Anne Showalter, who works at the Smithsonian American Art Museum has created this resource for educators, “A Woman’s Place is in the Curriculum: Teaching Women’s History Through American Art and Portraiture,” a wonderful compilation to use for Women’s History Month from the Smithsonian Learning Lab. There are three Learning Lab Collections that are free to use: “Persisting and Resisting: Exploring Women as Activists,” “Who Tells Your Story: Exploring Women and Identity,” and “Remaking the Rules: Exploring Women Who Broke Barriers.”
(You can find out more about Smithsonian’s Learning Lab here.)
Each collection contains images and artwork for the theme, as well as a webinar for each topic. The webinars were done live late last year, but you can watch the archived videos to get ideas for discussion and background information about the assets provided in the collection. “Exploring Women Who Broke Barriers” has a Powerpoint Presentation from the Webinar here. “Persisting and Resisting’s” Powerpoint can be found here. I might have missed it, but I do not see one for “Who Tells Your Story.”
I like how the presentations give ideas for using Visible Thinking Routines from Project Zero in to develop deep discussions about the artwork. (You can see some other posts I’ve done about using a couple of these routines here and here.)
Since it’s Women’s History Month in the United States, you may want to consider adding at least portions of these to your curriculum for March. But I think you will see that there are enough resources to make for enriched learning throughout the year!
