Do Your Lessons Love Your Students?

Mariah Rankine-Landers (she/her), M.Ed., and Jessa Brie Moreno (she/her), MFA, founders and co-executive directors of Studio Pathways, have each been liberatory educators and artists for over twenty years, having collectively taught at the pre-K through post-graduate levels. They are sought after professional facilitators who work with educational and executive leaders, and teachers leading for social change. They are co-creators of Rise Up: An American Curriculum and have co-designed creative pedagogy for The Othering and Belonging Institute out of UC Berkeley, The Center for Cultural Power, and the WKKF Foundation (Racial Healing). They are former co-directors of the School Transformation Through the Arts and Integrated Learning Specialist Program out of the Alameda County Office of Education. Partners include NAEA, The Kennedy Center, Stanford University, Museum of the African Diaspora, and many county offices of education, school districts, individual schools, arts organizations, and philanthropic and social change institutions. Follow them on social media platforms at @StudioPathways and at studiopathways.org.

Foreword Acknowledgements: Lineage of Love Indigenous Land Acknowledgement Origin Story I. Art as Love 1. A Pedagogy of Love 2. Creative Process for Social Change II. The SPIRAL Framework 3. The SPIRAL Framework: A Practical Frame for Liberatory Learning 4. The Studio Pathway: Cultivating a Studio Mindset 5. Creative Inquiry: Learning Through a Creative Pursuit 6. Reconciliation and Reckoning: Teaching for Social Change 7. Artistic Research: Essential Methodologies for Knowledge Acquisition 8. Liberation: Art, Love, and Freedom III. The Core Four 9. The Core Four: Foundational Concepts 10. Transformative Power: Addressing Social Power Dynamics 11. Narrative: Examining Core Narratives in Education 12. Lineage: Expanding Understanding of Identity 13. Embodiment: Knowledge Made Visible IV. An Arc of Learning 14. The Art of Praxis: Theory in Practice 15. Breaking Patterns: Breaking with Established Norms in Education 16. Culture, Cognition and the Arts: Using Creativity to Think Expansively 17. Grayscale: Deepening Wisdom Around Racialized Experiences 18. Heirlooms and Accessories: Facing Historical Truths and Practicing Repair 19. Queering the Curriculum: More Than the Confines of a Social Structure 20. From Implicit Bias to Explicit Belonging: Reshaping Thinking to Create Cultures of Care 21. The Radiant Child: Beyond Standardized Assessments Epilogue: Nahuales and the Artist Within