I have worked as an art and design educator with K-12 students
in various public and laboratory school settings.
Below are lessons that I have developed and taught.
2025 – 2026
Identity and Personality Collage
Project Example
Medium: Scrap Paper and Fabric Collage on File Folder
Grade: 1st
Duration: 1.5 Hours
Location: Materials for the Arts in Queens, NY
Students created collages using scrap fabric and paper to represent an aspect of their identity or personality. Students used techniques of selecting materials, cutting shapes and symbols, and arranging shapes or colors, to visually express who they are and explore how personal identity and experiences can be communicated through art.
Students Works:
2024 – 2025
Emotion Clay Relief Sculpture
Project Example
Medium: Stonex Air Dry Clay and Acrylic Paint
Grade: 4th
Duration: 6 Weeks
Location: Pratt Institute Saturday Art School in Brooklyn, NY
Students created abstract self-portrait clay relief sculpture based on an emotion based on a recent memory. Students used techniques such as slabbing, coiling, slip and scoring, additive/subtractive, color mixing, and painting to create their sculptures.
Student Works:
Oil Pastel Self-Portrait Drawing
Project Example
Medium: Oil Pastel
Grade: 4th
Duration: 4 Weeks
Location: Pratt Institute Saturday Art School in Brooklyn, NY
Students created oil pastel self-portrait drawings with an expressive emotion that tells us something important about their personality. Students used techniques such as observation, color blending, creating underdrawings, and sgraffito to create their drawings.
Student Works:
Pattern Linocut Printmaking Unit
Project Example
Medium: Linocut Printmaking
Grade: 10th
Duration: 4 Weeks
Location: High School of Economics and Finance in New York, NY
Through creating a pattern tile with linoleum block and printmaking ink, students will learn that printmaking’s purpose is to create multiple impressions of a design and will understand that artists use printmaking to print a design multiple times to create a large-scale design. Students’ personal, cultural, and community assets are recognized in this lesson through designing the patterns that resonate with them.
Student Works:
Fantastical Sandwich Drawing Unit
Project Example
Medium: Colored Pencils on Drawing Paper
Grade: 7th and 8th
Duration: 7 hours
Location: Pratt Institute Saturday Art School in Brooklyn, NY
Through drawing a fantastical sandwich with colored pencils, students will learn that colored pencil mark-making and strategies of emphasis can strengthen a subject within the composition, and will understand that artists use their imagination can bring fantasy to reality. Students’ personal, cultural, and community assets are recognized in this lesson through the freedom to choose what aspects about themselves they wish to include in their fantasy sandwich whether it is personal, cultural, and community assets.
Student Works:
2023 – 2024
Nick Cave’s Soundsuit Drawing
Project Example
Medium: Colored Pencil and Crayon on Drawing Paper
Grade: 2nd
Duration: 45 Minutes
Location: P.S. 024 in Brooklyn, NY
Through drawing a sound suit drawing with a 9 x 12 drawing paper and colored pencils and crayons, students will learn that they can express movement in a 2D drawing and will understand that artists can apply personal choices while creating art within their design.
Student Works:
Blind Contour Self-Portrait Drawing
Project Example
Medium: Graphite Pencil on Drawing Paper
Grade: 2nd
Duration: 45 Minutes
Location: P.S. 024 in Brooklyn, NY
Through blind contour drawing a self portrait and a hand pose with a graphite pencil, mirror, and a 9×12 drawing paper, students will learn that by not looking down at your paper, you’re forced to see your subject as a series of lines and shapes and will understand that an artist can draw the contour of a subject without looking at the paper. Students’ personal, cultural, and community assets are recognized in this lesson through individual choice by choosing which facial expression and hand pose they wish to draw through blind contour drawing.
Student Works:
Puerto Rican Flowers Collagraph
Project Example
Medium: Oak Tag Collagraph (Water-Soluble Ink)
Grade: Ages 9-12
Duration: 1 Week
Location: Nueva Escuela Juan Ponce de Leon in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico
Through creating a collagraph print of a Puerto Rican flower, using oak tag paper and water-soluble ink, students will learn to select and place shapes to represent a subject, develop a basic understanding of overlapping, and begin to control overlapping to show depth. Students’ personal, cultural, and community assets are recognized in this lesson through individual choice by choosing which Puerto Rican flower they want to create.
Student Works:
2022-2023
Puerto Rican Ships Collage
Project Example
Medium: Painted Collage
Grade: Ages 9-12
Duration: 1 Week
Location: Escuela Luis Muñoz Rivera II in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico
Through creating a collage of a boat from Puerto Rican history with textured papers students will learn to make hand-painted and scraped paper, manipulate cut shapes to represent a real subject in the world, explore the expressive use of colored paper to represent a subject, select and place shapes to represent a subject and choose papers to represent actual textures, and develop a basic understanding of overlapping and begin to control overlapping to show depth.
Student Works:
Michael Austin Rodriguez 