Whose art gets made in an art classroom? If we're not careful it's the teacher's art. Avoiding that and fostering self expression are important to me, so I ask students to make as many decisions as possible themselves. This includes decisions about craftsmanship. What we refer to as "craftsmanship" often refers to stylistic preferences. If I make these important choices for my kids I'm robbing them of a great learning opportunity. This, of course, doesn't mean that I skip craftsmanship or ignore it. It means I differentiate. Craftsmanship isn't a directive in my classroom. It's a conversation. My Art 1 students are working on a pixel/pointillism assignment as part of our Artists Solve Problems unit. The unit starts by looking at some amazing art inspired by pointillism, then practicing traditional stippling. Some of the spheres I asked then to create in out 15 minute mini-lesson were sloppy, some were lovely. "What" I asked the class "makes this work well?" We talked about it and the class came up with a range of suggestions. Next I presented an array of pixel/ pointillism inspired ideas and challenged them to make their own work. Some choose to stick with stippling. Some decided to expand on the idea of making points.
Many branched out, bring in their own supplies - like soda tabs, cups, matches, M&Ms, salt or even oats. There were no issues with sloppiness in the student directed section of my lesson, unlike in my stippling mini-lesson. The difference was ownership. Because students were working to accomplish their visions on their own terms they took pride in their work and strived for excellence, doing things like hand gluing individual grains of salt or spending hours coloring soda tabs black. Not just some students. Virtually all. Any conversations during this work in progress, all done on Friday, were about how to communicate vision. "Would the image work better with more salt?" I asked, or "Could this be part of a series?". My role was not that of quality enforcer, but partner in creation. That makes all the difference in the quality of the final product and the learning that happens in getting there.
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Working with a new group of students is challenging. The first order of business has to be getting to know them, as people and as artists. This prismacolor bootcamp with Art 3, I'm finding, is giving me the opportunity to do just that. I like to start new classes with skill building, then application of new technique because it allows me to assess where students are in terms of confidence, comfort working independently and technical ability. We started our prisma bootcamp with a quick overview of how prismas, which are high end colored pencils, work. Next I asked students to select three images with interesting textures from magazines.
The goal of this Texture Challenge was to draw three small sections of interesting texture. Next, demonstrated a range of approaches to working with this medium. I see my role as the provider of information and it's my goal to give students the ability to make choices that work best for the artists they are, not just pass on my own preferences. I liked this assignment because of the built in differentiation it has, which was more that I initially thought it would be. I asked students to pick images of things they would like to learn about drawing or that were challenging. Their image selection showed me quite a bit about their interests and confidence level. Some students found it challenging to pick an image independently, asked what I thought they should pick. It became quickly apparent that the kids in my class had a range of prior knowledge. It's tough for students when they have never used a material and they are setting next to someone who is a master. It's also hard to ignore differences in skill - the work is right there on the table for everyone to compare. The focus of these sort of activities has to be what I refer to "leveling up". I tell my students - frequently - that they must compare their growth to their previous work. Having classes select a wide variety of images supports this because work becomes less about comparison than it would be if everyone was drawing the same thing. I helped everyone level up during this activity by doing a lot of one on one conferring and demonstrations. Some kids only needed me to ask them to step back from their work to notice a lack of contrast, or to point out that blue might help a shadow recede. Others needed me to sit and draw the image they work working on, modeling my thinking out loud about how I compose, select color and thing about mark making. Next up: students will apply new learning in drawing of their choice. Engagement in action. I started this school year knowing that my grading methods were less than perfect. Up until now I've based grades mainly on student's reflective blog posts. Enlightening to read and easy to access, blogs worked well for grading - except for when it didn't. I noticed that the students who were the best writers, not the best art students, were earning the highest grades. We live in a imperfect world and grades are part of it, a part that is deeply important to students as they think about their education beyond high school. The challenge with grades is to find a way to make them valuable as an accurate reflection of the learning and growth that takes place during a child's time with me. So, who should earn an A in art? Grading reflection and growth is important, but it leaves out an important element: how students operate in the classroom. Do they just participate, going through the motions that are expected of them, or do they connect to the work? That connection is what I'm looking for, which is why I'm adding engagement to my grades. I'm defining it as enthusiastic participation in tasks and work. It will be graded weekly and account for around 20% of the final grade. I'll still grade student reflections, but I'm including presenting and conferences with me as additional options. Some students are just blog-averse, which impacts their grades. Kids should write and do all sorts of things, like be on time to and eat their vegetables, but not all of them do. Making all of my students successful is my job and providing a range of choices helps me do that for more of them, so expanding options for reflection makes sense. Between providing choices for reflection and grading engagement I hope to come up with grades that truly capture the learning that's happening in my classroom. To earn an A, students should be invested in learning and participate with commitment. They should also be able to analyze what they've learned through the art-making process and share the work they've created. I'd like my class to be about making art for art's sake; hopefully this new grading process helps me get closer to that ideal. |
AuthorI'm an high school art teacher who's really interested in student choice and creating opportunities for self expression. I'm also a writer at the Students QA platform and co-author of the soon to be published book The Open Art Room. In my free time I love to garden, cook and jog - all while chasing two boys under four! Archives
April 2019
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