tech side. And so there was a lot of advocating for, yes, we really do need a camera with these kinds of settings, and a couple lights would be really helpful. And so kind of advocating on that end too with the principal or up at a district level certainly is helpful.

And then it can also just be something quick though. I had a day where I was volunteering an art project for some first grade students for a friend of mine who is a first grade teacher, and they still don’t have any art in that particular elementary school. So they’re told, “Just put some art in your day, add it into your curriculum.” It doesn’t have that art background. So after I spent a day with those students, I sent an email to the principal and just thanked him for allowing me to come in. And then I sent him our visual arts advantage report from the Center for the Advancement of Art Education, which highlights the amazing benefits of visual arts. I don’t know if he actually read it. My job is to get it into his hands.

Yeah, I going to say can’t control it after that, but you can definitely do that. I also wanted to ask you too, I know you work a lot with grad students along with your work with CAAE. So can you talk about that, I guess, through an advocacy lens, like what you’re seeing your master’s students doing and how that relates to advocacy?

Oh, absolutely. So I teach our 600 level courses, which are two courses that students take at the very end of their master’s program. And in those courses, they complete a capstone project. And they’re my favorite classes to teach because the students come in and they find a passion area, something that they’ve always either wanted to implement into their classes, small changes that make big differences. Students that are looking at classroom management issues or they’re looking at adding a little more choice, or they’re trying to develop more sketchbook time or whatever that is,

And they make these projects. And then we talk a lot about that advocacy piece, whether it is talking to their districts about things that they have discovered in their project or going to a conference. But the other big piece of it is how do they advocate it within their classrooms? How do they bring that knowledge back to their students? How do their students benefit? Or if they do an art-based project and they look at their own process, how do they share that with their students? And even if it’s just the excitement of making art, that validates it. So that advocacy piece becomes really important. So it’s really fun to see them. I love the findings. I always tell them the unexpected finding is always my favorite. The one where they’re like, “Whoa, I didn’t expect that to even happen.” And then what do they do? And they’re so excited to share it because it’s their work, it’s their finding, it’s where their heart is.

Yeah, I love that. And I love giving people a chance to just share what’s happening in their classroom or like you said, share what they’re passionate about. Because I think that goes a long way. And when you are passionate about something and can speak up for it, that goes a very long way. So I really like that. Before we move on, any other thoughts, any other strategies or ideas of how teachers can advocate?

I do have one advocacy step that I think is really important and I’d love to share it.

Yes, please do.

One of the projects that I’ve taken on with the Center for the Advancement of Art Education is our State of Art Education survey. And this survey is an annual survey. We get a lot of response, so it makes our findings really valuable and really powerful. And this is the time to take the survey. So there’s a link you can go into our magazine and find that. I believe on our social media. It’s on our community page. And you can take that survey because getting your voice in that mix is really important. We want art educators to tell their story. We want to know your challenges. We want to know where you find joy. We want to know where you need support. We want to know what’s important. And so the more voices that we capture, the more powerful that message will be and the more impactful that narrative will be. And then you can use those stats when you go back to districts to ask for equipment or resources or whatever it is to show here’s where this need is and here’s why it’s important.

And I was going to say, we actually did an entire podcast earlier this year when the 2024 results came out. We did an entire episode on how you can use the results from the State of Art Education survey to advocate for yourself, advocate for your program. So if anybody’s interested in that, we’ll make sure we link that in the show notes. We will make sure we link the survey, the new survey in the show notes so people can take that as well. So like you said, I think it’s a great opportunity for people to speak up and a great opportunity to see what’s happening in other classrooms and figure out how you can use that information to help yourself.

I love that combination. Oh, sorry.

No, go ahead. Go ahead.

I love that combination of showing them the 2024 results and the survey link, so that if you’re new to Art Ed or at least new to the survey, you can see what it is and that impact before you even take the survey.

Yeah, absolutely. And then I guess I want to follow up on something you said when we were talking about strategies. You talked about sending an email to that principal, giving them a little bit more information. And I guess I would love to get your perspective on just who the intended audience should be or who the intended audience could be for our advocacy efforts. Where do you think we should be directing our attention or directing our efforts when it comes to advocacy?

I think that it needs to… A lot of it depends on what that advocacy is. If we are looking at just validating art as a practice, our students are really our audience. But I also think that we need to really think about the community and parents and really make advocacy, I call it making an advocacy habit, meaning nobody’s looking for more to do. No, art teacher’s saying, “Really wish I had more to do. I just don’t know what to do with all my extra time.”

So true.

So use the audiences that come to you. If you see parents out in the community, talk to them about something impactful that happened in your classroom. Or if you get coffee every morning at your favorite coffee place, maybe ask if they would ever display some student art. There’s ways to do it so that it’s not really eating up a lot of your time, but really expand that audience to more than just your district decision makers. Not that they’re not important, they’re very important, but advocacy can reach even further than that. And really just the more you talk about it, I think a lot of this comes from I am also on the board of a nonprofit. My son has a syndrome that is ultra-rare, so no one’s heard of it, including doctors. We go to doctor appointments and they don’t know what it is.

Yeah.

So, I’m so used to, “I want to get the word out, I want to get the word out.” And art is the same way. I mean art education isn’t ultra-rare, and yet I feel like there’s so much that happens in an art class that people just don’t know about. So really, I would really expand that audience or our intended audience is to really almost anybody who wants to listen to how fabulous this is. But to think particularly about parents or community people that might be partners down the road. Sometimes you got to set that advocacy piece as we’re talking to them. We don’t necessarily have to plan a big project, but we can bring it up or if you’re at a conference thinking about adding to it. But also how many times in a meeting do you want to speak up because you hear them talking about other disciplines and you don’t hear art address the same way?

If you’re that person that can speak up, if it petrifies, you do it when it’s comfortable, but speak up and say something. I sat in a meeting once and somebody from the administration was talking about one of the students who had found this drawing class. And he had never taken art class and he took this drawing class and she was saying how powerful it was that he learned to draw and credited him with his skill and tenacity. And I remember sitting next to the art teacher who had him in class and said, “I think the art instruction helped as well.” This never really came up. So I think we do need to speak up and say, listen, there’s a lot going on in our class. We can help and we can help each other. And we do more integration that way too. We can integrate subjects, we can do more art integration by just speaking up in meetings and letting people know that we can be a partner. We’re not just an extra, we’re not just an add. We’re not just there to keep the students busy until they get to the other class.

No, that’s a really good perspective. And like I said, we all have great things happening in our classroom, but people are not going to know if we don’t share. And like you said, I mean that can take a lot of different forms, but we do want to get the word out there. And so the more opportunities we have to do that, I think the more we should. Now, we’ve talked a little bit about strategies, we’ve talked about audience. I would love to just hear from you about the best resources when it comes for advocacy. Obviously, we have a lot on AOEU. You do a lot with the Center for Advancement of Art Education. Can you talk about both of those a little bit, but then also other outside resources that you see, anything else that you think is worthwhile for teachers to know about when it comes to resources and when it comes to doing advocacy?

Yeah, absolutely. There is a lot of resources out there, so it’s good to know where they are and where to find them. So absolutely, the Center for the Advancement of Art Education through AOEU has really valuable research information and statistics to share. So one of the things we know about education is we’re very research-centered, which is wonderful. We like research, we rely on research and statistics and it’s powerful. It’s a powerful way to advocate. So those materials through the center, people can find. While there was the Visual Arts Advantage report that I had mentioned earlier, it just talks about the benefits of art and how it can… Students that have these experiences in art do better academically in other subjects as well. That it expands much beyond the art classroom.

So there are some, and I think there’s a fine motor skill report, there’s one on literacy, so there’s some options there as well. If someone would need a report to give to somebody in their district that’s making a decision. The Art of Education University also, I mean really great magazine articles. This podcast, the new community page are great ways to seek out or find advocacy information. If you go on the Art of Education webpage and type in advocacy, you’re going to get all sorts of great resources coming through the podcast.

Yes, for sure. We’ve been doing this for a lot of years, so the archives are full of a lot of great articles and podcasts for sure.

Yeah, and years of experience. I mean, that was one of the greatest things when I started working at Art of Education was that here are all these art teachers that names I’ve seen. People that have been around for a while, taught for a long time, and then just have really great ideas. So that’s another really great resource is other teachers just going on. There’s the social media sites obviously. There’s the great people on Instagram. Again, don’t compare yourselves too harshly, just look for great ideas and implement when you can. Talk to other art teachers, ask questions. I remember being the new art teacher and I was so afraid to ask other art teachers lots of questions because I didn’t want to look like I didn’t know what I was doing or that I didn’t have any confidence.

But the fact is, we’ve all been there, so seek out, ask questions. Some teachers are so helpful, they’ll hand out… Give you curriculum. Some are kind of keep it to themselves. I have to be honest, I saw that more at the tech college level. In college, nobody wants to share their lesson plans or their curriculum. People are very tight with that, but I haven’t noticed that as much with the high school teachers that I’ve taught with anyway. They’ve been very generous in what they’ve shared and I, in turn that I’m very generous. I want to give back too. Right?

Yes.

So I think that there is a huge resource there. And then there’s the Art Education Research Initiative and the Center for Educational Research and Innovation also have research projects that are available to read and to share. And then there’s always the NAEA website, state and national associations. Americans for the Arts is a wonderful advocacy focus. Kennedy Center always has fabulous resources. They do have advocacy tools as well.

Who are we forgetting? Is that…

That feels pretty comprehensive to me, to be honest.

I feel like there’s so much out there. I’m sure there’s ones that we’ve missed.

No, there really are a lot of great things. And as I said earlier, we’ll link to as much as possible so people can decide what’s going to work best for them, what’s going to be most useful for them. And in just a second, I want to talk about how we get started with advocacy. But before we do that, I want to ask you, you mentioned just a bit ago, no art teacher is asking, “How can I do more? How can I get more on my plate?” And so I would love to hear your advice for people who are maybe feeling burnt out right now or maybe they think that the extra effort that it takes for advocacy is not really worth it. What is your advice for people who are feeling like that or are thinking along those lines? How can doing that work, doing that advocacy, how can that be beneficial for us as teachers?

That’s a great question because we know that through our 2024 data, well actually from years past through the State of Art Education survey, that burnout’s real. And it’s there and people are experiencing, and we’ve had it right. We all come as art teachers with that experience. So we know that feeling.

Yes.

The end of the day and you’re just wiped. So the last thing we need is someone saying, how come you’re not pushing harder for your program? We need that extra stress. So what I would say is advocacy can actually help alleviate some of those feelings of burnout. And by that I mean we get the workload, but if we talk about what we do, we let people know what we do, it builds our motivation, it helps us recenter on our purpose and really our why. We talk about how great our kids are doing and what they’re learning and the great things that they’re doing. And we’ve all had those breakthroughs, that student that we work with, and then all of a sudden, just like one day-

Yeah, it clicks. The light bulb comes out, whatever phrase you want to use. That is the greatest feeling in the world.

They engage and they’re excited and it’s like, oh my gosh, I don’t know even know exactly what that was, right? So sharing that with others makes us feel good. It makes us feel less alone in our efforts. We’re trying to create critical thinkers and creative problem solvers. So engaging others also helps us feel like we’re not alone.

So we’ve kind put all of this together here. I feel like we’ve kind of put together the advocacy puzzle at the moment, but I know for a lot of people, their head is swimming right now, because there’s so much about strategies, audiences, resources, we’ve put that all together. And so I guess I’d love to close with some advice for you or some strategies, or just some simple steps that you think people can take if they’re just starting out on the advocacy journey. What would you say to people who want to start with advocacy? Do a little bit more with advocacy, just trying to take that next step when it comes to advocating for themselves or for their program, what is your advice for them?

I’d say make advocacy a habit, not an extra effort. Don’t think of it as one more thing to do. Just absorb it into your day. If you’re meeting with a parent at a conference, you can bring some talk in there, some discussions. Really talk up your program. If you see a parent running errands, you can certainly mention how well their child is doing in their learning strides. So there’s little things you can do in that, but you can also, speaking up at the faculty meetings, we mentioned that, or speaking up about benefits at any kind of community gathering is always great. But the other thing is to really look at what’s going to make your day easier too. If bringing in some extra materials or equipment or something will make it just easier overall for your students, or it will really help them engage in the learning.

Then just find one thing that you can, because takes some time sometimes to figure out who’s my decision maker and then what’s really going to encourage them. So maybe find those statistics that will help and just try one project and see how it goes. I mean, the worst thing they can do is say no, and you don’t have it anyway.

You didn’t lose anything.

Right. To go out and ask. And I’ve learned if you just keep asking, eventually you’ll get a yes. So it is a lot. I’d say just kind of weave it in where it’s comfortable or just find one project and just try that instead of trying to sort of take it all. You need to be this advocate for everybody and everything. It just needs to be something that’s meaningful, something that will help you in the classroom, something that’ll benefit your students some way or something that’ll just help you. It’s totally okay to advocate for yourself and what your needs might be or what you want to do to help your students so they’re not overwhelmed.

Well, yeah, and I think that’s why I say advocate for yourself or advocate for your program, because if there’s something taken off your plate, something that makes your life a little easier or makes teaching more enjoyable for you, then that is going to make your program better. You’re going to be a better teacher if you are enjoying things more, if your life is a little bit easier. And that trickles down to everything in your program. And so if it is just advocating for yourself, there are benefits for your program as well. So if that’s the approach you want to take, I definitely think that that’s worthwhile. So anything else you want to share? Anything else you want to close with before we go?

Well, I will not miss this opportunity to mention the state of our education survey again. Well please take that survey. Your voice is so important, and although we get a thousand plus responses, be a part of that and really see what that might be able to do for you.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And again, I’ll probably talk again about how important that is. We’ll link to that to make it as easy as possible for people to take that, because there really are a lot of benefits for getting as many people as we can in there. So Dr. Haugen, thank you so much for joining me today. I love this conversation. I love you sharing all of these strategies, all of these ideas with people, and really appreciate your time and your insight and your expertise. So thank you.

Thank you for this opportunity just to chat with you. It was fun. And to get the word out about how people can really push their programs.

Thank you to Dr. Haugen. She has so many great ideas, and I really enjoyed that conversation with her. She mentioned the State of Art Ed survey in the conversation. I also mentioned it at the beginning of the show. I will link to that in the show notes. So you can take that if you would like. I think it’s still open for another week or so. If you have not filled out yet, we would love to have you do that. I’ll also link to the episode that we recorded earlier this year, talking about how you can use that survey when it comes to advocacy. Also, we’ll link to the website for the Center for the Advancement of Art Education in case you want to learn more about that or more importantly, access some of the resources.

Now, just a quick closing thought. Dr. Haugen talked about advocacy as a habit and how that habit can help alleviate some of those feelings of burnout. And I think that’s a very important point because when we advocate, that lets a bigger audience know about all of the great things happening in our classroom. And we all have great things happening in our classroom. And that advocacy can help our own motivation, it can help us focus again on our purpose. Help us remember our why. So if you’re wanting to do this, if you’re wanting to advocate, think about that. What is your why? What do you want to advocate for? How are you going to do that? That advocacy and that engagement and the recognition that comes from those efforts, that all helps us feel less alone in what we do. It helps us receive recognition for ourselves and for our students, and for our art program.

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