Using the modality of Digital Art in the ELA Classroom, students explore in depth the concept of solidarity. They examine not just their own values and what they personally stand for, but the values of female leaders and change makers throughout history that they admire and with whom they are willing to take a stand in solidarity.

After completing a Solidarity Poem featuring the person that they choose to stand in solidarity with and why, they engage with the digital art software WordArt.com. They create word art that synthesizes the characteristics of that person and the characteristics that they themselves possess that catalyze them to emulate that leader. Using the raised fist stencil designed to symbolize power and possibility, the students learn and apply features of WordArt.com such as word cloud generation, font and text layering, coloration, texturing and contrast.

The final artifact digital art canvas is created to echo the resonance of the final lines of their poem where they not only stand up for what they believe, and stand with the legacy of a female leader and change maker, but they issue a call to action for those who hold the same beliefs to join them in standing up and standing together in sisterhood.

It is through this kind of communal literary and artistic response that the students are able to use the arts not just to express, but to advocate, not just to be artists but to become activists.