Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

Amelia's Gift, Daniel J. Mydlack

Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal

Professor Danny Mydlack recounts the mysterious arc of his student’s creative unfolding. Amelia, a middle-aged single mom, drops out of the personal videography production class before the end and yet her final assignment is delivered, posthumously, by her adult daughters. For the author, Amelia returned him to the core principles from his student days: the vast, wide terrain that is the true realm of art-making and an embrace of the fullness rather than merely the fineness of art practice. Mydlack proposes that with teaching there is more unseen than seen, more beyond our manipulation than within it, and that pedagogical …