Students Find their “Visual Voice” in a Facing History Art Class

For me, each student's search for a response to the issues discussed in Facing History through the visual arts is, in itself, an amazing journey. I wait for the moment when the student sees that his or her creation stimulates questions, explores the human condition, demonstrates compassion, demands justice.  At that moment, the student knows that he or she has a powerful visual voice.
                                         -Ann Chaitin, Facing History and Ourselves Teacher

Ann Chaitin is the middle school art teacher and Facing History and Ourselves  coordinator at La Jolla Country Day School, an independent school in San Diego. Throughout their 7^th and 8^th grade experiences, students explore Facing History themes and content in-depth and in an interdisciplinary fashion. During this journey they study the historical content of the Holocaust and civil rights movement, as well as themes of identity, community, memory, legacy, justice, and what “choosing to participate” means. The culmination of this two-year exploration comes in Chaitin’s “Art and Memory” unit where they look at the role of monuments and memory in the aftermath of injustice and violence.

After teaching this unit for many years, in the spring of 2009 Ann applied for and received a Margot Stern Strom Teaching Award to create a new class called “Art with a Message.” Chaitin received funding for resources, field trips, and speakers.

Her “Art and Memory” unit enhances the students’ Facing History journey by allowing students another lens on to the history they are studying and another discipline through which they are able to demonstrate their understanding. The artwork they create explores the connection between identity and choices, and remembering the past in order to shape the future. Each piece of art that is created asks the student to consider his or her own role in contributing to a more humane society.  In developing the course, Chaitin wrote:

In this new class, I hope to not only encourage and develop their visual voice, but have the time and opportunity to show them how others have used that visual voice to bring about change, stimulate dialogue, effect protest, and perpetuate memory.

Click here to view artwork and scenes from the “Art with a Message” class as well as Ann Chaitin’s outline for the course.