At the end of the 2018-19 school year at Patrick Henry High School, I worked with our school Innovation Team to provide students end-of-the-year opportunities that would provide an alternative to sitting around in a dormant classroom. Below is a link to the article published by local CBS 6 news and beneath that is an excerpt written by Rob Cardwell.

wtvr.com/2019/07/17/hanover-last-week-b…

"Re-imagining the end of the school year" started as a district initiative in Hanover last year. Teachers fished for ideas on how to keep students engaged and learning. Ian Horwitz’ week-long class involved casting in a field.


“It's fly fishing 101," Horwitz said. "I work at Orvis at Short Pump Mall. We teach fly fishing classes there, so I thought this is a great way to teach the kids how to have some fun in the outdoors. It's a lot better than sitting in (a classroom)."

During my first week of student teaching at Deep Run High School, I took on the task of building the Art Club float for the Homecoming Parade. With help from many students, we created a steamboat for the Mardi Gras themed parade. It was a lot of fun working with the amazing students at Deep Run High School

photo credit: Mike Guyer, October 2017

One of my favorite lessons of all time was creating this Fishes of Virginia Poster with Mrs. Rachel Burgett;s 5th grade students at Greenfield Elementary School. We learned about collaboration, scientific illustration, patterns, textures, and the different freshwater fish species found in Virginia. This collaborative poster was based on the original Fishes of Virginia poster created by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

photo: Marina Schaubach

This shot details one of our modes of presentation for this project. We displayed the painted dance floor on the wall and projected a video of the process onto the dance floor. The dance floor acts as both canvas and a screen, relating to the concept of transparency among communities.

ARTE 408 TWO DIMENSIONAL ART EXPERIENCES - SPRING 2016
Instructor: Ian Horwitz, MFA, Adjunct Faculty
Department of Art Education
Virginia Commonwealth University

photo: Marina Schaubach

Here we discuss the possibilities of presentation. In this project intended for K-12 education, we collected artifacts within our community and taped them together to create a dance floor. By dancing with acrylic paint, our individual colors merge together to represent communal building.

ARTE 408 TWO DIMENSIONAL ART EXPERIENCES - SPRING 2016
Instructor: Ian Horwitz, MFA, Adjunct Faculty
Department of Art Education
Virginia Commonwealth University

ARTE 670, Spring 2016, Virginia Commonwealth University, Instructor Dr. Courtnie Wolfgang
This stop motion animation is a reflection of my service learning experience at the Richmond City Justice Center. I created it using a stop motion app on my iPhone, Garageband, and iMovie.

ARTE 670, Spring 2016, Virginia Commonwealth University, Instructor Dr. Courtnie Wolfgang
This is the product of collective storytelling through an image and sound collaboration with residents at the Richmond City Justice Center enrolled in a VCU Service Learning class. The residents were the students of our Graduate Technology in Art Education class. Together we wrote a poem and recorded it to be paired with metaphorical imagery shot with an iPhone 6s.