First, it's important to note that I teach ESL in a foreign country (Japan). I'm an assistant teacher, but I do lead the classes sometimes. I primarily make han

First, it's important to note that I teach ESL in a foreign country (Japan). I'm an assistant teacher, but I do lead the classes sometimes. I primarily make handouts and games/activities for helping teach vocabulary and grammar points. That said, it should be easy to see where clip art can help. - helping students associate new words with images - illustrating grammar differences via comparison - breaking up a handout so the flow is easier to follow (think a comic) - preventing excessive text which could make a handout look daunting - creating flash cards for students or other such materials I also took quite a bit of time to learn about typography and combined that with what I learned about UI/UX design in university to make my handouts look easy to read. I also choose fonts carefully because there is no way for me to know if any of my students are dyslexic (this is one great use of Comic Sans type fonts) due to Japan's privacy laws. I know that my position has little power when it comes to the method of education. So I do my best to provide the highest quality work for the little things I do have control over. Also, the work I do now will no doubt help me when I pursue an education career back in my home country. I'm too busy to find the sources I've read over the years since I never archived any of them. But if you read up on ESL, special needs teaching, education in general, raising children, psychology, and combine it with a general understanding of design, you'll see that clip art can be extremely useful. Mainly because the best clip art == cartoons boiled down to a single essential point. No extraneous fluff unlike realistic drawing or photos.