Abstract
This Project is an Alternative Culminating Experience for a Master of Arts in Education: Curriculum and Instruction with an Elective Emphasis on Arts in Education. It follows Pathway I: Artist as Educator. The focus emerged from the teacher/researcher/artist’s need to develop her artistic energy through a disciplined artistic process. The goals of the project were: to learn how to use journaling as a tool to develop aesthetic experiences, to qualitatively assess the experiences, and to integrate her own experience with research in the theory and practice of arts education. Her goal was to create an artistic process for herself that would result in an increase in aesthetic art experiences for herself and her future students. The transitory first year teacher investigated the artistic process: researching past artists’ processes, investigating the theory and practice of the arts in education, and planning the transference of narrative research findings into the classroom setting. Looking for inspiration in her own work, she simultaneously worked to organize time and a studio space in her home. The outcomes included: ongoing work in peer collaboration, journaling, developing studio time, and an outdoor painting class art show. Finally, through narrative inquiry, photographic evidence, the culminating experience of Sacramento’s Second Saturday Art’s Cohort Show, and her journals the artist carried her research forward for application in her classroom and other classrooms.