When Art Teachers Become the Students: Our Artist Mash-Up PD

There’s something energizing about seeing art teachers in creative mode.

During our most recent professional development session, we focused on two things that go hand in hand: designing clear, student-friendly learning targets from our visual arts standards and experiencing what those learning targets feel like in action.

To make it hands-on, we used a project called the Artist Mash-Up: Cardboard Relief Sculpture, a lesson that asks students to blend visual ideas from two different artists to create one original composition. After reviewing the standards and discussing how to translate them into meaningful objectives, we stepped into our students’ shoes and created our own examples.

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A Room Full of Discovery and Texture

Once the materials came out, the classroom came alive.
Teachers spread across tables, sketching, layering, and testing new techniques. One teacher made her own tissue paper from found materials since we’d run out. Another teacher experimented with rice for texture. Others dove into collage using magazines, and one even worked in a shiny wrapper from the treats I’d brought to share.

Every corner of the room buzzed with creativity. It was incredible to see how differently everyone interpreted the same learning target: some focused on balance and repetition, others on contrast and texture. By the end, the tables were covered in sculptural mash-ups that looked nothing alike, which was exactly the point.

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What We Learned

The best part of the day wasn’t just the finished pieces, it was realizing how many factors have to come together for authentic creativity to happen.
Clear, student-friendly learning targets help give students direction, but great work also depends on an engaging project, inspiring artist examples, and plenty of room for personal choice. When all those pieces align, students (and teachers!) feel both supported and free to take creative risks.

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Want to Try It in Your Classroom?

If you’d like to bring this project to your own students, I’ve bundled everything into a ready-to-use digital resource on Teachers Pay Teachers called Artist Mash-Up: Cardboard Relief Sculpture.
It includes the lesson plan, slideshow, artist cards, planning sheet, and rubric, all linked from one easy-to-use PDF.

It’s a creative, standards-aligned way to show how artists transform inspiration into something new, and how clear learning targets make that process even more powerful.

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