Ariella-Sophie Sternberg visual arts educator

I PRACTICE:

Student-centered instruction: Students are challenged to make meaning through inquiry-based lessons, group activities, and long-term personal projects, not lectures or endless slideshows.

Culturally responsive teaching: Students learn through multiple methods, including social engagement, kinesthetic activity, sketching, writing, and modeling. Diversity is highlighted as a strength, and cultural examples are inclusive and representationally diverse.

Restorative practices in the classroom: Students participate in regular check-ins, circle shares, and community-building games. Difficulties are resolved through communication and fair consequences, not punishments.

High expectations for student learning: Drawing from national visual arts standards, all students are expected to think critically about their own artwork, respond to art, present and share their work, and develop an understanding about the cultural context of art-making.

Differentiation for all students: Advanced students are allowed further growth through challenge questions. Students in need of more support are provided with thorough scaffolding, including word banks, visual aids, graphic organizers, modeling, and discourse supports. All students are given timely feedback and improvement strategies.

Interdisciplinary study: Meaningful art is inspired by social issues, scientific study, and an evolving discourse with world issues. Students draw from background knowledge, personal experience, and real-world inquiry to create meaningful art with connections to neuroscience, anthropology, history, and other disciplines.

Technology and digital learning in the classroom: Students learn to create by working with their hands. Their learning process is supported with online file-sharing; media tools such as Pinterest, blogs, and Google platforms; and select use of video examples.

WHO MADE THIS?

Let's play a game of art detective. Using this information, figure out as much as you can about the person who made this pot.

Inscription found on a jug: “Dave belongs to Mr. Miles / Wher the oven bakes & the pot biles. July 31, 1840”

Elijah Green, enslaved South Carolina man: “An’ no for God's sake, don’ let a slave be catch with pencil an’ paper. Such is a major crime.”

Harvey Drake, slave owner: “I used to own that one, Dave. He was a strong man, a potter. I won’t say that I taught him to read and write—but I won’t say that I didn’t either.”

John Landrum, Reverend, pottery owner, slave holder: “Dave is the best potter we have. He can make a pot that holds thirty, forty gallons. Too bad about his leg, though…”

Henry, enslaved man and potter: “Whoo! My life is hard with no hands. I've still got my feet, though. I’m lucky to have my feet. My friend Dave lost his leg when he was thirty-five, got run over by a train. I’ve got no hands and he’s got no feet—ha! Together we make a real good potter.”

Franklin Landrum, son of John, slave owner: “When my papa died, I bought up that man Dave. Eight hundred dollars he cost me! We’ll see to that writing, though. We can’t be having that.”

Leonard Todd, historian & writer: “Some of my ancestors here in North Carolina owned Dave at one point in time. During his lifetime, we estimate that Dave produced between 40,000-100,000 pots.”

Inscription found on a jug: “I made this Jar = for cash —though its called = lucre Trash—August 22, 1857”

Lewis Miles, pottery owner, slave holder: “War is coming. I can see it. I get 50 cents for each pot, but that money won’t be any good when war comes. I had Dave make me little jars, and I put aside a little gold in each one. Where they’re buried—that’s my secret.”

Name unknown, enslaved woman: “Ahhhh! The Reverend died, and I won’t see my Dave no more. I have new owners now. I won’t see my man no more.”

Leonard Todd, historian & writer: “It wasn’t an easy life. A female slave who worked closely with Dave in the pottery hanged herself after being whipped severely by their owner, Franklin Landrum.”

Much of this information from Leonard Todd, author of Carolina Clay: http://leonardtodd.com/carolina-clay_279.html