prepared?

As I get knee deep and face to face with the reality that in just a few weeks I'll be student teaching, I am coming to the realization that learning to teach is something that an infinite number of years in school will never fully accomplish. As I scramble to figure out what the heck I am going to do, I rack my brain, searching for the meaningful things I gleaned from the numerous hours spent in class that will come to my rescue now. And for some reason, the only thing I can come up with is "motivation."

I have been reading some great books, "From Ordinary to Extraordinary," by Ken Vieth, "The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain," by Betty Edwards, and "How to Be an Explorer of the World" by Keri Smith as well as this fabulous article my mentor teacher directed me towards. As I read through these ideas about how to get kids creative and how to present problems in the art classroom, I realize that these sort of philosophies and modes of teaching are wonderful and meaninful and great for our kids-- and they are things that I as a teacher can only come to master through experience. As I've been emersing my nerdy little mind in these books, I've wondered how much of these models were covered in my few semesters within the School of Education and the Art Department. Why didn't they give us more training in setting up a lesson this way? I think to myself. I don't know. Maybe they did and I didn't hear because my sensory functions were still recovering from the late night before in the painting studio. Maybe I just need a few more years of "doing" before I really understand.

Regardless of the ability of a classroom to teach me everything I need to know abou the nitty gritty of teaching, I've come to many a good thought. One struggle I've been facing in writing my units and lesson plans for the coming semester has been in the area of organization-- how do I put all of these ideas swirling around down on paper in such a way that my advisors, the state, and administration will understand what is going on in my classroom and in such a way that I know what I am supposed to be doing with all of these young faces looking attentively in my direction.

So, based on the advice of my mentor teacher, these great texts, and what I already know about lesson planning, I came up with this little sequence to help me frame my lessons in a way more conducive to introducing art as a "problem to be solved."

Class:
Lesson:

Problem to be addressed:





Resources Available:
-- Instructional Support


-- Materials


Learning Goals:

--Skills


--Concepts


Assessment:


Sequence/Procedures:





An aspect of Vieth's book that I'm really enjoying is the presentation of art process as problem solving, such as "Given two weeks, how can you transform an ordinary door knob into a work of art?" I think an approach that focuses more on an innovative aim is a great way of getting kids away from seeing art class as a place for people born with the talent of realistic rendering to a place where everyone gets to uncover thier own creative ideas. Art is no longer about creating a marketable product, but engaging in a creative process. Which is really what it is about, isn't it?

I learned the value/concept of pursuing a visual problem a few semesters back through the completion of the final for my figure painting class. The whole time, I struggled through the class, bored and uninterested in painting the figure. Throughout the semester, our instructor was showing us examples of artwork, saying, "look how this artist focuses on pattern, how this artist makes the figures look bony or weighty or ghostly." I didn't get it until the end-- I realized my painting was never going to be a success until I solidified my aim. What was I working towards? The obvious answer was "self-portrait"-- that was the assingment. But as an artist, I realized I have to dig deeper than that. What vocabulary was I hoping to expand? What was the problem I wanted to solve?

I think this idea of "visual problem solving" rarely makes its way into the k-12 classroom. Art is about going in and finishing projects that look pretty. But I think we need to trust our students with more advanced thinking-- and ultimately this is the type of thinking that is going to get them hooked on a level below the surface. Art is not about external experiences as much as it is about the struggle through the process of solving a problem. Making a goal and working night and day, sketch after sketch until our fingers bleed. This is what good artists want-- to move forward, they enjoy the struggle of finding it out. And we need to be training a generation of students who understand the joy found in this process.