http://www.donorschoose.org/fineart

I have started a fund raising effort at Donorschoose.org called “I Want To Paint Like Degas.” The goal is to buy my students a new painting studio! We have 2 donations all ready and can’t wait to see how this goes. Helps us on our way. Click the link and share on Facebook, Google+ what ever you are on. Thanks!

http://www.donorschoose.org/fineart

I am very excited to be getting started! Here are pictures of the art studio.

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Travis Meinolf's Pocket Loom

The Pocket Loom is an amazing and simple idea from Travis Meinolf that puts weaving into the hands of everyone! I made these out of wood for my kids to use this year I thought that wood would last a bit longer and be a little nicer for them. I plan on showing them how to make these and using the wooden ones for a model as well as setting up some ongoing projects in my new classroom.

http://www.make-digital.com/craft/vol08/?pg=53&pm=2&u1=friend

Changing Education Paradigms
I recently watched a video by Sir Ken Robinson on the new paradigm of education.It triggered a wave of realizations for me and the way that I am teaching. I realized that exploratory education is the most important situation we as teachers can create. This is the highest level of the art of teaching. Creating situations where students can use their inborn talent for creative and divergent thinking to discover the answers for themselves. Schools often try to teach children to behave, to think and discover or rather not discover in very specific ways. This is the problem. I advocate for an exploratory method of teaching, facilitating, letting students teach themselves. This is not an argument to make the teacher obsolete, but to help the teacher become a guide to learning how to learn. This process of discovery, of exploring a problem is where we can find true engagement for our students. I have been experiementing on my students at a k-7 charter school in Oregon, and I find that that when I give them the parameters, subject, style, materials, background, and assignment, a fully developed lesson plan, I get bored and surly students. When I engage them by providing materials (diverse materials), a bit of background or history and a problem to solve, I get almost 100% engagement, “on task behavior” and incredible results. Truly good art! Now my definition of “good” art is an innovative and entirely new creation, something that has not existed before, or if it has they may not have known of it so it is entirely new to them, this is the goal of exploration. They have learned on their own they have discovered something new and that new thing, when I have done my job correctly, is exactly what I was trying to teach, say cubism or abstraction. The basic idea here is that as teachers our job is not to pack children’s heads with information and facts, but to create situations where our students can teach themselves. We become a resource, an organizer and a facilitator. We must also give them access to other sources of information and resources apart from us, this is the organizer role, thinking ahead and getting things together so that when they discover that they need them they are there. This is how the student will learn to teach themselves and may choose to go further than we ever expected. Encourage divergent thinking by letting students use materials in anyway they can think of and by letting them “copy,” innovation often occurs this way, taking someone else’s idea to the next level.
Creativity is inherent in Humans. We must encourage it and help our students to refine it and get better at it. The current system is the opposite. As Sir Ken Robinson points out, students are getting worse at divergent thinking as we mold them into what is deemed culturally normal or academic, as they become “educated.” We can teach by setting up explorations in to the problems we present. It is our job as teachers to think in divergent and creative ways in order to conceive of how to make that happen. By teaching students how to solve problems we are creating life long learners and engaging our kids, they may even begin to love coming to school.

Re-Present
is an exploration in the unfinished nature of memory and community; in this case, drawing from the people and my time in Kenya.
As I painted, I was struck by what my memory could recall about these scene and perhaps more revealing, what was left out; colors, small details, maybe unimportant but maybe not.
The paintings, while complete, have an unfinished quality about them which feels like the fog and clarity of my memory. I find that community also has this illusive quality. We nearly remember what it is like, and have a semblance of it, but we cannot pull up all the details.
This became apparent to me upon my return from Kenya, where subsistence farmers live fulfilled in a substantial community centered around water. The palpable and powerful nature of community cannot be represented materially and maybe can only be remembered….

Art is one of the most important tools we have for reaching “at risk” students. Through art we can bring them in and offer them an outlet for emotions and a way to connect with and understand others.

“Creative thinking is generally considered to be involved with the creation or generation of ideas, processes, experiences or objects; critical thinking is concerned with their evaluation.”

http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/policy/cels/el4.html

Education in the process of making art can help to develop both critical and creative thinking skills, which can then be applied to regular life and other parts of a student’s education. As a student begins to solve the assignment or problem put in front of them they must utilize both of these skills to a high degree. Art education is effective in teaching problem solving skills because the problems it presents are well defined, while the desired out come is a physical object; you will produce a drawing or a sculpture. The student is then left to fill in the gaps and move through the steps of problem solving. As a teacher one must help to guide them through these processes.

Let us assume that the assignment is for the student to draw a picture of an aspect of their life. Previously the student will have been taught the fundamentals of creating a drawing: line, perspective, color, texture, shading as well having done a number of guided exercises such as still life drawings. The student must now use their critical thinking and decision making skills to answer a number questions that will help them solve this assignment. What in my life should I draw? What resources are available to me to draw with? The student must now decide which life experience is most practical to put into a drawing given the materials available and the subject matter they have to work with? Next they must use the knowledge they have gained in class. How should I draw this thing?  What colors should I use? Should I use colors at all? Which technique is best suited to this type of drawing? etc… Art is a good way to learn to have the confidence to answer these kinds of questions and use the decision making process in a safe and nearly risk free environment. Through the critique process students also learn to reflect upon others expression and understand their peers in a new way. Art also give students an avenue of self expression, reflection and exploration. (add to this) These practices can then be applied to real life once the students confidence is boosted they can then use these new skills in all other aspects of their lives.

In addition to the above and more relevant to the specifics of public schooling. A study was preformed by Nancy Lampert 2006 and it shows that students educated in the arts preformed better on certain parts of a standardized test related to critical thinking, “… but the arts students were found to have significantly higher mean scores on several of the subscales within the research instrument: truth-seeking, maturity, and open-mindedness. These results suggest that learning in the arts builds strengths in several critical thinking dispositions and offers evidence that the arts do indeed enhance the disposition to think critically.”  http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ740559&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&accno=EJ740559

I have been re-reading this book about art, developmental stages and how that effects a child’s perception of the visual world and I found this very important statement.

“…the work of children, “primitives,” etc., is not to be regarded negatively as somethingbelow standard, something to be overcome, the sooner the better, on the road to “competent” art. The preceding sections of this chapter will have suggested that visual form, when permitted to grow undisturbed, moves from stage to stage lawfully, and that each stage has its own justification, its own capacities for expression, its own beauty. Scince these early stages depend on one another and lay the foundation for any mature acheivement, they must be worked through unhurriedly. This true not only for children but for any developing artist.” Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, 1974 UC Press, Berkly Ca.

I believe this wholeheartedly and would like to argue not for a wild free for all of early childhood art ed. but for a guided exploration where children learn new skills and techniques without the pressure to create in a certain, “correct,” manner. I have been having very good luck with my Kindergardeners and the learning of new techniques of art making. I almost made the mistake of telling them how to draw a portrait… Eyes here and nose there, what is just below the nose? I must remember that my own power of visual perception and translation has been honed over years of work and that I started this way. I ask that all parents and teachers also respect this developmental process and let kids draw what they draw. You can ask them to draw a potrait, just don’t tell them how to do it.