Erin Hildebrandt

Professional Inquiry Project Final Report

~ Global Artist Trading Cards ~
PS3 Internship 2016 @ Saint Teresa of Calcutta School
Inquiry Question:
How can collaborating with global classrooms be beneficial for
student engagement, art exposure and skills, and global
citizenship?
Upon completion of my Professional Inquiry Project, I learned that
global collaboration is a valuable and effective way to teach and expose
students to other cultures, through both artistic and traditional aspects. The
artist trading cards that were produced and traded demonstrated a range of
abilities and experiences in Art from varying age levels and grades. Mrs.
Rogan, a collaborative teacher in China who teaches an artist trading card
club, revealed that students with similar ages could produce advanced
quality art work and demonstrated the potential that my students could
achieve with practice in their own art cards. Each of the students
communicated with their artist pen-pals by answering specific inquiry
questions on the back of their cards. This type of communication allowed
them to gain insight into their pen-pals school life, personality, art practices,
etc. Once our cards were received, my students were very excited and we
recorded a video to send to each global art classroom, providing an
opportunity to thank our artist pen-pals.
Evidence in student learning was recorded through formative
assessment practices, an entrance and exit slip, and an artist trading card
rubric as the summative assessment tool. As a culminating project activity,
students participated in an Artist Trading Card Swap, providing them an
opportunity to share and celebrate their achievements. One of the great
things about this project is that it can be continued and built upon moving
forward at Saint Teresa, and with practice, students will be able to develop
their art skills and experience multiple art mediums to complete their cards.
Reflecting back on the project, I would allot more time for a digital pen pal
aspect, where the students would email a specific student throughout the
project using planned discussion questions. Adding this aspect would allow
the students to gain additional perspectives about international student lives
and how they might differ from their own. I would also consider a digital
format for the artist trading cards, as the physical cards and mailing times
can be sometimes unreliable.
In conclusion, I believe that global collaboration is an important tool for
inquiry for my professional development as a teacher as well as influential to
student learning. I believe it exposes an innovative approach to enhance

Erin Hildebrandt
student engagement and provides students with knowledge of different art
practices and cultures, as well as creating intrinsic motivation to connect
with one another through different means. I believe my professional inquiry
project was a success and I look forward to improving upon it and
implementing it in my future art class.
Collaborative Teachers Feedback
Cassie LeBlanc, Art Teacher at Canadian International Schools, Abu Dhabi,
UAE
FEEDBACK--Jen Rogan,
Shen Wai International School - Shenzhen, China
My SWIS ATC Club was very enthusiastic about the prospect of an ATC exchange with the
students at St. Teresa of Calcutta! We had fun creating cards through the lens of cultural
inspiration. Generating ATCs inspired by Canadian, Chinese and Emirati culture was quite timely
for us, and linked well with the Unit of Inquiry: How We Express Ourselves, that our students
have been exploring in their class work. The Central Idea of the unit is that: Cultures express
themselves in different ways to convey their uniqueness. The Lines of Inquiry for this unit have
been:
Different Cultures around the world
Similarities and Differences between cultural expression
People's expression within their culture
The students were happy to send cards away and are eager to receive cards in exchange. Sadly,
we have still not received our cards from Canada yet. The mail seems to be somewhat unreliable.
A possibility for future exchanges might be to do a digital art exchange. Alternatively, we could
exchange digital or digitized ATC art works and use those as a jumping off point for physical
cards.