Resources

Announcing publication of Cultural Frameworks for Transformative Documenting and Learning, Naomi Sturm-Wijesinghe and Mauricio Bayona, of Los Herederos, are Guest Editors. This volume offers educators case studies, activities, and creative entry points to engage the art of documentation in our learning spaces.

Write for our upcoming issue on Teaching with Monsters: From Whimsy to Shadow.
The 2026 Journal of Folklore and Education seeks submissions that recognize monsters, cryptids, and the legendary beings of our family stories and community narratives as powerful communicative tools in the classroom and beyond. The exploration of monstrosity can serve as a medium that helps us to talk about topics that can be difficult to address in other ways. Considering the role that monsters play in informal modes of education within a diverse range of communities, this issue will provide models for thinking about how educators both inside and outside the classroom might engage with these expressions of folklife in their pedagogy.

We seek submissions that present case studies, programs, lesson plans, teaching modules, and research based in education through monster and legendary creature exploration. Examples might include:

• Stories and/or examples of diverse teaching approaches in classroom settings and beyond, in which monsters, cryptids, and legendary creatures serve as an educational tool
• Lesson plans and/or curricula that involve education through monsters, cryptids, or their related creatures–from the whimsical to the terrible
• Interdisciplinary approaches to monstrosity as a communicative tool to explore complex information through education, such as diverse art forms, narratives, movies, TV shows, podcasts, memes, TikToks, and other media

Access the full call and submission portal here.

Have a text, website, film, or resource that you would like to be considered for review in the Journal of Folklore and Education? Please contact our Review Editor Taylor Dooley Burden at reviews@JFEpublications.org.

Two websites published with your education needs in mind.
https://LocalLearningNetwork.org
The Local Learning website offers resources that include learning activities and research that are searchable by theme, topic, and subject. We have also continued to maintain and update our national and regional folklife listings–pointing visitors to organizations and individuals near them. We also invite all our visitors to learn more about why they might want to bring Local Learning staff and consultants into their school, museum, or community to build resources, learning activities, and deeper understanding of shared assets. You might even discover there is a Local Learning workshop planned in your region! Have feedback or updates you want to see on our website? Contact us.

https://JFEpublications.org
The Journal of Folklore and Education (ISSN 2573-2072) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published annually by Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education. Housed in the website JFEpublications.org, you can search by author, find full citations for the articles, browse by theme and issue, and more easily sort by subject, theme, and topic.

Connect

• Culture, Community, and the Classroom offers targeted professional development to artists who are then partnered with teachers for direct applications of their new knowledge and offering teachers an opportunity to learn more about the cultural expertise in their own community. 2025 saw CCC on Long Island, New York and Madison, Wisconsin.
• New York Folklore continues to be a core partner and contributes to supporting Mira Johnson is our Director of Learning Networks and Training. (You can reach her at Mira@locallearningnetwork.org.) A special project that was started in 2025 is the NY Teaching Artist Roster with a special credential available to artists who have completed the training offered through CCC.
• Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) is the Library of Congress premier educational program, focused on helping educators enhance students’ critical thinking and analysis skills and content knowledge using the Library’s collections of millions of digitized primary sources. Local Learning is co-directing the curriculum and professional development project with the American Folklore Society and our partners Vermont Folklife Center, Oklahoma State University Library and the Oklahoma Oral History Research Project, and New York Folklore. Now in our 4th year, we have curricula and learning activities available for immediate use. Learn more, find the most recent news, and access resources as they are available at https://locallearningnetwork.org/professional-development/tps.
• Share your updates and new resources for the Regional Resources section https://locallearningnetwork.org/resources/regional-organizations/
• If you have news for our quarterly e-bulletins with a national audience, send us a 100-word summary with a photo to mira@locallearningnetwork.org with the subject line: For LL Quarterly News

Local Learning at AFS

Local Learning staff will be at the American Folklore Society Meeting in Atlanta. Specific events to highlight can be found at https://locallearningnetwork.org/afs-education-session-guide-2025

Please note that the Local Learning Workshop open to the public is happening on Saturday, October 18th. All are welcome. Please let us know you are coming, using the registration link.

Advocacy

Local Learning continues to take an active role in national conversations around advocacy for arts, arts education, and folklife. This year it has mattered more than ever and reports were made as needed to the Living Traditions Network, AFS member gatherings, and to the Local Learning Network via our listserv.

Consultancy and Cross-disciplinary presentations to increase folklore visibility

If you want to bring us to your community or organization for professional development or a project (large or small), let us know. Some examples of projects we have been engaged in over the past year include:

• As a named consultant in the REACH grant from the Department of Education to the University of South Florida and Arts Schools Network with Distinctive Schools, Local Learning is continuing to ensure that folk arts are included in the development of culturally-inclusive arts integration curricula..
• National Arts Education Association and National Council for Social Studies presentations for national audiences
• Consultant for the Whole Schools Conference in Mississippi. Also coordinated with the Mississippi Arts Commission to write a National Folk Festival Guide for schools to encourage learning through the festival hosted in Jackson, MS.
• As a consultant on the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage we are supporting “For the People,” a ten-month professional development pilot program for teaching artists and middle school classroom educators that uses local festivals as experiential learning laboratories. We’ll work with seven cohorts of participants from Tucson, Arizona; Detroit, Michigan; Jackson, Mississippi; Montclair, New Jersey; Washington, D.C.; and Wisconsin (location TBD). Know Teaching Artists or Educators who should apply? The Fact Sheet with the application for either Educator or Teaching Artists can be found here: https://folklife-media.si.edu/docs/folklife/applications/For-the-People-Fact-Sheet.pdf
• With the Folk Arts Cultural Treasures School (FACTS), Local Learning is developing a two year professional development program for Teaching Artists and Educators, funded by the William Penn Foundation. Learn more here.

The post 2025 AFS Report appeared first on Local Learning.

Sound Recordings as Primary Sources:
Local Learning and Vermont Folklife

A FREE, one-day professional learning workshop for educators about teaching with audio recordings from folklife collections and using oral history interviewing in the classroom. 

• Wednesday, June 18, 2025

• 10:00 AM  4:00 PM

• St. Johnsbury School, 257 Western Avenue, Saint Johnsbury, VT, 05819

When you think about primary sources, what are some of the first things that come to mind? Historical documents? Old photographs? Diaries?  How about…sound recordings? Join Vermont Folklife and Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education for a one-day professional learning workshop in St. Johnsbury, VT to learn about the value of understanding sound recordings as primary sources.

The post Sound Recordings as Primary Sources Vermont Workshop appeared first on Local Learning.

This past fall, veteran CCC teacher Jim Longbotham (2022 and 2023) and veteran CCC artists Maria Puente Flores and Mateo Cano (2023) came together to create a five-day residency with the third-grade classes in the New Paltz Central School District. In the classroom, Maria and Mateo used story to introduce students to son jarocho, a folk music genre from the state of Veracruz in Mexico. While learning about traditional instruments and their material origins, students also considered their own relationship to music and community.

Reflecting on the residency, Jim shares, “Students got so much out of the experience.They were able to draw a number of connections to Mateo and Maria and follow those connections into their own lives. It also gave them a chance to think about the importance of their own family stories and share those reflections with their own families.”

We often hear from teachers that artist residencies engage students in ways that traditional classroom activities do not and, introduce them to cultures and art forms that they were not aware of, and inspire curiosity to learn more about themselves and the world around them. What may seem like a daunting project to pull off becomes one of their favorite units of the year. We hope you’ll use the lesson plans and activities on our website created by other educators who have hosted residencies to inspire your own projects connecting your local cultures and communities with your classrooms!

Onward,
Mira Johnson
New York Folklore in Education Network Coordinator

Read all our news and updates about upcoming PD in our First Quarter News Bulletin: https://icont.ac/50ZzE

The post Upcoming PD and 2025 News appeared first on Local Learning.

Flavia Bastos (left) and alumna Lataushsa Cox (right) engaged in a studio discussion of Cox’s artwork when she was a graduate student.

Meet Flávia Bastos—Local Learning Board Member

“I think arts and creativity are really where life becomes interesting.”

As Distinguished Research Professor in the Arts and Humanities in the Art Education Program in the School of Art, College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) and Provost Fellow at the University of Cincinnati, Flávia Bastos brings deep experience in and knowledge of the importance of community-based art and learning to the Local Learning Board. Her research and scholarship are indebted to her Brazilian roots and her commitment to social justice. Her courses range from Arts-Based Research to Community Dance. She is past senior editor of the Journal of Art Education and has published and lectured extensively internationally. She and former LL Board Chair Doug Blandy are editors of the new book Promoting Civic Engagement Through Art Education: A Call to Action for Creative Educators (Routledge, 2024).

We asked Flávia to relay to our readers how her work intersects with that of Local Learning and the field of folklore. We share here her thoughtful insights with gratitude for her contributions.

• What do understanding and calling upon the relationship of community-based, local, and traditional art and artists bring to art education?

Well, that is the cornerstone of my work. I have been motivated to advance an inclusive notion of art that encompasses a broad spectrum of artistic activities and a variety of purposes. So much of contemporary art education is about understanding contemporary fine art (which I love), but sometimes at the expense of promoting students’ and learners’ connection with the human drive to create art and an awareness that art is all around us. Focusing on community-based, local, and traditional arts is critical for promoting students’ understating of the cultural and artistic traditions that surround them; it changes the locus of art from a market-driven, elitist experience to something that belongs to all. Additionally, the skills needed to learn about local arts require critical thinking and inquiry skills that will be valuable throughout a learner’s lifetime. There is something powerful about local learners doing ethnography about their own communities and accessing the knowledge that resides in local folks, many times their neighbors and family members. It is an empowering practice of learning about where you come from.

• How does the work of Local Learning and our ethnographic approach to education connect with higher education and professional development for teachers?

The quest for meaningful activity is shared among all of us. Teachers are often so overwhelmed with multiple demands and concerns that they struggle to teach in meaningful ways. When I work preparing future educators or future art education scholars, I emphasize the importance to start with who they are, taking stock of their life experiences and values. When this works, there is so much energy that is released and my students find a sense of direction and purpose. They can model for their own students the reflection and inquiry skills needed to understand local, national, and global cultures in the ways that they show up today and connect them with historical and traditional practices. It’s about asking why. Why do I think or behave this way? Why do I prefer this versus that? What experiences made me make these decisions? This search for meaning and the realization that the objects and practices we develop in the world carry meaning, makes the process of seeking to unveil it exhilarating.

I have been thinking a lot about the future of education as we face this AI revolution. On the one hand, we will be able to retrieve information more easily, but we have to face the risk that this information will reproduce all the biases of the content in which AI was trained. Therefore, the future of education, in my opinion, will not be about mastery of content. It will be about the development of inquiry and creative skills that allow us to search for deep meaning, and to leverage the tools of AI to forge a better, more equitable future. For that to take place, it is paramount that we remain wide awake and cultivate the intellectual and relationship habits of relentless curiosity and imagination.

• What would you like those of us in the field of folklore to know about Paulo Freire, the Brazilian philosopher and educator? How do you think our work dovetails with his philosophy? What might we learn from him?

Freire’s philosophy of education honors local knowledge and local learners. He embraced an inclusive notion of knowledge that included on the one hand academic knowledge, in particular critical literacy as a methodology for making sense of the world (community) that we inhabit. My work on community-based art education draws on Freire’s concept of education as a process of critical consciousness. This is relevant for folklorists to reflect about the goals of ethnography beyond documenting and preserving traditions. Our ability to learn about our own culture unleashes reflection and invites change. It is a gateway for transformation, and (I deeply hope) for promoting social justice. We can learn from Freire that education is political, and it empowers those involved to become agents of change. I think that rekindling that commitment to educational practices that at all levels promote civic and political engagement is much needed today to cope and address the global and local challenges that we face.

The post Meet Flavia Bastos appeared first on Local Learning.

Artists and teachers will be presenting in the following order:

Thank you for attending!

To learn more, please Contact Local Learning.

Thank you to our partners and funders for this Culture, Community, and the Classroom Showcase. Local Learning’s Culture, Community, and the Classroom programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

The post 2024 CCC New Paltz, NY Showcase appeared first on Local Learning.

Folk Arts and its role in educational settings has been a passion of mine for my entire career. When I was asked to join the board of Local Learning – and later to serve as its Secretary – I was thrilled to be able to work collaboratively with partnering organizations, educators, and thought leaders to advance the mission and vision for folk arts in education on a national scale. My time on the board has allowed me to better understand the concerns of educators and artists who do this valuable work. I hope that my own insights and experiences have assisted Local Learning with their work.

Beginning with the American Folklore Society’s meeting in Buffalo in 2018, New York Folklore has been increasingly active in supporting and promoting folk arts in education in New York State. New York Folklore is viewed as a resource for artists and educators through our statewide advocacy for artists and community organizations, and through our own publication, Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore. With the formation of the New York Folk Arts Education Network, coordinated by Mira Johnson, our engagement became much more manifest. Therefore, while my term on the board and serving as its Secretary is now ending, I am pleased to be able to say that the collaboration between our national and statewide organizations continues: through the annual Culture, Community and the Classroom workshops for teachers and artists; through the ongoing network activities in New York State; and through a burgeoning group of trained artists, culture bearers, and educators who fulfill Local Learning’s mission for “a nation of lifelong learners who understand traditional arts and knowledge as critical tools for transformative solutions to the complex challenges of today’s world.”

Ellen McHale, Executive Director of New York Folklore

Read all the news here: https://icont.ac/50nVM

2024 CCC Artist Cohort meets in New Paltz.

The post Fall News from Local Learning appeared first on Local Learning.

Join us Thursday, September 19, 10:00 am – Noon PST (1:00-3:00 pm EST)
Register here to receive the zoom link to this workshop. The workshop is a live zoom event and will not be recorded.

The post Oral History in Interpretation and Museum Education appeared first on Local Learning.

As the summer unfolds…

…and as most K-12 students wind down their school year and look forward to a break, many of their teachers embark on new learning adventures through summertime professional development training, seminars, and courses. Local Learning has a long history of designing and leading such opportunities and we will find ourselves in several communities this year.

June 4 and 5 I was honored to be among the 50 local and national presenters at the Arts Express Summer Conference hosted annually by the BYU Arts Partnership in Lehi, Utah. The Arts Education and Folk Arts Programs of the Utah Division of Arts; Museums were among the conference partners, making possible the participation of numerous folk and traditional artists, including musicians who performed during meal breaks.

The first half of our Local Learning session, “Every Artist Comes from a Family and a Community,” featured traditional teaching artists experienced in classroom residencies. Terry Goedel of N8tive Hoops is a member of the Yakama and Tulalip tribes. An educator of 30 years, Terry has taught high school and junior high math. He and his family perform hoop dancing around the state and the nation. Judy Mansfield, a bead worker, was raised on the Yakama Indian Reservation and taught college math for 16 years. She builds math into her teaching bead work. Jenna Ehlinger, Administrator of the Chase Home Museum of Utah Folk Arts joined me in leading activities to ground participants in some personal traditions (“Who eats funeral potatoes?” “What is something you know how to make?”) and interviewing Terry and Judy along with the audience. Conversations centered on culture, with questions about cultural appropriation and interest in cultural stewardship as a framework for helping young people determine what traditions are important to them and their communities. One teacher reflected, “I loved the idea of opening our hearts to who we really are (each child) and the idea that all students have a culture (even the white, middle-class kids!).” Two hours of hands-on engagement followed, with teachers rotating to learn bead working, Chinese calligraphy, Mexican paper flowers, and pysanky.

The Arts Express keynote speakers reminded the audience of 500 classroom and art educators that the arts bring sensory pathways to learning. Eric Stern, a choreographer and educator, asked us to watch a dance performance twice, each time noting “What do you see, sense, and feel?” (“Tracking our experiences is hard,” he said). Inspired by an origami artist, he choreographed the piece for six professional dancers, who interacted with one another and large, multicolored pieces of paper. Eric interviewed two of the dancers. They said it was interesting to work with an everyday, ordinary object like paper, which changed throughout the performance, and how challenging it was to have minutes when they had to improvise within the choreographed movements. Eric called the piece “Unfolding.” The author and illustrator of the picture book The Circles All Around Us, Brad Montague, is also creator of the web-based series “Kid President.” He focused on finding and generating wonder—be awesome, be joyful, be kind, which contributes to children’s relational health. He emphasized that idea formulation is messy in the middle, and messy is more than okay. Brad and his wife Kristi Montague will launch a new picture book in September, Fail-a-bration, and invite young people and adults to “celebrate the way failing actually means you tried and learned something. Failing doesn’t have to bad! It’s just part of the process of learning to do something better.”

Over the two days of Arts Express, teachers and artists shared, laughed, and learned to do something better. Thank you to all the teachers in our lives, seek wonder this summer!

Read our full bulletin here.

The post 2024 Summer News appeared first on Local Learning.

This e-bulletin includes a welcome from our new Board Chair Halle Butvin, updates on summer opportunities, and more.

Dear Local Learning Community,

I’m excited to begin 2024 as the new Chair of the Local Learning Board of Directors. On behalf of our team, I extend gratitude to Doug Blandy, our previous Chair, for his dedicated service.

Currently, I serve as the Director of Special Projects at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, leading the Cultural Vitality Program. Our collaboration with communities globally focuses on maintaining languages and cultural practices for social and economic well-being. We share best practices through convenings and Smithsonian platforms. Effectively communicating the process and impact of our work, both at the Center and at Local Learning, can be challenging.

Last year, the Local Learning team convened in Chicago for a retreat to develop a new strategic plan, aligning with Local Learning’s people-centered and process-oriented approach. For me, the experience clarified that our process, an inquiry-based ethnographic process engaging folklorists, educators, and artists, holds the key for transformational change in our communities, our schools, and our country. More engaged learners develop the skills to understand themselves and others. It is a simple, radical concept.

Please join us in this new chapter as we embark on efforts in research, expanded programming, and widening our reach of this critical work.

Halle Butvin

The post 2024 First Quarter News Updates appeared first on Local Learning.

Local Learning:
Connects across disciplines, with 2023 conference presentations at the American Folklore Society, National Art Education Association (NAEA), National Council for the Social Studies, Oral History Association, and other state and regional gatherings.

Centers traditional artists’ and culture bearers’ expertise. We advocate for the inclusion of traditional artists in national plenary speaker roles at conferences like National Heritage Award Fellow Verónica Castillo at NAEA in April 2023. Our Culture, Community, and the Classroom (CCC) program supported teachers and artists in planning and implementing 23 artist residencies and publishing teachers’ CCC lessons and activities that connect cultural knowledge to education standards.

Serves the field through publication of the Journal of Folklore and Education. This year’s 10th volume “Teaching with Folk Sources” featured a double issue with timely articles and a five-unit curriculum guide that leads teachers to the rich resources found in ethnographic and oral history archives at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress and in regional archives around the nation.

Plans strategically for the future resiliency of both our organization and our mission amid social and educational upheaval. Our new five-year strategic plan is bold, providing an iterative framework that is responsive to and supportive of transformative learning through folk arts in education. We also honored the visionary thinkers who gathered in 1993 to advocate for a national network at our 30th anniversary celebration in September.

All this happens through our small staff because we are actively supporting leadership and program growth around the nation. All of you who read our journal, attend our programs, and hire the artists and folklorists who participate in our professional development contribute to the strength of this network. Almost half our budget goes directly to our co-planners and facilitators, the co-designers, artists, and co-dreamers in this work. When we strengthen one classroom, one artist, or one program, the network is strengthened exponentially.

Please find our full e-bulletin here: https://icont.ac/4Ve6C

The post You make our network stronger appeared first on Local Learning.