Parvin Peivandi
My inquiry in response to my Teaching Philosophy
My teaching philosophy is creating an educational environment for my students in which they practice to be open minded and respectful to all people from different cultures or races. In my pedagogy, I like to raise awareness about the importance of community and togetherness. My art projects hover over the concept of connection and integration.
I believe my Art is not separate from my teaching practice; In both art making and teaching art, I desire to make people connected through art and sharing the stories of different cultures. In my artworks, I usually talk about my passion of connection and communication with people. My art works express the struggles and the difficulties of living between two cultures and the labor of assimilation. Coming from Persian background, I put emphasis on the importance of togetherness in our community and want to invite the students to be more sensitive and respectful of different cultures.
In my recent art projects, I brought my art practices and teaching art projects more closely by bringing performance art as one of the most influential contemporary art practices to my pedagogy. I believe the successful pedagogy is an art by itself because it touches the heart of people and evokes their feelings and self-awareness. I want to set forth the idea of how our cultural bodies are also material in the process of making art and also responding to art. I like in my art pedagogy, delivering art, making art and responding to art overlap each other. I believe in a successful art educational environment, the artist and the teacher, the student and the instructor, the material and the concept all find the same status, meaning and matter. There is no authority or autonomy of one over the other. This is the moment that I strive for to level out any hierarchy or power structures in education.
I like the morality that exists in Chris Hedges quote, “ the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.” I think Hedge’s belief that “the measure of civilization is its compassion” is stunning. His idea made me think of my teaching philosophy that is based on increasing compassion and respect between individuals and students in this particular context, so I think I am on a right track in my educational endeavor. I aim to design contemporary art curriculum with more emphasis on collaboration and community art experiences.
I think the profession of teaching calls forth self-awareness and reflection in me and I consider mirror as my credo. The educational career lets me to have self-reflection all the time and try hard to improve my honesty with the world. I think as an art educator I am in constant dialogue with the world; world is reflected in me and me reflected in the world, this mirror needs to be spotless.
Parvin Peivandi, Inquiry Proposal in IB Nov 27th 2014
The purpose of this study is to inquire about the international minded education as the significant characteristic of IB program. By reading relevant academic resources, observing and examining the art lesson plans, classroom activities and teacher’s methodology in the art classroom at King George Secondary School, I study the content and presentation of the art lessons in regard to the globally oriented education in IB program. My inquiry question is“ How can I develop my IB unit plans in a way that students can become more internationally minded? How can I help them to understand different cultures and contexts better?” This question is my departure point.
According to the IB mission statement,” The international Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect” (IB Guide). This mission got me reflecting on the fact that international minded education brings both knowledge and respect at the same time and helps the students to expand their horizons. Coming from Persian culture and being part of the minority group in Canada, I have experienced some of the difficulties and challenges that exist in the multicultural education in Canada. Now, I feel I have a social responsibility to investigate the globally oriented education. I believe in order to improve the social justice in our schools; we need to develop the mindset of being open-minded and caring about other people from different cultures and backgrounds. The open mindedness is the foundation of international minded education as it encourages students to be tolerant and recipient of the other cultures and differences in the world. Also, in order to be international minded, one needs to have a contemporary knowledge of the different ideologies, cultures, arts and socio economical situations of different countries.
During my long practicum at King George secondary school, I try to observe my school advisor’s methodology and also lesson plans to investigate the depth of international minded education at this school. I also try to design my lesson plans based on the international minded education in IB with focus on the contemporary artist’s works and developing the sense of open mindedness and compassion among the students. I observe the diverse body of students in my classroom and try to know them and their cultures deeply by listening to what they say and what they do. I do research about the overall characteristics of their culture as well as their personal characteristics and capabilities. After making connections and knowing them, I try to reflect on their differences and needs in my lesson plans in a way that my classroom activities provides an equal opportunity for all of them to experience and explore their cultural identities. After assessing the students’ final art works in each unit plan, I revise my lesson plans and also my teaching style based on the international education in IB. I check to see if my lesson plans meet the criteria or not. Each lesson brings one or more inquiry question which need further exploration, for example what should I do to modify or improve my lessons or presentations? I respect all the students and their opinions in the class and try to do my best to facilitate their learning.
For the purpose of this study, I will use these references: The International Encyclopedia of The Education volume 1 and 6, Critical, Creative, Global Thinkers in Social Education, Human Rights Education Can Be integrated throughout the School Day, Global Citizenship Instruction Through Active Participation and http://arts curriculum.guggenheim.org.
Please watch this slideshow of my inquiry research in Media Library: Inquiry Presentation, Parvin
I have designed my unit plans with a multicultural concept that provide an environment for the students to collaborate together and increase their open mindedness.
Inspiration for designing the first unit plan:The beautiful poetry by the Iranian Poet ”Saadi Shirazi” has been my inspiration:
Adam’s sons are body limbs, to say;
for they’re created of the same clay.
Should one organ be troubled by pain,
others would suffer severe strain.
Thou, careless of people’s suffering,
Deserve not the name, “human being”.Translation by H. Vahid Dastjerdi:
Rationale and Inspiration For this unit:I believe the most successful education is the education that makes us more in love with life. What we need in art education now is increasing our sensibility and compassion toward the people of the world, their stories and cultures. As literature is a rich source for increasing our awareness of different cultures, I spend some time on reading Persian literature and also literature of the other cultures to develop my concept in art making and teaching art. During my Teaching Education Program at UBC and particularly IB education, I have found my main interest is developing a globally minded curriculum for the secondary art students in Canada and this unit is one of my attempts to increase the respect among students. According to the IB mission statement,” The international Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect” (IB Guide). This mission got me reflecting on the fact that international minded education brings both knowledge and respect at the same time and helps the students to expand their horizons.
The interest in multicultural education and social justice in classroom has shaped my inquiry question “ How can I develop my IB unit plans in a way that students can become more internationally minded? How can I help them to understand different cultures and contexts better?”
In the unit,” We Are All Created from the Same Clay”, I have tried to design the lesson plans and art activities in a way that encourage students to collaborate and respect each other more. Students will be informed that we need to zoom in and zoom out from our bodies from time to time in order to have a broader view of life and integrate with other people. In this viewpoint, the social community, the school community here, is not separated from our personal life and we grow and expand in bigger communities.
In this unit, I also have considered the material exploration and developing skills from 2D to 3D art that are necessary for this age group. I will show short video of contemporary artists in the beginning of each class to motivate my students and also give them knowledge of contemporary art. In order to make my classroom more interesting and engaging, I have designed different activities and performance art in this unit to expand the students’ senses and potentials. Performing Pedagogy: Toward an Art of Politics By Charles R. Garoian and Olivia Gude’s Principles of Possibilities have been valuable resources for me in embedding performance art in my first lesson plan of this unit.
What questions are guiding this unit?
What ‘big ideas’ are being explored?
My Inquiry Question for this unit is,” How can I develop my IB unit plan in a way that students can become more internationally minded? How can I help them to understand different cultures and contexts better?”
How can this unit increase the sense of open mindedness and respect among students in grade 9-10?
How can I make my students more engaged in exploring the school community and culture?
In which ways can I motivate them to show more compassion and care toward others?
What should I do myself to reinforce the unit objectives and rationale in regard to respect and understanding of others?
How can I be a model of a person who observes the social justice in her classroom? What should I do? Which language should I use? Which behavior should I appropriate to serve the unit objective better?
What type of modifications and changes should I make if my lesson plans do not meet the unit objectives?
Big ideas and concepts that will be explored in this unit are:
Community practices, social respect, Compassion, tolerance, Collaboration, Integration, social justice, Care and respect.
Transformation in Materials…. Transformation in Minds
next Multicultural project at CFE: Performance art: Carpet Woman
In Chicago, I thought of using performance art as my teaching methodology in Chicago’s public schools. Mrs. Kate Thomas helped me to refine my idea . She communicated with many art teachers in different schools around Chicago that I could go and performed while observing their classrooms.
My performance Art’s name was “ Carpet Woman” and basically I was wearing a carpet and sitting down on the floor and invited students to come and sit down with me and join each other. This brought all the students together on a piece of carpet and then we talked about the idea of connection. I started from the carpet and asked questions: “why Iranians have made carpets in the history and designed it with beautiful flowers? Usually there is a bouquet of flower in the center, do you know why?”
Students started naming the beauty of carpet, its application, its sense of comfort and warm feeling. Then I mentioned that Iranians have made carpet because they were interested to have a long lasting garden full of flowers for all seasons in which they could sit down together and appreciated the beauty of togetherness. So they visualized that garden and weaved it into a carpet. That’s what artist does, visualizing some thing and make it happens. Here, the carpet brings people together and is a site of togetherness.
Following my invitation, all students came and sat down on the carpet and at the end they mentioned it was a great experience for them as they felt more connected, more welcomed and relaxed. In some classes, by conversation with the art teacher, I came up with a responding activity to the performance. In one high school, students wrote the reflection paper about their experiences and in one of the elementary schools they painted the carpet lady with oil pastels. In a social studies class, they reflected on the performance art by participation on classroom’s conversations.
This experience was very beautiful for both my students and me. It elevated me and taught me some thing new. I find contemporary art pedagogy has a stronger influence on the students and makes them more open-minded individuals with compassion for others.
This note was my immediate response to this experience:
…….”I came back from walking in a flower garden! Today was one of the most beautiful days in my life., I taught art to students in an elementary school in Chicago . Kids were so close, engaged and connected to me during my performance art that I can still feel their pure energy. The overall experience was very exciting, refreshing and relaxing for us like walking in the garden. We all found a common moment of an awareness of our bodies and our emotions being tied together. We became so connected that we did not want to leave the experience. I think it was one of the most extraordinary moments in my life that I found I have made a strong bond with the students in one session. Our bodies and our emotions were the art materials. The whole experience was art. There was no teacher and no student and we were all the same. Teaching overlapped the art beautifully!
Final thought: My reflection…….What I do next?
I continue my inquiry as an artist and art educator; I continue my teaching philosophy of creating an environment for my students to be more compassionate and respectful of others.
I design new art curriculum that encourages more group work and community based projects, as I believe the role of me as an art educator is to raise an awareness of the importance of togetherness in our community and celebrating diverse cultures in Canada.
To be continued………