Thank you David for the smashing introduction! This is Mr. Anderson here, reporting from Caracas, Venezuela - where I am teaching middle school art at Escuela Campo Alegre, an American international school.

One of the projects I "inherited" from my predecessor was an 8th grade graffiti project. (Try telling your students, who have been waiting two years to create their name in graffiti on the classroom ceiling, that it WON"T be happening!) I've done quite a bit of curriculum work with graffiti, and was actually quite excited by the idea. I decided to broaden the unit to include a study of typography and writing systems, and to situate graffiti in that larger context. Now, I don't know a whole lot of 8th graders who are just itching to delve into typographic concepts and history, but a little graffiti sure livens the topic up!

I'll try to drop in with some graffiti resources later, but for the time being, here is a great resource on everything Typography. It's called Designing with Type.com, and it includes a historical introduction to a number of typefaces and a database of type design projects submitted by design professors at art colleges around the world - many of which could easily be adapted to the needs of younger art learners.

...Then sit back and watch your students talk about the serifs and ascenders on that graffiti bomb!