How is creativity (un)taught?

I have recently begun reading Tony Wagner’s book Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World and within the first 10 pages of the book, a striking questing came to mind – How is creativity untaught? I have read and listed to much of Sir Ken’s work and recognize some of the systematic reasoning at play – standardized testing / teaching to the test, industrial model of compartmentalized learning, etc. These policies and practice play a part, but they are not the most forefront of reasons for the lack of creativity learned in school. Ultimately it is up to what is happening in the classroom on a daily basis and the types of opportunities that educators are creating for their students.

In an art classroom, it is believed that this is the place to learn how to be creative. I am really beginning to wonder. With the curriculum designed to promote conceptual development and technical skill, is there really room for ‘creativity’? Learning how to draw in linear perspective or maintain accurate proportions of the human face is not ‘creativity’ – it is a necessary skill in order to be able to draw in a certain style. Researching, brainstorming and reflecting on an idea and developing an understanding of a concept is not creativity, it is merely coming to an understanding of an idea. The innovation in art is really about how students choose to use the skills they develop to express their perspective about a concept in such a way that others have the opportunity to experience the medium and idea in a new way – in essence, they are having to adjust their schemas in order to come to terms with what someone else is saying (in this case through a visual media). The creativity component is essentially figuring out the how and ensuring that there is a substantial why which will entice others into what you are exploring.

Now that I have a basic understanding of what I believe creativity to be and what it is not, the next thing to do is to reflect on what is happening in the classroom on a regular basis to inhibit creative development. I am not sure how many reasons exist – but these are just a few that I have come across in my short time reflecting on the nature of creativity, and my struggles to promote authentic creative learning in my classroom.

1. Lack of Student Interest:
2. Premature Exposure to Information, Ideas or Problems:
3. Prescribed Learning Activities:
4. Lack of Autonomy:
5. Lack of Trust:
6. Imbalanced Perception of Power:
7. Misunderstanding of What Knowledge Is:
8. Tasks are to Easy / Hard:
9. Insufficient Time to Delve Deeper:
10. Too Much Emphasis on Ideas:
11. Too Much Emphasis on Skills:
12. Students Don’t Understand the Learning Destination:
13. Teacher’s Don’t Understand the Learning Destination:
14. No-one Knows How to Define Creativity:
15. Students are Not in the Right Courses:
16. There is a Belief of You Have It or You Don’t:
17. We have A Creative Process instead of Creative Processes:
    
18. There is Insufficient Rigor in Courses
19. Students Have a Hard Time Making Connections
20. An Unwillingness to Make a Mistake

 

Random International “Future Self” 2012

Future Self, 2012

Aluminium, custom electronics,Metrilus 3D cameras, LEDs, brass rods
1200 x 1500 x 3450 mm

MADE space, Berlin supported by ABSOLUT Vodka
Dancers: FukikTakase Alexander Whitley | Rehearsal Director: Catarina Carvalho Choreography: Wayne McGregor | Score: Max Richter

I have been teaching media art this year and it has been quite the journey. Working with my new teaching partner in this discipline has stretched my teaching ability tremendously, in part through his keen ability to find influential artworks that truly inspire creative and innovative possible solutions for student artwork. In particular, there is his ability to navigate the difficult and challenging world of interactive art, an area that I have been extremely interested in for the past decade or so, but have not had the technical fluency to actually develop within the classroom.

This piece is truly inspirational how it not only combines the intetractive qualities that technologies make possible, but they hybridity of visual art, dance and music to all come together to create an awe inspiring piece. Unfortunately I have not had the ability to experience this work in person, and have had to settle for a mediated experience via these videos. But I must say that my initial reaction was that of being awestruck. The simplicity of the visual through the three dimensional matrix of lights creates this other worldly presnce in the midst of the dancer. It is as though the dancers are somehow able to communicate with another time, and through their interactions with these LEDs, they breath life into this enigmatic space which acts as a portal. The precise uniformity of LEDs in terms of their spacing and the proximity of how close the LEDs are to each other creates an eerily soft luminescence which intensifies as the dancer approaches and interacts. The large darkened space sets the installation apart and encourages the viewer to encircle the sculpture and experiment with how the work responds to your own movement.

The dancers and music truly complete the performative dimension of this piece, leaving the sculpture as a document for others to experience for themselves. The fluidity of movement and the rhythm of the music in combination with the visual simplicity of the sculpture speak clearly of our human relationship with the world and with each other. Our need to be responsive to ourself, others and the environments in which we find ourselves, becomes a profound message that the viewer / participant can begin to contemplate as our relationship with other human beings becomes increasingly mediated by technology – even though we may be in the same physical space, technology increasingly changes the most simplest of interactions with our fellow human beings. How far will this mediation take us? How far will we be removed from each other? Will we some day be so far removed from other human beings that we can be in the same room, and yet, at the same time only be aware of someone else because they to are communicating through a technology.

“Future Self” completely engulfs you in its performance (as I am sure experiencing the actual sculptural document would) and simultaneously requires the participant to think critically about what it means to be human.

FUTURE SELF | Project Film from MADE on Vimeo.

FUTURE SELF | Visions of Visionaries with Stuart Wood | rAndom International from MADE on Vimeo.

How would I assess in the CBL Framework?

Assessment is extremely important in all learning. Current research that I have read that provides the foundation for assessment for learning indicates that the most valuable form of assessment is descriptive feedback that is provided in a timely manner. Just as the name of this particular form of assessment indicates, it is descriptive in nature, or more specifically describes the students success in relation to some form of established criteria. In the case scenario the teacher will collaborate with the students to co-construct what success looks like so that they have access to exemplars and the vocabulary to discuss the success criteria. Each discipline has its own vocabulary and this is at great way to allow students to develop the vocabulary for when they are working on any given task.

Having had the opportunity to conduct my own research on the effectiveness of assessment for learning practices several years ago, I have seen first hand the importance of providing this kind of feedback to students so that they can a genuinely make positive progress in their learning (as opposed to the rote memorization that traditional methods of assessment and evaluation promote). Assessment for learning appears to be very conducive for the CBL framework as both emphasize the dialogue between learners – teachers and students. The question that I am asking is “What are the look-fors that determine how well students are working as they work through the CBL framework?”

The basic workflow of Challenged Base Learning is as follows:

1. Identifying and Defining the Challenge
   1. Identify the Big Idea
   2. Determine the Essential Question
   3. Establish an Actional Challenge
2. Delving Deeper
   1. Develop Guiding Questions
   2. Identify and Engage in Guiding Activities
   3. Identify and Utilize Guiding Resources
3. Publishing Your Findings
   1. Come to a Solution
   2. Assess Your Solution
   3. Revise Your Solution
   4. Publish the Final Solution and Reflection of Student Learning

It seems like the very structure of this learning model provides the keys for assessment for learning, specifically looking at the ‘when to assess’ question. There are three key stages in which assessment really must occur (points 1, 2 and 3 respectively) and there also appears to be the substages that could be assessed (points A, B, C and D). The question still remains, what is being assessed and how is it being assessed.

I originally started writing this post back in the summer when I did not have any tangible hands on experience teaching within this framework, and now, after a month and a half, I am starting to see the challenges in implementing this particular model. (Although there are challenges, and it is difficult, I believe it is worth the transition from the old paradigm to a new one – whether it be this one or another). As the teacher, it is as important as ever to have established criteria for what the work is to look like. But unlike the past, one set of criteria for the entire class does not seem to be working. In my grade 10 media arts course (students are working with technology towards creating hybrid and interactive artworks) at any one given time, students are working on a myriad of skills and concepts that are to be applied to their specific work. The fundamental change that I have noticed in the art classroom is that students are choosing what media (still or moving digital imagery) they want to work with, and figuring out what techniques to employ in order to make the work have relevance. For example, those that chose to work on the ‘still image’ could be doing anything from digital illustration, straight photography, altered digital photographs, multiple exposure photography, etc. Each media, and approach to making the images have very unique and demanding criteria by which to determine if the work that the students are successful. This requires one to almost anticipate what many students may do, and have exemplars and discussions about what makes the work effective.

Is a common rubric / evaluation tool sufficient any more in this particular model of education? With my visual arts team, we have moved our junior evaluations from containing statements of achievement to being based on look-fors. The latter is providing students with a check list of what needs to be completed, and at the same time is also providing them with ‘how well they did’ on a particular task. But how many evaluations are going to be required? Reflecting on the first unit of my grade 10 media art class that I just described I would need approximately 12 different evaluation tools based on what the students chose in order to demonstrate their learning. Am I to develop these evaluation tools alone, in consultation with the students, or allow the students to develop the criteria based on exemplary images (either professional or student made). Of course, then I as the teacher would be responsible for vetting the final criteria that is selected. I can see this working, in light of the power of co-constructing success criteria. At the same time however, “WOW, this is going to be a real challenge to my teaching practice.”

I am not trying to justify avoiding this approach, as I have already seen the benefits of providing students with autonomy, but I question where is the energy and the time to develop the resources to truly facilitate this. My feeling is that the whole notion of flipping classrooms which seems to be quite a popular strategy / fad in teaching style is going to be paramount in getting this up and running how it ultimately should be. Admittedly, it requires students to be motivated and responsible to be conducting some learning on their own time, especially if students are wanting to be spending their time in class with the teacher doing more hands on work! As I continue to develop my own practice in this area, I will continue to reflect and post updates on how it is being implemented in my classroom. I guess that the area that I find most exhilarating about this is that the examples that I have seen in the literature and on line have primarily been social studies and science classrooms. The art room, although they believe we have been doing this for a long time, is perhaps farther behind than others expected!

The Lady in Gold – 6 Degrees of Separation

The tale of the portrait of Adelle Bloch-Bauer by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt is told by Anne-Marie O’Connor in this great art historically based book about the (mis-)history of this northern “Mona Lisa”.

Back in the summer my mother-in-law was reading this book and started talking about it. Being an art history buff (I love reading books on art) I became quite intrigued and eventually decided to purchase the ebook. At first, I was not sure about the style of the writing, as O’Connor was integrating quotations from her primary research within the flow of the narrative that she was establishing, but for me I found this use of primary source somewhat disruptive to the overall flow of the narrative. As the book progressed the style became more intuitively integrated, allowing for a more natural flow of the story.

At the end of the book O’Connor states that this image has captivated a new generation, but also that many admirers do not know the history of the iconic painting, and once you know its tumultuous history you will never look at the painting the same way again. I would have to say that I agree. Understanding the context of this painting, and how it embodies so much cultural history beyond the personal identity of Adelle Bloch-Bauer, has given me a new appreciation for what was happening in Europe during the late 1930s through the mid 1940s for both Jewish and non-Jewish peoples. What O’Connor has been able to do through the history of this painting is to provide a very honest and transparent history of the experiences of the persecuted during the second World War, and how art became symbolic for the erasure of an entire people. Not only did Hitler attempt erase the lives of Jews, but also their cultural identity within Europe by ‘acquiring’ the artifacts owned and commissioned by Jewish families and re-writing the history of the artifacts that he acquired.

What I found most intriguing within the book was O’Connor’s ability to re-create the complex social networks of the lives of those that in some how were touched directly or indirectly by Gustav Klimt, Adelle Bloch-Bauer and the portrait. This intersectionality is profound, and to discover that I too have a connection to this painting beyond my own personal infatuation with Gustav Klimt and his shimmering paintings. My father currently works for the Canadian division of Raytheon, a company that specializes in radar technology. Herbert Wagner, an illustrious German scientist (and SS officer) during World War II was working for Hitler on a guided missile system that was to attack New York City, and was eventually ‘adopted’ by the United States to develop military technology to fight the communists during the Cold War (despite his Nazi connection), and eventually worked for Raytheon. Hans Mulbacher, enlisted into the German Military, but eventually was dismissed for his Jewish heritage, and then was hired by Herbert Wagner, and thus protected Hans’ life. Hans Muhlbacher was Maria Altmann’s childhood friend in Vienna, and one of the only still living friends (and survivors of Hitler’s atrocities of Austrian Jews) of Maria when O’Connor was writing the book. Maria Altmann was Adelle Bloch-Bauer’s niece, which completes my connection to Gustav Klimt, one of the modernist painters that have captivated my imagination!

The Power of Conversation

We have finished approximately 5 weeks of classes so far in the 2012-2013 school year and I must say that I believe that this has been the best start to a school year that I have ever had. I believe this to be a fundamental result of the changes I have made in my teaching practice to begin the year. I want to begin by describe my old method of teaching and then explain the changes that I have made. And in the end, I was able to have really great meaningful conversations with students about their work.

Last year was busy – I was opening a new school and there was more ‘administrative’ work being done to get the visual art department up and running, and less time than what I would have liked was being spent on developing, reflecting and refining the curriculum that I was teaching. At the end of the school year I had more time to reflect and realized that I was not teaching students the fundamental skill of creative thinking that I was hoping that they would learn while in my classroom. The primary evidence of this was in the student’s work itself as we presented the work in our display cases. One of two things would happen in each assignment: either the works would look essentially the same (i.e. students completed a self-portrait assignment that was to convey their personal sense of power, or if the work looked different, then it seemed to all be ‘about’ the same topic. What I realized was that students were creating what I call cookie cutter art, and to me this was unacceptable. At first, my reaction was to ‘blame’ the lack of creative thinking on the students rather than to look at how I was teaching, and structuring my lessons for students to learn and then apply a variety of means for making their own work innovative (at least in comparison to how it was seen in relation to their peers). The basic process that I had been using was as follows:

1. Set the context for the assignment, and allow students to brainstorm.
2. Complete Brainstorming
3. Develop Thumbnails
4. Play with the Media (Explore & Experiment)
5. Develop a Preliminary Drawing or Maquette
6. Start the Final Piece
7. Write an Artist Statement
8. Reflect on Learning

Between units I would do smaller exercises with the class that would explore composition, subject matter, style, conventions, etc. What I realized that little of this learning was being applied to the students work because it was temporally to far removed from when I was asking students to apply the ideas and skills to their own work.

This year however I have dramatically changed the structure of classes. Days in which students are not working on their culminating task are divided into 3 parts, but not in the more traditional ‘minds on hands on consolidation model’, rather into a mental / skill warm up, explore technique and then develop concept / composition. In this first unit what this looked like was students being much more engaged for the full duration of the class and then also the quality of student sketchbook work increased dramatically. The direct result of this process is that it allowed me to focus my feedback in a given class to a more narrow and specified range of ideas in order to boost student performance. For example, instead of spending 1 whole class working on pen & ink techniques, this would be broken down over three days; instead of one whole class devoted to creating thumbnails, this would be broken down over three days. The major area of improvement that I saw was in terms of composition because they had more direct time to think about exploring options. For example, one day we discussed the concept of symmetrical, asymmetrical and radial balance, and then the were required to create thumbnails of their subject matter for each of these strategies for placing the focal point. The next day, we discussed informal balance (which is a much more difficult concept to understand and much more difficult to apply) and then they tried out this strategy. The third day we discussed the idea of quartering the picture space to create areas of visual rest and the photographic concept of the rule of thirds. Again students had time to sit down and apply these strategies to their own visual thinking. The end result, better more focussed thumbnails.

The same process was carried out for determining ‘how’ to depict the subject matter (the invasive species in this case) in such a way that it visually communicated the invasive characteristic of the plant itself. Students were then lead through a series of short mini lessons to allow them to think about and then apply these imaging strategies such as personification, magnification, exaggeration, magnification, etc. over the course of several days.

In the end, students ended up with 10 or so really well thoughout out well developed thumbnail sketches that they were then able to take to the preliminary work stage, in which they bring together all of their work in a couple of focused preliminary drawings in which they refine their drawing skill, composition, imaging strategy and of course use with the technical media. Again, the work that was created was superb and much more refined than that which was done in previous years for me. Students are using more time in class to think through their process to develop their work (instead of ‘today we are working on thumbnails – GO!’), getting more feedback through conversation with their peers and me as the teacher.

After the whole process was completed this past week I evaluated their final products, and I was very happy with the end results. Every work looked different because of the media that was used, the compositional strategies that were employed and the imaging strategies that were thoughtfully selected to communicate the invasive qualities of the plants. Even though the project was somewhat conceptually limiting this time through, it provided a really unique opportunity for students to stretch their thinking within a fairly tight set of conceptual parameters. On the evaluation sheet that they used throughout the process there were no numbers, only quality descriptors (i.e. “beyond expectations”, “good / well done”, “its okay”, “some more work is needed”, “work is missing”) that corresponded to levels of achievement (i.e. 4, 3, 2, 1, R/Inc.). The students had now problem with this and when I talked to students at the end of the process, we looked at the trends in their evaluation throughout the entire process and steps that they need to take the next time around in order to show improvement. In a class of 26 students, only 3 asked about their numerical value, the other 23 were entirely satisfied with the conversation as the launching point for their continued learning in the class.

The Importance of a Common Vocabulary

Building the vocabulary of a discipline is no easy feat, especially when the vocabulary is extremely dense in terms of quantity of terms and complexity of meanings.  Yet, it is an essential component of being able to learn and think within the domain of a particular discipline as the common vocabulary becomes a common language through which ideas are shared and concepts refined or developed. How should vocabulary be addressed in today’s visual arts classroom? I have approximately 88 instructional periods in a given semester in order to help students to develop their capacity for imaginative thinking, creativity and innovation; develop skills in learning how to make art, be able to look at art and derive meaning and to develop an aesthetic awareness that will hopefully engage students in the arts beyond their time in high school. How much of this time is to be devoted to explicit teaching of pure vocabulary and reinforcing that the vocabulary is known. I am of two minds on this topic: part of me wants to believe that the vocabulary will be learned over time (after all the Ontario Curriculum is designed as a spiral) and another part of me feels it is necessary to spend explicit time teaching some of the vocabulary (even though I know it is boring – the trick is to find an interesting and appropriate way to say “this word is important”).

This topic has emerged out of a discussion that I have been having with my visual arts colleagues at school over the past month or so. We have decided that we want to emphasize the importance of the sketchbook as the primary learning tool in the classroom, and that it is the place to document their creative process. The conversation has been extremely rich and has provided much to think about in terms of ‘what’ we are teaching, ‘how’ we are teaching, and ‘why’ we are teaching certain things. It is also helping us as a small group to articulate the basics of a general collective philosophy of art education (which is no easy task even as one reflects on his / her own).

For the past two weeks we have been stuck on a word “conventions” and how it should be used instructionally and for assessment and evaluation purposes. Art conventions is a term that is part of our vocabulary, it is what I would call an umbrella term that is used to categorize a variety of other concepts that have a similar function within the domain of art. Taken literally, the term convention means a generally accepted way of doing things, which seems at odds with the whole notion of creativity, in which there should be no “standard way”. This perplexed me because I fully believe that conventions is the right word because it implies that art is a form of communication, and thus there needs to be conventions (as there is in written communication) in order for meaning to be transferred. It was not until the notion of meaning making was articulated more clearly in the context of the term conventions that I was able to articulate the importance of this term. In art, the term convention does not simply mean a standard way of doing something, but rather a generally accepted way of using aspects of art making in order to communicate meaning.

The question then, changed from “Why should we use the term convention when it is so stifling?” to “What are the conventions of art?” The following is a list of conventions that I believe are important:

• metaphor, abstraction, distortion, symbolism, stylization, appropriation, narrative, parody, transformation, juxtaposition, realism, propaganda, editing, layering, hierarchy, sequencing, levels, analogy

We are going to begin discussing how these ideas aid in the construction of meaning. It then came to my attention through careful reflection on other art vocabulary terminology, that some vocabulary is dualistic in nature: in one instance a term may be used to describe a convention and in another context it may not. The best way for me to describe this would be by using an example to illustrate my point. The principles and elements of design (which are a construct of the modernist view of art and the world) are generally used as vocabulary tools to help people articulate and talk about what they are looking at in an art work. In many cases, the vocabulary is used to structurally analyze how an artist has created a composition.

Robert Harris “A Meeting of the School Trustees” 1885

Robert Harris’s painting “A Meeting of the School Trustees” 1885 is the painting in which I first this duality of meaning for vocabulary when I was in high school in the 1990s. We looked at this painting and were asked to identify the focal point: we responded that woman was the focal point. We were then asked, why do we look at her as the focal point. A few of the answers included that she is contrasted against the wall, that the gazes of the men all look at her (leading lines) and that she was the only person standing up. My high school teacher then asked us who was in control. This was a different kind of question. We were no longer dealing with the structure of the painting, but rather the meaning or message that was being conveyed. Our answer was once again, the school teacher. We were then asked to justify our response. This was a challenging task. Why was she ‘in control’? How could we tell? To this we did not really have an answer, so our teacher walked us through decoding the conventions that were used:

• scale: not only does her size make us look at her as the focal point, but because she appears optically larger than the seated figures, gives her the sense that she is more important and in control
• shape: her head is at the top of an implied triangle with vertices on the man’s head at the far left and the man’s head on the far right – a triangle is a shape that implies hierarchy and stability, meaning that she is in control of what is underneath her (in this case the trustees)

For years I have been using the idea of the emotional / psychological meaning of the principles and elements of design to explain how they help to create and convey a message. It is in this context in which some vocabulary acts as a convention.

As we continue to develop our understanding of the vocabulary of art as a cohesive visual arts staff, we will be able to better use the vocabulary in order to assist students in applying these conventions in the making of their own art, and deriving meaning from the works of others.

Assessment using Mission Statements

After reading Grant Wiggin’s and Jay McTighe’s book Schooling By Design this past summer a whole new world of assessment and evaluation was opened to me. Of course, this is closely tied with the notion that good assessment is intrinsically tied to sound instructional pedagogy. In this book they promote the idea that we need to be teaching not just curricular standards, but enduring understandings, or big ideas that are embedded within the mission and vision of the institution that we are situated: the board, the school, and the department. What I (re-)discovered is that the front matter of the curriculum document is full of the ideas that Wiggin’s and McTighe recommend to be the aims of teaching. When I was part of the curriculum roll out team for the PDSB a few years ago, the Ministry of Education spent considerable time having us review and reflect on the front matter, but they did not suggested in any form that these larger ideas were the aim of the education we were trying to provide to the students in the class and that they should be assessed or evaluated. As a result, the status quo was maintained, and when we returned to our district, we reviewed the front matter and merely and suggested that teachers conduct a curriculum expectation gap analysis (i.e. go through current assignments, and determine how they meet the new expectations, and where there were gaps, to ensure that new assignments were developed to fill the void, and if necessary remove assignments that did not fit with the new curriculum expectations).

For the past few years I have been emphasizing the model of assessing curricular standards. But subconsciously I have always felt that there was a gap. For me, education is about growth over time, and using a spiral curriculum where students repeat the basic standards with increasing depth and sophistication from year to year was the philosophical fill stop for accounting for growth. Over time however, I did begin to recognize that at the high school level the growth was limited, as the majority students were only taking one or two courses in visual art, and then opting out for other ‘more important subjects’ like math and science in particular. Students were not accountable for demonstrating any form of growth in such a short period of time, and although the creative process / critical analysis process is assessed multiple times throughout the year, the expectation within a given year was the same. What I was looking for was increasing understanding of these expectations but there was little context for students to do so. Wiggin’s and McTighe’s theory of schooling by design was able to help point me beyond the curricular expectations and look at the bigger picture. After taking into account the front matter of the 2010 Ontario Arts Curriculum, our district school mission, our mission at the school level, and my own values of the arts (based primarily on the writings of Sir Ken Robinson, Daniel Pink, Richard Florida to name a few), I was able to identify larger educational goals that I am now using the curricular standards to address:

• develop and communicate, through the act of creation, insights about your world and personal identity
• develop refined art works that respond to historical themes that have contemporary relevance
• make connections between the learning in this course and other courses you are taking (or have taken) and / or future learning & career pathways
• monitor and reflect on the progress of your own learning through the documentation of your creative process
• refine habits of mind and 21st century skills such as…
  • persisting through challenges and ambiguity
  • to work with accuracy and precision
  • ask probing questions to further your learning
  • applying past knowledge and experiences to current creative problems
  • taking responsible risks with your work to create innovative solutions
  • manage impulsivity to find the correct answer right away
  • developing and reflecting on success criteria

The natural fit for me in terms of assessing the student’s ability to achieve these goals was in looking at their whole semester of learning. For senior students, this meant working towards creating a portfolio of their best work. I have tried to do this in the past, but have been very unhappy with the assessment of the portfolios because it became a checklist of course completion, the design of the portfolio, rather than an assessment of the growth. Essentially the portfolio became another form of an ‘artwork’ that was assessed. Using these mission statements as a guide provides a new lens through which to look at the students growth, and specific look for’s as to how students improved their learning throughout the semester.

For junior students (grades 9 & 10), many of whom are not looking at pursuing a post secondary pathway in the arts, the tasking of creating a portfolio seemed like an unnecessary and over involved task to require students to complete. Then my teaching colleague and I were planning for the grade 9 course and she indicated that she was interested in somehow incorporating the sketchbook into the the exam on a higher level. This of course was the answer that I was looking for.The sketchbook is ‘the place where the learning happens’ in an art room, and it documents on an ongoing daily basis what is learning, and provides students with a way of tracking their learning and the increasing depth of understanding as they apply concepts and skills repeatedly. This was perfect, as it provided greater emphasis on an essential component of the course that was not taken seriously and was done quite poorly last year.

This also meant that instructing for better use of the sketchbook was necessary. My teaching partner and I reflected and discussed at length the advantages and disadvantages of the program we were starting at David Suzuki Secondary School, and one piece that kept surfacing was the poor use of class time. Through further discussion, we began to explore how we were teaching and organizing the use of time within class, and found that a significant reason for the poor use of the sketchbook was the structure of the class and the delivery of each unit. As a result of these talks, we have come up with hte following (which I am now also applying in the grade 11 course as well):

• start every class with a creativity prompt to warm students up (approx. 15 minutes)
• conduct a small technical demonstration and allow students time to practice / play with the media and techniques introduced, while ensuring that studetns recognize that they are accountable for this work to be completed in their sketchbook
• provide compositional instruction and allow students to apply their learning to the development of their own thumbnails for the project that they are currently working on

By restructuring class in this way, students are provided with specific conventions and imaging strategies to think about as they develop their work, as opposed to asking them to create one whole stage of the creative process in a short period of time (i.e. you have one class to brainstorm ideas, you have one class to create thumbnails, etc.). Although it may add some time to the overall length of the project, the quality of learning from my early observations is significantly increased! As students progress throughout the semseter, they will have a greater variety of strategies to draw upon and can genuinely spiral through the curriculum applying increasingly sophisticated approaches to image making, and because it is all documented in the sketchbook, I will be able to more accurately assess their growth!

Educational Leadership in Art

A couple of weeks ago I sighed up for the ASCD Smart-brief (a daily snapshot of ideas and practices that reflect exceptional practice and theory). One such briefing was on the topic of what makes a good leader in a professional learning community. I find this interesting as I have often considered myself a leader, but at many junctions I have not considered myself to be the right person for the job as I feel that I have not been able to effectively mobilize people to work towards a goal. One example of this inability has been with the Peel Society for Education through Art. For the past few years, as the co-chair of this organization we have been seeing declining attendance at our workshops. After the rollout of our revised curriculum documents in 2010 we have not been able to sustain interest in the workshops we have organized to supports the professional development of visual art and media art educators in Peel Region. Granted, there has been a lot to do in implementing the new curriculum, and we as visual art educators are asked to support broader board wide initiatives (and as such subject specific professional learning does not happen). This has been a major impediment to being able to mobilize art educators in our district because most (in not all) the board organized professional learning does not take into account our special and unique way of looking at the world, and developing skills for students of the 21st century. We are at an impasse.

This is where these articles I have been reading come into play. The first article was about what leadership qualities are required for leaders of PLCs. The answer was simple, almost to simple: there is no one set of criteria to define the leadership needs of a group of professionals, and therefore there is no one set of leadership qualities to define leader. In fact, perhaps it is necessary to redefine how leadership appears in an professional learning community. At different times in the learning cycle, different leaders will emerge as the tasks and development of the learning occurs. The idea that there is a solitary leader heading up the group may be an antiquated idea. Ideally, with a group of professionals, each person will have different strengths to lead at different times, as the learning evolves and the activity of learning changes. Continuing with my reflection on the PSEA, this idea helps to explain the challenges that we as an organization have been facing. The ‘leadership team’ of the organization started to fall apart about two years ago, once our work with the new curriculum document was a near completion. We lacked a sense of purpose and our own learning goals were no longer being defined for us. We were moving into a transition when we were having a set our own learning goals. Unfortunately we did not realize is at the time, and went back to our old ways of doing things, even though the structure of education and focus had changed at the board level. Because we did not have a clear mandate for what our organization was for, we could not identify the types of leaders we needed to attract (or if we had them, we did not know that we needed them).

The second article looked generally at the two types of leaders: the dreamers and the doers. Both essential, but often not reaching their full potential. Dreamers see the world (or education in this case) as the way things ought to be. They do not merely accept the status quo and forge a head. The difficulty with a group of dreamers is that is often all they will do…. Dream and think about how things could otherwise be. Doers on the other hand are pragmatic and interested in getting things done, without necessarily thinking about why they are doing what they are doing. As far as visual,arts teachers go, I find that we embody both characteristics of leaders from our capacity for creative thinking and being able to work towards our visions. However, as a group, we dream big for educational change and at the same time mire in our current state of affairs in the belief that the system is against us. Although we are creative by nature, I also believe that we are some of the most resistant to change. Again, I can draw upon a specific example within my experience as the co-chair of PSEA. As I have previously mentioned, we as an organization lost focus and could provide little to no direction for the group’s professional learning. There was little interest in continuing the same model of professional development “on our own time” when our membership was looking around at other “subject areas” (I don’t think that there has been a shift to thinking about disciplines as of yet in our board) and seeing that they were getting item release to participate in professional learning. To visual arts teachers this was a huge injustice as we already spend so much time outside of class in extra-curricular activity to ensure the sustainability
of our programming.

So now, after a year of questioning my leadership ability, I have a greater understanding of what I need to do as some one who is leading. Leading is not me doing everything for everyone else by advocating, liaising, developing professional learning, providing networking opportunities…. Right now, as a leader my aim is to identify others with leadership abilities or potential. The success of individual gatherings is not as important as mobilizing a core group of educators that share a common mission for visual arts education and are willing toward implementing that vision. So far, on this new journey I have created a survey for the membership of our organization and 25 of 200 teachers on our e-mail distribution list responded (100 of which I would consider to be active members) last June. From the survey a lot of very useful info was adhered to start moving us forward as an organization. The first steps included the establishment of our website mypsea.com with active forums and discussion boards, a clear delineation of what the membership is looking for in terms of professional learning needs and a clearer articulation of what we as an organization are all about! But most importantly, there has been renewed interest in leadership, individuals stepping forward and being willing to take a stand and work towards a better future for arts education in the context of the 21st century student and their needs.

School Reform

I have spent the past month reading Wiggin’s & McTighe’s book Schooling by Design (2007). This book exemplifies praxis, the unity of theory and practical execution. Over the past several years, I have been reading much about how to improve my practice and how to move my practice into the 21st century and this book has helped me bridge the theoretical gap to the practical implementation of a program that is focussed on “learning strategies” as opposed to “instructional strategies” which will help me reach my goals for this coming school year. After a pedagogically challenging year at a new school I am hoping to see these few improvements:

• increased student engagement through a more disciplined approach to student learning (i.e. students demonstrate a greater degree of self-regulation)
• increased student engagement through a more individualized program, allowing students to identify skills and concepts that they are wanting to develop and explore within the context of their own interests and needs (i.e. life long learning)
• a clear vision of “what students want to know” balanced with “what students need to know” (i.e. 21st century learning)
• a greater connection of learning within the school (i.e. interdisciplinary learning opportunities to transfer learning)
• a transformation of the role of the teacher from teacher to facilitator to coach

The next step for me and my team is to articulate these aims as learning goals (using SMART principles) within the context of a school mission / department mission, provincial standards, and a collaboratively built curriculum that appropriately spirals throughout the entire program.

Michael Snow: Objects of Vision at the AGO

Michael Snow interacting with his work “Transformer” 1982

I have to admit, I have never truly been a fan of Michael Snow’s work until now. Most of the pieces that I had been familiar with have been his public art pieces (i.e. the figures adorning the Rogers Centre or the Canada Geese at the Eaton Centre, both in Toronto). This exhibition opened my eyes to another dimension of his work that I was previously unfamiliar with.

My own passion for sculpture has long been about the notion that art is more than just about looking at the work. Art is to be an experience for the viewer, or rather the participant. Perhaps this notion stems from my own experience of many artworks via the slide projector in art history classes – art experienced or mediated from a distance. And then several years ago I was introduced to the work of Chris Burden and Mowry Baden, both artists working in the 1970s and early 1980s that created works that required the viewer to interact with the work in order for the work to be ‘complete’. This concept has intrigued me ever since, as it changed my understanding of what artwork was about. In fact, it not only changed my perception of sculpture, but has also allowed me to rethink the relationship between viewer / artwork / artist in all other traditional media as well. All artwork, sculpture, new media, and traditional media are all about interactivity, whether we are talking about software art, works by Michael snow or paintings my Diego Velazquez.

It is in this context that this exhibition has dramatically changed my appreciation for the work of Michael Snow. As I entered the gallery and read the introductory front matter to the show, there was a small ‘invitation’ to participate. This was rather unusual as all of my previous experiences at the AGO were to stay off and away from the artworks. However, being able to sit in his work and walk through others, or to gaze into his abyss was provided me with a better understanding of his creative innovation, as he takes the simple act of looking, directs, and provides an experience for the viewer to feel and think about. Simple strategies of blocking out, blurring vision, reflecting vision, focussing vision, directing vision, challenging vision are all employed with precision and purpose. This has been a very welcomed experience at a gallery that I have not had for many years.