When taking Concepts of Art Education, I learned a lot that will benefit me as an art teacher in the future. This course has transformed my notions of the role of an art teacher through readings, discussions, assignments and service learning. Altogether, it has allowed me to gather important ideas that would help me become a facilitator of learning by incorporating a good balance between teacher and student-centered learning. To create a classroom that is mostly student-centered there are two general categories that go hand in hand: the role of an art teacher and effects on art-making.

 

To begin with, the role of an art teacher is to be a facilitator of learning and there are several ways to do this. One way is through differentiated instruction. I have learned all about DI in Differentiated Instruction in Art written by Heather L.R. Fountain, seen examples in many readings throughout this semester and practiced using differentiated techniques in my service learning. In DI pre-assessment is important because it informs teachers of student interests, prior knowledge and learning styles which if incorporated into teaching will keep students engaged and motivated and shows students that we care. Identity museum is a pre-assessment that I would use in my teaching. In identity museums, students take home a paper bag and fill it with personal items, then they set up their museums to show the class who they are. In my group’s service learning, we incorporated student interests into projects which were shown specifically in our third lesson to create a diorama of their favorite place. Some of the student-created dioramas included, a movie theater, Chuck E Cheese, a Taylor Swift concert, and backyards. When students recreate something that is important to them they get excited, the girl who created the Taylor Swift concert couldn’t stop smiling and giggling and the boy who created Chuck E Cheese shouted with joy. We also continued differentiated learning by providing a variety of materials in all of our lessons. For example, in our last lesson, the collaborative painting, we set up a wide range of items that could be used to make marks. This was awesome because every student made their own mark. One student really enjoyed using a sponge dipped in green as a stamp, while another student liked using a bundle of straw to splatter yellow paint.

 

We have also seen examples of DI and student-centered learning being used in readings throughout the semester. For the assignment “setting sail,” we watched a video and read a section about a high school art classroom. The video Setting Sail showed an elementary school classroom where DI was exhibited. In this classroom, the teachers created a lesson about the Titanic because every student showed curiosity. These teachers incorporated DI by creating several activities to reach all learning styles. They sang, wrote letters, and had more hands-on experiences that involved recreating the Titanic out of paper mache. In addition to Setting Sail, we read Student Ownership which was about a high school classroom where the teacher allowed her students to generate their own ideas and use the medium and materials of their choosing. By using differentiated learning, the teacher is more of a facilitator in the art-making process.

 

Another way to be a facilitator of artistic learning is to incorporate the Colorado Visual Art Content standards into our curriculum. These standards include comprehension, creation, reflection, and transference. At the beginning of the semester, we explored these standards in an early art-making experience that we had as a child. When thinking about my own childhood art-making it became apparent that comprehending, creating, reflecting and transferring were all apart of my creative process. I comprehended by coming up with an idea which was to create a puffball world, then I created the creatures by gluing googly eyes onto pom poms, I reflected by thinking about how I could create a working chair-lift for the creatures, then I transferred that knowledge to make the chair-lift. As teachers, we can help students by questioning so they can comprehend, reflect and transfer to create. When questioning we can get them to think for themselves to be originators of their own artwork. It’s helpful to think of our own artistic process so that we can help facilitate the steps that our students go through to make art. I’ve experienced artist block and sometimes it’s hard to come up with an idea, in my service learning group, we helped facilitate this step of comprehension, by creating a lesson menu. The lesson menu had components of creating an imaginary creature. This menu included physical features, personality traits, superpowers, and hobbies. We also facilitated the creation step by providing a variety of materials and reflecting and transference by having students show their artwork to the class and point out how they created their artwork.

 

As teachers we also need to assess and respond to student artwork but how do we grade something that is subjective? When reading Negotiated Fit and Responding to Student Art it became clearer about how to grade and come up with criteria. Responding to Student Art talked about how we should give positive feedback by pointing out specific things in a child’s art. For example, “I like your use of bright colors to show a joyful mood.” By doing this, students start to make meaning in their artwork by thinking about why they incorporated specific things in their artwork. This also goes back to the student being the originator and not just created art to please adults. Negotiated Fit talks about how a teacher came up with specific guidelines for an artwork, it had to include certain things such as at least two people being the main subject and a certain emotion. One boy wanted to create a sporting event with a lot of people to show how strangers can experience something together however it didn’t follow the teacher’s specific guidelines. What I learned from this is to create guidelines to allow students to create what they want and their own meaning. Again, this teaches students to be originators to think like artists and when guidelines are more open, students can succeed in an art class.

 

Now that we have a better idea of what the role of an art teacher is, it is important to think of what affects student artwork. To begin, the theories of Lowenfeld and Kellogg show developmental stages of childhood art. Kellogg categorized this developmental process into four stages: pattern, shape, design and pictorial. Similar to Kellogg, Lowenfeld’s five stages include: scribble, pre-schematic, schematic, dawning realism and pseudorealistic stage. By learning about the stages a key point that I took away was that students equate good art with anything that looks realistic. During the design and pre-schematic stage, children start to create combines and aggregates which are combinations of shapes adults start to equate these combines with real things, for example, a triangle on a square look like a house. The problem with this is children like praise and continue to create things that are recognizable to adults. Culture and society also influences artwork because a house in the US might look different than a house in Asia. When becoming a teacher, I will take this into consideration because I don’t want students to get discouraged from creating art if they can’t make something that is realistic. As a teacher, I will show students a variety of artwork including abstract and works created from imagination, this way they can see a wide range of art.

 

In addition to the stages of artistic development, the theories of Zurmuehlen in Studio Art: Praxis, Symbol, Presence, informs us of more effects on child artwork. When exploring her theories about the artist as the originator through artistic causality, the relationship between medium and maker, the inner critic and meaning-making through intentional symbolization, I related it to my own art in our biography of an artwork assignment in ART 325. As the originator, we all have innate creative impulses and that causes us to make something. We also have a dialogue with the medium we are using for example when I was drawing with a pen, I was worried that I would mess up and be unable to erase, this is where the inner critic comes in because it stops us from taking risks that could further improve an artwork. There is also meaning-making where we come up with our own symbols. This shows us what factors affect student artwork and the inner critic is probably the most difficult to overcome. As a teacher, I will try my best to push students to take risks and not listen to their inner critic so that they can improve.

 

In conclusion, throughout this semester I have learned that our role as art teachers is to be facilitators in learning and what effects a student artwork. My gatherings from ART 325 will be transferred when I begin to student teach and teach in my own classroom.