The Year-Long Adventures of the Blue Shoes & Their Friends: A Pedagogical Experiment in Visual Blogging and Tutoring University Athletes at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

While participating in a Teacher Workshop organized by Georgina Valverde at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013, Michael Hill began a one-year artistic and pedagogical odyssey making original images (always featuring some aspect of one or more athletic shoes) and posting them daily to a visual blog he created to help kick-start writing projects among the many student athletes he tutored at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He started the year self-identifying as “scholar/teacher,” but at year’s end Michael looked in the mirror and said, OK, still “scholar/ teacher,” but also “artist.” Here are the workshop organizer’s foreword, the scholar’s introduction, the teacher’s formal lesson plan, 52 plates from the artist’s blog, and a proxy example of student work. MICHAEL R. HILL earned two doctorates at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln and was for ten years a tutor in the UNL Department of Athletics. His specialties include archival research, human spatial behavior, visual sociology, and the theories, methods, and histories of the social sciences. Hill is a writer/researcher/artist at D&H Sociologists in St. Joseph, Michigan, and a docent in the Krasl Art Center’s K-12 Understanding Art Program. GEORGINA VALVERDE is an established Chicago artist and Assistant Director of Teacher Programs at the Art Institute of Chicago.