Hey there! My name is Ashley and I am the creator of the curriculum I call: CompassionArt. I want to share with you what CompassionArt is and how this website can be used to serve you and your students. CompassionArt is a visual art curriculum designed with empathy and compassion at its heart. All the lessons and resources you find here use art-making to teach important social-emotional skills such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. You will find that the lessons are broken down into four categories: emotional literacy, moral imagination, practicing kindness, and inspiring wonder. I believe these four themes are the most integral in nurturing a holistic human
ABOUT
I am a certified art teacher who has been working in public schools for the past 6 years but in the last two years, I have noticed a lot of changes. In August 2020 I began teaching art on zoom as my district decided, like so many others, not to return to in-person instruction. We finally returned to school in February of 2021 and the year that followed was one of the most difficult in both my personal and professional life. I began to understand how the pandemic was causing collective stress and grief. Changes in my students were manifesting outwardly in tears and outbursts. I knew that if I, as an adult, was experiencing symptoms of anxiety as a result of the pandemic then my young students most certainly were. And what's worse is that young children have often not acquired the language to relay and explain their emotions or the coping mechanisms to deal with them. The need for social-emotional support in schools became very apparent to me. I wanted to help my students in the only way I knew how: with artmaking magic. But I felt I had a duty beyond just providing a fun art-making experience, I wanted to start incorporating social-emotional learning into my lessons: and thus CompassionArt was born.
“The great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.”
-Percy Shelley
