These video modules, created by the Detroit Institute of Arts, feature Metro Detroit high school students from diverse backgrounds. The videos are designed to support educators in facilitating conversations about such potentially challenging topics as identity and race in their classrooms. The modules can be used as a pre- or post-visit resource or independently of a visit to the museum. Along with the links below for each video module, there are discussion prompts that may be helpful for guiding conversations with students. Educators can modify and use these flexible and open-ended prompts in many different ways to inspire thinking and discussion among students.

Discussion Prompts

• Where do you go to escape from external markers of identity? Where’s your “Soundsuit”? Do you have one?
• Think about some facets of your own identity—in your family, with your friends, at school. How can you build an understanding of yourself by exploring different facets of your identity?
• Think about a time when you’ve tried on different outfits in front of a mirror. What is this about—is it about self-expression, fitting in, something else? How do outward appearances get in the way of authentically seeing ourselves and each other?

Students will analyze American art from historical, geographic, and economic perspectives to propose solutions to a current, local challenge.

These video modules, created by the Detroit Institute of Arts, feature Metro Detroit high school students from diverse backgrounds. The videos are designed to support educators in facilitating conversations about such potentially challenging topics as identity and race in their classrooms. The modules can be used as a pre- or post-visit resource or independently of a visit to the museum. Along with the links below for each video module, there are discussion prompts that may be helpful for guiding conversations with students. Educators can modify and use these flexible and open-ended prompts in many different ways to inspire thinking and discussion among students.

Discussion Prompts

We are constantly being bombarded with information. How often do we question the source and perspective of the information provided?

How might we develop our own informed opinions?

These video modules, created by the Detroit Institute of Arts, feature Metro Detroit high school students from diverse backgrounds. The videos are designed to support educators in facilitating conversations about such potentially challenging topics as identity and race in their classrooms. The modules can be used as a pre- or post-visit resource or independently of a visit to the museum. Along with the links below for each video module, there are discussion prompts that may be helpful for guiding conversations with students. Educators can modify and use these flexible and open-ended prompts in many different ways to inspire thinking and discussion among students.

Discussion Prompts

-How do life experiences shape the way we think or wonder about what we see?

-Why might it be important to try and understand another’s perspective when it differs from our own? How might we go about exploring differences?

Through exploration of portraiture and self-portraiture across time and cultures in the DIA’s collection, students will understand how artists use pose, symbolism, clothing, facial expression, objects and other details to communicate information about people’s identity in portraits and their place within their culture.

Using the five themes of geography to guide their inquiry, students will explore objects from ancient civilizations to understand how human culture has evolved and how those advances affect our lives today.

Using this graphic organizer, students investigate how art can build an understanding of individual, group and world identity.

Help students capture descriptive details in their writing to make their thinking visible and find identities in art at the DIA.

Using essential questions from the new visual arts standards, this graphic organizer supports students as they explore the galleries and discover the standards in action.

How can adjectives help refine writing and more accurately describe student thinking? This graphic organizer helps students connect descriptive words with works of art and encourages more detailed writing.