The 7th grade visual arts students recently completed a unit titled "Object, Story, and Context: What You Don’t See Matters," which was developed for my Cultural Teaching Fellowship with the Field Museum. Throughout this experience, students explored how everyday and ritual objects can carry deep personal, cultural, and historical meaning, and how that meaning can shift or even be lost when context is removed. Beginning with a hands-on provocation, students closely observed and interpreted unfamiliar objects, quickly discovering how easily assumptions can shape understanding when key information is missing.

Students then expanded their thinking by engaging with storytelling traditions, including Indigenous perspectives on how stories are passed through oral histories, art, and material culture. Through these explorations, and a trip to the Field Museum Native Truths exhibit, students examined how objects communicate identity, values, and lived experience. They considered important questions such as: Who tells the story of an object and what happens when that story is incomplete? These conversations were thoughtfully connected to both Indigenous histories and Jewish experiences of memory, ritual, and cultural continuity.

The unit culminated in a photography-based project called “Seen / Unseen.” Students brought in objects meaningful to their own lives, many connected to family experiences or Jewish identity, and photographed them in two ways: one image showing the object in use (with context), and one close-up image that obscured its meaning. They then wrote personal narratives explaining the significance of their object and created layered visual displays that revealed the full story beneath the surface.

During our final gallery experience, peers first interpreted the close-up images, making thoughtful guesses about each object before uncovering the full image and story. This powerful “assumption vs. reality” moment helped students recognize how perspective, context, and voice shape understanding. The project not only strengthened students’ artistic and observational skills, but also fostered empathy, critical thinking, and a deeper appreciation for the stories objects hold and the importance of honoring those stories with care and respect.