From Thesis to Today: How Social Media Still Shapes My Work in the Arts

Defending my Master's Thesis at ISU, 2016

​Back in 2015, I dove headfirst into my master’s thesis, Social Media as a Tool to Share Art Curriculum. I investigated how social media platforms can assist art educators in sharing curriculum and reflecting on their own teaching practices.

The Experiment
I was working as an elementary art educator (I’d been teaching since 2012), so I decided to make my thesis as practical as possible. I launched a Facebook page where I shared my curriculum materials and documented my teaching experiences. Over two months, I posted regularly, responded to comments, and kept a reflective journal to track how social media engagement shaped my teaching approach.

Alongside my own reflections, I ran an online survey for other art educators. I wanted to hear how they were using social media in their own classrooms—what was working, what wasn’t, and how it influenced their teaching.

I combined qualitative first-person reflection with broader practitioner insights via the survey, to offer a balanced perspective on practice-based learning and peer approaches. It showed how platforms like Facebook could be both a teaching tool and a professional learning space, fostering community, peer support, and open curriculum sharing.
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Looking back now, it feels like I was capturing a snapshot of an early stage in how teachers were beginning to build professional communities online.
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Photo by Susan Moran, 2025

Fast Forward to 2025
A lot has changed since then. I’m no longer in the classroom—instead, I serve as the Community Engagement Officer at the Rockford Area Arts Council. One aspect of my job is to oversee summer and afterschool youth art programs. While I'm no longer teacher, I'm still passionate about inclusive, diverse, and creative arts curriculum.

My social media presence has also changed. Once I stopped posting classroom lesson plans, my audience—largely art educators—had fewer reasons to engage. My follower interactions declined, and I started to wonder: Should I just shut down my art education accounts? I didn’t know who my audience was anymore and I wasn't sure what I wanted to share.
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Finding a New Direction
Instead of deleting my accounts, I’ve decided to change how I use them. My focus will expand from exclusively art education to three interconnected areas:

• Creative Practice – sharing my own art and process
• Community Engagement – highlighting arts initiatives and collaborations
• Youth and Arts Education – continuing to champion inclusive curriculum for youth
  
  

I hope this shift helps me connect with a new community—artists, community leaders, and anyone passionate about the role of the arts in our lives.
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Social media has changed a lot in the last ten years, but I still believe it is a great place to share ideas and learn from one another. Stay tuned!