Teach. Learn. Experience.
What happens when students leave the art classroom setting or cannot afford materials?
Art at Home lessons provide opportunities for all to engage with the arts without limitations.
Students are encouraged to be resourceful and mindful of the environment. I will post condensed versions of a series of lessonsTHAT cover 2D, 3D and Digital arts!
WestCAST 2020 is a conference that brings together educators, students and administrators from BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to share their experiences and knowledge in the teaching field. I submitted my proposal, derived from my Inquiry question I explored in one of my courses. I didn’t think it was going to be accepted, and I didn’t think that as a teacher candidate, I would have something to valuable to share because of my inexperience.
It doesn’t hurt to try. So on a whim, I submitted a brief of a workshop I wanted to lead and called it ” “Utilizing Discomfort in the Classroom Through an Interdisciplinary Lens (Social Studies, English, and Art).” I wasn’t sure if I could do it on my own, so I reached out to an amazing friend who had a similar topic of inquiry on chaos, boredom and play. I was so thankful she was just as excited to jump on board. She has fantastic energy, sincerity and intelligence as a teacher and a friend.
When the schedule released, we had the 8:30 am time slot. GREAT. We though no one was going to come! Who gets up early on the last day of the conference for a workshop? Well a group came through, and suddenly I felt pretty nervous. Uncomfortable you could say, haha. We started the session by introducing ourselves by name accompanied by a wild gesture. With a bit of silliness and giggling, it broke the ice.
Two activities that our workshop was based on was Redacted Poetry (also known as black-out or erasure) and Sense Poems (adapted from Johnny Macrae from Vancouver Poetry House). No poem was the same. Readings elicited serious head-nods, laughter, and of course, *snaps*. I was blown away with the pieces strangers came together to create and share.
For one participant’s poem, she described a topic of personal discomfort through our Sense Poem activity (using the 5 senses). At the end we had a guess…And had no idea her gruesome and detailed lines were about wearing high-heeled shoes.
I really liked speaking in a small-group setting, and having participants from a variety of places and contexts. Shea and finished the workshop feeling fantastic.
WestCAST ended their conference with an incredible speaker, probably the best I’ve heard because of the power and relevance of his words. Chris Scribe shared personal stories and indigenous knowledge with a room full of strangers. I feel not just motivated but it being my responsibility to educate myself on Indigenous culture. He had a great analogy for why Indigenous knowledge needs to be taught in schools. For example, I am Chinese Canadian but I feel out of touch with my Chinese background. Where would I go to learn more about my culture? Probably China, where I can learn about traditional practices, beliefs, and even modern culture. In Canada, it is not the same. We’ve buried and tried to erase Indigenous culture with unsettling stories of colonialism that still remain in students’ textbooks today.
That’s just a fragment of the knowledge that I left with that day. I felt heavy, on the verge of tears, and lost in thought after Scribe’s speech. I wish everyone could’ve heard it.
My SA and I went to a George Littlechild collage workshop at the Gordon Smith Gallery. I have never been to the gallery before, and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of environment and place-based photographic work up in the gallery. I took note of Aimee Henny Brown, who made these structural collages from nature and architect magazines. I thought it would be a good idea for the prompt of Utopia/Dystopia for my students when brainstorming ideas for the Chesterfields contest at the Polygon.
Back to the George Littlechild workshop:
I learned how do make a trace-mono-type which was super fun. I’ve been wary of printmaking because teachers say it’s messy, and I am unsure of how students can take turns and keep the work flow going. Seeing it happen amongst teachers showed me that other people can work on collages while others can try out the printmaking process.
I like how the facilitator, Amelia, directly mentions a first people principle (learning requires exploration of one’s identity) when beginning the workshop. I would like to make more direct references to the principles in my lesson. She connected Littelchild’s loss-and-finding of Cree identity to me. I’ve always thought it would be hard to relate to Indigenous learning and culture, but it was much easier to understand his use of symbolism and archived photographs as being a part of re-finding of his cultural roots. For me, this would connect to my Chinese heritage, which I feel very little connection to. The book Amelia showed us, “We are All Related” provides great examples of collages students made in the 90s based off Littlechild’s work.
Polygon Gallery
I went to the Polygon and wrote down notes on artists that made an impact on me:
Elizabeth Zvonar
-“Photography Is Hard” is a cheeky title that she named one of her pieces, which play with psychology, history, and technology in a vinyl wall collage/photograph
-this would be a funny theme for students to expand on
-Personal archive/Index. What if students made a collage of a bunch of items and numbered them, with titles? What does it say about commodity, and identity through symbols and objects?
Xan Shian
-Lind Prize contestant
-Water+Space, multimedia installation and photography
-the content of the photo relates to how she destroys the photograph (soaks it in salt water, so that the viewer can see the crystals on the photograph!)
Rebecca Bair
-“Reach and Coil”
-identity without depicting the body
-bodies are tied to assumptions, expectations around race and gender
I don’t think that the Polygon is too tiny and or privileging high-art (not community based). I felt proud to see two of my classmates’ work at the Lind Prize exhibit (Rydel and Lacie, not pictured), and Elizabeth is also an Emily Carr graduate. I think the photos require space, and a special setting to really live.
Playing, Creativity, Possibility – Olivia Gude
Gude cites Carl Rogers a lot in this article. Rogers says that in order to cultivate creativity, external evaluation must be absent, which I think is true upon the initial realization of an artwork, but feedback and conversation counts as external evaluation. I want to encourage and nurture a talkative and safe environment for that to happen.
I think that what’s forgotten with creative freedom (and was touched upon in describing Rogers’ psychological freedom) is an absence of responsibility. The maker needs to remember that they are putting the creation into existence for a consumer audience.
I look up the Spiral Workshop which led me to Gude’s lesson plans.
It’s interesting that she writes about a less structured approach to teaching, yet uses enabling constraints in her lessons (i.e. A Portrait of Place lesson, where students link a place to who they are and cannot use linear perspective.)
Question: What kind of activities allow students to have a ‘creative break’ from an art project?
A/r/tography as Living Inquiry Through Art and Text – Stephanie Springgay and Rita L. Irwin Sylvia Wilson Kind
What is the point of defining Artography?
Does it limit people’s accessibility, by overcomplicating art research, segmenting the subject from other disciplines more than intertwining them?
Is it magic?
Is it tangible, who does it serve?
Does it serve as a guide for art educators, a new way of research that allows for slippage, making, and other modes of inquiry?
Or does it rid artists of accountability (oh, yes, that was part of the process; that was a mistake)
(unfinished work)
(walking in the woods a creative process, enter: another magical realm)
I am not sure if Artography stands up in the name of art practices or separates the subject further from the others, into a further division of categories. Irwin’s six renderings of Artography seems like a different version of a DBAE model, but maybe like a reactionary force against it (using of scraps, entering cracks and constantly living in question.)
The object, the artwork, becomes less important than the discussions surrounding it. And there’s no definite end of becoming an artist or teacher, it is a continual journey.
Here are a couple of things I found with First Peoples: A Guide for Newcomers:
-Text heavy
-Clear wording
-In my opinion, a good resource tool to read (as a teacher) before integrating Indigenous education in a lesson plan
I am imagining other ways of engaging with this guide, whether it’s more images, a list of links, graphic novel, etc. because I think the format is a bit stale. I am also wondering how many people have read it since its creation (2014) and whether it will be updated yearly, since it’s accessible online. There should also be translated versions for different languages. The guide does reference a lot of loaded topics (residential schools and an interesting myth and facts list) quite carefully. I tried researching if there was any articles or papers reviewing the guide, but I couldn’t find any online. My question is: Who is this guide best suited for? I understand that it was written for educators, newcomers, and students, but I feel like the template and content might be geared towards a certain audience.
Link to the guide: https://www.vancouverimmigrationpartnership.ca/newcomers-resources/first-peoples-guide/
Embracing Subjective Assessment Practices: Recommendations for Art Educators – Leslie Gates
Objectivity is a choice, and subjectivity means that you can evaluate students based on their growth and individuality. Objectivity can negate the teacher’s expertise or result in a problem where the teacher avoids creating meaningful criteria at all.
I like the article’s emphasis on language in terms of performance descriptors. It is possible to create rubrics with qualitative and subjective language that produces quantitative, measurable results for school admin. I have inserted images from the reading because it provides concrete examples for wording teachers can use in their criteria, and also “longitudinal data” to show the student their progression.
Question: Is using words like “weak” on a rubric harmful towards students? Or is it simply just being realistic?
Strategies for high school studio art teaching and assessment in Canada – Fiona Blaikie (ReVisions p. 240)
Limitations I found within Blaikie’s Study:
-Outdated (Results from 2000-2002) and reflected on curriculums from the early 2000s
-Small pool of teachers interviewed; that being said, the examples were more specific and in-depth on experiences than a study based on statistical information
Classroom Tools that Resonated with Me:
I was most drawn to Mark’s reflection. He is an art teacher in New Brunswick who made some great points. In analyzing artwork, he asks the students, “What’s your intuitive response?” and gets them to say comments based on the artwork’s form or function. I did this in my Design course at Langara, and I found this extremely useful in articulating and giving reason to our critiques.
Mark focused on making art talkable, and encouraging a language that students could feel comfortable in speaking. I think that artspeak/artalk severely limits accessibility to art. If we can clearly explain our artistic judgements with existing artwork, I think this will help us in explaining our assessments and criteria to the students.
Question: Since art teachers are still able to create their own criteria, how much formalism will you keep in your assessment?
Creating Effective Paraprofessional Support in the Inclusive Art Classroom – Corrie Burdick & Julie Causton-Theoharis
I thought this article was extremely useful in providing practical steps to support a paraprofessional and teacher collaboration. I can apply the bulleted methods to my LLED lesson plans. I was prompted to reflect on the paraprofessionals/teacher aids in my experience. In elementary school, other students and I would witness them yelling at their student and also at other students. The paraprofessional’s emotions were extremes of two sides. One minute they were shouting to try to gain control of a situation, and then they would be trying to be every students’ friend. I wondered if they too had a disability.
I can totally see how too much of a teacher’s aid presence can work against the student and repel other students from approaching the student. Fading is an interesting concept, and I’ve never been aware of it happening (as a student.)
Questions