Art Education Practicum, cross-listed as ARTS 100 and EDU 143, is a class where students work in pairs to create an art project and lesson plan which they utilize to teach elementary and middle school students during the last six weeks of the class. The class is taught by Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Art History Patricia Yossen, who has 30 years of teaching experience and is a professional artist. Yossen said she likes to share the experience of creating art.
“I love to engage with people and I am passionate about creating a space for people to create,” Yossen said. “The class is created around the concept of creating as a group; the students who come to participate in this class have to create a workshop they can teach to our community.”
Yossen said she has three main goals for the students taking this class.
“[One goal is] to make sure that the students can be part of the community [by sharing their] creative expression,” Yossen said. “[Second is] that they are able to articulate a workshop of six classes based on their own interests. And [third,] they have to have documentation about the work they did during this process.”
Sara Tina Kazemi (senior) said she likes how the class is set up and how supportive the professor is.
“I love the fact that we can [pick from] so many different art mediums.” Kazemi said. “I thought about not taking the class because I’m more comfortable with crocheting than painting with acrylic, but then I found out you can use whatever artistic medium you want. Our professor is very transparent on when we teach [and] what we TA for, and she’s really good at accommodating students.”
Yossen said this is a class for making, not for theory.
“We see a lot of theory in the beginning, but then you have to be able to communicate what you know with your class, and part of that knowledge is making,” Yossen said. “If I’m going to be teaching how to make a comic, I have to be able to make a comic.”
Yossen said she wants students to use this class to find their own interests and to think about whether they like teaching art, making art and sharing it with the community.
“I don’t believe in teaching a class that you are not excited for,” Yossen said. “When you know the subject and you like the subject, you can be contagious and that is what you need to create with others.”
Pearl Rosen (senior), a Media Arts & Culture (MAC) major and current student in the class said she enrolled because she likes to teach kids and is interested in education. Rosen said she and her partner, Angelica Lozano Estrada (sophomore), are teaching a papier-mâché piñata-making class to elementary schoolers on Wednesdays.
“The point of the project is to have the kids gain experience in papier-mâché, which you come across many times in your lifetime,” Rosen said. “The kids have more energy than I thought […] they just want[ed] to start working while I was trying to explain the instructions. It’s fun to watch them be excited and want to do all the things I’m giving them to do.”
Frankie Fleming, the manager of education and community engagement at Oxy Arts, works with Yossen by getting the community interested in signing up for Occidental students’ art workshops. Fleming said the Art Education Practicum is the first entry point into a multi-year experience project called Community Studio, which offers a supportive, hands-on environment to pursue experience in teaching.
“If you’re someone who’s interested in teaching art, working with young people [and] you have a lot of excitement and passion, this is a course that will give you the groundwork to explore and build up your skills,” Fleming said. “You’re in the gallery [supervised] and all the materials are right there.”
Fleming said students interested in continuing with education who have taken this course can look into internships offered by the program with the Los Angeles Unified School District, which provides career training.
“We have internships, a paid teaching program where they can teach in five different elementary schools in the neighborhood,” Fleming said. “We have five paid positions where students essentially go to campus one day a week and work with the art teacher who’s on campus […] like a TA support position.”
Yossen said the final grade for the class will be an exhibition at the Oxy Arts Gallery.
“The final exhibition will be for middle schoolers on Monday, April 20, and for elementary schoolers on Wednesday, April 22, from 5:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., both days,” Yossen said.
Renny Flanigan* (sophomore), the Education In Action student (EIA) for ARTS 100 and a participant of this class Fall 2025, said the class is rewarding.
“It’s fun to see how things have changed since I was in fourth or fifth grade,” Flanigan said. “Children have imaginations that haven’t been influenced by growing up, [they produce] very original work.”
Flanigan said the collaborative aspect of the class is helpful, and that the class being labeled as a 100-level class is misleading –– the workload is high, but what you gain counteracts this.
“[Having a partner] puts pressure on you to put in the work because someone is depending on you, but also you don’t have to do any of the work alone,” Flanigan said. “It is very multidisciplinary, you gain knowledge in psychology as well as teaching and interacting as a team.”
Contact Miriam Arenal at arenal@oxy.edu
*Renny Flanigan is an illustrator for The Occidental
