What I’ve Learned in My Independent Study This Semester

A billboard on I-75 advertising the Appleton Art Museum in Ocala, Florida reads “Connecting Art with Life.” That is what I have always wanted to do for my students, but have often been frustrated because I did not know quite how to do it. However, I truly believe that the new way of thinking about curriculum which has been shown to me this semester will help me make them realize how art throughout history, and the making of new art, is relevant to their lives, whether or not they decide to become artists later on.

Many of the big ideas I have been introduced to as foundations for curriculum building are ideas I have been interested in, and think about as I go about my daily life as well as while making art. However, I had never really thought about making them a main part of my teaching. The concept of organizing lessons around a big idea is exciting, and developing an entire curriculum based on one big idea has been very satisfying. Doing so shows students that the ideas behind all great pieces of art unifies them, which is part of what makes the art itself timeless. It also shows them that the ideas are bigger than merely the art world, but extend to other fields, as well as issues that they individually deal with in their world today.

I have been impressed by how much more complex and interesting a lesson plan is when you base it on student problem solving and student choices rather than a step-by-step process that produces a predictable result. These emphases connect art with life in that they teach students about a part of life that is key: making choices and solving problems. This is something we do every day, no matter what our walk in life. It seems to me an art curriculum that recognizes this, and helps students to think more critically, would be much more effective and relevant in the life of a student than one focused merely on skill-building.

At first, this seemingly more open-ended approach looked as though it would leave little room for skill building. However, I have learned that I do not need to throw skill-building out of the window, but it is actually something I should incorporate while I am teaching the big idea. This also helps connect art with life, because it helps students see that skills they are learning connect directly to the big idea they are exploring as they do their problem solving, since the skills help the students to accomplish the task before them. It enables me to be somewhat rigorous about teaching the skills, too, as long as I give students clear expectations, showing them and teaching them how to do each skill, one at a time. Too often I have expected students to intuitively know how to handle different media, doing things such as blending and shading without including those skills in my lesson. This has caused a gap between my assessment and my instruction. That is one area in which I need to improve. I also need to make sure I slow down and show them what I expect. Just because I know what I’m looking for does not mean that they do.

The new ways of teaching art that I have learned about this semester have added a new dimension to the way I think about teaching art, and I know they will have a huge impact on my teaching. A good teacher is one who explores his field alongside his students. I feel that the mindset that has been presented to me as I have taken this course will move me toward becoming a better teacher in this way, and this excites me.

Moving Toward Conceptual Curriculum Planning

When I started putting together my first curriculum, I thought that a helpful bit of information to consider would be my recollection of the art projects I did when I was in school. However, to my dismay, I could not remember many of the art lessons I had as a student. Most of my art education experience in the Florida Public School system is pretty much a blur.

I resorted to talking to friends of mine who were seasoned teachers. They gave me books and pages of old lesson plans which ended up becoming a starting point for my curriculum planning. The two themes I saw in all of these lessons were a chronological presentation of art history, and the elements and principles of design. These two ideas have formed the framework of my curricula ever since I have started teaching art. One thing I liked most about these frameworks is that they made it very easy for me to decide what to do next. After a lesson on Lascaux cave paintings, it was obvious that Ancient Roman art would be a good place to go. By the same token, a project focusing on shape naturally follows a lesson on line.

This seemed to work fine for a couple of years, especially since the elements and principles were new concepts to me (I hadn’t covered them in my music degree), and art history was so exciting in itself. I really thought it was quite an accomplishment to get them to interact with historical art, even if they were producing their own piece in the style of a Van Gogh, or copying a Monet. And if I could get them to think about the way art can be broken down into elements, and how to critique art according to principles, I thought I would be satisfied. But there were many times when I wished that my students’ artmaking experience could be more like mine is—an organic process of creation. I found so much more satisfaction in teaching independent projects some of my students would do when participating in county-wide and nation-wide contests than I did teaching my normal classes, because I could talk with each of them and help them to come up with ideas that were relevant to their interests, and that inspired them to create.

Why was it that I eventually enjoyed teaching my curriculula so much less than these individual projects? In retrospect, I think my frustration with my curricula lied in its exclusion of the first part of the creative process: generating ideas. Many of the projects in my lessons were primarily mimetic. Maybe I was either assuming I could not teach it, or I was assuming that my students could not do it. Maybe I was considering the technical aspects of the art-making process to be more important to teach than the creative thinking aspects. The consequence is that many of my students have difficulties coming up with ideas when I leave projects more open-ended. This is something that I intend to fix as I write my new curriculum. It is true that the technical side of art is much more straightforward, and it is difficult to make good art with little technical skill. However, without the ability to come up with an idea, what good is technical skill to an artist? Therefore, my key concept for my students to explore will be “Where do artists get their ideas?”