Strategies
Big ideas
To challenge my students throughout out the year I use focus topics called “big ideas”. A big idea is exactly as its name states; it’s broad and encompassing, and it only exists as an idea or happening. I explain to my students that big ideas cannot be touched or put in your pocket and exist only in your brain. Some big ideas that we regularly discuss and create about are identity, transformation, family, nightmares and dreams (figurative/literal), power, beauty, nature, time, and more. These ideas are usually the focus for a month or two, and after we are done they move to a big idea bank. The big idea bank allows students to revisit any past big idea when they are so inclined. There is no due date or expiration for an artwork inspired by a certain big idea, and very commonly, artworks span across a few.
Centers
New materials are introduced in a center, a home base or spot where those materials will live for the remainder of the school year. These centers can be tables, drawers, baskets, or even a binder of information. Using this organizational technique allows me to run my classroom the only way I see fit: as learner-directed. New ideas are introduced to students through a variety of ways, such as, presentation, challenge days, light readings, and art criticism talks.
The use of centers allows students free access to all material in the classroom. I release materials in stages throughout the year as students are ready to receive them. I begin the school with the entire room being the drawing center. At every table I stock a variety of drawing materials: markers, colored pencils, crayons. Standard pencils are readily available at another location, next to sketch paper and other permanent materials. As the year progresses and student understanding and skills develop, more advanced material are released in this order: painting (cakes then liquid), collage, sculpture, printmaking, clay, weaving. Alongside materials-based centers I also open content based centers. Still life is a center that resides in a container; it is set up and broken down as the artist/student needs. Continuing through their mastering of the art room, students will have access to an upload center where they photograph their own artwork and submit it for publishing on the class website, as well as more information based centers where they can go to brainstorm and analyze information to craft new ideas. These information style centers often include technology and a hall pass to leave the room and venture to the library across the hall.
Choice-based art education
The choice-based, or learner-directed, art room is one where students oversee the designing of their own lesson. In my art class I will never tell a class what we are making; that’s just not right and it for certain isn’t artistic. Instead I teach my students about techniques, process, artists, history, cultures, and materials. Once loaded with their new information for the day, I set my class free to use the lesson or techniques anyway they want. I encourage experimentation and celebrate the failures equally to the successes as opportunities to learn. Everything is relevant to my young artists, and will be used in the creative process.
I decided to “teach” in this manner after studying the level, or lack of, creativity in my students. As the teacher in the learner directed classroom I look at myself as a facilitator. I am there to prep students and materials for self-directed discovery and art-making. When put in charge of a project students are not just deciding what color to paint their artwork, but rather working on a deeper level of how they want to communicate. Students in the choice based art room are thinking critically about what they want to create and how they will accomplish that. I challenge my students to think creatively about materials and techniques.
The learner directed classroom is a place where students think critically about choices, strengthen their visualization skills, and develop collaboration techniques. Every student in my classroom must present me with their idea before a project can begin. Like a mini sales pitch, students must express how this project will be completed, what the significance is to them, and what the viewer will experience.
Restorative practices
“I was benevolently good, it was misery that made fiendish” -The Creature
The above quotation is from Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein. It is spoken by the creature who is known commonly today as Frankenstein, but who in fact remains nameless throughout the book. He is talking about a point in his life when he could no longer bear the misery of being alone and misunderstood. At this point in the story the creature commits some of the most violent acts in the novel. This occurrence when an individual turns to violence due to their identity being challenged or disregarded is not only native to 19th century literary monsters, but also to my students.
At the beginning of last school year, Keene began a new course of disciplinary action. Our first action is now to use restorative practices, instead of the outdated scolding/punishment model of discipline. The main idea of restorative practice in school is to repair the relationships harmed during a time of wrong. When an incident occurs that disrupts the classroom relationship I focus my teaching on repairing the relationship(s) between the offending/offended parties. Assuming the role of a facilitator, I bring together all students or classes involved in an incident to voice, in a safe place, how we all felt before, during, and after the incident.
The book Better Than Carrots or Sticks: Restorative Practices for Positive Classroom Management lays out the framework for facilitating “circles”.18 In our circles we take equal time to speak, listen, and understand how all the involved parties feel. The focus of these circles is not to decide a punishment for the offender but to bring the victim and the offender together to come to equal terms of understanding; to move forward.
To hold an effective and meaningful circle, my student’s identities need to be active. I need my student to know that I hear them, that the community hears them. In seminar, we discussed the need to feel validated, the need for our voice to be heard so we can continue existing. We looked at this need to be heard through the eyes of Frankenstein’s creature. In Shelley's novel, the creature perpetually longs to be heard. The creature is constantly judged by his looks, described as so grotesque one cannot bear to look at him. Only being able to communicate with a blind man, after years of solitude, the creature has his first chance to have a voice. Never feeling whole, physically being made of parts different human bodies, he is seeking validation. Being part human he exhibits the same desires. “it’s defining of humans that we need to be address and be seen”.19
Upon finally being heard, but not seen, the creature is ever so close to finally having his internal identity of an intellectual who is able to read, write, desire, and reflect; overpower his external identity of a horrid non-human creature. The blind man in the novel is part of a family that the creature has watched for a great time. Through the family, unbeknownst to them, he has learned to speak, read, and write. Observing the family all day, and secretly refilling their firewood stock at night, the creature waited for the sighted members of the cottage to leave to speak with the blind man. Hiding being the man’s blindness the creature tells the story of a lost soul in the world to the blind man. Talking about himself, the creature is seeking the blind man’s comfort and love. Eventually the blind man’s family returned to the cottage, and upon first sight, the blind man’s son beats the creature out of the home. Infuriated and depressed, the creature reflects on his decision to contact the family, putting himself down. Eventually he talks himself out of his recent depression and in a fit of rage lights fire to the family’s cottage. The actions and reaction of the creature raises the question, is he human?
I have witnessed the creatures turn to violence in my students. In seminar, we discussed how when our core beliefs are challenged and we can no longer commit to words, we turn to violence. Having our identity challenged causes great turmoil in our being. We as humans need to tell our story. When a child feels as if their belief/identity is being threatened and they cannot bring themselves to words, they thusly react in the instinctual manner of physical action. The goal of using restorative practices in my classroom is to create an environment where there is no need for physical action because every student feels they have sufficient time to explain their story.
Word Clouds
A word cloud is a visual representation of text. A generator can be found online through a quick internet search. I use these images to actually see, not read, an overview of a text. To create a word cloud, I input a document, list, or other text into the generator. The generator will then analyze the text. Based on the number of times a word is used, it will appear larger and more central. The less a word is repeated the smaller it is.
Comments: