About Your Instructor

My name is Karen Wilkins, and I am excited to be your instructor for Elementary Curriculum and Pedagogy for Visual Arts.  I can’t wait to support you on your learning journey through this course and to learn alongside you over the coming weeks and beyond! 

A little bit about me :) I have been teaching for 24 years with the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board in a variety of classroom settings primarily focused on the Arts and in particular, Visual Arts. I have taught all grades from K – 12 but have spent many years as a middle school visual arts specialist working closely with our secondary schools, as well as a K-5 MADD (Music, Art, Dance, Drama) teacher.

Recently, for 10 years, I had the privilege of being the Arts Consultant for K – 12 in the Leadership and Learning Program Department, supporting all of our schools through the Arts Curriculum, learning in, about and through the Arts! As a part of this role, I also worked provincially as a member of ARTSECO, which is an amazing network of all the Arts Consultants across Ontario, in addition to working with the Arts Education Subject Associations OAEA, OMEA and CODE. 

Unfortunately, these dedicated subject area positions in HWDSB ended in the summer of 2019 and so for the past 6 years I have been back in the classroom as a teacher librarian K - 8 and the grade 3 - 8 visual arts teacher in a large elementary school in Dundas. This fall they eliminated the teacher librarian roles in our board, so now I teach grade 6 homeroom and visual arts to grades 3- 8. I have enjoyed being back in a school with students to call my own, and I have been able to put into practice many of the things I developed and learned over the past number of years.

The arts work their way into all the areas I teach, and I have supported a fully functioning maker space and a variety of creative learning centres in our learning commons, as well as integrating the arts into language, math, science and social studies curriculum.  The hardest part about being in a board-level position is not having your own students, so it has been a joy to see smiling faces every day and build personal relationships with students again… even with the kind of school years it has been recently! 

I am an ETFO AQ Visual Arts Instructor as well as an AQ instructor with Queens University for the past seven years, where I have taught all of the Visual Arts Part 1, 2 & 3 courses as well as the Honours Specialist in Visual Arts and Secondary Senior ABQ in Visual Arts. I also support the work of the Ontario College of Teachers with their AQ Advisory Branch. I am so excited to be teaching again for Western University in the Faculty of Education. 

Teaching is a second career for me, having started working in Art galleries as an Education Officer.  After completing my art degree and a museum studies diploma, I enjoyed working with students, schools and community members in addition to doing some curatorial work before completing my Bachelor of Education.

Teaching was a natural progression from my lifelong passion for the Arts, supporting Arts education in a variety of contexts and my absolute joy in working creatively with young people, helping them to reach their creative potential. I have been very fortunate in all my teaching roles to be able to support the teachers and students throughout our school board with this area of specialization. Seeing firsthand SO many amazingly talented students of all ages through all stages of the creative process, but also watching them perform and exhibit their creativity, has been such a joy. I have also had the pleasure of working closely with so many art teachers and community members, supporting amazing learning opportunities for students across the province. 

In addition to my interest in teaching, I have a variety of experiences as a professional artist and have exhibited in numerous solo, group, juried exhibitions, and artist studio tours and contributed to many collaborative art projects with other artists as well as students. The day-to-day challenges of a very busy working life and family commitments often get in the way, but finding ways to use my hands, think creatively and be a keen observer of our world is something important to me in finding balance in life. 

I am looking forward to the continued sharing of this learning experience with all of you!  The Visual Arts course covers a large amount of relevant information for enhancing your teaching practice in visual arts, allows us many opportunities to be creative and have thoughtful discussions, and will support your professional learning journey as an art educator!

There are many great professional resources and readings to discover, you will dig deeper into the art curriculum through an enhanced exploration of the creative and critical analysis processes and will have the opportunity to make several art pieces of your own.  This course will hopefully build continued excitement and motivation in you to teach visual arts.

Please do not hesitate to ask any questions or concerns, encourage each other with positive comments and feedback and reach out to me directly if I can assist you with anything as you make your way through this course. 

I look forward to the continued collaboration with all of you! 

Karen

kwilki52@uwo.ca