Making Our Marks: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Teaching Art as a Relational Process

This thesis is an autoethnographic investigation of interactions I have had with my students as a first-year art educator and the ways in which these interactions have led me to recall memories of my own experience as a student in art. Employing a metaphor of teaching as mutual mark making, I present these interactions as sketches, which refer to and reflect the ongoing and unfinished nature of memory and experience. My exploration of memory as it relates to teaching and learning has led me to advocate for art education based on relationships between teacher and student, as well as the relationship between the educator and his or her own learning experiences