Patty's Response to Ed Check

The author Check writes about his struggles between connecting his upbringing in a working-class, Polish Catholic, middle America neighborhood to his advanced academic life and his life as a gay man, which he terms queer. He sees himself as both an academic and an activist; an activist for his fellow working class professors and students. He goes on to discuss his personal upbringing in Wisconsin, his religious background, some of his experiences as a gay man, and his own artwork in which he connects the church and sexuality. Finally Check discusses his experiences as an art educator. He is an advocate of moving past teaching the elements and the principles, to incorporating “working-class people, grief, loss and healing, and queers in art and education” (p. 32). He believes that critical children’s literature is a vehicle to teach for social justice in the classroom, and demonstrates how “first-person narrative, truth-telling is essential for respectful learning and social justice (p. 33).

I was drawn to Check’s article initially because of his honesty in his story telling and the passion in his writing. I couldn’t help but share in his feeling of ‘not fitting in’ in the academic world, because I too have also felt that. I am used to being around eight and nine year olds all day long, and last year to jump back into a Masters program here at Ohio State, and to do so in a course on Lacan (whom I had never heard of) with PhD students who had taken multiple courses on him, I too felt like I did not belong. I also understand his problems with Catholicism, because I too am Catholic, and while I am not gay, I too do not agree with the Catholic Church’s beliefs on the matter. I just really identified with this author. Even more so when I came to the last section of the article, ‘My Struggles With Art and Education’. If you as an art educator can connect art to a students’ emotional needs, their art will be ever more important to them. It is important, as he states, to recognize and integrate different social class realities into our classrooms, as well as loss, grief, and healing. (p. 32) I teach elementary school though. I see those topics and automatically think of all these cool things I could do with high school kids. In my opinion, with ‘heavier’ topics such as these, it is harder to bring them down to an elementary age level. Check suggests using literature, which is a great suggestion, and I saw the light bulb. I will definitely look up the two books he suggests. We do need to “facilitate complex and changing identities of students” (p.32) in our rooms, despite what age level we teach. Art and storytelling are both excellent ways of doing so. Schools are always seeking to integrate topics; Check shows how to with art and writing, and how to do so meaningfully, in this article.