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Testing, Matt Damon, and Imagination

  • Posted on August 4, 2011 at 2:57 pm

This was painted by Annalisa, one of my students....being allowed to express herself!

As the summer winds down and I am spending time preparing for the new school year, I find myself thinking about my own potential as a teacher.  I feel blessed to be able to teach art in this 21st Century where politicians seem to think the only thing of value is math and science.  It boggles my mind when I think about my own potential as a child.  I have always felt that I had a deprived childhood because I didn’t have any art classes in my K-12 education.  It is truly remarkable that I have spent much of my adult life as an art teacher.  I would never have pursued art in college, if it hadn’t been for the student friends that happened to see my drawings.  They kept asking me why I wasn’t taking any art classes.  I remember drawing pictures and putting them up on my bulletin board.  I had no training.  I just liked to draw with a simple pencil and paper.

I grew up in a large family with 14 kids.  I have always felt that when you grow up in large families with little money you learn to be creative.  Maybe you have to find new ways to play because you don’t have that fancy toy your friend has or maybe you have to fix something because you don’t have the money to buy a new one.  Regardless of the reasons, I feel my family circumstance contributed to my creativity.  In addition to that is the fact that I had good parents.  They both were teachers, but they also were devoted to their family.  The family came first.  My parents would go without many things to provide for the big brood they had.  I can remember my mom coming home from teaching at the end of a long day.  She would lie down on the couch with a cold compress on her head.  She did this almost daily, but then she would always get up and make the family meal.  Everything would be from scratch.  We never went out to eat!

From very early on, I knew I was going to college.  I’m not sure why I knew this as my two older sisters weren’t as fortunate.  Maybe because I’m the youngest, I had a better opportunity as a girl to go on to college.  My oldest brothers all went on to college.  The four oldest each went on for their doctorates.  The fact that both of my parents even had gone to college was quite remarkable.  They didn’t come from wealthy families and they were born in 1909 and 1911.  Education, obviously, has always been important in my family!  This is one the reasons I find the current turmoil in education about standardized testing so ridiculous.  As I grew up in a family of 14 children, we were as different as the day is long.  We weren’t clones of each other.  We all had remarkably different personalities and interests.  Some of us were probably better “test takers” than others, but taking a test could never really determine who we became as adults! Some of us might have even been considered “late bloomers”.   I don’t think any of us ever would want to remember our K-12 experience in school as being about testing!  However, today students are spending much valuable time preparing for “important” tests.  Much of the school day is designed and structured around that yearly test.  Each school has to make adequate yearly progress.  This test taking business is just going to get worse.  Recently, here in Michigan, the governor signed a new bill into law that will eventually require 49% of a teacher’s evaluation to be tied to student test scores.  As a parent there is no way I would want my child subjected to this kind of education.

My son is 27, so he isn’t part of this craziness.  I look at my students much like my child.  Since I had my son so many years ago, I have always felt that I should treat my students the way I would want my son to be treated by a teacher.  I always wanted my child to dream big and be creative.  I wanted him to see possibilities and use his imagination.  I worry for the students of today.  Are we doing everything we can to make them into compliant little test takers?  Is that really what a teacher is supposed to be doing?  As an art teacher, I know my job is a big one in this high stakes testing time.  I have to give my students wings so they can access their creativity and play with their imagination.  So much of time in school is spent with the constant pressure in the back of everyone’s mind to improve test scores.  Now, it will even be elevated as teachers discover that their jobs may be on the line, if they can’t get their students to pass the state test!  Now, most of you reading my blog probably have some reservations about all of this test taking and what it really means for the future.  However, some of you may think teachers are just not doing their jobs today, because you keep hearing about how we have fallen behind in the world!  Truthfully, politicians have chosen to go after teachers because many of us belong to the last strong union standing.   Do you really think it’s the fault of the teacher if a student can’t pass a state test?  There are a lot of reasons students don’t pass tests.  One thing we know for sure is poverty plays a part in test taking.  At our school and probably many others we make sure students have a snack before they take the “big” test!  There are many factors that can affect test scores.  These are everything from poor nutrition, to lack of sleep, to inadequate test taking strategies (Yes there is a strategy for this!), attention problems, distractions, to even daydreaming!  Some days are also better than other days.  Maybe you just had a bad day that day.  Who knows what’s going on in a student’s head on any given day?  I remember a young lady that came into my art room that seemed out of sorts to me.  I asked her what was wrong.  She first said nothing and then she told me that she had been in an accident that morning.  The point I’m trying to make here is that teaching shouldn’t be about just taking a test and yet it seems like that is all the politicians care about.

This was painted by another student of mine, Cleanna. Shouldn't we be opening the door to imagination and creativity in our schools?

If you think back to your favorite teacher, I bet you don’t think about the fact that he or she taught you how to take a great test!  You probably think about the day when you felt special, like your teacher really cared about you!  I hope I make students feel special when they come into my art room.  I really do care about them.  The other day I was at the Three Rivers’ Meijer store shopping and an older woman was so upset because of some “screaming brats” in the store.  She thought she had an ally in me.  She thought the parents were terrible that couldn’t control their children!  She also thought they didn’t care that other people were annoyed by them.  I told her I was a middle school teacher.  It was obvious she wouldn’t want that job!  She told me she likes dogs but not kids.  She could tolerate her own children but even her grand children had better behave or she’d give them the boot!   I let her know that I like all of my students even the ones that frustrate me.  So many people that criticize teachers would not ever want to be stuck with thirty middle school students themselves.  Most of the teachers I know really care about their students just like I do.  We realize that at the middle school level students can bounce around with their behavior.  They have good and bad days.  They need adults around them that really care about them and can help them transition into adulthood.  If teachers are left worrying about test taking it gives less time for teachers to really spend caring about their students’ individual needs.  We are not all clones of each other and the students we teach are as different as my brothers and sisters were from me when I was growing up.  At the middle school I always think it’s interesting because there is no one student that can show us what a middle school student is, as they come in all different shapes and sizes, and interests!  So, I’m left asking myself the question why we have a government that insists on a test where one size fits all.  Matt Damon gets it and I really hope you take the time to listen to his full speech from last weekend.  It’s not that long but at one point he says, “None of these qualities that make me who I am can be tested.”  Truthfully, none of the qualities that I bring to my art classroom as a teacher can be determined and evaluated by a student test score either.

I am so excited about this new school year, not because my students will be great test takers, but because I can’t wait to work with my students and push their imaginations and creativity.  Just like any other year, I have a thousand things racing through my mind.  I’m filled with ideas for lesson plans for the new school year.  I can’t wait to share my ideas with my students, so they can take the seed of an idea that I begin and create something totally new and different from any other person.  As the government has us all “race to the top”, I’ll have my students all chart a new path for their own creativity and learning.  They will learn from each other.  They won’t run over each other racing for some golden imaginary ring devoted to test taking.  My students, for the brief time they are with me, will hopefully have an opportunity to access their imagination, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving skills.  These are skills that will serve them well in this 21st Century!

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Google, GAP and Art in My Life

  • Posted on February 4, 2011 at 4:46 pm

Google has partnered with some great art museums to create an online website where anyone can take a trip or tour around the world’s great art museums.  It’s called the “GAP” for short.  http://www.googleartproject.com/ It’s a wonderful site and I encourage everyone to check it out.

When I came across this website today I was taken back to my beginnings as an art student at Michigan State University.  It really is amazing that I even ended up remotely connected to the art world.  I never had an art class in all of my K-12 education experience.  This is one reason I so fervently believe in art education.  I feel like in many ways my young life was deprived because I missed out on the creative playfulness and unique perspective the arts provide in a world ruled by math and science.  The most interesting and intelligent people I have ever met are “creative” people.

I remember thinking I was going to college from around seventh grade on.  It seemed to be a “given” that I was planning on attending college, even though I came from such a large family.  My older sisters did not have that “given” in their minds but they were ten and twelve years older than me and times were tough.  I, being the youngest, had more opportunities than they did.  I think I probably knew I was going to college because many of my older brothers had gone to school.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do.  However, for a few years I wanted to be a veterinarian like my brother Joe.  I really looked up to him and I wanted to be like him I think.  Well, until I saw him go down to Ed and Jessie’s place up north and do something unspeakable to a cow.  That sure put a kibosh on the idea of becoming a veterinarian.  I never even thought about anything in the art world because I never even knew what it was.  Nobody in my family was connected to the arts.  You might be wondering how in the world I ended up involved in art.

Botticelli, The Birth of Venus

I liked to draw.  I didn’t obviously have any training and I simply used a pencil and whatever paper was around.  When I was a senior in high school I can remember not sleeping all that well and staying up late and drawing.  I remember drawing a picture of President John F. Kennedy from our “World Book” encyclopedia.  Of course I sort of left my pictures out for my parents to notice like any kid might do.  I remember them thinking they were nice.  There was no real encouragement to pursue art at any time in my life from anyone when I was young.  I took all college prep classes peppered with a lot of math and science.  I didn’t have any room in my course schedule for art until my senior year.  I had one free hour.  I chose choir because I like to sing and because I was afraid to take an art class.  I would have to take the beginning art class and be put in with freshman students which I didn’t want to do but really I was afraid that my secret would be out.  The secret was that I had never had an art course and felt inept!  Heaven forbid that I could take a course that I knew nothing about!  Isn’t that the point of an education?  To learn about things we don’t know?  Oh, well, I digress.

Botticelli, The Birth of Venus Detail

I moved on to college not knowing what I wanted to do.  I was an “undeclared major” college student.  I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do possibly because I hadn’t been exposed to what my true passion would become.  Back in the seventies the first two years of most college education was liberal arts anyway, so I took a lot of different courses.  I took quite a few philosophy courses which is amazing because I don’t consider myself to be very logical in many ways.  You know the old “If, then phrases”?  They never made a lot of sense to me.  However, as time went on I continued to draw.  I remember putting up my drawings on my bulletin board in my dorm room.  One drawing I did I really remember well.  I don’t know how I was exposed to the picture, maybe it was through a humanities class.  However, I fell in love with the painting by Botticelli, the Birth of Venus.  I loved the face on Venus so I drew it on typing paper and put it up on my bulletin board.  That one drawing probably created a turning point in my mind to consider taking an art class.  Other students kept asking me why I wasn’t taking any art classes.  I started thinking maybe I should.  I still didn’t have the confidence to take an art course but it kept nagging at me.

During my sophomore year I finally got up enough nerve to take a beginning drawing class.  The first day of class I can remember sitting in the art room waiting for our instructor and listening to the other students.  Most of them were bemoaning the fact that they had to take this “dip shit” beginning drawing course before they could take anything good.  I was petrified.  I thought what have I got myself into.  I was looking for an exit.  The first class was just an introduction.  After class I went up and talked to the instructor and told him my dilemma and how the other students were obviously much more experienced and how maybe I thought I should drop the class.  He asked me if I was willing to do all the assignments and come to class.  I told him of course I would do that.  He encouraged me to stay in the class and he offered that some of those students would end up dropping out because they wouldn’t be willing to do the work.  His “pep talk” worked.  I stayed in the class and never looked back.  I went on to take many art courses, much more than I needed for my B.A. so I earned a B.F.A.

Most people that I know today in education don’t realize how precious I feel a well rounded education is to the development of the whole person.  I think art is crucial in my life and opened up my imagination in ways that never would have happened otherwise.  As a teacher I have high expectations and hopes for my students.  I want to share with them my love of art and creativity.  The feeling I get when I create something with my hands, brain and heart connected cannot be measured on a test.  The push to create something new and original is always in the back of my mind.  As a teacher, I try to help my students reach their full potential and hopefully see that there is more to life than just looking at things through the eyes of some test that they won’t remember thirty years later anyway.  I see the value of creativity.  In our world today people must be creative just to survive in the high stakes of unemployment.  The world of the future will depend on the innovation and creativity of our youth.

Technology today is a wonderful tool for art education.  There are so many resources online that it is amazing what can be learned about art.  Many people even openly share their knowledge on sites like YouTube.  You may have to watch a few bad videos to get to the good ones but it is all worth it.  Here is a man creating a Greek/Roman style vase on Youtube.  It really is exciting and educational to watch him work.

Art touches everyone.  Even people that profess to not care about art carefully pick out their car, clothes, jewelry and furniture.  We all live in a society where we want to be surrounded by some element of what we think is beautiful.  When I watch those “Hoarding” shows, I even see people collecting items that they think are beautiful.  The items may get lost in all the surrounding trash, but they are there.

I encourage everyone to get involved in the beauty of the world of art.  If you cannot leave your home, travel online all over the world and view art from your own private perspective.  If you have always wanted to take an art class but were afraid, go ahead and face that fear.  You might be surprised at how wonderful you catch yourself feeling when you create something with your own brain, hands and heart!  If you don’t have access to an art class, make your own class up.  Go on Youtube and learn something new.  Many people are sharing all of their wonderful artistic talents online.  You can learn about everything from drawing and painting to basket weaving.  The world we live in is amazing and shrinking in many ways.  FDR said the only thing to fear is fear itself.  Don’t be afraid to discover your creative side.  Your brain is more than willing to create new connections to learning as you discover the beauty of pushing your creativity beyond the scope of what you thought possible.  We are all creative beings even those people that profess to not be very creative.  Push yourself to discover all the beauty art has to offer.  You might be surprised to discover your hidden talents and when you do, it will be a wonderful feeling of mental self satisfaction and fulfillment.

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Bravo’s Work of Art

  • Posted on May 22, 2010 at 8:11 pm

As if we needed another reality show!  Okay, so we might, if it involves art.  I love the concept of an art contest in the manner of “Project Runway”.  I don’t know what the artist wins exactly, maybe a special exhibit somewhere.  As an art teacher I know it is hard to tame the creative mind and lump it into a time frame for anything.  Creativity isn’t something that switches on necessarily at will.  I have a student right now in my advanced 8th grade class that is super talented.  She probably wouldn’t do well under this kind of pressure as she has a hard time meeting deadlines with her artwork.  How will these artists be challenged to create art and who will be judging the criteria for great art?  Those are the two questions that I have in my mind.  Don’t worry as I’ll be tuning in to see what happens with this show.  I hope it truly is creative and not some “staged” creativity that feeds the masses what they think art is all about.  Today art can be almost anything from realism to true fantasy to the fatally ugly.  Making a statement in art isn’t always beautiful and sometimes is political and at others it merely mocks reality.  I haven’t a clue what kind of art this show will have produced for it.  I find it mildly interesting that it is being produced by Sarah Jessica Parker.  I haven’t a clue what qualifies her for this.  Is she an art lover?  Is painting her secret passion?  I know she’s been featured lately on some shows like that ancestors, genealogy thing.  I really don’t care why she’s involved but I’m wondering why it’s being played at eleven at night.  I’ll still have one more day of school but knowing me, I’ll probably watch it and suffer through that last day!  I’m going to get my art on and have my art fix.  I hope this show pumps up the volume and pushes the envelope on creativity.

http://www.bravotv.com/work-of-art

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Sturgis Middle School Annual Art Show

  • Posted on May 12, 2010 at 10:29 pm

Another school year is almost finished and I’m busy with the end of the year art activities.  We recently had 6th grade orientation for next year’s sixth graders.  I put up an art display for that.  I’m putting up another display for the board meeting and orchestra concert on the 18th.  The show that I really look forward to is the annual art show at the Sturges Young Civic Auditorium.  I just set up that show Monday night.  Two of my students helped me set it up.  Every year I always think about how I’m going to put this together and every year I am filled with excitement at the talent my students exhibit.  This year was no exception.  I always think I don’t have enough variety of quality work to fill the show and of course I end up with enough to fill two shows.

There are about 140 artworks in the show by around 90 students.  Both two dimensional and three dimensional works are represented.  There are pencil drawings, colored pencil, watercolor, acrylic paintings, collage work, sumi-e painting, scratch art, sculpture, pottery and both oil and chalk pastel.  This is but a few of the shots that I took.

The show will be up through May 24th.  I encourage anyone that is in the Sturgis area to stop in and see it.  Here are some more three dimensional artworks.

As I said these are just some of the many artworks in the show.  Be inspired by the young people with artwork represented here.  I am.  I love working with these young students.  It is a thrill to see them develop their artwork under my tutelage.  I take great pride in what they accomplish and great ownership in the work that I do to get them to this level of development.  As I have said in past posts, “You got to have art!”  I can’t imagine my life never having explored the field of art and art education.

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We’ve Gotta Have Art

  • Posted on April 2, 2010 at 11:11 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG6A71py9nE

Teaching middle school art today is very different from when I was young and just out of college.  I remember the enthusiasm I had for teaching my first class in Fowler, Michigan.  It was so exciting to be out of school and to finally get a job.  I graduated in December of 1977.  It was in the middle of the school year and there weren’t any jobs really available.  I started working at Sugar Loaf Mountain resort as a hostess for the restaurant.  It didn’t pay very much and I didn’t stay long after they wanted me to design wine labels for the same pay as the hostess job.  I also found it very elitist in their attitude.  As an employee we were not supposed to fraternize with the tourists coming to ski the mountain.  I didn’t have a problem with that but they really didn’t want us to even go to the bar or restaurant.  It felt more like the hired help wasn’t good enough to sit next to the wealthy establishment.  I found the place rather stifling with their rules and expectations for the “hired help”.  They found out I had an art background so they wanted to use that.  Regardless of their motives I soon found employment at Kmart in the camera department.  I really enjoyed working at Kmart as they put me in an area where I had a lot of expertise and they respected my intelligence.  In the summer when I was interviewing for a teaching position the management was overwhelmingly supportive.  I was given the time I needed to interview and people were very happy when I snagged my first teaching job.  It felt like a family at Kmart as everyone was very encouraging of the young people that had gone to college and were looking for jobs in their fields.

When I arrived at Fowler I got right to work on working with the young students to create art.  We had so much fun together.  At the end of the school year I organized an art show while the gym teacher organized a dance and the music teacher had a concert.  We had a great turn out from the community and this was established for each year until I left a few years later.  I did manage to paint an eagle with two boys, with scaffolding, on the gym wall.  What an experience that was for someone who is afraid of heights!  I took a break from teaching and devoted myself to my art, making pottery and traveling to different art shows in Oklahoma and Michigan.  For many years I was happy doing this but when my son started kindergarten I volunteered to bring in my pottery wheel and demonstrate for the students.  I fired pottery pieces the students made and fell in love with the idea of teaching again.  I decided to update my teaching credentials.

A lot had happened in my years away from teaching.  Something called D.B.A.E (Disciplined Based Art Education) happened.  I was out of the loop but I easily got back into the loop.  However, teaching art has to be more about art production than anything else.  The art history, aesthetics and art criticism are all important but working with young people today it is so important to actually get their hands on the art materials and help them experience what it feels like to produce art.  In this age of text messaging and quick technology fixes I think it is more important than ever to develop creativity within my students.  So many students don’t have a clue how things are really made and why we buy the things that we do.  While art is all around them in designs that they purchase from their shoes, totes, mp3 players and phones so many of them are clueless about the thought that these items are purchased because of their interesting design concepts.  Some of them think that a computer spits out the design.  They don’t think about what person may have put the idea into the computer.  I try to point this out to my students because there is vast ignorance from most people about these issues.  Art is so important in all of our lives today whether we are aware of it or not.  We are surrounded by art in many forms and we make decisions about art on a daily basis whether it is decorating our homes or buying a car.  Art surrounds us in ways we don’t even think about!

I had an opportunity to review my art curriculum this year.  I was able to add a document camera and a projector to my teaching tool box.  This has resulted in a major change in my instruction delivery.  When I would show students how to do things in the past they would have to look at a mirror placed strategically over my head.  Now it’s projected.  If I’m doing something very detailed I can even zoom in for the students.  That student sitting in the very back of the room can now actually see what I’m trying to show them.  I marvel at this new technology and how computers have snuck their way into the art classroom through art programs and even online galleries.  Some people might think art is a thing of the past but art really is evolving and is the future.  We, as consumers, will always be drawn to beauty and grace.  Art will be in our future designs and really the creativity of our nation is dependent on the continued exposure to all the arts in their many forms.  Without art we become a mass produced society, plastic in many ways, without a heart.  It is art that nourishes our souls and completes our craving to be unique, to know that we are original beings and that we aren’t just one of many but one in a million!

When I was young and a beginning teacher I never thought about how teaching art might change.  It was all pretty basic in my mind.  You draw, paint, and sculpt; whatever medium you use art remains fairly unchangeable in its end result.  However, now I realize that art and its medium is constantly changing.  Today we have artists creating art through recyclables, computers, videos and much more.  Art is never stagnant and never stays the same.  Art is truly the most original thing that one can do.  Art continues to allow our imaginations to soar and our creativity to flourish.  Today there is more to art than ever as we search for new ways to express ourselves.  The importance of art in this rigid testing structure of education cannot be overly emphasized.  If we are to truly think, dream and imagine we must have art in our lives and we must nourish our souls with the making of art.

A video from our high school art teachers and the 2010 Scholastic Art Awards

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The State of Michigan Needs Inspiration

  • Posted on March 30, 2010 at 10:00 pm

This is the time of year when schools look at their budgets and program offerings for the coming school year.  At Sturgis Middle school we recently found out about our MEAP scores.  Each year we hold our collective breath waiting for the results.  The MEAP doesn’t follow an individual class through their time in school but focuses on grade level.  This means that scores can go up and down sometimes based on the type of class that is currently being taught.  It has been my experience that some years we have classes that are challenging, usually behavior issues are the problem, and some years we have classes that are exceptional both in their behavior and their ability to pass the MEAP.  This year we all have let out our collective breath with a big “Hooray!” as our scores were very good.  We can only hope these scores will continue to be high in the coming years.  I know that everyone at our school is part of the team to help students pass these tests.  This year students, that needed extra time, were given extra “lab” time with their core teachers.  This was accomplished through much effort by the exploratory teachers.  Exploratory teachers were asked to develop a “split” time class in which they would have students for 25 minutes out of 50 minute period.  This has been a difficult thing to accomplish but exploratory teachers rose to the moment and did what was necessary to help make this program a reality.  Most days classes were normal but some days individual students were kept back for more lab time in math, science, etc.  This can be very challenging for any exploratory teacher working with project based media as the student can fall behind in that class and other students will get bored if they spend too much time waiting for the behind students to catch up.  There are often times teachers are pitted against each other based on being a “core” teacher or an “exploratory” teacher.  Core teachers always get the respect from everyone simply because they are teaching what most people see as being necessary for an education, “reading, writing, and arithmetic.”  Some core teachers see themselves as above exploratory teachers by virtue of their placement of importance in the system.   In my nearly seventeen years of teaching at Sturgis a well rounded education has been of utmost importance to Sturgis school district.  Unfortunately, with the current money problems I think many schools are being forced to make cuts to their programs.  Whether it is art, music, drama or extra curricular programs all will be judged regardless of their merits.  At Sturgis we have been able to maintain our programs.  I believe it helps us with the “school of choice” program but as people flee Michigan for other states where they hope to get a job, the outlook for our school is also dim.  The funding coming from the state is less and less each year while the costs for everything from staff to energy continue to rise.  This is forcing larger class sizes and the reduction of services just like what is happening to our state government.  It’s time for our state to develop some new ideas for funding and for surviving our current crisis in our schools as well as all other aspects of our lives.

Our state is in a crisis that can and has to be fixed.  We need more revenue coming into the state to fix these problems.  Either we must create more employment through industry of some type or we must raise taxes on those that are still here working.  The fact is we are going to see a reduction in services across our state in our schools, road work, police, secretary of state’s offices, and anything else that the state touches, if we don’t do something now.  Many people are tired of being taxed and feel it’s gone far enough but many don’t realize the perilous position the state of Michigan is in.  We have such a beautiful state.  I personally think it’s ridiculous that our state should be in such bad shape.  We have natural resources that are the envy of other states.  We have great universities where people come from all over the world to get their education from.  We have terrific hospitals across our state.  We have so much to offer for recreation all through the year from the lakes in the summer to the skiing in the winter.  Unfortunately, for many years we put all of our eggs in that one basket of the automobile industry.  It’s time for new industry to grow and prosper in Michigan.  I love our state.  I think it is an absolutely beautiful state.  We need to develop our commodities to attract people to the state.  We hear about the problems in Detroit but it isn’t just Detroit.  The problem is all across our state.  If you go to the thumb area it is just as depressed as Detroit.  It’s just a smaller population.  Here is Sturgis we too have lost business and of course the people that work in those businesses.  Yet, we have a beautiful little city that could be doing more to get people to stop and shop here and build our local community.  I find myself running to Coldwater and Three Rivers to get things because we don’t have the stores that those communities have to offer.  I’d like to keep my money local but I’m not willing to shop at the loss of choices in products.

Our current government continues to use the same old tactics and behaviors that they have been exhibiting for the past sixty years.  That is the Republicans want to argue about cutting programs and lower taxes and the Democrats want to maintain programs but don’t have the where with all to create the funding for them.  Neither of these approaches really seems to be working.  We need something new and daring to happen.  The same old politics just isn’t working.  Geoffrey Fieger was on a local television program and he was talking about being “inspired”.  He said, “We need someone that will inspire us.”   I couldn’t remember the last time a politician actually inspired me.  Maybe when I was a kid and learned all about John F. Kennedy I felt inspired.  As an art teacher I know that inspiration can lead to all kinds of wonderful thinking and problem solving.  I think maybe our politicians need to be inspirational to bring out the best in their constituents.  My sister is always talking about the “genius among us”.  These are every day people that come up with fantastic ideas and solutions to problems.  Many of them are over looked as being “kooks” or just flatly ignored but there may be somebody out there with great ideas for our state that is just being ignored and overlooked.  I think maybe our current government needs to go to the people for fresh, new ideas.  We need a suggestion box for the government just like those old suggestion boxes we used to see at restaurants.  Someone in Michigan has a great idea for this state and how to turn it around.  I just don’t think it’s a politician.  He or she may be sitting next to us with a wonderful imagination and a desire for change but not the where with all to make it happen.  The state of Michigan needs to set out the suggestion box to get this conversation moving.  Enough of the fighting over budgets and everything else, it’s time for new ideas for funding this state and developing it to its fullest potential.

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Teaching in a Disconnected World

  • Posted on January 9, 2010 at 12:59 am
Global Children

Let's Embrace the Creativity in our Children

The word we always hear about today is “global”.  We are either “going global” or we’re standing still.  However in the American classroom my life as a middle school art teacher has probably helped to make me a bit skeptical of new government educational plans.  We seem to be pressured to make our children “global” beings that will “beat” all the other “global village” people as the government keeps telling us our children are not quite up to par.  The arts are always the first to be cut because greater minds than mine have decided that they must be a “frill”.  I always think those people simply must have absolutely no talent and imagination.  The arts are far more than a “frill” and serve a far greater good than most people can even imagine.  If you are wearing beautiful clothes, driving a highly designed vehicle or live in a fabulous home thank the artist that brought the design to fruition.  I know that many people have absolutely no idea of how most items are created and even brought to market.  If it wasn’t for the very artists that create the cool designs that make us all want to buy the next great thing, we’d all be driving around in box shaped cars and still be computing on the old box shaped computers.

Artists have been treated poorly in this old educational process of teaching for a “test”.  I think picking a, b, c, or d on a test is basically pointless.   The truth is no one will really know the end result of all this testing until these test takers become productive tax paying citizens that the government and business clearly want to be the next little worker bees.   I, on the other hand, believe that a true education will encompass all aspects of our intelligence.  This fight for the “core” subjects is disheartening to those of us that are on the cutting edge of embracing our creativity.  It is through real creativity that we all can find our true purpose in life.  Creativity allows you to learn how to think and make decisions based on realizing that there might be more than one answer to a problem.  Test taking makes us believe there can only be one answer and it is the “right” answer.

In life we all know that sometimes things aren’t easy for us.  Sometimes we actually have to think our way out of problems.  The answer isn’t covered on a test.  I think it’s time that we taught students how to think and make creative decisions.  Many children are lost in this test taking mold.  Many have shut down because their exuberance is not appreciated.  Sometimes teachers are so busy teaching for the test that they can’t see the marvelous gifted mind of the student that may be simply struggling with the test taking process.  I don’t blame the teachers or even the administration.  I blame a society that allows arbitrary politicians that promote programs that are just a boon for the test taking industry and a peril for the poor student confronted with all of the tests they have to take.

I think students need to spend much more time using their hands and brains in the classroom whether it be a core subject or my art class.  Students today are spoon fed information and then given countless hours on the computer where things are really quite pointless in many ways.  It’s just a click here and a click there browsing through things but usually not really reading them all that clearly.  We are in such a hurry today that I think we have forgotten the true wonder of education.  It is a joy in my art classroom when I watch a student that didn’t think he or she could draw figure out the drawing process.

Education used to be a wonderful thing to embrace.  Students need to feel that thrill that comes with the discovery of new intelligence.  If we want students to be excited about learning then we have to embrace the creativity that the arts empower in individuals.  The true joy of learning comes through self expression.  While the arts are a power onto themselves they can also enhance the learning in the core classes as well.  It is the individual we need to embrace and cultivate to be the creative adult they are meant to be.  It is not the test taking process that is going to build the next “greatest” generation.  It is the almost innate creativity we all have within us when we are a child that has been suppressed through years of “drill” type instruction that needs to be embraced and nurtured.  If the government wants us to be a “global village” then we should empower our children through creativity in all of their classrooms.

Below I have included an excerpt from Eliot Eisner that I think needs to be examined further.  The truth is number 10 is what I have really been talking about.

10 Lessons the Arts Teach

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it
is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution
and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.
The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.
All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.
When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source
and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young
what adults believe is important.
SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

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