Learning — Kameelah Janan Rasheed

Learning is core to my practice and, more importantly, to my life. I have worked in education for the past twenty-six years. At the age of eleven, I began volunteering in my younger brother's special education classroom. Now at 37, I have worked as an educator across various contexts: public high schools, museums, universities, libraries, and more. The archive below includes programming from 1992 onward. Since 2021, I have been an adjunct at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and a Visiting Critic at Yale School of Art (MFA Painting and Printmaking, 2021; MFA Sculpture, 2022-23). I am also a Mentor-in-Residence (2022-2023) for the Future Memory track for New Museum: NEW INC.

I also conduct studio visits by invitation.

If you are looking for my consulting business, Orange Tangent Study, please visit our website.

If you are looking for my itinerent school, NIGHT SCHOOL, please visit our website.


Mentor-in-Residence NEW INC - Future Memory Track NEW INC: New Museum (Remote and New York, NY) ︎︎︎︎︎︎Are.na Page︎︎︎	September 2022- May 2023	NEW INC members work with mentors to achieve strategic goals and solve tactical challenges through our mentor-in-residence program, dedicated mentorship, and office hours consultations. Mentors act as empathetic sounding boards, helping our members to contextualize their experience and chart a course for individualized growth. Through ongoing feedback and guidance, mentors are a critical point of accountability as members pursue new major projects or a sustainable business model.
Visiting Critic MFA Sculpture and MFA Printmaking and Painting Yale School of Art (New Haven, CT) ︎︎︎︎︎︎Are.na Page︎︎︎	September 2021- May 2023	As a Visiting Critic, Rasheed participates in studio visits and group crits with MFA students at the Yale School of Art. From September through December 2021, Rasheed served as a visiting critic at Yale School of Art - Painting and Printmaking. From September 2022 through May 2023, Rasheed served as a visiting critic at Yale School of Art - Sculpture.
︎Course Instructor Teaching and Learning as "PRIMITIVE HYPERTEXT" School for Poetic Computation (Remote) ︎︎︎︎︎︎Are.na Page︎︎︎	October - December 2022; April 2023	Teaching and Learning as "PRIMITIVE HYPERTEXT" uses texts authored by Octavia Estelle Butler as a starting point to explore teaching as a relational practice that builds networks between all organisms and knowledges. In this course, while we will start with Butler, you will be introduced to a range of other texts that expand our "aperture" (Zaretta Hammond) of our practices as both teachers and learners.
︎Course Co-Instructor Languaging the Contemporary The University of the Arts (Summer Session: Montpellier, FR)	July 2022	In this five-day intensive co-taught with Yuchen Chang, we explore the failures and possibilities of language to describe ourselves and our worlds. This class begins with coinage and historical approaches to finding language. We then move into opacity and moments of both refusing or abandoning language itself. As we get to the end of this brief course, we will spend time thinking about translation across languages, substrates, genres, gestures, etc. On our final day together, we will discuss the relationships between bookmaking (sequencing, assembling, binding) and choreography.
︎Course Instructor Teaching as Social Practice The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (New York, NY) ︎︎︎︎︎︎Are.na Page︎︎︎	January 2022 - present	As a practicum, this course invites students to actively explore the evolving role of the artist engaged in teaching as an art practice. The aim is to support the undergraduate who is currently teaching or who has an interest in teaching in The Saturday Program. In this course, we will explore questions such as: What is [un]learning? What constitutes a community? To what extent is teaching an art practice? To what extent is art itself, pedagogical? How is knowledge produced through art? How do art and art-making prompt us to build ecosystems between these emergent bits of knowledge?
︎Founder and Lead Instructor NIGHT SCHOOL Hosted by CUE Foundation (Remote) ︎︎︎︎︎︎Explore Our Classes	Fall 2020, Winter 2023	The first season of NIGHT SCHOOL was hosted by CUE Foundation. NIGHT SCHOOL is a series of interdiscplinary evening classes that loosely orbit a theme. Each class centers collaborative play and co-construction. NIGHT SCHOOL seeks to consider ways of learning in community that center the spiritual and somatic process of wandering through what Octavia Estelle Butler calls a “primitive hypertext.” Season One (Winter 2020) focused on technologies of perception and communication. We explored dirty data, non-human countersurveillance, spirit writing, GANs, Black privacy, black units of measurement, and deepfakes.
Workshop Instructor Research in Practice School of Visual Arts, MFA Fine Arts (Remote and New York, NY)	Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Spring 2020	This workshop is about how we think, how to articulate that thinking, how to revise that thinking, and how to build ecosystems between these emergent bits of knowledge within our artistic practice. Each student will select an interest that has “take[n] hold” (Octavia Estelle Butler) such as a specific person (non-artist), a location, an object, a phenomenon, etc. to focus on during this workshop. To invite Rasheed to a studio visit, please click here.
Studio Visits ︎︎︎︎︎︎Are.na Page︎︎︎	Fall 2006 - present	Rasheed has conducted studio visits at several universities and colleges such as: Dartmouth College, School of Visual Arts, School of the Art Institute of Chicago - Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection + Archives, Rutgers University - Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, Parsons School of Design, The New School, Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art, Columbia University, Northwestern University, The New School
︎Curriculum Designer; Instructional Coach New York City-based non-profit organization (New York, NY)	August 2013 - October 2022	During her almost decade tenure at this non-profit, she co-designed standards-aligned Global I and Global II curriculum and assessments in response to the 2014 statewide shift; co-designed and facilitated over 90 professional learning sessions for teachers and administrators seeking to modify curricular resources for a range of learners; coached NYC-teachers using the inquiry cycle, close observation, and modeling/rehearsal cycles.
Humanities 9/10, Global History and Geography 9/10 Teacher Public High Schools in Bay Area, CA and Brooklyn, NY	August 2008 - August 2013	Rasheed’s first professional teaching experience was with students in her own neighborhood of East Palo Alto at the East Palo Alto Academy in Menlo Park. Her final year of teaching in New York City was at a Brooklyn-based transfer school for undercredited and overaged students.
Museum Educator Gallery/Studio Instructor Brooklyn Museum of Art Workshop Instructor Queens Museum of Art	August 2012 - August 2014; October 2015	Rasheed taught a range of classes to middle-school and high school aged youth that invited students to explore ongoing exhibitions as a point of technical and conceptual inspiration.
Tutor, After School Teacher, Program Manager Los Angeles County; Inland Empire; East Palo Alto, CA	October 2002 - May 2006	During Rasheed’s undergraduate time at Pomona College, she participated in and led tutoring and teaching initiatives. Of most interest were programs focused on closereading and civic engagement.
Summer School Teacher’s Assistant; Homeschool Teacher’s Assistant / Volunteer in Special Education Classroom Bay Area, CA	August 1996 - August 2005	When Rasheed’s mother withdrew her younger brother from his special education class, Rasheed supported the effort by assisting in the homeschooling effort. Rasheed also worked as a researcher and lead at a local arts program focused on community history and civic engagement.
Self-Appointed Handwriting and Reading Coach; Self-Appointed Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) supply supporter Menlo Park, CA	September 1992 - September 1998	During the earliest years of Rasheed’s life, she appointed herself a handwriting coach for her second grade classroom and the wrangler of all leftover books from the RIF program. Being the wrangler of leftover and unwanted books allowed her to begin building a tiny home library.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a learner from East Palo Alto, CA.

She lives and works between Berlin, Johannesburg, and Brooklyn.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a learner from East Palo Alto, CA.

She lives and works between Berlin, Johannesburg, and Brooklyn.