OATK12 was founded as a service project by Dr. Trina Harlow to assist art educators in navigating COVID-19 pandemic teaching. Dr. Harlow served as the group's first director. Eventually, Bob Reeker, who was the first team leader, became co-director. Together, Bob and Trina led the group, dedicating much time on a daily basis to administrate the group, its activities and events, and its focus. The group also had three other team leaders who remained team leaders the entire two-year duration of the social media group - Holly Bess Kincaid, Kate Miller, and Dr. Sarah Ackermann. The group lost Randy Robart, another dedicated original team leader, to cancer during the first year of the group's existence. While a few team leaders came onto the leadership team and then left to handle professional or personal responsibilities during this challenging global time period, Christine Wellman, Danny Bryant, Rob Garrett, John Lentine, Jane Montero, Sasha Odom, and Ruth Pittman also served as team leaders as the group archived in June of 2022. We are thankful for this dedicated group of team leaders who served the entire profession of art education during pandemic teaching.

WHAT'S NEXT?

OATK12 archived the private Facebook Group with 28,000 members in June of 2022 to preserve the meaningful work that this collective community service organization did to sustain school and museum art education during the 2023 COVID-19 pandemic. In April of 2023, OATK12 began to think of what its next phase of support might look like for the field of art education. The service organization turns its focus to teacher recruitment and retention, teacher and student mental health and wellness, and addressing violence in our schools. OATK12 will continue to host summer conferences, online art exhibitions and contests, award prizes to outstanding teachers, contribute publications to the field, offer travel opportunities, and other activities. And, you just never know – the revered private Facebook Group may open back up someday. Although we have had many requests for that, we are still thinking about that! For now, stay connected with OATK12 through this website. We've been through a very challenging time TOGETHER – let's see what the future holds . . . TOGETHER!

OATK12 is a service organization -

serving the field of art education.