Expand Your Practice

This page will link to resources we brought to our professional learning through RēTA. Each time we meet we will post here so you can get easy access to the materials, artists and practices we share with you.

Teacher Presentations of Learning

April 11th, 2025

ReTA Teacher Learning Spring 2025

Theresa Harlan

Támal-ko/Coast Miwok

Theresa is the founder and director of the Alliance for Felix Cove, which works to protect, restore and reclaim her Felix Family Támal-ko/Coast Miwok ancestral home in Point Reyes National Seashore. She is an advocate for landback and cultural healing for Indigenous communities. Theresa is the 2022 recipient of the Anthony Grassroots Prize of the Rose Foundation and has a long history working in the San Francisco Bay Area Native American community as an art writer, curator and consultant. Her 4 part sereies called Comming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Memory, and Stolen Land we produced by Emergence Magazine. You can list to all for podcast episodes here.

Emma Stevens

The International Year of Indigenous Languages,

a United Nations observance in 2019, that aimed to raise awareness of the consequences of the endangerment of Indigenous languages across the world, with an aim to establish a link between language, development, peace, and reconciliation.

To bring awareness to this important cause students at Allison Bernard Memorial High School in Eskasoni, Cape Breton recorded Paul McCartney's Blackbird in their native

Mi'kmaq language.

Visible Thinking Routine: Joy Protocol

Download Routine Here.

Visiting Artist e bond

(abridged from her website)

e bond makes handmade books, love to hang out with trees, and writes poetry. Under the studio name roughdrAftbooks—e makes one-of-a-kind artists books, printed pieces and abstract drawings that merge and blur the boundaries of art, craft, surface design and poetry.

She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Book Art from Mills College. 'Her work is held in library collections across the US and has been published in Uppercase Magazine, Berkeley Poetry Review, 500 Handmade Books, as well as numerous books (about books). Most recently, e’s work has moved into the wonderful world of surface design where she has designed many colorful, abstract fabric collections in collaboration with Free Spirit Fabrics.'

How to make Tunnel Books Handout - download HERE

Token Response Activity

The Token Response game is an interactive art criticism and aesthetics activity where students use tokens representing different ideas (like personal preference, craftsmanship, or originality, time, etc) to respond to artworks, encouraging discussion and critical thinking.

We found this great video from the Milwaukee Museum of Art that shows how it works, with directions on the page.

Here are is the lesson that Liz created for the Token Response experience, and the sheet of tokens she made for SVMA for the Book Becoming Art show.

FUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE

Read more about the Funds of Knowledge:

Reimagining Art Education: Moving Toward Culturally

Sustaining Pedagogies in the Arts With Funds of

Knowledge and Lived Experiences,

by Alexandra Overby, Janelle Constance & Barth Quenzer

Accordion Books

Accordion books are a great creative strategies or ongoing reflection and learning. This strategy allows you to literally play with ideas in a safe and opened way, and promotes making learning visible through a creative process.

Making an Accordion Books

Accordion books are a great way creative strategies we started to use for teachers year-long learning and exploration in Arts Integration were Accordion Books. This is a practice that teachers continue to use and is being used in many of the classrooms with students! This strategy supports teachers ongoing reflection on their own learning, allows for them to literally play with ideas in a safe and opened way, and promotes making learning visible through a creative process.

Download handout here.

Accordion Book Project/Arzu Mistry

Learn more about the power of accordion books as a thinking tool here at the Accordion Book Project. Arzu is an artist, a book maker and a Professor of Education at Columbia University. See her series of short videos to learn more about what accordion book practice can do for your thinking as well and how to's of creting and building our your accordion book.

See step-by-step instructions for extensions and flaps

See step-by-step instructions for pockets

Turkish Fold/Bookmaking Process

The Turkish Map Fold is a unique and sculptural book form made from a single piece of paper, with an optional cover. As you open the book, the piece of paper unfolds so you can see the entire sheet. This book is great to use for a reference worksheet, as it folds down nicely and opens up in an unexpected way. It can also be added to your main accordion book as a pop-out.