7 Arts-Based Tools for the Higher Education Practitioner

During the summer semester, I was so happy to take this seminar with Dr. Kearney. Throughout the course we kept a journal where we created art that reflected certain events from our lifetimes and how those events affected us, inspired us, changed us, etc. We read Authoring your Life: Developing your Internal Voice to Navigate Life’s Challenges by Marcia Baxter Magolda. To say that this book and that this class changed me would be an understatement. This summer semester helped me to better understand some of the doubts that I had been carrying around with me. I came to realize that I had been living for others rather than for myself. I had been compromising some of my values while also silencing some of the facets of my identity in order to make others around me feel comfortable. Some of the choices from my past were also made for others rather than for myself. Attached are some photos from my journal, as well as some of the additional art pieces I created for this course.

ACPA and NASPA (2015) Competency Statement:

The competencies concerning personal and ethical foundations, values, philosophy, and history, and student learning and development were all quite prominent throughout this course. One of the major focuses of this class was to dig deep within ourselves and to cultivate a better understanding of who we are and what makes us the person we are today. What are our core values and how have they affected certain decisions we have made in the past? We also read about self-authorship and how oftentimes we allow others to impact our choices, even when we may not realize it. Knowing more about who we are and what we truly aim to accomplish will allow us to better maintain the paths to our personal and developmental goals.