Teaching Philosophy

 “I teach Art -- not crafts.”  Let me be clear; Art is different than crafts.  You can find a numerous crafts on the Internet and in books, but many of these are not teaching Art.  Art should teach creativity, not direction following.  It should inspire the student to make their own choices and make mistakes from which to learn.  Teaching Art should always include a lesson in Art History or a design theory.  For example, when you have 25 snowmen that all pretty much look the same, what you have is a great winter holiday craft, but it's not Art.  Art is something that the student will be proud of because they have made it distinctively their own.  It's something that the child will save and 15 years later, open up a box, see it and say, "Hey, wow, I made that!"  This is what I strive to accomplish with my students.

Art is a wonderfully rich subject that incorporates most every other discipline.  Art is universally necessary as part of the human experience, and to teach it badly or not teach it at all leaves the student with a void in their educational and human experience.  For some students, Art is their safe haven, their place to excel and shine; without art they may never know the joy of success. I take my job very seriously, because I believe in it.  I believe that what I do will enrich my students, not just while they are in school but for the rest of their lives.

I teach art at the elementary level and I have 535 students.  I expect that many of them will never take art again after leaving my school.  Only a few of them will continue to take classes and only a few of them will actually become a professional artists.  However, it is my goal that every one of my students will have an appreciation for art, a basis for critical and creative thinking, and a general knowledge of art history.  I am in a wonderfully unique position that I teach a fundamental subject during a fundamental time in a person’s development.  

I structure my lesson to meet these goals in the following ways. I start with a basis for a project, which is always grounded in a “big idea” as defined and described by Sydney R Walker “Teaching Meaning in Artmaking” and Marilyn G Stewart in her book “Thinking through Aesthetics.”.   These “big ideas” can be about an art movement, time period, a famous artist or design theory.  As I develop a lesson I create the most authentic and best experience I can for my students.   When I wanted to teach Monet, I realized that the big idea of Monet is “Plain Aire” (to paint outside), so I wanted to give my students a Plain Aire experience.  This was my inspiration to write a grant and install a water-garden on our campus.  When I teach Picasso, we listen to jazz music and create a still-life of musical instruments.  I grow a sunflower garden every year so that we can make sunflowers like Van Gogh did.   When I wanted to teach about the artwork of Claus Oldenburg and how he supersized everyday objects to emphasize American consumerism, I realized that I could not do such a project with an entire grade level, so I started an art club for special projects for permanent display in my school.  Now hanging from the rafters of my school’s, main hallway 30 feet in the air, are sculptures of school supplies, enlarged by a factor of ten.  For a lesson in museum etiquette and the difference between a reproduction and original work of art, we take a field trip to the Nelson-Akins Museum of Art.   When I teach aesthetics and critical scanning of art, I bring in 8’x17’ banners of reproductions of art from the Teachers Discovery Company and I take the entire school into the hallway to observe and discuss the works of on art display.

                Obviously, not every lesson can be as involved as previously mentioned.  I do, however, give an in-depth introduction to each project.  I start off every new lesson with a power-point about the artist or art movement that is the inspiration for the project.  This gives the students background information and a schema to work from.  Then I carefully demonstrate how to create the techniques needed to make their own work of art.  When it is time for my students to create their own works of art, I make sure that the project is open-ended enough that it really is their own work of art, not just a copy of mine.  For example, when it’s time to make a landscape, I’ll pass out dozens of photos of landscapes I’ve cut out from calendars.  Then we’ll spend time as a class brainstorming and writing on the board a list of all of the different landscapes that we could do. “A desert, the mountains, a swamp, a beach, a meadow, an island, the steppes, mesas, the prairie,” the kids enthusiastically shout out examples as I write. 

For students who struggle with art I do many things to help them and encourage them, but the first thing I do is in my classroom rules.  Rule number four states “You can’t say ‘I Can’t.’ You may say ‘I need help, I don’t understand or I’m having trouble.”  This immediately reframes the students thinking, and makes achievement possible.   I also am adamant that the creative part of the project never comes from me and always from the student.  When a student raises their hand and says “I don’t know what I should draw.”  I typically reply with “I don’t know what you should draw, either, but I have given you all of this information and all of these ideas.  It is your job to come up with the solution.”  Sometimes I will follow up with “The math teacher would never say to you “oh, the answer to problem 23 is 74.’  They make you work out the problem in math and I’m going to make you work it out here in art. I will show you how to draw once you figure out what to draw.” At that point I leave the student to their thoughts.  I let them “work it out.” And they do – every time.  I have never had a blank piece of paper handed back to me.  It is that moment when the student stops to think, you can start to see their own creative force emerge.  These moments I love, and they are the reason why I teach. To see that spark of creation ignite in a child.  I love all the ideas, the idiosyncrasies, the different perspectives and background that I get to see and experience through my students’ works of art.  By watching them create, really create, something when before there was nothing, by using their own experiences, preferences, and skills, is a true joy.  I love to go through a stack of projects at the end of a unit and be delighted to find unexpected treasures of images.   By teaching what I teach the way that I teach it, I feel as though I am helping to raise children who will grow in to creative forward thinkers, living full rich lives, with a healthy appreciation for art and design.