I was a high school art teacher in the New York City public school system for 25 years. During the first ten years of my career, I taught some of the most disadvantaged children across the five boroughs. As an itinerant art teacher, I traveled to different locations each day—homeless shelters, juvenile detention centers, centers for pregnant teens, schools for LGBTQ+ youth, high school equivalency programs, and drug rehabilitation centers. These environments were often challenging, but the students were deeply grateful for the chance to escape their circumstances and engage with art.
To meet the unique needs of these at-risk students, I developed a program with filmmaker and artist Gregory Shepard called Reality Art Class. At the time, handheld digital video cameras and basic editing software had just become accessible. Reality TV was also in its infancy and had captured the attention of young people. I saw an opportunity to combine these tools and cultural trends into a dynamic art program centered on student experience and agency.
Reality Art Class allowed students to document their learning through storytelling, video, and editing. They wrote about what they were learning, how they were learning it, and reflected on the process through the lens of video documentation. The program emphasized interdisciplinary learning and took students out of the classroom to places relevant to their lives. Before visiting these sites, they studied the locations, created artworks inspired by them, and then filmed their visits—often using three cameras. The footage was edited back in the classroom by the students themselves, transforming their learning into a collaborative narrative.
When the student videos were complete, we shared them with the communities and locations involved in each project. These screenings became important moments of connection and celebration. Students saw their work valued outside the classroom, and the people and places they had studied had the chance to witness the students’ creative perspectives and personal growth. This closing loop of sharing deepened the educational impact and turned each project into a dialogue between the students and the world around them.
This process gave students a deeper understanding of their experiences and placed them within a larger world.
During this time, I stopped making paintings and devoted myself fully to teaching. I found it impossible to give 100% to both fields, which each demand full commitment. Although I put aside my studio practice, I never stopped identifying as an artist. I began to wonder: Could education become a new medium for me? Could the classroom be my studio? In hindsight, I realized that what I was doing closely resembled relational aesthetics, a concept coined by Nicolas Bourriaud around 2002—the same time Reality Art Class was conceived. I view the student-created videos as final artworks. They capture moments of learning and the relationships that make creativity possible. To me, this is art in its purest form—akin to a monochrome or a single line on a canvas.
The next fifteen years of my teaching career were very different. The city closed the school where I had been working, forcing at-risk students into traditional high school environments—a decision I believe was deeply misguided, yet all too common when politicians assume the role of educators. I transitioned to one of the largest high schools in Queens, where I taught five 45-minute classes a day, each with about 40 students. The student population was completely different, and I was unable to continue the Reality Art Class program in this new setting.
Despite these changes, my experience developing Reality Art Class deeply informed my teaching. I continued to introduce students to the joy and reward of the creative process and encouraged them to see art in their everyday lives. Even in a more traditional
environment, I remained committed to making art education meaningful, relevant, and transformative.
Reality Art Class
“Properly used, media is an extension of the mind.” Howard Gardner, educator, philosopher, and author of the multiple intelligences, on the effects of media on thought processes. Edutopia.org 2002
Reality Art Class is a digital video curriculum for high school students, founded by New York artist and educator, Howard Schwartzberg and Gregory Shepard. The program emphasizes self and group identity by creating intimate moments of discovery that become personal memories, demonstrating art in its purest form of immediate emotion. Reality Art Class gives students an opportunity to explore a variety of environments that they might not otherwise experience.
The program exists within a concept called, “Freespace” (for expression and observation). Freespace can be interpreted and perceived as a living artwork/social sculpture, and/or learning lab. Through experience/project-based learning, Reality Art Class helps its students build the characteristics of resiliency as they become self-directed learners. Freespace is a concept/place where creativity excels through process and collaboration, where not only the student, but parents, teachers, and the community at large feel a sense of belonging and optimism. Freespace can be anywhere and everywhere and ultimately exists as a goal for students to find their own Freespace from within.
Reality Art Class immerses students in real interactive environments in real time. Reality Art Class adapts the popular reality TV show concept and molds it with lesson plans for an integrated art curriculum. Implemented in a contemporary educational fashion, the curriculum fully engages and self-empowers students. Mr. Schwartzberg assumes the role of Mr. Howard, a teacher who motivates his students to see, imagine and create using all the disciplines of art making.
The excitement and collaborative nature of film making effectively engages the students in the creative learning process. Through hands-on use of video, sound and editing equipment, they can explore the world on both sides of the film making process. In class, the students work in groups of three or more on short film making exercises that fine-tune their conceptual and technical skills. For example, students might write, perform, document and edit a commercial for a product, make a music video, host a talk show, or act out a play or monologue. As they become larger installations and evoke higher-level learning, students also have opportunities to engage in other forms and mediums of art making to support their video projects.
After completing exercises, lessons, and projects, students will be ready to go on location to create an episode of Reality Art Class. There, the students document their shared experiences and interaction with the surrounding environment. The teacher and/or the students choose locations together. Each one should be a unique and challenging environment that provides a cross-curricular learning experience.
Back in the classroom, students take ownership of their learning as they write about their experience and review their video footage. Facilitated by Mr. Howard, students discuss how to edit the episode and create the best possible memory. Editing gives the students a chance to further reinforce what they have learned. Students will also have the opportunity to work with professionals in the field to share and learn about new ideas and techniques that can apply to their work.
Identity and self-esteem can be established by exploring the external world and our relation to it. It can be odd to see yourself in action on video for anyone, let alone a teenager. A still photo is an object and easier to separate from oneself. When you see the way you speak and hold your head and play with your fingernails, you see yourself as others see you. To know yourself is to understand others, gaining compassion and departing from ignorance.
The most valuable and rewarding aspect of the program is sharing the work with fellow classmates, parents, teachers, and the community. Each episode becomes a tangible memory for each participating student. Students will receive copies of the episodes they created . In the future, when viewed, they will see their own personal growth and remember fellow students and the relationships they had with art and its processes.
Reality Art Class was conceived as a way to creatively engage at risk teenagers and learning-disabled youth.
“To make people free is the aim of art, therefore art for me is the science of freedom.” Joseph Beuys
Reality Art Class