Connecting the world through visual literacy

Understanding symbols leads to richer experiences

All teachers hope to leave an impression on their students. Few imagine impacting fellow educators.

Yet art education professor Kathy Unrath and coteacher Steve Barrett drew colleagues as well as graduate students to their fall Visual Literacy course. Course participant and literacy education professor Jill Ostrow says, “It’s wonderful to be back in class again and take aspects of what I’ve learned to apply to my own teaching.”

Visual literacy is the idea of making connections across the four symbols — letters, numbers, notes and images. Each one can be impactful on its own, but they create much stronger meaning when working together.

“Our vision for the class is for the word and the visual to be inextricably linked,” Unrath says. “There should be a beautiful melding that creates a joyful, satisfying experience.”