Monthly Archives: September 2015

Refelction on Concept of the Artist Teacher

In research, it has been found that the beginning art teachers’ artmaking does decline in their first year of teaching. It is probably because the role transition for new teachers is not easy. Once we become teachers, we would be aware of what impact we can bring to students and take responsibility of that as professionals, not as self-willed artists anymore.

In the second week of Art Education, I visited an art gallery of UBC exhibiting a collection about human sexual activity. In which, I didn’t recognize aesthetics and the significance of the works. That is the freedom of being an artist to interpret art in personal ways, but as a teacher, creativity and ideology must be constrained by rationalist epistemology where reason and sensation are compatible. “This transition (from artist to teacher) is profound in the case of artist teachers, for whom the contrast between their practice as a critical artist and that of a regulated professional can be severe.” (Adams 2007, 264)

Once the new teachers get into their roles of being educators well and remain positive and committed, artmaking and teaching can enhance each other. Education is about life-long learning. Reflective practices help to maintain a critical stance and develop new disposition towards their practice, as well as bring transformation of professional experience. These significant gains deepen teachers’ desire to give their students authentic experience as artists.

My question is how to create such working environment to allow both students and teachers to practice and learn art together.

Reflection on Gender issue

In traditional Art history, female artists haven’t had much chance to practice art or to acquire art education, as male artists tended to dominate the traditional art world. The bias on female is still exist nowadays.

According to feminist aesthetics, approaches to art by women are fundamentally different than those by men in a way that gender-biased roles for women such as knitting and quilting are stressed. Despite this gender bias, routinely practicing those activities can actually enrich women’s life in family as well as enhancing their crafting skills. Acquiring these skills therefore does not precisely infer that the inner potential of men and women are inherently and inevitably different. These approaches partially reflect social and gender bias and different expectations on each gender.

Different social expectations are implied by the difference of the life of Pablo Picasso and that of Emily Carr who were born at almost the same period. However, Emily obviously had more struggles in her life as an unmarried women and had less fame. Being a single lady was not easy at Emily’s time, yet Picasso’s wild life was relatively uncontentious. Due to absence of social and family pressure, men tend to succeed easily.

As Art educators, we should start to question many of the assumptions and beliefs that had taken for granted, and to design a gender-equal art curriculum for students.

Positive Expressions Vancouver Toastmasters Speaking Club

It’s not easy to make up an adventurous story without any preparation. That is what I did at my first time in Toastmaster. The president gave a story starting with two passengers negligently exchanging their luggage at the airport, and then called up each name to continue the story from last person. Increasingly, the story turned into a gangster movie after finding 1 million dollars of drug money in one of the bags. I was the person supposed to close the story by giving an impressive ending. But forgive me anyhow, the ending is ugly.

At least, I took a significant step towards public speaking and learned a lot from other speakers. Communication is not just about the language. To grasp audiences’ attention immediately and constantly is an art. To become a competent public speaker is by deliberate practice. I started to enjoy it ~

Reflection 1 The Role of Education

Teamwork provides a great opportunity to learn from other team members who are from different cultural backgrounds and learning subjects. With the awareness of our world moving into multicultural society, our group come up with the significance of being educated is to allow for students in diversity and multiculturalism, and to learn to be open minded to new and different social and spiritual needs. What I learned is to create a fair and open learning atmosphere, educators should take leadership in merging international concept into classroom and speaking up for minorities, like Aboriginal people and new immigrants.

Religion is also a topic that needs to be addressed in that many cultures are influenced by one or more religions. One would hope that by talking about other cultures there might be an appreciation of the differences and the historical background for them. This should lead to understanding and acceptance by all cultures of others (assuming the practice is considered ethical). Then there is the extremists…in many religions it seems that people want to have their beliefs as those of the society e.g. ISIS militants. Groups like that do not want to learn about others or accept them. However it would be good to have the majority working toward creating a global society that accepts others for who they are regardless of their customs.

Another issue that draws our attention is if technology always effectively helps learning. E-generation cannot bear life without the internet and online community. Google, as the leading internet searching engine, is making world smaller by building an international online gallery for free, therefore, art lovers have no need to travel long ways to visit museums. Priceless paintings online can also clearly show the painter’s brush strokes after being magnified many times, which provides better opportunities for students to study. However, learning is not only coming from visual, but also from touching, feeling and experience. As educators, we must ensure we expose our students to new technology but to teach in reality as well as the virtual.

We are on the way to foster young generations in a holistic approach of life, socially, emotionally, and intellectually.

Nature Art Walk in Stanley Park

What a lovely day it was in Stanley Park with a group of artists, known from Meetup. It is a good time to pick up my drawing skills and an opportunity to meet local artists. We gathered at 9 am at Terminal of No.19, then split up into two groups. The group I joined headed towards Beaver Lake, where it was nearly dried up in the summer. The leader of our group, a naturalist of Stanley Park, interpreted how human’s living habits interrelate with ecological. I was fascinated by the topic of self defense against wild animal attacks. We should certainly react differently when encountering different animals; for example, we can play dead when coming across a bear but scare away a coyote by shrieking.

All in all, I had a great time talking with people from various fields and picking up plein-air sketching. I may do the same thing with my art students one day~

Sunday School and Service @ Antioch Church

It was our great pleasure to have Eden Bliss Singers as our guest speakers on Sunday Service. Their singing was amazing and touching. Although they are blind, God can use their limitation to make them productive in His kingdom. God makes His people weak in order to strengthen them by power.

In the same way, God’s work has transformed my life and I hope that it will transform other people through me. It is a privilege to serve other people by using the gift God gives; it becomes my desire, passion and goal to glorify God and honor Him in my life.

I have taught kids art and Bible stories in Sunday School for 10 years. Seeing them growing in grace and in knowledge of God is really rewarding and well worth the effort.

Another experience I gained is collaboration and teamwork. All departments worked together as one and helped each other when there was a need.

Reflections on 21st-Century Art and Culture Curriculum

Principles of Possibility: Consideration for a 21st-Century Art and Culture Curriculum was published in 2007, 8 years away from now, but it is still pointing out valuable insights that we can use in nowadays art classes.

DBAE discipline based art education: art production, art criticism, art history, and aesthetics. The four areas should be taught as independent strands but in relation to one another.
The goal of discipline-based art education is to develop students’ abilities to understand and appreciate art. This involves a knowledge of the theories and contexts of art and abilities to respond to as well as to create art.
Less time devoted to production but pay more attention to the appreciative or culture aspects of art.
It is far better to introduce students to fewer artworks or cultures in depth, than to present many artworks with little or no context. Exploring complexities of race, ethnicity, gender,sexual orientation, and class, develops students critical thinking on cultural understanding.
The goal of good multicultural curriculum is to effectively encounter other points of view in order to question the centrality or normativeness of one’s own point of view.
Artistic thinking is not separate from daily life, but rather can inform and enrich every aspect of one’s life. The goal of art education, therefore, is more the spirit than the mechanical skills.

Apart from the aspects of art education being mentioned, there is another one aspect of teaching: merge art therapy into art class. During the process of art making, inner souls can been connected with mind through self-reflection and healed after opening up hidden emotions.

And also, I realize that it can be very challenging to create a well-rounded art curriculum to meet all of social, educational, and personal needs. Finally, I have a question lingering in my mind—how to design a curriculum of developing specialized students’ techniques as well as increasing regular students’ interests in art?

How have past teachers influenced our beliefs about teaching and learning?

Starting from almost 400 years ago, educators have realized family skills would benefit teens who were going to start families soon after leaving schools in 1658. They tried to bring a Home EC curriculum into school system. At that time, the program specially benefited girls, future housewives, as girls stayed at home longer than boys. Along with social changes, curriculum has been changed to serve both boys and girls, and both high schools and middle schools. What all the educators did have made great contributions to school, community and society. The HC course extends the knowledge of science into the knowledge of real living, so that students from all levels can get fully prepared with real-life skills after they leave school.

IRP: Integrated Resource Package

THESA: Teacher Home Economic Specialized Association