You searched for Organization - The Art of Education University

Beyond Grading: 11 Unexpected Ways Art Teachers Can Use Rubrics

Kyle Wood — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 11:00:40 +0000

Assessing creative work can be extremely difficult. While math and science will often have one correct outcome, art is open-ended and more subjective. There are innumerable pathways to success and every student will produce unique work. That is why art teachers love a good rubric! Rubrics can streamline assessments, provide clear expectations, and help students understand areas for improvement. But did you know that rubrics can be more than a grading tool?

Leverage rubrics in 11 unexpected ways to enhance student learning, foster meaningful dialogue, and refine your teaching practice.

There are many ways to use rubrics but where do you start if you don’t know how to write a solid rubric? The first resource you won’t want to miss is the Plug n’ Play Rubric from FLEX Curriculum. This rubric is customizable to any art project and will create consistency in your curriculum. Save more time with the many other rubrics and assessments in FLEX—simply select the Assessment tab and filter by grade level and medium to find what you need.

1. Guide parent-teacher conferences.

A rubric provides a clear framework for discussing student progress with parents. It moves conversations beyond letter grades and highlights specific areas of strength and growth tied to learning objectives. This shared understanding helps you collaborate effectively with parents to support students’ artistic development.

2. Support reflection, self-assessment, and artist statements.

Rubrics provide a structured format for students to reflect on their creative process and articulate their artistic goals. Turn the rubric criteria into prompts to kickstart reflection. This will result in more thoughtful self-assessments and more insightful artist statements.

3. Focus critiques.

Similarly, structure critiques around the rubric to provide students with focused feedback. Tying feedback to the rubric criteria helps students provide constructive comments based on the artwork. It pulls the attention off the artist and onto the work. This approach also encourages students to more deeply analyze artwork and develop their critical thinking skills in a supportive environment.

4. Check in with students.

Integrate rubrics into student check-ins to foster a sense of ownership and encourage self-reflection. Students can use the rubric to monitor their own progress and identify areas where they excel or need additional support. This process promotes self-awareness and empowers students to take an active role in their learning. Using rubrics in this way also guides the feedback conversation in a way that feels predictable and comfortable for students.

5. Plan future projects.

Analyze rubric data to identify trends in student performance and areas where students consistently succeed or struggle. This information informs future lesson planning and helps you tailor instruction to meet the specific needs of your students. By using rubrics to identify knowledge gaps, you can differentiate instruction more effectively.

6. Build research skills.

Provide students with rubrics designed to evaluate the credibility and relevance of research sources. Students will gain critical research skills as they identify reliable websites, videos, and other resources. It will help them to assess the accuracy, authority, and objectivity of information, which is crucial in an age of digital media.

7. Decrease student questions.

We’ve all heard the question a thousand times—”Am I done yet?” Create a rubric for students to reference to determine if their work is complete. List hallmarks of completion, such as filling in negative space and putting their name on the work. Laminate the rubric and hang it where students put their completed work. This way, they can check it before turning their project in.

8. Monitor studio habits.

Establish clear expectations for studio habits and encourage responsible behavior with a studio rubric. Be sure to outline specific criteria for maintaining a clean and organized workspace. This promotes a productive learning environment and instills ownership in the art room. It develops organizational skills, attention to detail, time management strategies, and respect for shared resources.

9. Evaluate your lessons.

A rubric can also assist you with assessing your teaching strategies and identifying areas for improvement. This reflective practice encourages continuous growth and helps you refine your instructional approach to better meet the needs of your students. The specificity of a rubric will clearly tell you if it’s the clarity of learning objectives, the engagement of activities, or the overall impact of your lessons. You can even give your students a rubric for scoring your lessons to tell you which are the most interesting and impactful!

10. Encourage engagement.

Rubrics can assess how students work and conduct themselves in the classroom. Think about the skills you want students to demonstrate, such as listening quietly when others speak, asking good questions, sharing relevant connections, revising work, and seeking feedback for improvement. Make a rubric with examples to define these soft skills.

11. Prompt deeper discussions.

Rubrics equip students with a shared vocabulary and a common framework for discussing art. This shared understanding facilitates more meaningful conversations about artistic choices, techniques, and the creative process. Using a rubric, students can engage in more focused and productive critiques of their work and the work of others.

Ultimately, rubrics empower both teachers and students beyond grading art projects. Clear and specific rubrics foster transparency, encourage self-reflection, maintain an orderly classroom, and promote meaningful dialogue about art. By embracing these unexpected rubric applications, you can cultivate a more engaging and enriching learning environment. Watch teaching and learning flourish and students develop a deeper understanding of their artistic potential!

How else do you use rubrics in your classroom?

What other tools are helpful for student feedback?

To continue the conversation, join us in The Art of Ed Community!

The post Beyond Grading: 11 Unexpected Ways Art Teachers Can Use Rubrics appeared first on The Art of Education University.

How to Become a National Board Certified Art Teacher: Steps & Benefits

Kyle Wood — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 11:00:50 +0000

Reflection is a key part of the artmaking process and having a growth mindset. It helps you be the best artist and art teacher you can be! Just as we assess students and prompt them to be reflective learners, the National Board provides the same opportunity to us as teachers. Working toward National Board Certification will help you increase your depth of art history knowledge, art interpretation, cultural connections, art media, and instructional methods. Becoming more deliberate about your teaching will lead to increases in student engagement, student achievement, and personal satisfaction with your job.

Learn why National Board Certification is respected and how it can help you grow in your art education career.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is a non-profit organization that aims to advance the quality of teaching and learning. It does this primarily by offering National Board Certification, a rigorous, voluntary assessment process that recognizes accomplished teachers. National Board Certification is the gold standard in teaching and signifies excellence and commitment to the profession. Becoming an NBCT will help you be a more effective art teacher and advocate for your art program.

National Board Certification will prompt your professional growth.

The greatest benefit of the National Board process is that it will help you to become more thoughtful and deliberate about every aspect of your practice. As you analyze your teaching practices, gather evidence of student learning, and engage in rigorous assessment, you’ll gain valuable insights into your strengths and areas for improvement. This reflective process will empower you to refine your instructional strategies, enhance your assessment methods, and deepen your understanding of how students learn in the context of art education. You’ll emerge from the certification process with renewed confidence, a refined skillset, and a heightened commitment to lifelong learning—all of which translate to a more impactful and fulfilling teaching experience.

National Board Certification will increase student learning and achievement.

As you improve your teaching practice, you will notice your students’ attention and skills improve. As you create the rigorous lessons required for certification, your students will become more versed in critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and communication. These are crucial skills that will set them up for success for the rest of their lives. The National Board also encourages teachers to create a supportive and inclusive learning environment. As you model these traits and demonstrate your commitment to building a culture of learning, you will notice students naturally following suit!

National Board Certification will help your community.

The first thing that draws a lot of teachers toward National Board Certification is the financial incentive. Many districts offer a stipend or step increase as a reward for those who meet the rigorous standards. Districts recognize that National Board Certified Teachers provide a tremendous benefit to the community!

Many districts also offer recognition at school board meetings or similar public events. This can elevate your visibility among administrators, enhance your credibility, and make advocacy for your art program more impactful. Repurpose the required writing component into informative flyers to accompany student work displays, foster community engagement, and increase understanding of the value of art education. Ultimately, the skills you hone in articulating the impact of your educational practice will equip you to be a powerful advocate for your program, ensuring its continued growth and success for the benefit of your students and the community as a whole.

Discover the four components of National Board Certification and tips to tackle the process with confidence!

Know the four components of National Board Certification.

Teaching is a complex job. Just as effective teachers segment instruction and provide clear criteria for success, the National Board helps teachers to focus on different aspects of their job to target growth. In order to become an NBCT, you will need to create a portfolio demonstrating your proficiency across four key components.

Here’s a snapshot of the four components:

Content Knowledge
This component assesses your understanding of the subject matter you teach and your ability to convey it effectively to students. It typically involves a computer-based assessment.
Differentiation in Instruction
This component focuses on your ability to adapt your teaching to meet the diverse needs of your students. You’ll need to provide evidence of how you differentiate instruction to support all learners.
Teaching Practice and Learning Environment
This component evaluates your classroom management skills, your ability to create a positive and engaging learning environment, and your use of various instructional strategies to promote student learning.
Effective and Reflective Practitioner
This component focuses on your ability to reflect on your teaching practice, analyze student learning data, and make adjustments to improve student outcomes.

Each component requires you to submit evidence of your teaching practice, such as video recordings, student work samples, lesson plans, and written reflections. Many people tackle the certification process by segmenting it and focusing on two components per year.

Set yourself up for success.

Trying to tackle all four components at once can be overwhelming. Instead, take your time. Most teachers find it manageable to tackle two components per year. Familiarize yourself with the requirements early and often, paying close attention to the evidence needed, including photographs and videos, so you can plan ahead. When writing your submissions, prioritize the rubric over style. Structure your writing to mirror the rubric, using keywords followed by concise statements of evidence. This approach may feel disjointed, but it ensures clarity and facilitates efficient scoring.

Get parental consent right from the start.

You will need to record lesson videos to submit as evidence. While the video should focus on you and your instruction, it’s a good idea to think through privacy concerns. Strategically select a class with minimal or no students on your school’s media denial list to streamline the consent process. Parental consent forms are always necessary and it is generally easier to obtain them from parents who have already consented to the school’s media policy.

Study a little every day.

Content Knowledge can be one of the most intimidating components. Art history encompasses basically all of human history from around the world including artifacts that predate recorded history. On top of that, art teachers need to have knowledge of materials and methods for artistic production. If that feels overwhelming, remember that the test is not about trivia. It is aimed at assessing whether you know enough to do the job well.

Most of the information you need to know is stuff that you likely already know. Still, studying and learning will help you feel more confident. Review PRO Learning’s Packs on art history and media to grow your repertoire of artists and vocabulary. These Packs provide a quick and deep dive into various topics with short, engaging videos.

Take advantage of free learning resources.

One free resource is podcasts! Listen to podcasts during your commute to and from school. Art Ed Radio has hundreds of episodes to help you gain new insights into all aspects of the art teacher profession. Shows like ArtCurious and Who ARTed can help you not only learn facts from art history but also hear how others analyze and describe pieces. You can also go on a free virtual museum tour with smARTee. There are some wonderful YouTube channels, such as Great Art Explained, which tackle a fair amount of depth in 15 minutes.

Be intentional with how you respond.

It’s inevitable that some students will do something unexpected. The evaluators understand this reality. It’s okay if a student blurts something out without raising their hand or behaves inappropriately on camera. It’s how you respond that matters the most! Respond appropriately to re-direct and get things back on track, then reflect accordingly in your writing.

Along the same lines, you may need to write about an artwork you have never seen before. Remember the purpose of the essays is to evaluate how you respond to art. If you have no background knowledge of the specific piece, take a formalist approach. Describe the elements as you see them, then share connections and inferences. As long as you provide evidence to support your ideas, you’ll do fine!

Artists and art teachers are always looking for ways to grow and improve. If you haven’t considered National Board Certification, now’s a great time to think about it! Working toward National Board Certification will refine your teaching practices and philosophy, boost student engagement, and help you advocate for your art program. Break the journey down into two years and focus on two components per year. Plan ahead, get parental consent, and study as you go to make the most of this art teacher adventure. Your commitment to excellence will leave a lasting impact and empower the next generation of artists and thinkers.

What advice would you give to an art teacher working on National Board Certification?

What questions do you still have about the NBCT process?

To continue the conversation, join us in The Art of Ed Community!

The post How to Become a National Board Certified Art Teacher: Steps & Benefits appeared first on The Art of Education University.

Riding the Struggle Bus (Ep. 447)

Timothy Bogatz — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 11:00:31 +0000

Janet Taylor joins Tim today to talk about some of the challenges we are facing in the art room–the things that have us riding the #StruggleBus. Taking suggestions and advice from the Art of Ed Community, the discussion covers art teacher struggles with art history, assessment, organization, teaching Gen Alpha, and more. Listen as Tim and Janet discuss these topics and the importance of finding solutions, sharing ideas, and building connections with other educators so we can feel less alone in navigating these challenges.

Full episode transcript below.

Resources and Links

Join the Art of Ed Community
AOEU Resources on Organization, Assessment, and Art History
Strategies to Engage Gen Alpha Students

Transcript

Tim:

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz. We’ve been talking a lot about the Art of Ed community here. And just over the past few months here, and it’s been an amazing experience to be part of that Art of Ed community, and it’s one of my favorite places to hang out on the internet. And today’s conversation, which will be with Janet Taylor, will be about a great few posts and discussions that have been taking place in the community. I want to continue that conversation. A couple of weeks back and Janet had a series of posts about the challenges that we are all facing, and what we are struggling with. Or specifically what makes us feel like we’re riding the #strugglebus.

And teachers in the community were sharing so many of their own issues, whether it be with organization or assessment or art history or teaching Gen Alpha. But along with sharing our struggles, people are also sharing the ways they solve those problems, and they’re offering help and suggestions and some great stories. So this episode is going to be all about finding solutions and sharing practical advice, not just from us, but from the art teacher community. Art teachers across the country, we’re hearing from them and hoping that what they share can help you feel a little more confident and a little less alone. So we’ll highlight some of those conversations because we’re all dealing with a lot of similar issues. There are those times when we are riding the Struggle Bus. So whether you’re looking for some ways to solve your problems or you just want to commiserate a little bit, this is a discussion that might be worthwhile for you. Let me bring on Janet now. Janet Taylor is joining me now. Janet, welcome back. How are you?

Janet:

Hey, Tim. I’m okay. How are you?

Tim:

I’m doing well actually. So things are good. I am literally about to leave on an airplane to go interview Carrie Mae Weems for our Now Conference for the Keynote Presenter, so I could not be more excited about that. So in general, life is good. We’re going to record this podcast.

Janet:

I was going to say, yeah.

Tim:

I’m driving straight to the airport, so I’m looking forward to it.

Janet:

Yes. It’s a great day for you,

Tim:

And it really is. I’m looking forward to it very much. I need to ask you though, we are having the podcast here related to riding the Struggle Bus, and it is early December. You are teaching high school. Are you on the Struggle Bus right now?

Janet:

I feel like I’m always on the struggle bus.

Tim:

Okay, fair. Okay.

Janet:

Okay. Not really. Not really. That’s not fair to say. That’s not fair. Okay. Yeah, you said it’s December. So here’s the thing. I don’t know how that happened, but it did. It was actually December. And Thanksgiving was late, so that break was late. And then all of a sudden, it was literally December when we came back. And then the way winter break lines up, I literally said to my kids yesterday, I was like, “Hey guys, we have a week and a half of solid work time left, and we still haven’t even done an entire unit. And we have the art show next week.” So yeah, we’re doing great. We’re doing great.

Tim:

Okay, good. No, it’s wild to come back from Thanksgiving and then all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, finals week is two weeks away.”.

Janet:

Yes. Oh my gosh. There’s so cleaning of the studio and prepping, you know what I mean, to close out this semester too.

Tim:

Yeah. Yes.

Janet:

We’ll get there.

Tim:

It’s a lot. But yes, we always do. We always do. Okay, so I talked in the intro about how much I loved reading, just all of the conversations that came along with Struggle Bus Week on the community. And so I wanted to go through all of those with you. And I figured that you and I could talk a little bit about each of the topics and what we struggle with. And then I’d love to share some community ideas too. So if I can just start with the art history one. That may have been the first one posted. It was the one I was most excited about because I always love talking about art history. So let me ask you, Janet, to start, what do you struggle with when it comes to teaching art history?

Janet:

Everything. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I love art history. I have always been super fascinated by it. I love how it’s like when we were in college, and funny enough, Tim, remember when we were in college together and took classes probably in the same, and Tim and I didn’t even know each other at that time, but we went to school at the same time.

Tim:

We should tell everybody this. We were both at the University of Iowa at the same time, never knew each other.

Janet:

Both making art.

Tim:

But then what, 20 years later, we start working together at the Art of Education and find out that yeah, we actually went to school together. Still can’t place each other in any classes. We were theoretically there at the same time, taking the same classes.

Janet:

And had same professors. Yeah, weird. But do you remember that intro class that was like, what was it? Western art history of the Western world or whatever that was? Yeah, that survey course where you had to memorize… They’re just like, here’s a slide, here’s a slide, here’s a slide.

Tim:

Yes. Those slides that you had to memorize. Yeah.

Janet:

Okay. That is my experience, and that I feel like was my experience in history growing up. Everything was just about names and dates and tying all those things together. Now I’m, as an adult, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, this is so cool.” And I still somehow my brain cannot retain that information. It’s like a sieve. It’s a sieve. So I struggle with it. I’m always on the struggle bus. But can I tell you my current issue actually with-

Tim:

Yes, please do.

Janet:

Okay. So my current issue that is ongoing for me is that I teach mostly jewelry metals, metalsmithing, and it is very difficult to find contemporary artists or metalsmiths, who do conceptual work. Because when you search in Google or Pinterest or whatever.

Tim:

Is it all Etsy? Is it just people with Etsy shops come up?

Janet:

It’s Etsy or it’s mass-produced horrible enamel pins.

Tim:

Oh goodness.

Janet:

So it’s very, very difficult for me to connect contemporary artists into my metalsmithing classes. So that’s a real struggle bus for me right now.

Tim:

Yeah, for sure. I have not even thought about that. But yeah, that seems like just the biggest pain. It needs some alternative avenues. I would say that art history has never really been a struggle for me just because I love it so much, and that’s how my brain works. I can remember this. My brain does a pretty good job of retaining that information. But I would say my struggle is related to what you talked about is how to teach it and how to make it exciting. Yes, I get excited about it, but how do you present it to kids in a way that’s exciting? So they’re not feeling like they have to memorize slides and memorize dates. And you just need to put some thought into how are kids going to connect with this? How would you relate it to what you’re doing in class?

But I think if you put some thought into that, it comes pretty naturally to most of us. So I don’t think that’s too big of a struggle. And then when you get excited about, or there are always new artists that you want to find that you want to share with your students, but then you get into the struggle of if I’m going to put this artist into the rotation of who I teach about, who has to leave? So we’re not just overwhelming them with a giant list. So those can be tough decisions sometimes, but generally I just get excited about new artists and then just out of nowhere, like, “Hey, everybody, have you seen this artist?” And just show them out of nowhere, and that’s fine too.

So whatever works. But a few really good comments from the community I wanted to share and see if anything resonated with you or gave you any thoughts. So Dylan Trumbull said their struggle was which artist to spotlight. Michelle LaRocque said, “Choosing from the unlimited list.” So I feel that for sure. Ashley Hinton, along the same lines said the overwhelming amount of options. And then Jessica Stuver said, “I don’t know if it’s a struggle as much as a constant concern, but I always wanted to make sure I’m teaching art history that shares a lot of diversity.” And I applaud her for thinking about that. I think a lot of us take that perspective as well, just making sure that we show a diverse set of artists. I remember one of the first podcasts we ever did was called No More Dead White Guys, and just talking about getting away from those “Canons of art history.” Because it’s such a broad spectrum of artists that are out there. And there are so many more that you can share. So anyway, Janet, thoughts on any of those comments from the community?

Janet:

Yeah, totally. And again, as somebody who struggles with retaining all that information, I often will toss out multiple artists per unit that connect with what media or the technique or whatever it is. And really just let the students analyze, compare, contrast, et cetera. But then pull what they want to connect with from that artist. And I think that helps me so that I don’t feel like I have to necessarily focus on an artist. I don’t want my kids copying an artist, but also I’m exposing them without feeling like I’m limiting or constraining that amount as well. So I don’t know, that’s one way that has helped me. And I’ll tell you nother person that has on your, I was going to say on your Struggle Bus, but not your Struggle Bus, your rocket ship or whatever to art history. It was Kyle Wood.

Tim:

He’s great.

Janet:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And he talked in the community a little bit about his arts madness, and I always love that, how he approaches that. Yeah.

Tim:

Very cool way to introduce a lot of artists, but I love that idea of showing a lot of different people and just let the students drive that and let them figure out what they’re interested or what resonates with them. And so giving them those options. All right. Any other thoughts? Are you ready to move on to topic number two?

Janet:

Well, can I give a quick little teaser about one of our presenters for the Now Conference?

Tim:

Please do.

Janet:

Okay. So we have Ruth Byrne coming back for the NOW conference, and I’m super excited. She’s just a brilliant teacher and a lovely person, but she’s actually going to provide us a way to help students connect with and analyze artwork. So if that’s something that you struggle with, with the conversations around the artists or around the artwork, she really makes it really accessible for young, all the way up through high school. I could see it definitely using it in mine too.

Tim:

Yeah, she gives a great framework that you can work from, and I think it will be a very helpful presentation. So I’m excited for everybody to see that one. Okay. Moving on to conversation or topic number two on the Struggle Bus. And I think this is the one where you excel. Janet, what do you struggle with when it comes to assessment?

Janet:

Nothing, obviously. No.

I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding.

Tim:

No, you’re the go-to expert for this podcast when it comes to assessment. So I feel I’m asking [inaudible 00:13:05]. But no, what do you struggle with when it comes to assessment?

Janet:

No, everything we do is always a challenge. Nothing is easy. But I would say time is always a concern for everybody. It’s a concern for me when everybody’s like, “It takes me so long. How do you do it?” And I was like, “Yeah, me too.: It just is. Things take a while to deal with. So time to grade, timely feedback to get that stuff back to students. I still have some grades I’m still working on. All of that. So I don’t know. Again, maybe, I don’t know if this is really an assessment issue or more of just a general lack of time in the day issue because I feel like everything is treading water. But like I said, I’m on the Struggle Bus. That’s how we started this podcast, so might as well continue on that.

Tim:

No, for sure. It’s tough. And there’s pressure because we hear all the time about how important it is to give timely feedback. But on the same level with that, when do I have time to give that timely feedback?

Janet:

Exactly.

Tim:

Finding the hours in the day is really tough. And I would say that’s my biggest struggle too, is just staying on top of everything. When I taught elementary art, I luckily didn’t have to do much. I just had an overwhelming number of kiddos and people understood. And so we just have end of quarter grades and that’s all we had to do. And that was not bad. But when you’re in secondary and you’re still seeing hundreds of kids and all of these projects, finding the time is always an issue. And I think a lot of people talked about that in the discussion we had.

One thing that I really love doing with my advanced classes is just sitting down for one-on-one conferences with kids in the middle of projects at the end of projects. And just being able to do an assessment via conversation, just face-to-face talking about what’s going well, what’s not, just whatever the rubric may be. And those are incredibly helpful. But you need to have decent classes that allow you to do that. You need to have small enough classes that you have the time to do that. And so I realized that’s not going to work for everyone, but I would just say anytime you can make some time during class to give some feedback or give some assessment, that can be an incredibly helpful.

And I would say when we’re looking at this conversation from the perspective of the community, I think the theme that we saw along the time was the difficulty of dealing with rubrics, especially if you have hundreds of students. So Matt Weidman, Frank Montaz, they mentioned specifically having time to grade or finding time to grade. And I want to highlight a really good comment from Frank. He said, “One thing I learned after almost 10 years was that if I catch myself writing the same thing as part of my feedback, it should be part of my rubric. I rarely write anything anymore, but I highlight and underline a lot. It’s a sign of a well-written rubric if you can just circle where you are in there.” That’s good. And then Frank said, “Finally, I will say that my mid-process check-ins are more beneficial to students than final assessments.” Which is a great point. So a lot to digest there, but anything that you want to comment on?

Janet:

Yeah, just that’s like a mic drop moment that he said all that. But another thing that I have learned too is that if I can’t give timely feedback back to my students, if I’m doing exit slips or bell ringers or any of that, and I am not getting the information back to them, or it’s not informing my instruction, because I can’t read it fast enough or whatever, then I don’t do it. What is the purpose of that? That’s not fulfilling the purpose that it’s meant to do. So stop putting more work on yourself and focus more on the, you said conferences, but I feel like we are doing individualized feedback and talking to students all the time.

Tim:

Yeah. For counseling.

Janet:

Yes. And so that is the feedback loop. That’s assessment right there. And so I think just shifting the focus off of the paperwork end of things and more on the interaction feedback I think is a big way to save time and focus that, like Frank said, your rubric. If you underline, circle, if you put that work up in the front that your rubric is solid, that takes a little bit of time. But in the end, you’re not sitting there writing a ton or having to give all that feedback to the students.

Tim:

Yeah. No, I appreciate the idea of the mindset shift that you just mentioned, where we need to think about it less as the paperwork and more of this thing that we are consistently doing with our students. And another thing, I feel like we’re off to a whole different podcast here that we could be talking about with all of these topics, but one thing that I’ve learned from you, Janet, when it comes to assessment, is just the importance of those in process, midpoint critiques, midpoint feedback, not only for students like Frank said, but for us as teachers to modify or to supplement what we are teaching. And they are super important, and like I said, not only beneficial for students, but for us as teachers as well. Because they can inform our instruction in so many different ways. And so I think if we worry less about what we’re doing at the end and a little bit more about the consistent interactions, consistent feedback that we are giving and getting, that can really transform how we think about assessment, I think that can be really helpful.

So like you said, a lot of really, really good points there, and we could talk a lot more about that. But let me go ahead and move us on. Our next topic for the week was organization. So what do you struggle with the most when it comes to physical organization? I will give you a second to think about that, because I struggle with all of it. But I want to give a genuine shout-out, Michelle Parvin and Robin Murphy from the community. They’re like the extreme type A people. They have that all figured out. Michelle had a day in the life video with AOEU that shows off her classroom organization. Probably worth watching if you need some inspiration, you need some ideas, we’ll link to that. But yeah, I always admire those people who have all of the organization things figured out because that has been a lifelong struggle for me. So what about you, Jan? Where are you when it comes to organization?

Janet:

Okay, this is where I am constantly on the struggle bus. Truly. Yeah. So I’m a piler, I pile things, I have sticky notes, I pile the sticky notes. It’s really, really bad. But I have to say, so I walked into my classroom last year. Brand new classroom, beautiful. It just was amazing. And you get in there and you realize even though it looks perfect, not everything always works for you and your students, right?

Tim:

It’s not always functional for what you need in an art room. Yes.

Janet:

So I do really actually enjoy coming up with systems and figuring out what’s going to work best for them, seeing what works, what doesn’t. I also really love getting feedback from my students about what is working and what is not. So I changed it up this whole way. I did tool delivery, set up whatever in my classroom, and something didn’t seem quite right. And then my students were like, “Oh, yeah, I didn’t like it this way. I liked it that way.” And I’m like, “Okay, then let’s figure out something in between that’s going to work for both of us.” Or whatever it is.

So I get it. It’s really, really hard and it’s a constant battle, and there’s always so much mess, and there’s always so many pieces of artwork laying all over the place. And oh my gosh, like I said, this is the time of my art show coming up next week. And it’s like I just walk in my classroom and it’s just piles and piles and piles of stuff everywhere. So I don’t know, Tim, are you? I’m a little bit of a hoarder when it comes to materials and things.

Tim:

I would say at the beginning of my career, I was a hoarder. Just like you never know when these toilet paper rolls are going to come in handy, better keep all of them. Oh, this might be a great project someday. Then as I got into further into my career, like, “Hey, I’ve been here a decade and haven’t used [inaudible 00:22:17]. Probably don’t need to keep them around anymore.” So that helped once I realized that I could get rid of things. And I’ve talked about this ad nauseam on the podcast, but just labeling everything, pictures on everything, helping kids be self-sufficient when it comes to getting materials out, putting them away is probably the biggest game changer for me with organization. I would say just judging by community responses, storage space was a huge one. Jessica Stuber, Jennifer Jasper, Ruth Byrne, they all mentioned finding storage space for 3D projects.

Heather Hacker and Amber Maddock both mentioned supplies, especially when you’re out of space or if you have multiple classes working with different materials. And it’s tough though, because you can’t really give any blanket advice for that because everyone’s room is different. And I was lucky enough to have cabinets with space on top of them, and I could just store everything on top of the cabinets. And I’m tall, I can reach it, whatever. It’s not a problem. But then I realized, “Oh, that doesn’t work for everyone. And everyone has these different spaces, and it is really, really difficult to figure out how everyone can do that. So I would just say, if you’re listening to this and you have any great hacks on storing 3D projects or other in-progress works that you want to share, please head on over to the community and toss that into the chat. We would really appreciate hearing all of those. So Janet, any more thoughts on organization before we move on to our last topic?

Janet:

No, because like I said, I’m on that Struggle Bus every day.

Tim:

Can’t give any advice because I’m busy unpiling my sticky notes right now.

Janet:

Seriously as I’m jotting it down. No, it feels nice that we’re not alone though, doesn’t it? That’s the thing about the struggle bus. It’s not all the time, but also we’re not the only ones. It’s an ongoing issue.

Tim:

Yes. Absolutely. I said that at the beginning of the episode. Maybe you’re looking for advice in this episode, maybe you just want to commiserate and [inaudible 00:24:24]. This is tough for me too, so I can appreciate that. Our final topic of the week was Gen Alpha. And that is a fun one, so love for you to think about what you struggle with when it comes to teaching Gen Alpha. The first thing, which I think was probably my favorite comment from the community was from Jessica Stewart again, who said “Probably their continued obliteration of the English language.”

Janet:

Okay, so can I tell you? I was driving with my daughter the other day and her friend. And I said something like, “What’s up with the Skibidi Toilet thing?” And they just started cracking up. And I was like, “I still don’t know where this came from, what it means.” And they just couldn’t answer either.

Tim:

No, okay, this is my problem with Gen Alpha slang. I could rant about this, but I’m just going to leave it quick. I appreciate Gen Z slang because it makes sense and they can explain it quickly. Gen Alpha is the most nonsense stuff that you’ve ever heard.

Janet:

It’s like surrealism.

Tim:

It is.

Janet:

Data.

Tim:

Just a terrible use of slang. And then you ask them, where did that even come from? And they have no idea.

Janet:

They don’t know what it means either. It’s like they don’t know where it came from or-

Tim:

But it’s fun to say, so go with it.

Janet:

Hopefully I pronounced that correctly.

Tim:

I believe Skibidi Toilet was correct. But beyond the slang, what else are you struggling with when it comes to Gen Alpha?

Janet:

Okay, this is a biggie for me. So these kids are digital natives. That’s all they do is digital. It’s an attachment. An additional appendage is their device. But they don’t know how to type on a keyboard or change the size of an image without it being distorted on a slide. It just blows my mind that they cannot do these very simple basic computer tasks.

Tim:

Yes, okay. So, oh my goodness, the typing. It’s crazy to me. These kids are on devices all the time. And when it comes to typing, they have to hunt and pack with their two fingers. And it’s fascinating to watch. And I don’t know, my default thought on that is like, “Oh my God, how do they not know?” But at then the same time I realized that we as adults just assume they know because they are digital natives. And I think everyone in their life has just assumed, “Oh, they know how to do that. They’re on devices all the time, but nobody’s ever taught them.”

And so I think it is a weird disconnect between they’re on there all the time, so we assume they know how to do everything, but yet because we assume they have not been taught. And so it’s a weird setup. Again, I feel like that’s another discussion that we could have that could take a while. And I would say one comment that I saw in the community that kind of resonated with me, I don’t teach Gen Alpha, but with volunteering and coaching, the thing that I always see is the constant touching of each other. They always have to have their hands on each other.

Janet:

Oh my gosh.

Tim:

I do not get it. And so we’re always having conversations about, “Hey, without permission, you cannot touch people. And you have to give people space.” And you just talk about that constantly. And oh, it’s difficult.

Janet:

I teach high school. It is a real problem. So I was thinking about this the other day because of course, I was like, “Stop touching, hands to self.” I’m like, “Gosh, what is the problem with? This is seniors.” But okay, so this is my little soapbox theory, whatever you want to call it. I wonder if it’s a pendulum swing from having social distance during COVID where they do not know how to socialize at all. And now they’re socializing, but it’s just, I don’t know. Sometimes I’m like, is this some weird developmental milestone that they missed out on? And so now it’s got to show up before they become adults. So we might have this for a little longer. I don’t know.

Tim:

There are a lot of teaching moments there, and we probably need to take advantage of those teaching moments. That’s a good point. I do want to highlight, though, beyond the nonsense that we’re talking about, there are actually some really serious points, really good conversation in the community about that. And I would say just the ones that really stood out to me or the themes that stood out to me consistently. Just the of Gen Alpha’s apathy, their work avoidance, a lot of middle school and high school teachers commenting that students never read directions anymore, and they’re almost helpless if you’re not holding their hand every step of the way. And that seemed to be a huge source of frustration for a lot of teachers. Robin Murphy talked about how her resources that used to work so well, all these things that she spent all the time putting together, these teaching resources, basically don’t work at all anymore. Todd Liebman, he put this very succinctly when he said, “Students are spending more energy avoiding the work than it would take to actually complete the work.”

Janet:

Oh my gosh, yes.

Tim:

Yeah, yeah.

Janet:

Yes.

Tim:

No, that was a very, very good point and very well said. Dawn Krueger said that Gen Alpha is struggling with self-regulation in general, volume control in particular. Lee Gorton also said volume and impulse, but then she also said, “I got to say I’m a huge fan of their weirding of the language. And I’m in love with the brain rot, and I’m here for it.” So I appreciate that.

Janet:

Full circle.

Tim:

I need to more to that mindset and kind of be entertained by the language rather than annoyed by it. So I appreciate that perspective. And then Deidre Forgione said, “My freshman boys cannot keep their hands off each other. It gets a bit inappropriate at times.” Like we said, with these teaching moments, she said lots of reminders about personal space and consent. So again, it’s annoying to have to remind them constantly about that, but it is something that we need to do. So any of those things that you want to chat about a little bit more, Janet?

Janet:

I think the not following directions, the apathy, the work avoidance, I feel like yes, those things still kind of wrapping together. And I don’t know, I felt like things were finally getting better. But there’s still, I don’t know, what do you want to say? Snags groups. There’s always a few that is still really stuck in that place. And it’s just a really disheartening part of teaching them right now. You know what I mean? The other stuff, it’s annoying, it’s ridiculous. I can laugh about it and roll my eyes or pull my hair out a little bit, but sometimes I think that just the apathy or that lack of motivation is just the hardest to really manage. Because it’s like I’m doing a tap dance and you’re still not entertained. What else can I do to get you to do the work? And these kids are just not, and this is a generalization. This group of kids that I’m saying that are struggling with this specifically are not motivated by grades or not motivated by credits.

Tim:

Not to be too flippant, but not motivated by anything. Yeah.

Janet:

It used to be, okay, I can do these fun things, let’s do it. Whatever. But sometimes I feel like I am working really hard for you to pass my class. And I’m not sure why I’m working so hard for you to not work at all.

Tim:

Yes. Well, I think that’s the difficulty we all face, because it’s fun to laugh at slang and worry about kids touching each other too much. But those are really on the periphery of what we do. But then when it comes down to why we’re really there, doing the learning, doing the work, putting in the effort, and no matter what we do, you’re not making a lot of headway there. That can get frustrating. That can be a struggle that’s really difficult. And again, we don’t have the answers. This is new to so many of us. And the things that we’ve learned and things we’ve done before are not necessarily working. And so that’s why I appreciate being able to have these conversations, being able to share these ideas and just seeing we obviously don’t have the solutions, but if we’re all putting our heads together, we’re all having conversations within this community, I think it’d be helpful for a lot of people.

Janet:

Yeah, it’ll be really interesting. Because that kind of stuff is the things that we worry about really I feel like are the long-term implications of that lack of motivation or apathy. What is going to happen when the students are not students anymore? What is the next generation of our workers and people?

Tim:

Yeah, for sure. And again, that’s another one that we could dive into a ton. But no, it’s something to think about and to reflect on, and I think that’s why a lot of us worry about these things. So I think it’s good to put it out there and to have those conversations, but we can leave it there for the day.

Thanks to Janet for coming on. I hope you enjoyed the conversation, and we hope you enjoyed hearing from the community. And if you are not there yet, we would love for you to join us. It is, like I said, an amazing online space. It’s filled with positivity and professionalism, great conversation, great ideas. I love the discussions are happening. I love the connection. So if you have some time, please come check it out. We’ll link to the community in the show notes, or you can find it at community.theartofeducation.edu. I hope we see you there.

Art Ed Radio was produced by the Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Please be sure to subscribe so we can join you again. And if you love the show, please jump over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen. Give us a five star rating, maybe even leave us a review. We are also taking questions now for the January mailbag. If you have any questions about what to do after break, how to start a new semester, how to reset your classes after break, or anything else that you want advice on, we would love to hear them. Email Timothy Bogatz at theartofeducation.edu or podcasts at theartofeducation.edu with any questions you may have. We are looking forward to reading them.

The post Riding the Struggle Bus (Ep. 447) appeared first on The Art of Education University.

You’ll Love The Dark Aesthetic in This Home and Art Room Tour! (Ep. 7)

Lindsey McGinnis — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Immerse yourself in the world of art history and dark academia with this home and high school art room tour in Worcester, Mass. Colleen O’Hara opens up her family home and shows how she added a dark aesthetic and sentimental touch. Plus, see how Colleen uses an extra bedroom as her ultimate studio space, office, and artsy closet! Then, tour her dark yet streamlined art room where she teaches advanced courses such as ceramics, painting, and 3D design. Meet the class pet, Edward Hopper, and gain lots of organization inspiration!

For more videos like this, subscribe to AOEU on YouTube.

Subscribe!

The post You’ll Love The Dark Aesthetic in This Home and Art Room Tour! (Ep. 7) appeared first on The Art of Education University.

The December Mailbag: Organizing Crayons, Parent Concerns, and How to Say No (Ep. 446)

Timothy Bogatz — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 11:00:30 +0000

Following Thanksgiving last week, Amanda Heyn is back with Tim in the December mailbag to answer listener questions and offer advice. They begin with a fun but meandering conversation on wishlists, food takes, and a variety of other topics (skip to about 14:00 if you just want to hear the art teaching advice). They then talk about organization, dealing with unreasonable requests from your principal, and what report cards are really saying. The episode finishes with a quick version This or That: Winter Edition.

Full episode transcript below.

Resources and Links

Transcript

Tim:

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz. Welcome everyone to the month of December, and as it is the first episode we are doing in December, it is time for the mailbag. The always popular mailbag episode with the always popular Amanda Heyn, Amanda, how are you?

Amanda:

Oh my gosh. Always popular, thanks. Now I’m great.

Tim:

Okay, good, good, that’s a pleasant way to start. And you really are very popular, more people listen to these episodes than anything else we do, so.

Amanda:

Oh my gosh. Thanks everybody. I feel like there’s a Wicked joke in here, but I’m not a theater kid, so I don’t know it, but make one up in your head.

Tim:

That’s fair. That’s fair. For those of you that are just tuning into a first mailbag episode, I’m Tim Bogatz, and I host this Art Ed Radio podcast, I put on the Now conference for AOEU, taught a couple years of elementary art, a whole bunch of years of high school art, and now I’ve been working for AOEU for quite a while. So, Amanda, can you give us a quick introduction?

Amanda:

Yeah, I’m Amanda Heyn, I’m the director of community engagement here at AOEU, I’m a former elementary art teacher, and I have also been here for a long time, over a decade, which is wild.

Tim:

It is, it is. It’s great, it’s been fun to grow with AOEU from starting off as a cute little blog that we both wrote for once upon a time, when you used to edit my articles back in the mid-2010s, and yeah, it’s been a while, but it’s been fun. So, okay, director of community engagement, can I just say I got a little sneak preview of the community 101 course, and I got to take the course… I got a new badge for it, which is wildly exciting, I don’t know why those badges are so exciting in the community.

Amanda:

Because they’re fun.

Tim:

It’s really, really fun to see that on my profile now. So, I felt very special to not only access the quiz a little bit early, take the course a little bit early, but I got my badge early, and I love it. But can you talk a little bit about what that is and what we can do with it?

Amanda:

Yes. Sure. Okay. So, if you don’t know about the community yet, AOEU launched a community, I think we’re two months old now, and it is only the good parts of social media, and only for art teachers. So, if you want to come join us, it’s free to join, you can go to community.theartofeducation.edu. Come on in, come hang out, it’s very fun. And we just, or I guess I should say we are just about to launch a new community course, which opens, if you’re listening on the day this comes out, tomorrow, it’s on December 4th, and it takes less than half hour and it just shows you everything there is to know about the community so that you can make the most of your time there. So, it starts by asking you to identify why you joined us and what you hope to get out of it, and then it goes through everything you need to know.

How to find friends, how to find people near you, how to create posts, how to add images to your posts, how to attend events, and where to find what we’re doing there. We have a really fun monthly event called Art Club, and then we do pop-up studios where you can just come and hang out and make art with us, online, and so my hope is that it just shows you everything you can do in there because there’s actually quite a lot. On the surface it’s kind of like, oh, this is similar to Facebook or something, but there’s really so much more.

Tim:

There’s so much more there.

Amanda:

Yeah. It’ll tell you also, teachers are busy and they have a lot flying at them, so how to set your notifications, and what do you want to be surfaced to you and what do you not, and how do you want everything organized. So, anyway, I’m biased because I made it, so I think it’s great, but I’m glad you thought it was great.

Tim:

It was. It was super helpful, I even learned a couple things. I’ve been messing around in there since the beginning, but I even found a couple things that were helpful for me. So, yeah, if you have time to go through it, I definitely think it’s worthwhile.

Amanda:

Yeah. And huge shout out to Jen Leban, our online community manager, because she was an instrumental part in helping me create that, and you’ll see her face in the videos too.

Tim:

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Anything else with the community that you want to share? Anything exciting coming up?

Amanda:

Yeah, we’re just giving away $5,000 in the community. So, we’re doing something fun and excited called the Winter Wishlist Giveaway, and we are giving $200 to 25 community members this holiday season.

Tim:

Nice.

Amanda:

Which, when I got the approval to do that, I was like, hey guys, I have an idea, I think this would be really fun. And it got approved, and I’m so excited. So, it’s very easy to do this, can I tell people how to enter?

Tim:

Well, I had a two-part question, if that’s okay.

Amanda:

Of course you had a two-part question. Yep.

Tim:

Number one, do I qualify for this? Number two, if I don’t have a wish list already, can I just make one and post it?

Amanda:

Great question. Do you personally qualify? No.

Tim:

Okay, fair. I didn’t expect to, but I was hoping maybe.

Amanda:

But if you don’t already have a wish list, yes, you can create one for this. And Jen is so good, she’s a former tech coach, so if you haven’t created a wish list and you don’t know how to do that, we have directions for you with neon pink boxes of exactly where to click and exactly what to do, which is wonderful.

So, it is three steps you need to join the Art of Ed community, which again is community.theartofeducation.edu, if you’re already a member, great, you have completed step one. When you come into the community, you’ll be prompted to complete the verification process. So, this is filling out a quick form, it helps us keep the community really safe, and we know that there are just art teachers in there based on that verification process. And then, fill out your community profile, which again is easy, you put up a picture, you write a sentence about yourself. And then you are going to drop your wish list in the winter wish list post, and that’s it. Now, we’re talking about this, it’s already launched, and it’s not, this is actually, you as a podcast listener are getting first knowledge of this. This is going to go up on December 5th. So, depending on, I’m sorry, that is incorrect, December 6th.

Tim:

Okay. You’re trying to get people’s hopes up, and now it’s the wrong date.

Amanda:

Well, I know. Also, I’m really bad at calendars, so you can’t see this, but I pulled up my phone, confirming Friday, December 6th is when it’s going up. So, you can get in on that, we’ll leave it open I think for about a week and a half, so you have until December 18th to get your wish list in there, and then we will randomly draw 25 people, and that’s going to be really excited.

Tim:

Perfect. So, everybody who’s listening can get a head start on their wish list, get that made, and then it’ll launch Friday, they’ll be ready to go.

Amanda:

Right. Also, I don’t think we said that it’s an Amazon wish list. So, it’s not just any wish list you want, you can just write a list to Santa and take a picture and post it, Amazon wish list and we’re giving away Amazon gift cards, just so that is clear.

Tim:

Okay, sounds perfect. Okay. Now, I do need to ask you before we get into… Because we never can just dive into the questions, we have lots that we always need to talk about. We played this or that at the end of the episode last month, because it was November, we talked about Thanksgiving food, and so I just need to follow up on, A, how was your Thanksgiving? B, did you avoid the cranberry sauce? And C, I did not ask about gravy, and I wanted to know your thoughts on gravy, if you have a moment.

Amanda:

Okay, well this is a three-part question. How was my Thanksgiving? Good, great, we hosted a small Thanksgiving. Did I avoid the cranberry sauce? Yes, because as the host you get to dictate what people bring, and I’m not-

Tim:

Did anybody miss the cranberry sauce, if you did not allow it into your home? Did anybody, oh, where’s-

Amanda:

I don’t care. I don’t know and I don’t care.

Tim:

Fair.

Amanda:

I don’t know. Go to a different house if you want cranberry sauce, I think was the idea there.

Tim:

And then gravy?

Amanda:

Did I want to say anything about gravy? Not really. It’s like meat jello. I don’t like anything about gravy, I don’t know why people eat gravy, it’s just thick meat sauce. I don’t know why it’s a food.

Tim:

Okay, okay. That’s fine.

Amanda:

Do you want to say anything about gravy?

Tim:

No, I have very similar thoughts, it’s like liquid meat, it’s very strange to me, and I don’t want any part of it. Everything is fine without it. If you need gravy to make your food better, maybe your food wasn’t that good to begin with.

Amanda:

Oh, burn, I love that take. That’s a hot take.

Tim:

It probably is, but that’s legitimately how I feel, maybe just get better food and then you don’t need gravy at all.

Amanda:

You know what I do you like about gravy, though? The tiny little ladle. I kind of like the gravy vessel.

Tim:

The gravy boat?

Amanda:

Yeah, the gravy boat. It’s like, what other food has its own… Do you know what I mean?

Tim:

Yeah.

Amanda:

Singular purpose? You’re never putting anything else in a gravy boat.

Tim:

That’s true. That’s true. I feel like you could put ranch in a gravy boat.

Amanda:

But you don’t.

Tim:

No, you definitely don’t.

Amanda:

You don’t.

Tim:

And also-

Amanda:

Sure, you could put a lot of things in a gravy boat, but-

Tim:

Yeah, ranch boat just doesn’t have a ring to it, gravy boat really does.

Amanda:

No. It really does. So, anyway.

Tim:

It’s good. We’ve derailed this podcast already though-

Amanda:

Yeah, let’s get back on track. Do you have a good story to tell because we announced our feature presenter?

Tim:

Yeah. Well, I don’t know if I have a story yet, but Carrie Mae Weems is going to be our feature presenter for the Now Conference in February, I could not be more excited. And as this podcast releases, I am packing my bags and literally tomorrow headed to Syracuse, New York to interview Carrie Mae Weems. So, I’ve never been to Syracuse before, more importantly, never talked to Carrie Mae Weems before, but I have so many great questions that I want to ask her. I have been a fan of her photography and her work since I first saw it, god knows when, 30 years ago? So, yeah, I’m super excited to talk to her about her work, her career, her life, her experience with the arts.

She’s going to be an incredible featured presenter, and I cannot wait. So, anyway, yeah, you can check out everything about the conference. We talked to community already, but yeah, the ArtofEducation@edu/now, check out more about Carrie Mae Weems, and about all the other great stuff we’re having at the conference. Cannot wait to go talk to her, so that should be a fun one.

Amanda:

That is fun.

Tim:

So, do you have anything exciting like that in your life?

Amanda:

Well, no, the most exciting thing is I blended cottage cheese into a soup recently.

Tim:

Oh my god.

Amanda:

If we can go back to food for one second. Well, I just had a birthday, it’s the last of-

Tim:

I have so many questions.

Amanda:

Okay, well, I’ll be very brief, because I know we’re very far into this and we haven’t even opened up the mailbag. Okay, just had a birthday, it’s the last year of my 30s. I’m 39. Which, if you’re the same age, you know that now you have a second full type job and that’s eating protein so you don’t wither away. And so, this bowl of soup I made had 20 grams of protein, and I will say, everybody on my team, I did this for you guys because I said I ran across this recipe, you said it was going to be horrible, credit to Jen Leban, she said it was going to be good, and I said, I will take one for the team. It was delicious.

Tim:

Okay.

Amanda:

That’s a big sigh.

Tim:

Okay, well, I’m just trying to filter my questions down into just a couple of them. I have 30. But question number one is why? But you kind of answered that, because we’re doing the protein. Question number two, what happens to the cottage cheese when you put it in soup? I find cottage cheese to be disgusting, up there on the level of grossness with gravy. Do the individual little curds just melt when they’re in soup? Is your soup chunky?

Amanda:

No.

Tim:

What happens to it?

Amanda:

Okay, well, first I think it’s important that I say I use the Vitamix, so I use the most powerful blender known to man.

Tim:

Okay.

Amanda:

And it was so creamy, it tasted like it was full of cream, but it was full of protein.

Tim:

Okay. All right.

Amanda:

It was squash soup and it was great and everybody should do it.

Tim:

Okay. Well, being lactose intolerant, that’s still disgusting to me, but not as bad as I originally thought. So, I think that’s good. Okay, can we go ahead and officially start with the questions? Amanda, can you do the honors?

Amanda:

Yes, I can. Let’s take a minute and open up the mailbag.

Tim:

We have some great questions, I’m very excited about them. First one comes from Shania, via email, and Shania says, “I have a good handle on organization, my room looks pretty good, most of my supplies are organized, but I can’t figure out how to organize my crayons. Looking for advice on what you do to organize your crayons and make it easy for kids to keep them organized because I don’t do a very good job of it and I think a better system would help. Thank you in advance, and thank you for everything you do with the podcast, I love listening.” Thank you Shania, and my short answer might be just don’t organize your crayons. So, we can get into that, but Amanda, your thoughts?

Amanda:

Yeah, my initial thought was like throw your crayons in the trash, which, I understand, Shania we’re going to get to some helpful things, I promise.

Tim:

This is the least helpful podcasts of all time.

Amanda:

If you’re tuning in for the first time, usually… Well, the beginning usually is like that. But okay. No, I’m kidding, I was more of an oil pastel fan, and I did use construction paper crayons quite a bit in my classroom, but I didn’t use crayon crayons a lot. However, I will say, I did have them in my room and I did have them organized. First thing I want to say, I know some people do color coding with drawing supplies, like they’ll have all the orange crayons and all the red crayons, and all the… And I personally found that unnecessary. I love organization, and my room was like a tight ship, I am the teacher who said, do you have a label maker? And they looked at me like, what are you talking about? No art teacher has ever asked for that before.

So, I had a very organized room, but to that level was just unnecessary to me, and to your point, Shania, it’s just hard to maintain something like that. It takes a lot more effort to maintain that. So, I just organized my crayons into shallow bowls or plastic containers that could nest inside of each other and kept those in a big tub. So, this is what I did for a lot of my drawing supplies, honestly, I would just pull the tub out, and then I had the right number of smaller containers in that tub that were for the tables, my kids shared. So, I think I had three buckets per table group, and I had four table groups, so I had 12 containers of crayons. And then, at the end of the class, the kids just put all the crayons back into the smaller containers, and then I assigned a student to pick up those smaller containers and put them back in the big container.

I feel like this is a lot of explanation for this very simple system. But really having a method where you can distribute and clean them up really easily I think is the biggest thing to think about. It’s just so easy when it’s like, this is how we do supplies, and this method carries through to all the dry media in the class. So, I might think about that too. Are there other supplies that you have organized in a way that’s working for you, and can you apply that to your crayons?

Tim:

Yeah, I think that’s a decent approach. I would say just keep it as simple as possible with your crayons. When I did, I didn’t use crayons in secondary, but when I taught elementary, I was a traveling art teacher, and I just had Ziploc bags, the big gallon bags, and all of the crayons were in there. And I had a half dozen, you just toss one to each table, and let them do their thing, and when it is time to clean up, that’s super simple for them. Please put them back in the bag. And you save so much time not worrying about organizing those things. And I think that’s one of those, like you said, one of those tools that does not need to be color coded. And honestly, when kids have all of those colors available, when they have all of those colors right at their fingertips, they’re maybe using some colors that they wouldn’t otherwise, rather than having just like, oh, I need yellow for this, and that’s stuck in their head, they can look and see different shades, or maybe they’re going to mix a few yellowish colors together.

And it just gives them the opportunity to explore a little bit more, and not be focused on one thing, but maybe see what some of the other options are, and it can be good for them to try some different things that they maybe wouldn’t have thought about before. So, anyway, I don’t want to tell you to not organize things, but I think you should figure out whether it’s worth your time to organize them, because honestly, it works fine to have bowls, or bags, or just piles of crayons, and that’s one of the materials that lends itself to a little less organization, I would say.

Amanda:

Yep, totally.

Tim:

All right. Okay, next question. This comes from Stephanie in Minnesota, and Stephanie says, “I’m in my second year of teaching, my principal has asked me to do lots of things for decorations, and bulletin boards, and other stuff around the school. I always said yes because it was my first year, and I’m a people pleaser, and I hate confrontation.” LOL. Familiar. “Now she wants me to do these welcome back bags for when kids come back in January. They’re super cute, and I love the idea, but it’s 300 bags, and I would’ve to work on them over break. I don’t want to do it, but also I don’t want to say no. So, I guess I have three questions, should I make the bags? If I say no, how do I say no? And if I say no, how do I not feel bad about it?” All right, Amanda, I feel like you are going to answer this with a lot more tact and a lot better advice than I would, so I would love for you to take this one, if you don’t mind.

Amanda:

I would not mind. Also, my eyes were just getting wider and wider as this question went on, because… Okay, so here’s what I would say, you should only make the bags if you want to make the bags, and I heard, Stephanie, very clearly you say, “I don’t want to do it.” I think that is a direct quote.

Tim:

It is a direct quote from the email.

Amanda:

Also, you didn’t ask this, but I think this is an unreasonable request to put on a single teacher. If these welcome back bags are something the school wants to do, and yeah, sure, that’s a very cute idea, then at minimum that needs to be a shared responsibility, and honestly, that sounds like the literal perfect job for the PTO, like this is a PTO project.

Tim:

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, if I can just jump in real quick, I would love to second that idea that it is a very unreasonable request, just asking you to do 300 of anything is far too much.

Amanda:

Right. Yeah. Okay. So, onto question two, that does unfortunately mean you’re going to have to say no. I’m excited about this for you, this is a new era for you, Stephanie. Okay? This is good practice, and this is an easy one to say no to because it is unreasonable. So, I hope you get really good at this because as a second year teacher, people are going to keep asking you things, and you cannot do everything. And I will say, your principal might be disappointed that you say no, but those are her feelings and those are not your feelings, and that’s a really important distinction. And it’s okay for you to set a boundary that makes you feel good and is good for you, and it makes somebody else feel a different way. You don’t have to take on other people’s feelings. And thank you for coming to this armchair therapy session.

Okay, so how do you do that? Question three, how do you do it and how do you not feel bad about it? Personally, I’m a fan of no is a complete sentence, and I also understand that that doesn’t work in a professional setting, it doesn’t often work in a power dynamic situation like this. So, if it were me, and I was a second year art teacher, I might say something like, “Thanks so much for thinking of entrusting that important job to me, I’m not going to have time over break to devote to that project, perhaps the PTO or student council would be willing to help.” So, that’s one way to go about it.

If you feel really uncomfortable though about not helping, you could also offer an alternative solution that feels okay to you. So, you could maybe say something like, “I’d be happy to host a short after school session with other volunteers for 30 minutes in the art room on X date.” Time bounded, pick a date that works for you. And whatever you choose, I promise that when you say no, you’re going to feel so relieved and that is going to prompt you to do this over and over. You’ve got this, you can do it, and we are with you.

Tim:

That’s great advice. I’m going to summarize and give my answer just really quickly, I agree with you on all those points, but I was just thinking, I’m a huge basketball fan, and I was just thinking about how players come back each season with something new in their game, like new skills or abilities. And I feel like for Stephanie here, in year two, she’s coming back with the ability to say no to things, and so Stephanie, good job upping your game here. But yeah, just short answer to each of the three questions. No, don’t make them, you don’t need to make them. Number two, the way you say no is just say, “That’s more than I can take on right now.”

Amanda:

I like that.

Tim:

You can give an alternative solution if you need to, Amanda gave you some great suggestions. Just really say, “I don’t have time for that right now,” and that’s okay. And if you’re feeling bad about it, which I can empathize with, take just a minute to think about, or honestly even make a list of just all the great things that you have done over the past couple of years for your kids, and that you’re continuing to do for your kids, and that will tell you that you are doing enough and you don’t need to feel bad about not doing this extra work.

Amanda:

Yep.

Tim:

All right, next question is from Tom. And Tom says, “I have a parent that is upset with my grading and I would like some advice. I teach elementary, about 400 kids, and we do report cards every quarter, where kids can be graded one through four. I gave one of my kids a two because honestly, they don’t even try that hard, and the parents were super upset. I’m going to have to give the kid another two for second quarter and they’re going to be upset again. I see a few phone calls in the future and maybe even another meeting with me and the parents and the principal. How do I get them to realize it’s third grade art and it’s not that big of a deal, or should I just give the kid a one and not even worry about dealing with the parents?” That’s a big one.

Amanda:

That’s a good question. Can I ask a clarifying question?

Tim:

Yeah.

Amanda:

I’m assuming here one is the best, and two is worse than one. Yeah?

Tim:

I assumed yes.

Amanda:

Context clues?

Tim:

Tom, you’ll have to write back in and let us know if we were wrong about that. But in all the grading systems I have seen, yes, one is going to be the best there, two is just a small step down.

Amanda:

Right, okay. Okay. Can I take this one first?

Tim:

Please.

Amanda:

Okay. First of all, Tom, I really empathize with you, because a eerily similar thing happened to me. I think it was my second or third year of teaching, and I gave a child an S for satisfactory in the behavior category on the report card I was asked to fill out, because his behavior was in fact satisfactory-

Tim:

Satisfactory.

Amanda:

… not excellent. And the parent called me and proceeded to yell at me for 30 unhinged minutes. I would’ve handled that phone call much differently now, at my age, than when I was 23 years old.

Tim:

Right, right.

Amanda:

Anyway. It honestly ended up being a really valuable learning experience for me-

Tim:

Yeah. Well, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think that can be a learning experience for a lot of people, for Tom and for the kid and for the parents. And I would say, if you’re just taking the easy way out and giving the one so you don’t have to deal with it, I don’t love that, I don’t think that is the way to go. I think you need to give your student the grade that they have earned.

Amanda:

Yes.

Tim:

So, anyway, I am sorry to jump in, but I know, Amanda, I’ll let you get back to it, I know you have some thoughts on what grades are telling us here.

Amanda:

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, I really love what you said, the grade that they’ve earned, and I think, Tom, I think this is the key to avoiding this issue in the future, is you have to figure out what the kids are earning grades for in your classroom. So, I’m going to assume a few things based on what you wrote in, so it seems like you’re giving one grade, it’s a 1, 2, 3, 4 for art class. And this is a way that it works in some elementary schools, I have worked in a school that worked this way. It’s one number, right?

Tim:

Yeah. And I think it is obviously better practice to have multiple lines on there, or one for meeting standards and one for behavior and just knocking that out, but if you just have one grade, a lot of schools still do that. And so, that is the reality that a lot of people are working within.

Amanda:

Right. So, in your note, you said you gave the kiddo a two because they don’t try very hard. So, my question would be, do you want that one number to reflect if a student is meeting the art standards, or do you want it to reflect their behavior and effort? So, if it were me, I would use that number to reflect if they’re meeting the art standards, and then I would use the comment feature in the report card if you want to say something about behavior, because to me it’s really tricky and confusing for everybody, for you, the child, the parents, to wrap knowledge and skills and behavior and everything happening in the art room up into one number.

For example, if a student is producing stellar artwork, but they’re really chatty or tardy every day, is that a two or is that a one? Or if a student is behaving like a perfect angel but they don’t know the primary colors, what number is that? It’s very unclear. And so, I think this is a really good chance for you to think about what specific things factor into that number and how they factor into that number.

Tim:

Yeah, I think so. I think both the what and the how, and just also think about why? Why are we grading things this way? And if you don’t have a ton of autonomy, maybe talk to your principal and just send them the situation, like what do you want this report card to communicate? And just ask them that question. And maybe that will give you the guidance you need because you need to think about what those grades are communicating to the student, to the parents, and if we put that question to you and you say to yourself, oh, I don’t know, or if you say, oh, it communicates all the things, I think it’s worth spending a little time to clarify exactly what you’re getting at with your grades, and exactly what you’re trying to communicate with that number that you put on the report card.

Amanda:

I think also if you have other art teachers in your district who are working under the same system as you, definitely ask them, and if you don’t, if you have other specials teachers, if music is also graded 1, 2, 3, 4 or PE or whatever, see what those teachers are doing too, because having consistency in that way can also help you out. My other piece of advice here is that a report card should never be the first time a parent is learning their child is not meeting expectations. This was my case, I hadn’t expressed to this parent that their child was not acting excellently, they were acting satisfactorily, and it was a surprise to them.

And I wasn’t a parent at that time, and I am now, and I really appreciate when my own children’s teachers communicate with me upfront, it’s a much more collaborative positive experience. And so, if a student is struggling, my suggestion is to communicate that before an official grade report. And having, like we said, a rubric, or a document to explain your grading practices also really helps with those conversations. So, something to think about for next year is, I like to determine whatever the system is and then send that out at the beginning of the year so the expectations are super clear to everybody.

Tim:

Yeah, absolutely. And you talked about a lesson learned for you, that was one that I had to learn my first year of teaching high school, I had parents upset because they came to conferences and their kid’s halfway through first quarter and failing, and they’re like, “Why haven’t I heard about this?” And I was like, that’s an excellent point. That’s something that I didn’t even think about as a new teacher, and that was a learning experience for me. And like you said, Amanda, as a parent, you’d like to hear about those things because it can be a collaborative effort to get kids on track and get them doing what they need to be doing. And real talk, not every parent is going to be excited to hear from you about that, not every parent is going to be collaborative, and I think that’s more common, and probably a little bit worse than it has been in years past, but I think it’s still something you need to do is communicate home and just share with them what’s going on.

Most of the time, parents are going to be on the same side, they’re going to be wanting what’s best for the kids, but they will appreciate that communication and they will want to help you. And so, I would encourage you to get that communication going as quickly as possible. I know it’s tough to find time to do, but I think it is something that’s important enough that you do need to find time for it.

Amanda:

One other point is absolutely, some parents are just, they’re looking for a fight, or they’re not-

Tim:

Their children can do no wrong, we’ve all dealt with that, we know.

Amanda:

Yeah. However, if you have things documented, then that helps you with your principal, and that helps your principal advocate to the parent. And so, it’s just covering your bases can be really helpful no matter if it goes well or poorly.

Tim:

Yes, absolutely. Great point.

Amanda:

Okay, can I switch gears a little bit?

Tim:

Yes. I know you had something you told me you wanted to add, so yeah, let’s go for it.

Amanda:

I do. So, I wanted to highlight a discussion going on in the community, which was kind of fun. So, recently we asked, every week there’s a big question of the week that people can pop in and answer throughout the week, and it was, do you have a morning routine? And tell us about it. And I loved reading the responses there because I feel like sometimes what we do outside of school can really make or break our day at school. So, I would love to bring the community’s thoughts forward here, and then, Tim, I want to know about your morning routine when you were teaching and what it looks like now.

Tim:

I was going to say my lack of a morning routine, because I hate the morning.

Amanda:

As do I.

Tim:

Yeah. All right. Yeah, do you want to go through those and then I can share mine at the end?

Amanda:

Yeah. I do. Okay. So, some of my favorite answers were about how everyone is incorporating AOEU into their morning routine. I don’t know, I just wasn’t expecting this, it was just so heartwarming. So, one person said, “Once I get to school, I like scrolling through my elementary art pages that I joined on Facebook for inspiration. Now, I can come here.”

Tim:

Awww.

Amanda:

You can start your morning with us and the community. And then someone else said, “I drive to a store, get a big coffee, and I listen to Art Ed Radio.”

Tim:

I’ve had people tell me that before, how Tuesday mornings are their favorite because Art Ed Radio comes out, they listen to it on their commute, and I just appreciate that so much. So, yes, heartwarming is the right word, so thank you.

Amanda:

That’s great. Yeah. Thanks to those of you who start the day with us. Okay, then another common theme was prepping the night before. So, one community member said, “I typically try to lay out student artwork the night before and set up for my class in case I’m running late, so at least I’m ready for that first class.” Someone else put it this way, “Morning routine? Definitely not. I get all of my prep done the night or day before so I can stumble through my morning like any true night owl.”

Tim:

It’s me.

Amanda:

It’s me also. Yeah, I think this is so smart. I think sometimes those five minutes at the end of the school day, you are exhausted, you don’t want to do anything, you just want to leave, but if you can just rally yourself for those five minutes and do something to help set yourself up for success the next day, it just makes the start of that next day so much better.

Tim:

Yeah, future you will thank you.

Amanda:

Yeah. Some people talked about their home and school routines, so coffee, dog out, breakfast, and then had a very repeatable way to start the day at school, like I always take my stools down, then check my email, then pull up slides. And I like this too because it takes the guesswork out, and you can come in on autopilot and know you’re going to be ready. Another person said they do a temperature check, of walking around the building, greeting students as they enter, which, as we see all the kids in the school, that’s a great way to gauge how students are doing. And then, of course, there was a lot of love for coffee, which, fun fact, I don’t drink coffee, you don’t drink coffee.

Tim:

I do not drink coffee. Neither of us are coffee drinkers.

Amanda:

No, weird anomalies. And lots of parents of small kids in absolute chaos, scrambles, which I definitely remember the days of. And I think the one that made me laugh the most was someone said, “I’m not an early morning person, my bed likes me to stay as long as possible. Perhaps it has some separation anxiety.” Just really appreciated that. Okay. So, Tim, what did your morning routine look like when you were in the classroom, and what does it look like now?

Tim:

Okay. So, pre-kids, pre me having my own children, it was me staying in bed as long as possible. Yeah, that was very much it. I would shower the night before, shave the night before, just everything ready the night before, sleep in as long as possible, put on my clothes and brush my teeth, and head out the door. And eat breakfast on the way to school. Yeah, sleep in as late as I possibly could. And then, after I had kids, I did not want to saddle them with my bad habits, and so I got up a little earlier, we got a little bit of the, what do they call it, the chaos routine down? And it’s busy in the mornings when kids are younger, but we’d get them up and off to school, and again, I still wouldn’t do much for myself, it was more about getting the kids ready and getting them out the door.

And now, it’s very much about, my kids are both in high school now, and so they take care of most of their stuff, and it’s just a matter of the dog and I will get up, and wake both of them up, and we just kind of say hi… Nobody’s a morning person around here. So, everybody just grabs their own section of the newspaper, and glances at it as they are eating breakfast, and then everybody’s up and out the door. So, I don’t know, I guess my lack of a morning routine is my morning routine. And so, I’ll just get them out the door and then I’ll pull out my laptop and start working. Yeah, the people who are like, oh, I take a nice stroll, and I have my coffee-

Amanda:

I do yoga.

Tim:

… and do my breathing exercise… That is so foreign to me, just nothing in my life would make me want to go for a relaxing stroll in the morning. I could be sleeping during that time.

Amanda:

Right.

Tim:

So, yeah, the lack of routine is probably my routine for the morning. So, what about you?

Amanda:

Yeah, when I taught, I was a big fan of prepping the night before because my bed also likes me to stay in it as long as possible. So, very similar. I would shower, I would do my hair, I would lay out my… I would do every possible thing at night, because I’m a night owl, that’s when I’m productive. So, I would do those things at 10:00 PM so that I could literally get up and be out the door in 20 minutes. And I had it timed perfectly, and I knew exactly, if I left it this time, I wouldn’t hit traffic. And the same goes for at school, I would prep everything the night before. I often had breakfast duties, so that was part of my morning routine. So, any supplies we needed. And I would, this is how neurotic my brain is, I wouldn’t just prep for the first class, I’d prep for every class. I was-

Tim:

Oh, I did that too.

Amanda:

… prepped for every class before I walked in the door. And then, now, I do things out of order, I get up and I literally reach under my bed and grab my laptop, and I just start working before I even get out of bed.

Tim:

Oh my.

Amanda:

And I get myself and my to-do list organized, and what do I have? What meetings do I have? And then, my husband takes on most of the morning stuff with our kids. My kids, they’re in elementary and early middle school, so they still need some prodding and some help in that way. But he takes most of that, so if I have time, I’ll help a little bit with getting them out the door, and then I get ready, and make breakfast, and then I go to my office down the hall. Or if we’re being real, go to a blanket nest on the couch because now it’s cold in winter, and sometimes I do my best work from there, so.

Tim:

Okay. I can’t imagine pulling my laptop out first thing. I can’t believe-

Amanda:

I understand it’s psychotic.

Tim:

… we’ve never talked about this before. Does that help your brain relax, when you make that to-do list?

Amanda:

No.

Tim:

Because I feel like I would pull that out and it just be immediate stress. Also, I can’t imagine having my laptop in the bed… Do you just work until you go to bed? These seem like very bad habits.

Amanda:

They’re really not great habits. I don’t work until I go to bed, no, but I do put my laptop there so that-

Tim:

You just go with your laptop?

Amanda:

… I’m prepping for the night before. I’m prepping for the day, the next day.

Tim:

I see. I see.

Amanda:

So, I just slide it under. Okay, does it make me… Is that a good way to start the day? Objectively no. Do I wish I was a movement, foam roller… There’s some really healthy… Meditation. That’s not me. And actually getting up and understanding exactly what I have to do and getting organized does make me feel relaxed for the rest of the day.

Tim:

Okay.

Amanda:

My brain does like that. So, we’re all about being vulnerable here, if anybody has ideas of how I could have a healthier morning routine, I’m all ears. But this is honestly not bad for me, it’s working.

Tim:

Okay. Okay. Good, good. Glad to hear it. Okay. Real quickly, before we go, do you have 90 seconds to play one more round of this or that?

Amanda:

Yes.

Tim:

Okay. Let’s do it. All right, thanksgiving was super fun, it’s December now, it’s snowing, so we’re going to go winter edition. Eventually we’re going to have to make these art teacher questions, but there’s just so much else going on with life that I feel like we’re going to do winter edition. So, are you ready?

Amanda:

Yes.

Tim:

Okay. This or that, hot chocolate or apple cider?

Amanda:

Oh, hot chocolate. Apple cider is like dirty pie water. I don’t want it.

Tim:

Dirty pie water, I really like that. Okay, sledding or ice skating?

Amanda:

Sledding. Sledding is big, and I would actually prefer a tube.

Tim:

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Could have done sledding or tubing, but no, I like ice skating. Okay, snowball fight or building a snowman?

Amanda:

Snowman. I don’t like when the snow crystals get in my jacket. I don’t want to snowball-

Tim:

Like going down the neck of your jacket?

Amanda:

Yeah.

Tim:

Yeah, terrible, terrible feeling. Snowball fight, if it’s dependent on the type of snow, if it’s hard, icy chunks, let’s not fight with that. But yeah, you need the right type of snow for a good snowball fight. Probably for a good snowman too. But anyway, that’s a whole different discussion. Wool coat or puffy coat?

Amanda:

Oh, puffy coat. I have a coat that’s name is Papa Puff, because it’s so thick, and I love him.

Tim:

All right, I love that. Peppermint or cinnamon?

Amanda:

Peppermint.

Tim:

Okay. You look like you’re thinking very hard about that one.

Amanda:

Well, I think peppermint. Cinnamon’s fine.

Tim:

Okay. Okay. And then, this is probably the biggest one for teachers, what’s better, winter break or unexpected snow day?

Amanda:

Ooh. Winter break because it’s so long. That’s the only… A snow day is… I live in Wisconsin, and a snow day is truly incredible.

Tim:

It is the greatest feeling in the world.

Amanda:

It’s so great, but winter break is so nice. It’s so cozy and it’s so nice.

Tim:

Yeah, I don’t even know if I can answer that one because they’re both so magical, so wonderful. So, that’s good. All right, well, Amanda, thank you so much for joining us, I appreciate the advice, appreciate the insights on the community, and I appreciate your thoughts on snowball fights, and peppermint, and snow days. So thank you.

Amanda:

You’re welcome. See you next month everybody.

Tim:

Thanks to Amanda for coming on. We’ll have a lot of links in the show notes, and after last month, we all know where those show notes can be found, so please dive in. We also talked a lot today about the Art of Ed community, and honestly, if you’re not there yet, we would love to have you join us. It is an amazing online space just for art teachers, it is filled with positivity and professionalism, great conversation, great ideas, and I love signing on there, and always look forward to the discussions that are happening. So, if you have some time, please come check it out.

Art Ed Radio is produced by the Art of Education University, with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you for listening to this episode, and every episode, we hope you’ve enjoyed them. For a deeper dive into what we talked about today, again, find those links in the show notes, or you can check out theartofeducation.edu. Also, be sure to subscribe so we can join you again, you get the next mailbag at beginning of next month, and if you love the show, please jump over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen, give us a five star rating, maybe even leave us a review. We’ll talk to you next week.

The post The December Mailbag: Organizing Crayons, Parent Concerns, and How to Say No (Ep. 446) appeared first on The Art of Education University.

Giving Back to Art Ed (Ep. 444)

Timothy Bogatz — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 11:00:29 +0000

Kyle Wood is back on today’s episode to talk with Tim about how we can give back to the field of art education and pay it forward. The conversation covers the importance of building a community of art teachers, being willing to share ideas and lessons, and taking on mentorship roles. They also highlight the value of advocating for art education and talk about ways in which art teachers can express gratitude for the art ed community and take positive action to support and strengthen the field. And, if you want to stick around until the end, Kyle dives into This or That: Art History Edition.

Full episode transcript below.

Resources and Links

Take the 2025 State of Art Ed survey
See the 2024 survey results
Join the Art of Ed Community
Read Kyle Wood’s articles, and listen to the Who Arted? podcast
More Advocacy Resources from AOEU

Transcript

Tim:

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for our teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.

Last week I talked with Dr. Theresa Haugen about advocacy in the art room and how we can advocate for our programs, for the arts and for the benefit of our students. Today’s conversation will be somewhat adjacent, but we’re coming at it from a different angle. Kyle Wood will be joining me in just a minute to talk about what we can do to give back to the field of art education.

So with Thanksgiving coming next week, I’ve been thinking about all the things that I’m grateful for, and I’m a big believer in how gratefulness can lead to positive action. Because when we express our gratitude and we feel uplifted, but we also feel indebted like we want to pay something back or maybe in this case pay it forward. So that is going to be the framing for our conversation today, what we are grateful for within this community of art educators. And there’s a lot to be grateful for, but also the actions we can take to give back to art ed if we want to pay it forward. So let me bring on Kyle and we can start talking about some of these ideas.

Kyle Wood is back on the show joining me again. Kyle, how are you?

Kyle:

I am doing great. I am well into the fall and just I like this time of year because I feel like kids are getting settled into routines and things are getting smooth, especially with the younger grades.

Tim:

Yeah. For sure. And I love the fall. Outside of the classroom, I love just the weather. I love stepping on crunchy leaves. However, it’s been very damp lately, so the leaves are not as crunchy. It’s a little bit disappointing, but I am with you on all of the school things, like this is the time where things do start to run smoothly. You feel like you have routines down, you feel like you can really dive into stuff. So glad to hear that’s going well for you. And I don’t know, I guess our whole conversation today is just going to be about gratitude and thankfulness and paying it forward for lack of a better term. But I guess I would love to start before we get into that, of just how things are going for you. I feel like you’re a very regular guest at this point, so I’d love to know just kind of what’s going on with your classroom, what’s new with your teaching, what’s going on or what’s new with your podcast?

Kyle:

Well, I mean, I guess to start with gratitude, I’m thankful that you keep bringing me back because I love having these conversations because as an elementary teacher, I’m the only one in my building, and it’s so nice to have this conversation, this connection where it’s like I can nerd out with a fellow art teacher who gets into this stuff, and I love those opportunities. The art teacher at my children’s school was just texting me about stuff and wanting to get together to do some PD together and planning that out.

I’m really grateful that I’m reaching that point in my career where I am not sitting alone at the conference and I am starting to meet other people and know other people and make those connections and know who I can talk to learn about the things that I don’t know about yet, but I’m curious about and all of that. So I’m in a very happy place with a lot of stuff professionally, and I have the sweetest family in the world. My kids are the greatest human beings that I am so lucky to know, and I want to be just like them when I grow up.

Tim:

I love it. No, I love hearing all of that. That’s really good. So hopefully, I feel like for 98% of the audience that’s really going to warm their heart and then 2% of the people are going to be like, “This is too cheesy,” and they’ve shut it off already, but that’s okay. We’ll move on with our gratitude and our things that we love and appreciate those things today.

And I guess let’s start, like you said, you’re in a good place professionally, and I feel like you’ve worked hard at that. And I think that’s something that a lot of us should be doing, could be doing more of, is trying to build that art teacher community, trying to build those connections. And like you said, when you’re all alone in your building, that’s very, very difficult. And so any place we can find connections, any place we can find community, I think that’s really helpful. So I would encourage as many people as possible to go out and do that. But just looking at your career, like you and I have both been doing this art education thing for a while, but what are you thankful for when it comes to all of your years in art teaching? What are you thankful for in your career?

Kyle:

Okay. So the thing that really brought me to a different space was actually … He wasn’t officially a mentor, but when I first started teaching in the district that I’m teaching in, I was split between schools and the art teacher who was in the other school had been there for a decade, experienced, knew the ropes, and he showed me a lot of tricks to make lessons better. But then we just got along so well that we started experimenting with stuff. Before Zoom was a thing, we were sending messages back and forth to each other’s classrooms and trying to video conference between classes. And that led to pilot programs that we started doing and then we collaborated on a video project. And just to date myself and how long I’ve been doing this, back during the Obama administration, they had the White House Student Film Festival, and my kids got to go to that because of the work that we were doing.

Tim:

I don’t think I ever knew that.

Kyle:

They only did it for three years, but the first year they did it, we were an official selection.

Tim:

That’s awesome.

Kyle:

It was a super cool experience. But what I was getting at there was just being open to make a connection with another art teacher and work collaboratively. And I was starting and new to the district, but before that, if I’m being 100% honest, I had a little bit of an overly inflated sense of my own skill. By third year teaching, I was like, okay, first year I got through it. Second year I feel like I kind of know what I’m doing. Third year, it’s like I got this down. And then having to start over in a new district and seeing what other people were doing was a little bit humbling, but being able to accept that help from another person and accept another person’s insights and viewpoints was a tremendous growth moment for me. And it led to so much growth that I never would’ve thought was possible back when I thought I was good at this job.

Tim:

Yeah. No, I like that. And I think the willingness to help from the mentors perspective is something I’d like to talk about a little bit more later on. But I think that is something that is vital to keep moving this profession forward. And I think that along those same lines, just the willingness to share, the willingness to help other people who are also facing the same things is something that I appreciate when it comes to art education. It took me a while to realize, hey, I should start going to state conferences. I should start going to national conferences when I can.

But then once I did, I saw how many opportunities were out there to connect, to learn from other people, to just see what other people were doing and allow them to share that with me. And that was, like you said, so incredibly valuable, such a growth moment when you finally realize that there’s so much out there and there’s so many things that people can share. And once you tap into that, it makes everybody better. And so I think that’s something that we should do more of as well. So yeah, I don’t know. Any other thoughts on that? Just the idea of connecting or the idea of sharing out what we have?

Kyle:

Well, I think the other thing that I’ve come to realize is that I was really intimidated when I first started going to those conferences. I didn’t know anybody. And outside of the couple of people in my district, I know obviously, but when I went to the conferences the first time, I think I saw one person that I kind of recognized. And it was very intimidating because the first time I went to those conferences, I was thinking these people are all so much smarter and more experienced than I am. And I think the thing that I realized is just like so many other avenues in life, everybody has something to offer and we need to recognize that and appreciate that in others, but also recognize and appreciate that in ourselves.

And sometimes I feel like we don’t give ourselves that permission to brag a little bit and to recognize that we’re good at this, we have something that can help someone else. And it’s really not even boastful. It’s generous to be sharing your expertise once you’ve learned that, okay, this is how I get a kid to stop throwing the paper towel in the sink. You’re listening, you figured that out, please email me because I need to know.

Tim:

No, I think that’s right though because we all have good solutions for different problems. We’re all creative people. We teach art, we are creative, and we’re going to come up with creative solutions. And it’s good to share those out. And like you said, it’s not bragging. It’s not saying, “Look how great I am.” It’s saying, “Hey, I might’ve figured this out. It may work for you too.” And just being willing to share that. And like you said, it goes both ways. There are so many things we can learn from from other people, but we also have a few things that we can share ourselves.

And I guess that brings me to my next question, which is just the idea of helping other people out. Because people who feel gratitude, people who are appreciative are more likely to pay it forward. And I’m definitely of that mindset. I like to spend a lot of time appreciating what I have. I like to spend a lot of time thinking about how we can share, how we can pay that forward. So I have a list of ideas, but I’ll put the question to you first. What are some ways or how can we pay it forward professionally? How do we give back to the field of art education?

Kyle:

So I always start by thinking in terms of the smallest sphere and then work our way out as we become more comfortable. So it starts in your classroom and once you feel like you’re comfortable in your classroom, because first year you’re in survival mode and you don’t need to take on that pressure to help other people at the same time.

Tim:

Absolutely.

Kyle:

Get yourself afloat first and that’s perfectly okay. But I think starting by just making those connections, finding your people, even on a small scale, doing the lesson swap and sharing those hacks and stuff like that, it makes a big difference. Being that person on social media who, if you’ve seen my stuff on social media, you can see how uncomfortable I am in front of the camera. I am not that person who has that bubbly personality and can share stuff, but I’m like, “Okay, here’s how you can rehydrate a brick of clay and it’ll work for you.” It may not be fun to look at, but this’ll work and that’s okay too. Whatever you can put out there that’s going to help someone or put a smile on someone’s face. Sharing the art teacher outfits I see all the time and stuff. Nobody wants to see pictures of my outfits, but it’s nice when I see like, wow, you coordinated really well. And anything that brings a smile to someone, I applaud.

But I suppose we should probably get into the more formal aspects, like taking on that mentorship role. I talked initially about my buddy Chuck, who listeners of my podcast have heard come on so many times because he’s my person who’s always like, “Okay, someone canceled. I need to record an interview in an hour, be ready to talk.” And he’s always there with a yes. That makes such a difference. Taking on those mentor roles when you feel like you know what you’re doing, being able to give that lifeline, give that feedback, and do it for others.

Tim:

Yeah, I was just going to say, I have loved that role and the opportunities that I’ve had to do that. I remember when I first started teaching, my wife started at the same time. We both had mentors, we were the mentees, and she had somebody in our subject area that they became fast friends. My wife learned everything. They’re still friends 20 some years later, which is amazing. And I had somebody who didn’t know anything about art and barely talked to me, and it felt like a huge missed opportunity. And so when I had the chance after you talked about after I got my feet wet, after I felt like I kind of knew what I was doing. The opportunity came about to mentor someone.

And I feel like that’s just such a valuable thing for both of you because not only are you able to share your knowledge, share your experience, share your ideas. You’re also able to put yourself in their shoes and able to remember what it was like to be a first-year teacher and think about, oh, these are the things you struggle with, and it helps you to reflect on your own teaching and think about why you’re doing what you do. And I think that can be worthwhile for both of you.

And I think along those same lines, I really enjoyed the opportunity to have student teachers in my classroom. And I feel like that’s a great opportunity to, again, impart some knowledge and some experience, but also it’s good for students to hear a different voice and hear a different thought on projects, on creativity, on every aspect of the process. Having those additional voices is something that I think is valuable for everybody. I don’t know. Have you had student teachers before? Have you gotten to experience that? What are your thoughts on having student teachers?

Kyle:

So I haven’t had full-on student teachers. I’ve had the practicum students who are doing observations and teach a couple of lessons. Every time after they do that because in Illinois at least we get certified, maybe it’s changed since I went through the process. I had to do elementary and a high school placement and we had to go to different stuff.

Tim:

Yes. Same here.

Kyle:

So I haven’t seen someone through the whole process. I’ve had two practicum students do observations, both positive experiences, both very wildly different students personality-wise and different ideas. And the thing I found was I not only felt really good about being able to give some guidance and give some help to someone who’s just trying to figure out this world of education. I also learned a lot from them because of both what you said about being like, you have to be very deliberate and thoughtful in terms of how you explain what you’re doing. And then you start to realize like, oh yeah, maybe I should be doing it this way, the way I’m telling them to do it. But also you have another artist in your room who has new ideas that you have not even considered. And the thing that worries me most is the thing that I’m blind to. I’m already working to correct all the faults that I know about, but there’s so much that it never even would’ve occurred to me. And I love that.

Tim:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it makes everyone better when you have the chance to really analyze what you’re doing and share those ideas, see new perspectives. I think that’s all really valuable.

Another thing I was thinking about, and something you mentioned as far as PD is just sharing lessons and ideas. I think that’s a great way for us to, again, just pass on that knowledge and that experience. I love to share lessons. I love to share ideas. People may use them, they may not, doesn’t really matter to me, but I really love putting those ideas together and just putting them out there because if that can help even a few people, then I think that’s really valuable. And I think everybody has the opportunity to share.

Obviously not everybody has a podcast where they can do random episodes of their favorite lessons, but everybody has the opportunity to share in their school or in their district or at the state level. Just there are different times in professional development, different connections you have with teachers that you can share your ideas or even if it’s on social media, just passing ideas back and forth. We can add to what each other are doing. We can bring new ideas, we can bring new perspectives. And I think sharing that out can again be helpful for everyone. I guess I just talked for two minutes about it, but Kyle, any other thoughts about sharing ideas, sharing lessons and what that can bring us?

Kyle:

No, I think you’re hitting it. I just want to say I am so thankful to all of you who share your stuff on social media. That’s how I use social media. I’m not good at posting stuff regularly. I’m not good at talking.

Tim:

So you’re lurking. Are you a lurker?

Kyle:

I use it as a research tool. I generally don’t use it for a lot of happy, relaxing interaction. I use it like I’ve got a class coming in here in an hour, and I hate everything that I have ever done and so I need something new. And then I see a colleague of mine has posted a delightful Jeff Koons inspired balloon dog drawing, and I’m like, yep, that’s what I’m doing next hour. I love seeing that stuff, and I’m so grateful for everyone who puts out a good YouTube channel or the AOE obviously has great YouTube content that I have stolen from. And I love the stuff that, especially videos, I am such a big fan of the videos where I can actually see and understand the process. So thank you to all of us who do that.

Tim:

Yes, big thank you to everybody who puts anything, any resources like that together. Like I said, we are making each other better. I’ve also thought about paying it forward through advocating just for art ed in general, like going to school board meetings and talking about accomplishments or what your kids are doing. Just any chance you have to brag on your kids. Let’s say they make it into, I don’t know, a White House student film festival. You got to get out there and promote that and advocate that because it helps talk about how the arts are helpful, why they’re so important.

And it doesn’t need to be the school board, but you can even just educate your colleagues in the building about what you do with art, what your kids are accomplishing with art. Take those things to your assistant principal, your principal, anybody else in your district, and kind of talk about the cool things that you were doing, what kids are getting out of your classroom, and just let people share or share with people and help them to understand what we are doing in art and why it’s so valuable. Do you do things like that? What does advocacy look like for you?

Kyle:

Okay. I have talked at school board meetings. Usually not … I’ve been to school board meetings when they’re doing like, okay, a recognition for this or whatever.

Tim:

Yeah.

Kyle:

But in all honesty, I think in my experience, the most effective advocacy is actually asking for help, is actually asking for stuff. Because you build relationships with people when you’re working together for a common cause, and when you reach out to a local charitable organization, there’s a local educational association that has given me grants for stuff before. And then I take pictures of how I use that grant money, and they can use that at their fundraisers. And they love it because the art stuff that they fund always photographs beautifully so they can bring stuff in. And then there’s happy smiling kids using these things that they bought for the program. And so they become the advocates instead of me talking to the community saying, “Look at this great thing I’m doing.” It’s a trusted organization saying, “Look at this great thing that’s happening because of your support.” And then everybody feels good and invested in it.

And along similar lines, I have found that parent volunteers are the greatest advocates for my program. And so when I was younger, I used to be hesitant to call in volunteers because I thought asking for reinforcements is showing that I can’t handle the job.

Tim:

Right. I have the same feeling.

Kyle:

And I felt like it signaled a lacking in me. And the thing I realized, especially once I became a parent, is those volunteers are not coming in because they think you can’t handle passing out water dishes. They’re not coming in because they are loving to wipe up slop and spills. They’re coming in because they want that moment where they see their kids smile as they enter the room, and you are giving them that opportunity. You are giving them that warm fuzzy moment and that memory, and they are going to look at whatever you’re doing in the classroom with a very generous eye. And then that creates that positive chatter.

And I have had parent volunteers who have written to my admin saying, “This lesson that Mr. Wood did,” because I only call in the parent volunteers for my home run lessons. It’s not my hardest lesson. It’s the ones that I know will go smoothly and everyone’s going to feel good about. But I’ve had parents right to my admin saying, “This was the coolest experience and I’m so glad.” And that’s the best advocacy when you get other stakeholders to recognize that value. So just bringing in other people as partners and letting them feel like they’re a part of the success, they’re going to want to brag about your program because they’re a part of it then.

Tim:

Yeah, that is wonderfully said and Kyle, another reason I appreciate always having you on is because you end the episode so very well, I don’t even have to say anything after that. So I appreciate you putting all of those thoughts together and just kind of sharing your perspective on all of these things. Can you stick around for just a bit longer and we’ll play a quick game of This or That?

Kyle:

You know I’ve always got time.

Tim:

Okay. We are now going to play a quick round of This or That Art History Edition, because Kyle, you have the Who Arted Podcast. So I could not think of a better topic than art history. Are you ready to go?

Kyle:

I am ready. Although I got to say this is the highest pressure I think I’ve ever felt talking to you because I feel like you’re going to … You know my weaknesses, you’re going to expose me for the fraud that I am.

Tim:

No, no, no judgment here. No judgment here. We’re just running right through these. I need to know who you prefer. Let’s start with Keith Haring or Jean-Michel Basquiat?

Kyle:

Oh, I’m going Keith Haring.

Tim:

Right.

Kyle:

Honestly, no shade to either, but Keith Haring, I absolutely love because the older I get, the more I just appreciate something that is earnest and positive. And Basquiat, there’s so much good in his work, but there’s also just so much layering to it. And Haring’s is so direct, and I love that. I love the directness and the earnestness, and there’s something I can’t get enough of.

Tim:

Okay. Self-portraits or landscapes?

Kyle:

To teach or to create?

Tim:

From art history, would you rather see people’s self-portraits or would you rather see their landscapes?

Kyle:

Oh, this is going to depend on who it is because that’s so much … I’m going to say the self-portrait. At the end of the day, I like something that reveals somebody’s true nature and their character. And whether it’s like a representational or an abstracted, I probably favor the abstracted and more conceptual.

Tim:

Okay. All right. Manet or Monet?

Kyle:

Oh, Monet. Monet. Monet was my entry point into art. I still, to this day, remember second grade art awareness, seeing Monet’s work, and I went home and I remember saying to my dad, “I know what I want to do. I want to be an artist.” And my dad looking at me and just being like, “You’re going to be poor,” which he is such a good sport about every time I tell that story, because the fuller story is he was just warning me, “Most artists struggle. And for that, I support you in it.”

Tim:

That’s good. All right. Napoleon leading the army over the Alps, Jacques-Louis David version or Kehinde Wiley version?

Kyle:

Oh, I’m going to go with the Wiley. Yeah.

Tim:

Okay.

Kyle:

Okay. I think Wiley is one of those artists that I am starting to feel like I’ve seen his work too much, and so I’m starting to pull back from it a little bit.

Tim:

Oh, interesting.

Kyle:

But I do like what he’s doing with a lot of the backdrops that are becoming so much more. There’s a lot of creativity in it that I appreciate, the different way of presenting the subject.

Tim:

All right. Surrealism or impressionism?

Kyle:

I am still going to go … My heart is always with impressionism. My head starts to go a little bit towards surrealism, but I’m going with impressionism.

Tim:

All right. I love that we have discovered your one true love in art history, and it’s Claude Monet. This is fantastic. All right, and finally, Frida Kahlo or Diego Rivera?

Kyle:

Ooh, I’m going to go with Frida. Frida’s work is a little bit more interesting to me and Diego, while I appreciate a lot of ideas behind what he was doing, I feel like there’s too much that I’ve read about him as a person-

Tim:

It’s tough to get over that.

Kyle:

Well, the artist and biography thing, I’ve always looked at a little bit like, okay, is the artist’s biography intertwined with their work? And when I look at the city of industry murals and then I read about how he was treating his workers, it’s hard for me to get past that. Whereas other stuff, I can separate them mentally. And Frida, I mean, obviously you can’t separate her biography from her work because her most famous work was very autobiographical.

Tim:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Cool. Well, that is all I have for you. No wrong answers on This or That, but somehow you and I agreed on all six of these, so I’m excited that we’re aligned on all those. So, cool. Well, Kyle, thanks for playing.

Kyle:

That is tremendously validating. Thank you.

Tim:

Well, thank you for playing, thank you for coming on the podcast, sharing all of your ideas. I appreciate all of it as always.

Kyle:

Oh, it’s great. Thank you for having me.

Tim:

I will go ahead and wrap it up because as always, Kyle and I talk for way too long. But I enjoyed our conversation. I enjoyed playing This or That at the end. And of course, more than anything, I hope we are able to give you some ideas that might work for you somewhere throughout the conversation today. And I hope you can take a minute to be grateful about what art education has given you and what you might want to do if you were to pay it forward.

Art Ed Radio is produced by The Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you as always for listening to the show. We would love for you to share this episode with anybody who might find it worthwhile. And if you’re loving the podcast, please leave us a five star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We appreciate the ratings and the reviews. Now next week is Thanksgiving week. We will revisit an episode from the archives. Then we’ll be back the first week of December with another mailbag episode with Amanda and me. So if you have any questions you want answered, email me at timothybogatz@theartofeducation.edu, or podcasts@theartofeducation.edu. We’ll talk to you then.

The post Giving Back to Art Ed (Ep. 444) appeared first on The Art of Education University.

How to Become a Highly Specialized Expert in the Art Education Field

Shannon Lauffer — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 11:00:01 +0000

Has anyone ever asked you, “You teach art… What’s your specialty?” Maybe you thought to yourself, “Uhhh, art?!” In reality, the art teacher can sometimes feel like a jack-of-all-trades. You do a little of this; you do a little of that. You know how to do minor services on your kiln and revive liquid tempera. You can teach four mediums in a single day. If you feel like the jack-of-all-trades, consider this: What have you mastered? What’s one thing you’re really good at?

Let’s figure out what your art teacher expertise is and explore three pathways to becoming a recognized expert in the field.

Identify your art teacher expertise.

An expert is somebody who’s highly specialized in one specific area in their field. You have more knowledge, experience, and achievements in this area than most others. Start by reflecting on what makes you tick and what you’re passionate about. What do you get excited about? What’s something you can talk about for hours? This could be a specific philosophy of classroom management or a medium you love playing with and teaching.

To help you identify your expertise, ask yourself the following:

What is a moment in your teaching career when you saw something “click” for a student?
What aspect of your classroom or practice are you particularly proud of?
What methodology or philosophy in art education resonates with you?
What is a medium you love teaching to all grades?

Next, get narrow. When we talk about expertise, the more specialized and niche you are, the better. Follow the expression, “An inch wide and a mile deep.” Get ready to dive into your topic through reading, listening, researching, learning, reflecting, iterating, and practicing.

Here are three examples of how you can take a passion area and make it a specialized area of interest:

Classroom management is broad. Specializing in The Glasser Model is specific.
Ceramics is broad. Alternative, non-glaze surface treatments for the K-12 art room are specific.
Recycled art materials are broad. Service learning through recycled kinetic sculptures is specific.

1. Break down your focus into smaller, achievable goals.

Once you have your narrow focus, it’s time to break it down into small, achievable goals. There’s no formula for how long it takes to master something. Author Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that mastery takes 10,000 hours of practice. However, other researchers pointed out that the idea is a bit more nuanced. The key takeaway is getting good at something takes lots of practice!

Researcher Angela Duckworth is notorious for her research on grit and how we can develop grittiness in our students. Angela talks about the importance of setting small, achievable goals to reach your ultimate goal. This journey of going from novice to expert will take persevering through tons of practice, bumps, frustration, and even failure.

For example, let’s say you’re looking to grow your expertise in fiber arts, specifically embroidery on non-traditional surfaces. Break this big goal down into tiny, achievable steps:

Gather materials.
This doesn’t need to be the best of the best, but definitely buy or collect enough to practice and make mistakes!
Document your learning.
Identify four surfaces to play with and create a sketchbook to document your progress, questions, and reflections.
Select your first surface.
This is practice, so work small! Start with a hypothesis, investigate various stitches, and see how things turn out! Reflect on and record difficulties and areas of enjoyment.
Create a challenge.
Propose a problem for you to solve. Return to the surface again, but employ a different strategy or approach.
Repeat!
Repeat this process for each of your different surfaces. Write an artist statement to accompany your multiple embroidery studies.
Learn from an expert.
If you’re looking for an opportunity to explore fiber arts with an expert in the field, enroll in Studio: Fibers.

2. Find a mentor and become a mentee.

Feedback from others interested in the same topic is another great way to grow your expertise. Experts can’t grow in a vacuum; you need critical feedback to stretch your understanding and consider alternate perspectives. Your mentor doesn’t necessarily have to be an art teacher. This can be a teacher in another content area who knows about a particular classroom management strategy or a museum curator who specializes in a specific art history period.

Here are three simple steps you can follow to find a mentor:

Identify someone you want to learn more from by joining and networking at a professional organization, on social media, in professional publications, or through a mutual colleague.
Find an opportunity to connect, preferably in person.
Make your request by sending an email or LinkedIn message, or speaking with them at the end of a conference presentation.

If a mentor doesn’t seem to be in the cards, consider other options to get feedback. If you’re specializing in design thinking in the art room, look for an active Facebook group, attend a design thinking conference with working sessions, or take a course. Also, consider reading and research as feedback. Your “mentoring” can come from reading the work of experts in the field and using reflective practice to challenge your ideas and assumptions.

3. Earn a credential, certificate, or degree.

One tried-and-true way of building expertise and credibility is to earn a credential. There is truth to the idea that the “piece of paper” in the form of a diploma or certificate of completion comes with a level of esteem. Plus, it’s a great way to grow your network, hold yourself accountable to learning, and formally build your resume. If you’re searching for a program that’s right for you, look for one that is highly specialized in your topic or one you can tailor to your needs.

The Art of Education University offers focused graduate courses and an MEd in Curriculum and Instruction with three specializations built in:

Inclusive Practices in the Visual Arts
If you’re passionate about making art accessible to all of your students, this specialization is the one for you! You’ll gain an understanding of special education terminology, rights, and responsibilities so you can reach and teach all learners effectively.
Instructional Leadership in Art Education
Are you eager to step into leadership or lead a team of art teachers? In this specialization, you’ll learn to advocate for change and drive meaningful impact through community connections. You’ll learn skills like ethical leadership, grant writing, and entrepreneurship.
Arts Integration
If you’ve been looking to infuse the arts across disciplines, this specialization is your pick. You’ll integrate creativity through art, build interactive experiences, explore emerging technology, and facilitate 21st-century learning.

If you have questions on whether this is a good fit for you or how to get started, reach out to chat with an admissions counselor today!

Chat With Us!

As art teachers know best, learning is a lifelong venture. Refine your learning and focus on one thing you’re passionate about and have a knack for! Figure out your niche expertise and then break down your learning path into small, achievable goals. To help you grow through knowledge and feedback, find a mentor, attend a conference, join social networking groups, and do a lot of reading and researching. Gain credibility with a degree or certification, such as the MEd in Curriculum & Instruction, to help you build your network and resume. Embrace your passion and let your art teacher expertise shine so you can strengthen your teaching practice and enrich your students’ artmaking.

What is your area of expertise in art education?

How do you plan on taking steps to grow in this area?

To continue the conversation, join us in The Art of Ed Community!

The post How to Become a Highly Specialized Expert in the Art Education Field appeared first on The Art of Education University.

Back to Basics: What Does Adaptive Art Look Like in Practice?

Erin Smith — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 10:00:06 +0000

Note: This article will use People First Language since we do not know the reader’s preference.

You have a stack of IEPs and 504 plans archived in your email and you’re not quite sure what to do with them. What exactly are they? What do they mean for you, the art teacher, in the art room? You may have these questions and more swirling in your brain. If so, know you’re not alone! The realm of adaptive art can be very confusing.

Keep reading to understand the basics of adaptive art and learn new ways to approach your art room and curriculum to meet the needs of all students.

Adaptive art is the practice of making meaningful art with students with cognitive, intellectual, and physical disabilities. This often includes using adapted materials and art tools, adapting lesson plans and/or delivery, and working with paraprofessionals in the art room. The goal is to make sure every student can be successful, no matter their art experience level.

To begin, let’s cover some foundational keywords to ensure we’re all on the same page:

Individual Education Plan (IEP)
A document crafted by a team of stakeholders that addresses the specific needs of a student with a disability so they can succeed. This document includes strategies teachers will implement to adapt the instruction, content, and environment.
504 Plan
A 504 plan offers specific accommodations or services to students with disabilities who may not require a special classroom setting for their day-to-day education but would still benefit from extra support.
Least Restrictive Environment (LRE)
This refers to a principle in the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) that states that children with disabilities have access to education with their peers as much as possible. It looks different for each student, but the idea is to make sure each student is able to thrive in an environment that has the fewest limitations possible.
Hand Over Hand (HOH)
This is a practice to help students who need physical assistance to hold or maintain hold with a variety of art supplies. It can be your hand on top of the student’s hand or the student’s hand on top of your hand. A variation is when the student just needs some light elbow support to maintain a lifted arm.
Differentiate, Adapt, Modify, and Accommodate
These words all refer to changing different pieces of your lesson, delivery system, philosophy, and materials to fit the individual needs of students. Differentiating a lesson proactively considers students’ varying interests, levels, and learning styles. Adaptations are further measures of support and include modifications and accommodations. Modifications are changes to the instruction or content, whereas accommodations are changes to the classroom environment and setup.
Paraprofessionals
Also known as teacher assistants, instructional aides, or TAs, they play a vital role in the day-to-day running of a special education classroom. They assist the lead teacher in instructional support and organization and can be a huge help with general supervision and behavior management.
One-on-One (1:1) Aide
This is an adult assigned to one specific student. They are typically paired with a student who needs more assistance.
Inclusion
Inclusion brings special education and general education students together in the same room for the same class. This approach aims to consider the needs of all students from the start. It’s important for social skills, peer relationships, and community building within schools.
Self-Contained Art
This is an art class that consists of students solely from a special education setting.

What does adaptive art look like in practice?

Adaptive art courses are becoming increasingly popular in many schools. You may be teaching one for the first time this year! Alternatively, you may wonder how to incorporate adaptive art practices into your existing art courses and classroom. Whichever route you are on, adapting your art room and curriculum doesn’t have to be complicated or consist of huge sweeping changes. Sometimes, the little things can make the biggest difference!

Get to know your students.

Start with a student-centered approach. Art teachers know first-hand that the best way to get to know a student is to spend time with them building rapport. The key to having a quicker and deeper understanding of your students in special education programs is to also cultivate a relationship with their special education team. This can include their homeroom special education teachers, paraprofessionals, and parents, guardians, or caretakers. These adults spend the most time with these students and can be an invaluable resource when it comes to interests, struggles, wins, and behavioral triggers. Make these perspectives a priority!

Make an early finisher station.

Consider creating an early finisher station in your classroom. Students can choose an activity from different bins when their work is complete or if they need a break. Sensory bins are always a win for all grade levels! Have a plastic tub with colored rice or water beads or a box with various types of paper for tearing or hole punching. Ensure your bin is on a low table for all students to access or provide smaller bins that students can bring back to their tables. Building blocks, plastic building bricks, and magnetic tiles are also great options that are tactile, strengthen fine motor skills and hand strength, and encourage students to be design-minded.

Create open spaces in your classroom.

It’s a good idea to consider your room setup for all students who may come through your door. Your setup may need to be flexible so students in wheelchairs can access everything. Create open spaces in the room so there are a lot of pathways to move around, as well as open spaces on countertops or tabletops for students to spread out and work on. Many students with wheelchairs have attachable work trays. Reach out to their homeroom teacher to see if they can bring their trays to art class with them.

Visit these students in their homeroom classroom to see what it looks like. Observe what works and think about how you can implement a similar setup in your space. Go one step further and invite the homeroom teacher to come to your studio and provide tweaks you can make to improve the space for all students. Their homeroom teachers will often have awesome ideas because they know these students better than anyone!

Start with the highest level of modifications.

Instead of pulling modifications from IEPs and 504 plans and trying to make adjustments for each individual student, start by finding the highest level of modification needed in the class. This approach ensures you are meeting the needs of all students without re-writing your lesson plans multiple times. Students who need more of a challenge will often rise to the occasion. Plus, the rest of the class will never know who the original modifications are for so students won’t feel singled out.

Collect adaptive art materials and tools.

Once you have an understanding of student skill sets and levels, you can begin to collect adaptive materials and supplies. While there are many helpful specialized items out on the market, you don’t need anything expensive or fancy to support students. There are many cheap or free hacks and budget-friendly options. Get started with grips, adaptive scissors and paintbrushes, and button-adapted tools. These are all great for students with low muscle tone or limited movement.

Focus on the process.

While completed artworks are important, the artistic process is where so much learning, discovery, and reflection happens! Lean into the process and allow your students time to delight in artmaking—let them experiment with materials, play with tools, and enjoy art through a sensory lens. This may be a student’s first opportunity to take an art class and we want them to fall in love with visual art for the long haul!

Whether you are teaching an adaptive art course or incorporating adaptive art strategies into your art room and curriculum, your perspective is vital. The way you approach bringing art education and visual arts to your students is just as important as the special tools or fun art materials. The priority is to provide avenues for all students to experience art through age-appropriate and challenging lessons, explore art tools and materials, and engage in the artistic process. Celebrate all of the art opportunities you bring to your students, especially those with a disability. Remember, all art is magic, but adaptive art is a unique opportunity to equip students with new and creative ways to express themselves!

Share one thing you’ve learned from teaching adaptive art.

How do you meet the unique needs of all of your students each class period?

Which adaptive art strategy are you looking forward to trying this year?

To continue the conversation, join us in The Art of Ed Community!

The post Back to Basics: What Does Adaptive Art Look Like in Practice? appeared first on The Art of Education University.

A.I. and Art Education (Ep. 440)

Timothy Bogatz — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 10:00:19 +0000

In today’s episode, Jen Leban joins Tim to talk about artificial intelligence and how it might affect the world of art education. In this conversation, they discuss their curiosity when it comes to AI and share some of their own explorations with various AI tools. Listen as they discuss their ethical concerns with these tools, the possibilities for teacher use and artistic creations, and the importance of thoughtful use and AI literacy.

Full episode transcript below.

Resources and Links

- Find Jen on Instagram and in the AOEU Community
- Learn about the AI and Art Education graduate course
- AI Prompt Engineering for Art Teachers
- Creating Digital Surrealism with AI
- AI and the Environment
- How AI is Changing Photography
- Check out Claudio Zavala and Adobe Express

Transcript

Tim: Before we start today with this episode about artificial intelligence, I want to tell you about the Art of Education University’s graduate course, AI and Art Education. The AI in Art Education course is designed for teachers who want to prepare students not just for the present but for a tech-driven future.

The course explores how AI tools can be used creatively in the classroom, not just as tech add-ons, but as a means to spark new types of art and encourage students to explore media in ways they couldn’t before.

The course is structured around creating practical, actionable materials, including lesson plans and a code of ethics guide for AI use.

And my favorite part of AOEU classes? The fact that you are working together with other art teachers. By bringing educators together to discuss, critique, and experiment with AI, the course fosters a collaborative environment where teachers learn not only from the course but from each other’s experiences and insights. You will leave the course equipped to implement strategies immediately.

If that sounds like a course you would love, you can find everything you need to know on the Art of Education website. Now let’s start with the show.

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.

Welcome, everyone. We have a very exciting show today, all about the use of artificial intelligence and art education. My guest today is going to be Jen Lebann, who has been on the podcast quite a bit in the past few months.

Jen, welcome. How are you?

Jen:

Hey, I’m good. I’m excited to talk about AI.

Tim:
Yeah. I feel like we should, at the beginning, kind of just set the stage and say, we are not experts when it comes to AI.

Jen:
No.

Tim:
But we are people who are curious about technology. Jen, in your case, I would say you are very good with technology.

But we’ve done a lot of experimentation and exploration with AI. We’ve learned about it. We’ve sort of explored what it can and can’t do. And I just kind of want to have a discussion because we’ve done some of the work for people, I suppose.

I know a lot of teachers have not used a lot of AI.

Jen:
Yeah.

Tim:
Whether that be because they don’t have time, or they’re just kind of scared of it, or they don’t understand it. But, you know, we’ve done all of those things, and so maybe we can pass along some of our experience and some of our knowledge.

Jen:
Yeah.

Tim:
So I guess I’d love to start with the big broad question of why do you think people are so fascinated with AI, Jen?

Jen:
Well, my simple answer to that is that it just it feels like magic. It feels magical. Like things can happen that were like, how did it do that? Like we don’t always know the the goings on behind the scenes.

Tim:
Right.

Jen:
It just seems to like happen. And I think that that’s just it’s intriguing for people and sometimes scary.

Tim:
No, I think magic is a good word, especially if you’re using generative AI to create images. You just type in two sentences about what you want, and it creates a painting.

It may be good. It may be the worst thing you’ve ever seen. You never know.

Jen:
Correct.

Tim:
But it is still magic. So that’s that’s kind of fun. But I would love to know, I was just talking to Amanda Heyn, another frequent podcast guest.

She was telling me about the community art club, the the studio time that you’re making. And she was asking generative AI to do a self-portrait. And she’s like, it’s a disaster. You just need to ask Jen about it. So of course, I waited until you’re on the podcast when you have a microphone in front of you. So, can you tell me about this experience?

Jen:
Okay, so so we have um a monthly art club meeting in the Art of Ed community, and every month is a different topic.

Tim:
Yeah.

Jen:
So this month was AI and sci-fi and all that magical, scary stuff, and we brought in a guest from Adobe EDU.

His name is Claudio Zavala, for those of you that don’t know him, want to give him a little shout-out for spending his time doing that, but he was showing us all the tools that you could use in Adobe Express, all the AI features, and there’s quite a bit there, but we focused on um the text to image generator really just for fun because one of the ways you learn as a teacher is by doing. So this was kind of a safe space where teachers could like type it in and see what happens. And the fun part is that like Sometimes it turns out well.

Sometimes it turns out awful. And you learn a lot about like the choices of words or prompts that you use with the AI.

And so one example would be, I think it was Janet Taylor put in, oh, 40-year-old you know woman making art. And it produced this gray-haired woman with all of these wrinkles, and she was like 80, and we were all horrified.

Tim:
Yeah.

Jen:
We were like, what does AI think of us? Because I’m like 45 years old. I’m like, what the heck? So it seemed like we either got like these old women or we got like the 12-year-old little like chubby character cartoons like that looked really young. So clearly, the AI is not fully learned and doesn’t understand the reality of of a 40-something year old. We do not look like grandmas.

Tim:
It reminds me, reminds me of like kindergartners and first graders who are just like, you’re so old. Like there’s no difference between 40 and 78 to them.

Jen:
yes yes because you come in as a brand new teacher and they’re like do you have any grandkids and you’re like horrified you’re like what no that’s a a ai as a kindergarten yeah

Tim:

Yeah, that’s fun. Basically, I mean, it seems like a pretty apt analogy, to be honest. No, I was just going to give a quick shout out too, because just a couple of weeks ago, Kyle Wood, who was actually just on the podcast last week, i read an article of his about how to engineer prompts for AI and so when you mention that, I was like oh, that was a good article.

So I want to shout that out We’ll link to that because that’s there if you want to explore a little bit more. That’s a really good one. So

Jen:
Yeah.

Tim:
Okay, I want to talk to you about just AI concerns, I guess, too.

It’s just something that I worry about. I know a lot of people worry about it. Just the idea that the use of AI can be problematic. like there are environmental concerns like how much energy and electricity that these machines are using and how our resources are being diverted to them are also concerns about sort of the ethical side of things about how it’s been trained you know using artists work and writers work sometimes with their permission a lot of times without their permission and companies are very rarely transparent about how they’re training their machines, very opaque.

Jen:
Yes. Correct.

Tim:
And so, you know, I don’t want to judge anyone for their their use of AI. But, you know, I do want to talk about those those concerns and I’d love to get your thoughts. Like, you know, what crosses your mind when when those topics are brought up?

Jen:
Yeah.

Tim:
How much thought have you put into that and and your own use of AI?

Jen:
The honest answer is some of it I had and some of it I had not really dug into. So I actually did research before we we came here because I wanted to know more.

Tim:
Okay. Yeah.

Jen:
And the environmental concerns, I had heard about them kind of like in a peripheral way, but I hadn’t really dug into it. And I found this great article from the UN Environmental Organization. They talked about how AI clearly like it uses a lot of energy and electricity But the amount of water that it uses to keep things cool because computers run really hot they how their own foot Yeah, so the amount of water that’s used for cooling but also the amount of like e-waste and electronic waste that it produces however, they sort of couch that with the opposite side that

Tim:
Yeah, they run so hot. Yep.

Jen:
AI itself can pinpoint ways that we are overusing, like, resource do you know what I mean? Like, it can kind of spot problematic areas and help us limit those and also kind of identify areas where we can, you know, source events that aren’t being utilized and things that are being over utilized. So it’s this weird, like, the balance of good and bad that, like, yes, it it does do these things, but does do the pros outweigh the cons, you know?

And I think we’re still kind of like, yeah, figuring that out.

Tim:
I was just going to say it could just be growing pains as well, where like right now, perhaps it’s using a ton of electricity.

Jen:
True.

Tim:
But later on, you know, we learned to find a better equilibrium.

Jen:
Yes.

Tim:
I don’t know if that’s the case, but it seems like a possibility.

Jen:
And I and I think no one does like a lot of these people come out and and say like, I’m an expert on AI. And it’s like, are any of us really experts on AI when you think about it? Like we’re all just kind of in this wild west of trying to figure stuff out.

Tim:
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Jen:
that’s ah Yeah.

Tim:
Well, and I wanted to ask you to just thinking about, you know, copyright issues. You talked about Claudio from Adobe and they’ve done a good job with um how they kind of train their AI, right?

Like with with the ethical concerns of people’s work.

Jen:
I at least everything that they have said everything they’ve come out with everything that I’ve heard and again I’m just one person but um is that Adobe they use all of like their their licensed stock images to um not to educate, to train their AI.

Tim:
Right.

Jen:
And they also have a policy in place specifically with Adobe EDU, which is the great, you know, I just can’t speak to the other stuff because I’m not like a user of it. So it doesn’t mean that it’s not.

But if you generate something with their AI, like text image generator, it doesn’t take those prompts and those outcomes and then use that to train their AI. Their AI is not eating itself, you know, so it doesn’t take your information

And then use that so that’s kind of nice too is they do give you I mean, that’s their messaging is that they’re I Guess if there’s an ethical use of the AI that’s that’s it and they’re and they’re using it now The weird part about that is like ah in the case of Adobe edu like their product is free for schools Clearly not the other stuff, you know the professional stuff. They make a lot of money. Um, yeah They can um But the reason like why I talk about them specifically is not like I’m not making a commission or anything, but that a lot of the other products that are out there, if they’re free, you should really be skeptical of that because the saying generally is that if the if the product is free, it’s because you’re the product, you’re the thing that that it’s collecting and it’s getting trained off.

So teachers are very excited and you’ll see a lot of like teachers on TikTok that are like, use this tool and use this tool and use it. And it’s like, Are they cool? Yeah. Do they seem like magic? Yeah. But are they taking all of your information and working on ethically and stealing from other people?

We don’t know because they’re not being transparent. Like, it doesn’t automatically mean that, oh, they’re bad. But we don’t know. And that’s the part that’s sketchy.

Tim:
But yeah, I think just like anything else, you know, just look with a critical eye and use your thinking skills and you’ll have an idea of, you know, and that’s a choice for everybody to make, like how they want to approach that, how much they care about these issues.

Jen:
Yeah.

Tim:
But, you know, I i think it’s good to and to highlight them and and let people make their decisions about how they’re they’re feeling about them.

If we can shift gears for a little bit, I would love to talk a little bit about how we can use AI in the classroom, like how it can help benefit teachers.

Jen:
Yeah.

Tim:
Like the self-portraits of four-year-old women, it is super fun but also not helpful in the day-to-day things, the teaching realm. So, um, what have you found with AI that can be helpful for daily tasks or just work that you don’t want to do, for lack of a better term? You know, I found a few good things and I’ll share those in a bit. But like, what have you found that’s good and where have you find it found it to kind of struggle a little bit?

Jen:
Yeah, so I would describe AI as good for drudge drudge work, the stuff that you don’t you don’t want to do, like, OK, this some people might be like horrified by this.

I don’t know how to like exactly approach this, but say you got to you have to write a parent email. they’re never fun to write like especially if it’s about like a behavior issue you can actually like say those things in your head that you don’t want to say like man tim is interrupting the class and he’s being a jerk and he’s bullying kids and he’s you know never brings his stuff and he never does this and he’s always like say all those things run it into like a a chat gpt or some other ai tool and say hey can you say these things in a kind way or a friendlier way of saying these things nicely.

Tim:
Yeah, a professional way, yes.

Jen:
Yes, and it will tell you.

Tim:
No, this was, I know you said you you were skeptical to to bring this up. That was literally the first thing on my list as well, were writing emails that you don’t want to write.

Jen:
Yeah.

Tim:
And I’ve actually found it to be really chat GPT to be really good for for writing emails.

Jen:
Yeah.

Tim:
And, you know, uh, and when I first did my experiments, this was maybe a year ago, even, I just said, please, you know, write an email home to a parent from the perspective of a teacher, talking about a student with these concerns and then I listed the concerns and it just spit out exactly what I needed. And you know obviously, go through and make a few edits to give it your voice it doesn’t sound like it’s written by AI, but it was surprisingly good I don’t know if I should be surprised but I was surprised at how well it did with that.

Jen:
Yeah. No, and i I think you’ve identified the key point there is like I don’t want like people don’t like AI because they feel like it’s like it’s inauthentic like you just told it to write an email to a parent and you didn’t even like no there was a lot of thought behind it in fact there was more thought than if I had just said like Tim’s acting like a jerk in class like I wanted to say it in a nice professional way so I took the extra effort to do that and when it spit the answer out I didn’t just copy paste it into an email i I read through it that’s the important part he’s using it to draft your stuff and then reading through it like it’s still you, it’s still your thoughts. I still put a paragraph into ChatGPT and just asked it to rewrite it for me in a more friendly way and that’s, I think, what people don’t always understand.

I didn’t just say like write a parent email this kid’s a jerk you know and then they did that.

Tim:

No, I was just going to say, though, I love the idea of doing that busy work or just first first drafts of stuff.

Jen:
Mm hmm.

Tim:
You know, I was doing some curriculum work last year, and just like as a first draft, of a rubric or a vocabulary list or things like that.
And it can save you a ton of time rather than me thinking about vocabulary definitions of 15 different words and looking up, you know, making sure that I’ve got everything covered in its comprehension.

Have them do that busy work for you and then you can review yourself.

Jen:
Yep.

Tim:
And so I have enjoyed that.

Jen:
yep and absolutely rubrics lists of criteria things to like i want my kids to write a report about impressionism what are the important things they should include it will spit out a list for you it’s pretty incredible you know so yes who no no it doesn’t always and that’s the part

Tim:
Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, it does a good job with that. You need to refine. You need to check it over and make sure it is doing things right because it doesn’t always do things right. But it is a good starting point. So I just want to dive into that.

Jen:
Well, that’s the part that gets to me is that, like, once you do use AI more frequently, you will start to notice that there are quirks or things that start to sound similar. If I were to look at a list of conference proposal session titles,I can probably guess pretty well which ones were chatgbt, and this is as someone who has used it for that exact purpose. There are things that I notice that I see over and over again and it’s hard for me to like give specifics but I know that there was a chat conference and there was i don’t remember I feel like it was the word like unpacking or a explore or something that I saw so many times that I was like wait a minute this is this seems sketchy so and the reason I say that is because when someone uses a tool like ChatGPT for the first time they’re like this is wonderful and I can copy and paste it just as it is because it is new and fresh to you but you have to remember a lot of people have

Tim:
Yeah. yeah

Jen:
seen, though, like after a while, it does kind of give you that uncanny-like feeling.

Tim:
Yes.

Jen:
So you have to be really careful of of that, I guess. Am I saying that correctly? Also, AI detectors are are garbage. They don’t work. Don’t use them. So at that same time, don’t rely on those now.

Tim:
No, no, that’s fair. That’s fair. I also wanted to ask you too. I know you have more experiences than I do with generative AI or art making for creation.

Jen:
Yeah.

Tim:
We touched on a little bit at the beginning, but I would just love to hear your perspective more.

Jen:
Hmm.

Tim:
I know you’ve used this, like I said, a ton more than me. What’s good? What’s not so good when it comes to image creation?

Jen:
Yeah, let me take a deep breath here. I think that AI and image creation, it’s good to use as a step or a part of a larger project, like I think in and of itself, unless you’re doing something like a little one off sub lesson plan or thing with your coworkers where you’re trying to create little AI, you know, I don’t know, avatars for your Google class or something like, sure, have fun with that.

Tim:
Yeah, yeah.

Jen:
But otherwise use it for things like, and okay, if you could remember when when you were in middle school and when I was in middle school and you were going into art class and you were kind of broaching that that mental state where you were going from like the concrete to the abstract and you would have all these great ideas in your head. And pictures in your head and like you would go to put it down on paper. Have you ever seen that meme that’s like here’s a horse like in my head and then when I draw it and it’s like a stick figure, so you’re in that stage of life. Generative AI can be so great because it can produce that picture or a version of that picture of what’s in your head and like make it real.

Tim:
Yeah.

Jen:
So I think that it’s kind of cool with the idea of using that maybe at that stage because kids can conceptualize a little bit better and it does really train them to write about art and use descriptive language because if they can’t do that they’re not going to get the picture.

So that I think is just a truly useful skill but also think about, sorry I’m kind of rambling here but I get very excited, um think about like when you teach grid drawing.

Like you teach grid drawing you go on the internet and you Google an image and you find an image and the kids print it out and then they grid that image. They’re really just copying a picture from the internet.

Tim:
Right. Yes.

Jen:
So what if they use generative AI to create that picture first and then grid that image and then draw that? Because then they’re doing a copy of a thing that they also generated and created.

Tim:

They played a part in its creation rather than just, yeah, copy.

Jen:
Yeah. Yeah. So I think Yeah, using it as a step in a larger project is super useful on its own. I’m like, I don’t know, like it’s not a replacement like it. And the only way I can describe like the hilarity and also like horrors that you can get from ada AI sometimes is to literally just try it. like tell it like You have to use it. um Say like a 40-year-old white woman making art at a computer, you know like something like that. Type it in and see what it produces. AI is notoriously bad at like hands it doesn’t produce hands very well when you start to get multiples of something if you say a crowd of people they’ll start to have two heads and like merge together like it’s it is really funny so like that in itself could be an interesting activity is having kids generate these images and then evaluating them and being like where did this fail you know that’s it’s so ah there’s a lot

Tim:

Well, I was just going to say, I also struggle with drawing crowds and drawing hands myself, so . . .

Jen:
You are AI. It’s been revealed, Tim.

Tim:

Just really quickly, there are a ton of, you know, generative image creators out there.

If people haven’t used them before, do you have a recommendation of a good one to start with?

Jen:
I don’t want to harp on the same thing, but Adobe, you so Adobe Express has Adobe Firefly built into it.

And because it is an EDU product, it is not gated, but if you tell it to like, draw me a gun shooting some, it’s not going to do it. If you tell it like do Van Gogh starry night, it’s not going to do that.

Tim:
Right.

Jen:
So I like that kind of safeguards that are in place.

Tim:
Yeah. Yeah, the parameters then. Well, and I was going to say that’s where I started because you did the NOW conference presentation. That was about a year ago now, that introduced me to Adobe Express, and I hit me, and he was like, this is great. I need to use this. So no, I think that’s a good one. Like we said, we’re not trying to harp a ton on Adobe, but that is a good starting point.

OK, I have a big picture question ah that I want to ask you, and then we can kind of close up shop with some advice for people, too. So I just want to say, again, I’m just thinking through all of these ideas. And there are people who have just really embraced AI wholeheartedly. They’re like evangelists for the practice of AI in the classroom.

Like you said, the the TikTok people are like, this is so exciting. And i they love all of it. And there are others who are on the opposite side of the spectrum. You know, I’m thinking of the College Board who has just banned the use of AI in any part of AP courses or portfolio development. You know, you have to certify that AI was not used in any part of the process.

And so, I mean, that’s that’s very much the opposite in the spectrum. And I’m just curious to know, like, where do you fall on this spectrum and where do you think most teachers are on that spectrum?

Jen:
Yeah. Well, I think it’s pretty clear that I fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, and maybe I haven’t made my anti-AI very clear, to be honest. like I think I’ve i’ve only said like good things about it, but there’s plenty of… it’s the unknown, really. It’s the unknown that… ah scares me, but scares a lot of teachers, I think. And the best way to make something not be scary is to, you know, learn about it. And whether it’s people or it’s I like, we got to learn, and we got to have empathy, and we got to try things.

Tim:
Yes.

Jen:
And the more we know, the less scary things are, you know. um So that’s what I would say is if after listening to this podcast, you go and you try out some generative AI just to like, what is this ai all about? And you do it like, please, then that’s that’s a win. Teachers spend their whole life preaching to kids about how great learning is.

Tim:
Yes.

Jen:
And then they they get afraid to teach something because they feel like they don’t know all the things. And we just said, we’re not experts about A.I. And here we are recording a podcast about A.I. We don’t know everything either. You have to kind of live in that that zone.

Tim:
I was going to say, I don’t know how many hundreds of times on this podcast, I have said, learn it together with your kids.

Jen:
Yeah.

Tim:
You don’t have to know everything. You don’t have to be the expert. You can learn together. And so that’s just me bringing that point up again.

Jen:
Yeah. And they can tell you.

Tim:
Yes, you can learn from them.

Tim:
Alright, so I love the idea of teachers exploring with kids, learning together with them, and kind of you know figuring this out as we go. And I guess my big question there and I think a good spot to end it is. You know, how do we help teachers, you know, how do we help ourselves improve our literacy when it comes to utilizing AI?

And how do we pass that along to our students as well? Like how do we help them with their visual literacy and their literacy when it comes to how they use artificial intelligence?

Jen:
Yeah. Yeah, so there there are a lot of teachers that almost wear that like, I’m not good at technology, like badge with pride.

Tim:
Yes.

Jen:
And it’s like, just like, don’t, don’t wave that flag that like, I’m going to advertise this. and like five Find a kid that you can trust. It could be a student. It could be a relative in my case.

And I do like tech and I’m not afraid to dive into something and fail miserably.

Tim:
Right.

Jen:
I had at the time high school age nieces and I was like, show me all about this Snapchat or what is it about the TikToks that everybody’s going on and on about? And they they i would like explain to me like I’m five and have them show you their phone and walk you through it and do that like do that first, like be curious, ask someone, try it out.

Tim:
Yeah.

Jen:
OK. And then as far as like advice for for students and asking your kids and how to become more adept at like navigating this is AI literacy. I’ll make that up. it’s It’s not that different from other media literacy. like If something seems sketchy or off or not quite right because there is that uncanny valley when it comes to, you know, anything tech and like AI, double check your sources. Can you verify this information or this photo that you’re seeing in another spot? And the other one that they use for media literacy that also applies here is the red flag.

If something sparks a strong emotion in you, like outrage or like, oh, I can’t believe that. How could that be?

Tim:
Yes.

Jen:
That’s actually like hold yourself for a second there. Be like, why is this happening? and Try to verify it somewhere, because sometimes they’ll learn It’s intentional, you know?

Tim:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, I think that’s some really good advice. And I think the idea just to to try it, to use it to work you to figure it out is the best.

Jen:
Yeah.

Tim:
And you may figure it out and be like, this is not for me. But if you have a better understanding of how it’s created and how it can be used, I i think that’s that’s going whether you choose to use it or not.

Jen:
Yes.

Tim:
i think It’s a good thing to know a little bit more about it.

Jen:
Yeah.

Tim:

Jen, thank you so much for for coming on and talking through these ideas as, you know, I’m trying to figure out my own opinions, my own ah approach to to using all of this. I appreciate your perspective. Appreciate you talking through things with me.

So thank you.

Jen:
Tim, I think you need to come to the Art of Ed community and we could start a thread of horrifying AI creations and discuss this more.

Tim:
Oh my gosh. I was going to say I’m already in the community, but I feel like that might be a good place to post.

We’ll hold that until the episode is published.

Jen:
Heck yeah.

Tim:
And then whatever day you’re listening to this, please go to the Art of Ed Community and either Jen or I will have started a thread of our favorite AI fails.

Jen:
A.I. fails, yes. Love it.

Tim:
So Jen, thank you so much.

Jen:
Thank you for having me.

Tim:

As Jen said, there is an entire world out there when it comes to A.I., and we’re all kind of diving in together. So you should explore! Learn what works for you, what doesn’t, and figure out if and how you can use AI for your own purposes and if and how you can use it to teach and to help your students.

And if AI is a topic you want to explore further, I would encourage you to check out the graduate course from AOEU that I mentioned before the episode started. It’s an opportunity to explore not only the how what and why of AI in the art room, but some of the bigger picture issues as well.

You have the chance to talk about Ethics and AI in the Classroom, as one part of the course is the emphasis on ethical issues—such as data privacy, misinformation, and bias—helping teachers navigate these responsibly and teach students to do the same. The course offers a balanced view of AI’s benefits and challenges, and gives you a good chance to work through some of these bigger issues that we raised today. Again, if that is a course that interests you, you can learn more about it and sign up on the AOEU website, and we will also link to it in the show notes.

But for now, go explore, go learn, go use AI. Develop your AI literacy, and see if you are ready to bring it back to your classroom.

Art Ed Radio is produced by the Art of Education University, with audio engineering from Michael Crocker.

Again, please email me to submit any questions for the November mailbag, which I will be doing with Amanda Heyn that first week of November–we would love to hear from you–any questions you have about AI, art teaching, or anything else you want to hear us discuss.

The post A.I. and Art Education (Ep. 440) appeared first on The Art of Education University.

Ten Sci-Fi Artists to Share with Your Students (Ep. 439)

Timothy Bogatz — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 10:00:17 +0000

Kyle Wood is back as a guest today as he and Tim talk about their favorite sci-fi artists to share with their students. Listen as they discuss the connections between art and science fiction, as well as explore various artists whose work intersects with themes of futurism, technology, and imagination. Hear what they have to say about Salvador Dali, Yayoi Kusama, Cai Guo-Qiang, and so many more artists–both historical and contemporary–who explore speculative themes, blurring the lines between reality, imagination, and science in their work.

Full episode transcript below.

Resources and Links

- Read Kyle Wood’s articles, and listen to the Who Arted? podcast
- Tony Oursler’s Alien Invasion
- Check out the work of Rosemary Lee and Lynn Hershman
- You know you want to see a Cowboy Shooting a Dinosaur
- Vija Celmins, Umberto Boccioni, and Salvador Dali

Transcript

Tim:

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for our teachers. The show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.

Welcome to the show, everyone. We are very excited to have this conversation tonight. One of the things the AOEU magazine is doing this month with our theme is sci-fi and AI. And we have an AI episode coming in next week. We may fit a little bit in, but we want to talk about sci-fi artists and artists from art history who have a ton of connections to science fiction. Some of them are strong connections. Some of them are a little tenuous here as we kind of dive into things. But I thought who better to come on the podcast and talk about artists and art history with me than regular podcast guests, host of the Who Arted? podcast, AOEU magazine writer, and all around incredible art teacher, Kyle Wood? And Kyle, how are you?

Kyle:
I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me on here again.

Tim:

Well, thanks for always saying yes when I invite you. We just keep doing more and more episodes, and I love talking to you. So I appreciate you continuing to come back. So, for new listeners, people who have not heard from you before, can you give us a little introduction and tell us a little bit about yourself?

Kyle:
Well, I am now suffering a giant ego blow that all sorts of anonymous listeners don’t already know who I am. Ithought as a suburban elementary art teacher everyone would just automatically know my name, but . . .

Tim:

I know, it’s so rough, isn’t it?

Kyle:

Yeah, so I teach K-5 art. I’ve been doing this for a long time since 2007. I’m, you know, in the suburbs of Chicago, I am super excited.

I have been a magazine writer this year doing a couple articles for The Art of Ed.

It’s so cool to be a part of the organization that I have learned from so much over the years. And I am also really excited if I can give a shameless plug. It’s this month marks five years of doing my own podcasts.

Tim:

Oh, congratulations, that’s amazing.

Kyle:
Who Arted? Yeah, and for anyone who’s interested in nerding out in some art history, one of the big total history nerd thrills for me was I got to talk to the curator of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco about Mary Cassatt on my most recent episode.

Tim:
Yes. Absolutely.

Kyle:
It was such a thrill to learn from someone so knowledgeable, so I highly recommend anyone who wants to dabble in visual arts in an audio medium to check out my Mary Cassatt episode of Who Arted. It was it was a great one.

Tim:
I was going to say that’s a big get for you. That’s very exciting and very cool episode. Also, in the less cool episode category, there are a few with me in the archives, too. So after that month, Mary Cassatt, you can, you can listen to me talk about Keith Herring and, uh, I don’t know who who else have we talked about on your podcast.

I feel like it’s disappearing now.

Kyle:
We did Christo and Jean-Claude.

Tim:
Christo and Jean-Claude. Yup.

Kyle:
We talked about Yves Klein and coming up the, the toilet episode of Who Arted, just like rounding out a theme there with the Mauricio Catalan episode.

Tim:
Yes. Can we call it the duct tape banana episode? I’d feel better if we go that way. No, that that’s good. I highly recommend the Who Arted podcast if you’re an art history fan. It’s a fun one. But for our art history today, I want to talk about science fiction, connection between art and science fiction. And I guess to to start, before I ask you the first question, I want to just kind of define sci-fi for our purposes today. And I’m just thinking about, you know what, it is, how we approach it. And my best thought, my best professional type definition, would just be that art that’s based on future science or future possible technology that leads to some kind of change. People are hoping for for change with what’s coming in the future. That may have something to do with outer space or time travel or aliens or all of those things we kind of imagine, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. So that’s kind of where I’m coming from as we start this discussion. As I said at the beginning, some of these art and sci-fi connections will be strong. Some of them are a little tenuous, so we’ll we’ll kind of see where we go with this.

But Kyle, like what I would love your perspective, too. like What do you consider to be science fiction? And I guess part two of that question, are you a fan of science fiction?

Kyle:
Okay. So, I am always the type to seek out the broadest possible definition. And so when I look at it, I always take that sort of structuralist approach, like science fiction. We’re talking about something that’s fictive. It’s imaginary.

Tim:
Right, right.

Kyle:
It’s not literally true. And it’s rooted in science that doesn’t exist today, but scientific principles as they are imagined by somebody in some future or parallel dimension or something like that.

So I take a very, very broad definition, even something that, you know, seems to be a little bit fantasy. If there are scientific elements, I’ll lump them in there and stuff, too.

Tim:
Yeah, I appreciate that because, actually, at least one of the artists I listed was just like, oh, she likes outer space. Let’s include her. So I think the broadest definition possible is appreciated for for our purposes here.

But . . . we have a list of artists.

I asked you to to come up with a list of a few artists. I have a list of a few. I thought this was going to be just a short list. But then I got making mine, you got making yours and all of a sudden we have like 10 or 12 artists that we need to talk about. So we’ll zoom through them pretty quickly. I thought we could kind of go back and forth. Kyle, are you okay if I talk about one of my artists first?

Kyle:
Oh, yeah absolutely. Especially if it means that I don’t have to pronounce the name.

Tim:
Okay, that’s fair. That’s fair. All right. Our first artist, one of my favorites, one of my favorite to show with students, a Chinese artist named Cai Guo Qiang, and he does all sorts of incredible drawings with gunpowder. And so he started out just like doing gunpowder on uh, you know, boards and trying to to create two-dimensional drawings just done with gunpowder, which is very cool, fire explosions, all the things that that we love, then he’s moved on to fireworks and huge explosions.

And he did the opening ceremony from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which is a while ago now. But remember these fireworks of just footprints flying through the sky and this is some incredible stuff. So he’s maybe most well-known for that. But the reason I wanted to include him in this list is he thinks, or he’s attempting to at least ah communicate with aliens through his explosions and through his artwork, which I absolutely love. It’s fascinating for you know all of our students to to think about, like, this dude thinks that he’s talking to aliens. And so I recommend looking him up on YouTube and seeing some of his artworks, and his explosions.

They’re incredible. They are colorful. They’re bright. They’re exciting. I love watching them. One of my favorites is called Sky Ladder; it is a set of fireworks attached to a huge weather balloon that explodes while working its way up into the sky. And it looks like this ladder is lighting up as it climbs way up into the atmosphere. It’s amazing to look at. So I’m very excited about him and his work. Great one to show to students and absolutely the first one I thought of. Are you familiar with his work, Kyle?

Kyle:
How i know that work is actually because i have seen something that you have written. Every time I’m stuck for ideas and I need to find some fun facts, I keep coming across an old article that was like 10 fun facts about artists and you know the communicating with the aliens and every time I see it I’m always just struck thinking like

Tim:
Oh, God, yes, I remember that one.

Kyle:
Where does he think the aliens are watching this from?

Tim:
Right, that’s a great question.

Kyle:
Because, like, if you are so distant that we’re not picking you up on radars and in our space telescopes, how on earth are you detecting the message in fireworks and not noticing everything else that’s happening around the world?

Tim:
Yeah, yeah. That’s a great point.

Kyle:
It’s mind boggling to me. you know I find the work beautiful and interesting in a lot of ways. I like the idea of explosive artwork for a number of reasons, but mostly just the fact that it’s like it’s to be in the moment. you know And yes, it’s documented and stuff like that, but I like things that are experiential like that.

Tim:
Yeah, absolutely. And I don’t know how truly or how thoroughly he believes he’s talking to aliens, but it’s it’s a great conversation piece. Like it’s a great conversation starter about his work. So I do appreciate that. Who is your first artist?

Kyle:
So I put Lynn Hirschman first. She’s been doing work in like all media since, I want to say around the 1960s. She’s doing drawings, photographs, videos, installations, performances. I put her on the the list because um relatively recently, I think it was done with like chat GPT-3. So that tells you fairly recent.

Tim:
Yeah.

Kyle:

She did something where it was like it was an installation that had video with somebody acting as a cyborg and talking about AI and the history of AI and the script being written by AI, by chat GPT, and I just thought like that if that’s not gonna go into our sci-fi Listicle of an episode then I don’t know what is?

Tim:
No, that’s perfect. I love that. I’m not familiar with Lynn Hirschman, so I will have to check her out. But I was going to say, I appreciate you setting up me up for my next artist, a great segue, also about installations and videos and not necessarily cyborgs. But ah Tony Oursler is my next artist and he does all sorts of video projections, video installations. And I’ve talked about him before on the podcast, but he talks about some of the alien qualities of some of his earlier work where he’s recorded these people uh these voices but then he puts up different videos would be like a close-up of one eye next to a video of a close-up of another eye versus a close-up of a mouth and they’re all sort of put together into this weird almost human, but not quite, sort of collection of videos and you have this voice that’s almost human, but not quite, and so it’s like surrealism mixed with technology. Which I really appreciate and it’s got so many different qualities of audio and visuals and and science and technology.

And I actually just read an interview ah with him where he thinks of his work as an alien invasion. And so as soon as I read that, I’m like, yep, he’s on our list for today, too. So I really like his stuff. Another great option if you’re thinking about, you know, video and technology. And, like I said, it’s just sort of surreal work that’s done through video. So I really like that one.

Kyle:
Yeah, it’s kind of interesting very sort of uncanny valley vibes, but it’s it’s interesting to me how across so many different media, there’s something about like eyes and mouths and like those features zoomed like hyper-focus and I mean, I guess in some ways it makes sense for visual artists to be focused on and the eyes, but I think as an audience too, there’s something really interesting that’s happening as we’re looking at work that in some ways feels like it’s looking back at us, you know, like the Mona Lisa effect and all of that.

I think it just opens up a really good space for conversations about psychology in art as well.

Tim:
Yes. Well, and just on that theme, I could talk about Tony Oursler for the rest of this episode and beyond, but I will try and make this quick. Just kind of on on that point, I’ve been to exhibits of his where you can become the voice looking in on other people. So you were in a separate room and whatever you say comes out of that video and you can talk to the people who are viewing the exhibition and you can comment on their clothes or their look or whatever, and it just it’s a fascinating interaction.

So that’s a good one. But anyway, like I said, I could talk about that forever. We’re going to move on, though. Who is your next artist?

Kyle:
Okay, so moving on to interaction and people we could talk about forever. um This next one, point of personal privilege is actually an old friend of mine, Rosemary Lee.

She and I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago years ago, but she was good at it. So she is like, Dr. Rosemary Lee, she has her PhD and she like goes around the world. She’s an art theorist and a visual artist working in all sorts of different media. Right now she’s based out of Portugal, but I don’t know, she might be doing a residency in Germany or something, but she does all sorts of stuff.

When we’re talking about AI and arts, you know, she literally wrote the book on AI in art, a book called Algorithm Image Art. But she’s also done some really interesting stuff that I think could spark great conversations with students. Like I’m thinking one thing that caught some students’ eyes, she surgically implanted speakers into carnivorous plants.

Tim:
I love it!

Kyle:
That was a few years back. She also has this piece, Molten Media. And the reason I think that’s perfect to talk about in this conversation is, you know, one of the things that’s happening at least in my mind today is I think like, Oh, all my home movies and stuff, all that data that I’m collecting, it’s all preserved. It’s digital. It’s in the cloud. It’s going to be there forever. But, like our physical hardware, it is somewhat disposable and changing. The code and the language that we’re using is changing so much that like we could almost be in a digital dark age where think about like I can’t read the stuff that I saved on those old LS 120 discs and you can’t get a DVD player anymore and you know like so many different things that are changing.

Tim:

Right. Right.

Kyle:
And so she was she was creating this piece, um like I said, molten media that just it it seemed like the wreckage of our old computer systems and stuff. And just invites you to think about, like, what if these relics will survive the long term and, you know, um how well preserved is it and will it still be accessible?

Tim:

Right.

Kyle:
And what do we need to do to, you know, keep going with all of this? I don’t know. I’m she’s one of those people that I’m always bragging about that I got to know and have a small.

Tim:

You knew her when, or still still know her, yeah.

Kyle:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m like excited about the prospect of one day being a footnote in her biography.

Tim:
Yeah, I love it. Thank you for bringing up the digital at Dark Age and giving me something else to have anxiety about. I really appreciate it.

Kyle:
But not us. This podcast will live forever.

Tim:
Absolutely, it will. All right, ah my next artist is Vija Celmins, and now she is one of the artists where I’m like, I don’t know if she actually fits, but she loves drawings about her space. So I I love her work so much. She does graphite drawings of like deserts and oceans and just these vast empty spaces. And of course, one of those vast empty These spaces are going to be our galaxy or you know, just outer space photos. And so just these huge graphite drawings that are all black, with the exception of all of of the stars or the constellations or whatever else she puts into there. And they’re just these huge, beautiful graphite pieces. If your kids appreciate realistic drawing.

She is a great artist to show. Like I said, I don’t know if the science-fiction connection is there, but the science connection is definitely there. We love outer space, and I just needed to give her a shout-out. So I really enjoy Vija Celmins.

Kyle:
Yeah, and mine is also a somewhat loose connection here. I’m looking at Kusama . . . her infinity room installations are just amazing.

I look at that, and it invites me to contemplate the vastness of space with that infinite reflection and and all of that.

Tim:
Yes.

Kyle:

It honestly is the stuff of my nightmares to see infinite reflections and stare out into the void, but you know, good on her because a lot of people really love it. There’s always a line around the block when the infinity rooms are coming to your local museum.

Tim:

I honestly have never seen a Kusama Infinity Room in person. It’s something I would love to do, but never had the opportunity, so it’s on my bucket list for sure. Although I may go in and get freaked out like you, so we’ll just have to see how it goes.

All right, my next artist is Ray Harryhausen. I don’t know if Ray Harryhausen is necessarily a fine artist by definition, but he does a ton of art-related things. Animation and special effects, he worked in Hollywood in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

He would do all sorts of stop motion things, building armatures, creatures that you could see in films. He did one called It Came From Beneath the Sea. He’s got another one called Earth versus the Flying Saucers. Just think of like kitschy, stop motion animation. If you’ve ever going to to see movie monsters, he probably had something to do with that. And you know, as I’m thinking about that, like are students going to be into like movie monsters from 50-60 years ago? ah Maybe. They’re kind of cool, but also kind of ridiculous. So I’m not sure how well he’ll he’ll go over. But one thing that I promise will go over well, he has a painting of a cowboy shooting a rifle at a dinosaur. It looks like this Old West painting that you’ve seen a million times with just a cowboy on his horse going into battle, just that that sort of Western art tradition. And then you do a double take and you’re like, that is an Allosaurus.

And he’s literally shooting at a dinosaur. So that is a painting that I promise will will get some good reactions in your classroom. so Have you seen that one? Have you seen any art with cowboys fighting dinosaurs? It’s something unique to me, I think.

Kyle:
Okay so I have not seen that specific painting but I did immediately have a flashback to my BFA show where I walked into the gallery and the first painting I saw and really the only one I remember from the entire show was a painting of a dude fighting a like polar bear in space, like bare-knuckle boxing up in space.

Tim:
Wait, did you say in space, like in outer space?

Kyle:
And, and it was, it was one of those things where it’s just like, it’s such ah an absurd, it was well painted, but the thing about it that was so memorable was it just, it leaned into the absurdness of it. And I think, you know, you talked about will students appreciate, you know, these old, old monster movies and stuff like that. And I think the answer is yes.

I think you didn’t have to be raised in that to see the ridiculousness, the over-the-top campiness, and like, and I think the embrace of that is what makes it so endearing. You know what I’m saying?

Tim:
Yeah, absolutely.

Kyle:
I think just people earnestly going for it and going over the top and not being embarrassed to go big and be ridiculous. I love that and therefore everybody must, right?

Tim:
Oh, yeah why not? Why not?

I think no, there’s something to be said for for going for it. Once you get past that point ah of campiness, you might as well just embrace it and just go all out with it. And like you said, I think people appreciate that.

So that’s a good one. All right. Who’s who’s next for you?

Kyle:
Well, we’re, we’re sticking to a theme here. This is funny because we kind of randomly cut and paste, pasted our way into this list, but there are natural segues happening all over.

So I actually put in the OG, uh, practical effects guy, George Miliers.

But one of the things I so for those unfamiliar, his big film was a trip to the moon, which has been around. It’s a classic. It’s been referenced in all sorts of ways, like the Smashing Pumpkins video for Night Tonight was a take-off of that.

But the thing that I find really interesting, like he kind of stumbled into this stuff in the earliest days of, of film. Like we had the earliest days, like right after photography was kind of invented, you know, um, very shortly after that we had, you know, the horse in motion, arguably the first, the first moving picture, if you will, series of frames.

And then Milliers was doing kind of what Edison was doing, trying to film stuff on the street, just capture little bits of motion. And he broke his camera, broke the hand crank.

And by the time he got it fixed, he starts cranking it again. The scene has changed. And so then he has this epiphany of like, oh, that video I recorded, all of a sudden the bus full of workers turned into a hearse, which kind of dark imagery, but he saw that as a great special effect and that’s where he started to experiment with the stuff we saw where you know, you stop the camera, change things out, sort of precursor to stop motion, if if you will.

He also did double exposures and the split screen technique. And so I highly recommend anyone delving into video and animation, especially like stop motion, those old forms, show your students how it all began because it’s really accessible, special effects, you know,

Tim:
Okay, yeah. I like I have heard of him. I did not know that story though, so I appreciate the background there. So that’s that’s cool. I’m going to do a two-for-one deal here if, if you don’t mind, to kind of close out my list with Umberto Boccioni and Salvador Dali.

Now, you just mentioned Horse in Motion, which I think is Edward Muybridge, if I remember correctly. But, you know, showing the horse in motion frame by frame. And that makes a pretty natural transition, I think, to talking about Boccioni, because he did the sculpture called Unique Continuity of Forms in Space. And it’s that gold a sculpture of a figure in motion or multiple figures put together in motion combined and into one where the base is separated into two and it looks like someone taking a big step. They’re walking. I think a lot of people are familiar with that, but I think the idea of showing motion in sculpture whether it was something new. And Boccioni was always embracing the future trying to do those new things and so he’s embracing new technology, embracing the future, like all futurists were doing and he’s doing that through his art but he’s also writing and philosophizing. And you know that that Unique Continuity of Forms in Space, that sculpture, just the idea of multiple figures in motion combined into one, just a figure striding into the future is so representative of all of those future technologies that he was fascinated in that kind of form that basis for science fiction.

And so I think that that embrace of futurism, the idea of bringing humans and machines closer together and like loving all this new technology, how it’s going to change the world, I really think it is kind of the epitome of science fiction, some of the ideas behind it. So I wanted to include him. And then just real quickly, Dali, everybody knows Dali and his work.

But I just want to bring him up because he was fascinated by how art and science can intersect, how they do intersect. He had a lifelong interest in science and there’s a great quote that he loved to combine “the cold water of art with the warm water of science”, and I love that quote and it just kind of shows his thought processes and you can see that with a lot of his works, a lot of his paintings that are distorting time and space and like persistence of memory, the clocks melting, just dealing with future, dealing with time. And like I said, it’s maybe not the strongest connection with science fiction, but I feel like ah it’s worth mentioning.

Kyle, thoughts on either of those or do you have anybody else that you want to include or anything else that you want to add to the list?

Kyle:
No, I like I’m I’m out of lists, you beat me on that . . .

Tim:
Is that a contest?

Kyle:
I really like the inclusion of, I know you say like Dali is a tenuous connection, but, um, you know, the surrealists really were inspired by science, but they were not scientific. You know what I’m saying? And so in, in a very real way, they were I think science fiction just not on another world. They were trying to get at the subconscious and inspired by Freud and Jung and and persistence of memory if I recall correctly I think that was a bit inspired by Einstein and relativity because he was talking about like the camembert of you know time and stuff but I think that’s another interpretation of science fiction. And I think, just to end where we began, I think taking the broadest possible definition is always to our benefit.

I mean, when we look at and consider what art is, it encompasses so many different things.

Tim:
Absolutely.

Kyle:
And when we think of science fiction, anything creative and not literally true, but based on scientific principles and extrapolations of it, imaginative reinterpretations of these scientific ideas, I think is worth is worth making the connection to.

Because that’s how we spark ideas, especially for students. That’s how we show them how we make connections because it’s the unexpected connections like, you know, a man fighting a polar bear in space or a cowboy shooting a dinosaur that they stick in your head. Like that’s that’s how you get that image imprint imprinted that sticks with somebody years or in my case, decades later.

Tim:
Yeah, absolutely. I honestly could not say that any better. You were spectacular there. You should host a podcast. No, I really do appreciate you wrapping it up and putting some closing thoughts on there. So I will just leave it there because I feel like that was a great way to close the show. So Kyle, thank you for that explanation. Thank you for tying a bow on things. And thank you for for joining me with your list of artists today. Appreciate it.

Kyle:
Oh, thank you. I’m always happy to to ramble and geek out on some art history.

Tim:

That was a fun episode, and thank you to Kyle for coming on! I am not going to link to every single artist we mentioned in the show notes, but we will definitely make the cowboy hunting the allosaurus painting easy to find for you as well as anything else that seems important. So open up those show notes, find some links, and hopefully find some artists or art history stories that you can share with your students. Monster movies, fireworks, cyborgs, futurists, aliens, it’s all there for you.

Art Ed Radio is produced by the Art of Education University, with audio engineering from Michael Crocker.

Also, if you know about any sci-fi artists that we missed, or ones that you think we should know about, I would love to hear them! Please email me at timothybogatz@theartofeducation.edu and let me know!

You can also email me to submit any questions for the November mailbag, which I will be doing with Amanda Heyn that first week of November–we would love to hear from you–any questions you have about art teaching.

And one last thing–for Halloween, we are collecting art teacher horror stories. The last time we did this we had some incredible stories–exploding paint, inappropriate play-doh sculptures, some injuries, some vomit, and maybe the most fascinating teaching story I’ve ever heard, about a cooperating teacher actively sabotaging their student teacher’s lessons. And while I don’t think anyone has a story that rises to that level, I think we have all had something horrific happen to us in the art room at one time or another. So if you have a story–AND you can laugh about it now–we would love for you to share it! Email me or check out the art of ed community for a post that should be going up today. We want to hear your stories!

The post Ten Sci-Fi Artists to Share with Your Students (Ep. 439) appeared first on The Art of Education University.

Teaching with Authenticity (Ep. 438)

Timothy Bogatz — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 10:00:18 +0000

Following her NOW Conference presentation this summer about teaching with authenticity, Lyndsay Rose joins Tim today for a longer conversation on the topic. Listen as they discuss how not only authenticity, but also the importance of vulnerability and honesty when it comes to our role as teachers. The conversation also delves into suggestions on how to deal with burnout, and Lyndsay offers some of her best advice on how we can learn to fall in love with teaching again.

Full episode transcript below.

Resources and Links

Transcript

Tim:

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.

I’m looking forward to our conversation today, a conversation that will cover a variety of topics, from authenticity to vulnerability to remembering and reflecting on why we love to teach. My guest is Lyndsay Rose. I will let her introduce herself, but If you were at the last NOW Conference, she may be a familiar voice. She closed the conference with a great presentation on teaching with authenticity which was very well received. I think a lot of similar themes will come up in our conversation today, but we will have the chance to dive in even deeper to some of those ideas. I’m eager to get started, so let me bring on Lyndsay now.

Okay, Lyndsay Rose is joining me now. Lyndsay, how are you?

Lyndsay:
I’m doing well, Tim. I’m very excited to be here with you today. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Tim:
Oh, we are thrilled to have you. I had an amazing presentation at the Last Now conference. I think that message is definitely worth talking about a little bit more. So I wanted to have you on and kind of dive in a little deeper. But before we do that, I would love for you to just kind of introduce yourself to everybody who’s listening. ah Can you talk about you know what you’ve done before as a teacher, what you’re doing now, and just anything else you want to share about yourself?

Lyndsay:
Sure. Thank you. Yes, everyone. As you know, my name is Lyndsay Rose. I’m originally from Pennsylvania, born and raised. And that is most of the work that I’ve done as an educator in the last 11 years. I was a teacher in a charter school, one for 800 some kiddos. I have worked at the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design. I mostly spent the majority of my time at the Lancaster County Youth Intervention Center, where I worked with adjudicated youth for about 10 years, and that has been the absolute joy in my teaching career. And most recently I’ve been kind of pivoting a little bit in the art education career. I was the keynote speaker at Kutztown University at their annual art education conference. And most recently as well, I’ve been part of the juror for the Scholastic National Visual Art and Writing Awards, which has been a delight getting to see artwork from all all over the nation.

Tim:
Yeah, that’s really cool. I love participating in Scholastic Awards. I think that’s a great opportunity for kids. So that’s really cool to hear that you’re doing that.

As I said, at your Art Ed Now Conference presentation, you talked a lot about authenticity and why we need to be authentic as teachers. And I love that idea. I love the idea of teaching with authenticity. Can you talk about what authenticity means to you and more importantly, why authenticity is important for teachers?

Lyndsay:
Yes, thank you. So I think what’s important is to first kind of understand what the word authentic means. I think it can kind of lose its way in translation for different folks at different meetings. um But really the true definition of authenticity comes from authentic meaning genuine, not false, true. Especially in teaching, as we talk about teachers and the importance of having it in alignment with your true self. What I really want to know is why you’re a teacher? Why do you want to teach? And it really comes from you. It comes from inside of you and and true in alignment.

And I think what I challenge teachers to understand or to think about, to question is really what feels right and what doesn’t when you’re teaching. Because we all have this idea of why we became teachers. We all know that we love teaching what most of us do, right? um But what is that hiccup? What is getting lost in translation, what is getting lost in the job, what’s getting lost in the career that’s not in alignment with who you are? So just a quick example of something that’s not authentic to me is wearing a unisex t-shirt, right? It just doesn’t feel right to me. Every time I put it on, it just chokes my neck, and the sleeves are too long, and it’s so boxy. So that’s just a really kind of surface level idea of what is not authentic to me. It’s not true to me. It doesn’t fit right. It doesn’t feel right, right?

So if you’d like to hear a story about a teaching authenticity kind of dilemma and Something that I have battled with in the past was kind of selling my soul if you will um I had a parochial school approach me about doing some programming and while I am a spiritual religious person, my values weren’t in alignment with the school and how much I wanted it.

Tim:
Okay.

Lyndsay:
I wanted the salary. I wanted the job. I wasn’t desperate per se, but I really Really wanted a job and I had an interview I talked with the director and I said listen I would love to be transparent and upfront with you, but I don’t know about this religion.

I don’t understand it. It’s not something that I know about, and he’s like, well, it’s okay. We just need you in here. Can you just lie? Can you just lie on your resume?

Can you just lie to beyond that and it didn’t fit? feel right. It didn’t feel authentic. And the overwhelming stress and the floodgates of, oh my gosh, well, if I accept this, then I would have to learn about the religion really quick.

Tim:
Yeah.

Lyndsay:
I would have to act this way, learn this way, know this way. And that’s not authentic. And I feel something important for us to understand is when we’re we’re not authentic to ourselves, it’s not helping anybody else around us.

So if let’s say I took that job and I pretended to be this religion that I wasn’t. Not only am I putting myself in jeopardy and my values, But my students, what if my students would ask me a question and I would have no idea?

And then parents would get concerned and the administration would get concerned and all because I got asked to lie about this and it didn’t feel right.

Tim:
Yeah.

Lyndsay:
So I think the idea of being authentic, especially in your teaching, in your job, does it feel right or does it not feel right? Do we try to rationalize with our brains? um Yes, I can make this work. Yes, I can teach myself about X, Y, and Z just to fit in, just to get that. It’s really sacrificing so much more when we’re not staying true to an alignment with who we are, what we know, and what is true to ourselves.

Tim:
Yeah, that’s well said. And I actually I appreciate that story, but I want to drill down a little bit into something you said at the beginning of that answer, just the idea of, you know, falling in love with teaching or or falling back in love with teaching. And I think the one thing that resonated with teachers when it came to your now conference presentation was the idea that we can fall back in love with teaching because I feel like everybody’s been there. The longer you teach, the more things can become sort of disillusioning for you or difficult for you. And it’s tough to remedy that sometimes. And I feel like we hear about burnout and negativity. We talk about that a lot and don’t talk as much about the positive side of teaching. And I’ll be honest, like I’m guilty of that as well. So my question for you is, how can we go about finding what we love about teaching or remembering what we love about teaching?

Lyndsay:
Ooh, good question, good question. So my opinion and my thought, now folks are able to disagree and we can have a really nice conversation about this disagreement, but to me, I feel like burnout negativity, it comes from external sources and not our own. So what I mean by that is I’m obsessed with like Lord of the Rings.

Tim:
Okay.

Lyndsay:
So anything that you can think about, any kind of movie or any reference or book or television show that you can think about really long time ago when humans were just kind of humans and we just were out in the element.

We had food, shelter, water. We had our kind of place in our community and that was it. And I think about my teaching, my love for teaching that way. So if I lived all that long time ago, if I was how many hundred years ago and I knew in my bones, I knew it was up to me to be a teacher, I would teach a couple of kids, whatever it was at that time, whether it was reading or gardening or whatever the task was, making bread, making shoes, and you just taught and it felt right to you, it felt good to you.

And now we fast forward and we’re in 2024 and just the profound responsibility put on teachers. I feel that’s where the burnout and the negativity come from because you just don’t have a couple of kids that you’re teaching something very natural and authentic.

We are as educators, now expected to teach. Like I said, at one point in my school, I was 800 kids just for me, right? we also have we have parents, we have admin, we have back-to-school nights, we have IEPs, we have all of these different things that are happening to us. We have communications. We have all of these stresses and pressures. We have art clubs and parents and other people wanting your supplies and wanting you to donate and wanting to do.

So all of these external things are put upon us that is completely not teaching. It’s not in alignment with who we are knowing that what we want to do is help kids.

Tim:
Yep.

Lyndsay:
Well, in my example, I love teaching kids and I can’t do that nowadays. I can’t do that really in 2024 because I’m so overstimulated and I’m so burnt out of what is put upon me that I never asked for.

So I think it’s very hard and challenging to be a teacher in 2024 because you’re you’re so far away from your alignment of just wanting to make those meaningful connections with kids.

Tim:
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. yes

Lyndsay:
So it’s not very popular, but to really work through burnout and negativity really just comes from understanding your boundaries and your balance.

So please take it from me. I’m a Libra. I’m the scale astrology. It’s all about balancing your life. It’s about understanding the demands of your job are so far away from your alignment, so you must say no. Can you say no to things that are people that are asking you, even admins asking you? Because ah, again, coming back to that kind of story just a bit ago, I don’t want to lie, and I don’t want to be disingenuous. Who’s that girl who does the organization, Marie Kondo?

Tim:
Marie Kondo, yes.

Lyndsay:
So can we say that as art teachers? Does it bring you joy?

Tim:
Yeah, does it spark joy? Yeah.

Lyndsay:
Yeah. So if someone comes to you and say, Hey, can you do this as a spark joy immediately? No. Um, so I feel that we have to get really good at saying no and holding on to the energy that we do have and stop giving it away so much.

And I am guilty of it as well, Tim, because I, I don’t want to let anybody down or I don’t want to break a student’s heart or I don’t want to, but when we do that, Oh, go ahead.

Tim:
Well, I think a lot of us are people-pleasers, right? And so it’s it’s very difficult to say no. And we’ve done entire podcasts on, you know, why you need to say no. And even if we know that in our head, even if we know that in our heart, it’s still really difficult to do. It’s really difficult to say no to people.

Lyndsay:
And I love that you said that, your head and your heart, but what is your body telling you? If your body’s getting all amped up, if your body’s feeling a certain way and it feels icky or gross, it’s like my unisex t-shirt, when I put it on and it doesn’t feel good, I’m gonna take it off and I’m not gonna put it on again. So I think it’s… um I think there has to be a part in our teachers that we we unite and we we just say politely with respect and kindness, this is not going to work for me. No, thank you. And I think the relief from that is going to be so fulfilling.

And that’s just kind of like another point, too, of coming back to your question of, you know, finding what we love about teaching or remembering what we love about teaching, remembering why.

And I did that at the NOW Conference. One of the prompts was, why did you want to be a teacher? How did you know you wanted to be a teacher? Because I feel like a lot of us, we know it since we’re little. It’s just kind of part of who we are. It’s part of our DNA. We love to teach it just for now. It just happens to be art for us. So it’s what gets you excited.

And for me, for me, it’s I think about all the time I teach kindergartners about printmaking and their reactions when you see how you lift it up and they’re like, or they mix colors or the time that that kid came up out of nowhere and just gave you a hug and say, I love you.

Tim:
Yeah.

Lyndsay:
So it’s, To me, it’s the relationships with my students that I have to focus on because that’s what fills up my heart and fills up my bucket. And as teachers, not many people are filling up our own but are filling up our buckets for us. We are required to fill up our own buckets a lot and that’s a lot of work to teach full-time. We have families, we have friends, we have other things going on.

Tim:
Okay.

Lyndsay:
We go to school and nobody’s filling up our buckets. So I feel like we also have to get better at asking others to do that as well, asking others to fill up our bucket by being nice

Tim:
Great.

Lyndsay:
Helping out, offering to do something. you know there’s There’s all different ways that we can ask others, and it’s not selfish. We can’t be expected to do everything for ourselves all the time. It’s just not possible. It’s just really not. so um So love yourself. Remember why you’re teaching, and if you’re not teaching your best, it’s time to reevaluate. you know It’s time to really, are you getting too far off with that alignment? With being authentic to who you are, what your needs are, and what your desires are.

Tim:
No, but that’s also very well said and I appreciate all of that. I think that’s a good point for teachers, a good spot for them to kind of reflect and and kind of look inward and kind of see how they’re feeling checking in with themselves. I think that’s good advice on how to do that.

Now, I also wanted to talk just another topic that I’ve seen you speak on before, keynotes and other places, just about the idea of vulnerability. And I would love for you to and just kind of in that same vein, talk about the importance of vulnerability and why it helps us to sometimes be vulnerable, even if that is hard to do.

Lyndsay:

Yeah, vulnerable, I feel that has been around for so long, but it’s been such a buzzword, especially with Benne Brown, you know, um just this idea of what it means to be vulnerable.

Tim:
Yeah.

Lyndsay:
And if you ever looked it up on the dictionary, it’s not it’s not a nice definition. I think I looked it up and I said, being open to harm or criticism. And as artists, we’re open to that all the time.

Tim:
Yeah.

Lyndsay:
Whether we signed up for that or not, being an artist, you constantly have people telling telling their opinion to you, whether you ask for it or not. So I feel like we kind of have thick skin you know to get us starting off. But to me, I think i think speaking your truth, no matter what, the matter of the people, no matter the circumstances, that’s what was being vulnerable. It’s coming back to, Being intentional. with you, being intentional with your values, being intentional with your feelings and being intentional with sharing that too.

So an example for me would be, I was in grad class during COVID 2020 and we all had group texts. So we would all get on and watch our professors. We would all be together. And I remember one professor was saying something that we were all just kind of like, oh, I don’t know if this feels right right now.

And she kept going on and kept going on. And I just kept saying the group chat kind of blow up about things. And I spoke up gently and I said, Oh, hey, so and so, you know, I just don’t think I feel comfortable talking about this. Or this is something that wasn’t really what we we were um talking about or this is kind of far off and I feel like this shouldn’t be said right now.

Tim:
Okay.

Lyndsay:
And the amount of texts that I received from the people in my cohort that said, oh my gosh, thank you so much for saying that or I could never do that or I’m so glad that you said something. So everybody, all these people are feeling the same thing, but nobody’s speaking up because why would you want to open yourself up to harm and criticism?

Tim:
Right.

Lyndsay:
It’s hard. It’s really hard to do that. But I think the benefit of that was It’s like a ripple effect, right? So I did it. So maybe maybe that inspires someone else to be like, okay, that wasn’t that bad because me bringing that up, that allowed the other members of my cohort to chime in. And then they spoke up as well and they said, hey, I agree with Lindsay or I think that is okay too. And then my professor’s like, oh, okay, let me fix that. So it’s a disservice I feel if you’re not being honest with something that really resonates with you. Now I will say responsibly that you must show discretion. Vulnerability is not just about airing out your dirty laundry or airing out your grievances or, you know, going on to Google and just writing a nasty review for something. It’s being vulnerable means that it’s true to you, and it’s really touching your core, and you know you want something to change. It’s not being frustrated. It’s not lashing out. It’s something’s not right in your alignment and you want to fix it.

So I encourage folks just to kind of wear vulnerability as like a hat or a cardigan or a piece of jewelry. Try it on and see if it fits. If it doesn’t fit, you spoke up, it didn’t work that well. Okay, take it off and try it again another time until it becomes a permanent part of who you are or like in that analogy, a permanent part of your wardrobe. Because once you start speaking up, speaking kindly in alignment with who you are, it really creates a positive culture that you feel like you can be safe in your group of who you are and able to say something. And even if, I think for me, even if it’s not received well, again, you know, sometimes people do not speak up because they’re afraid of retaliation. They’re afraid of being criticized themselves. But once you start to do that, I feel like it builds your confidence because you know that you’re speaking your truth and nobody can take that away from you. It’s your truth.

It’s your values. You said it. And if people are coming at you, I feel like it’s a confidence booster because you know that you just said what you needed to and what everybody else is saying, it’s just not going to matter to you. So you just represented yourself 100%. Drop that mic and then you walked away because you were representing yourself and you were in truth in that alignment with who you are. So it kind of goes hand in hand with being authentic, being vulnerable. You have to know what you stand for. You have to know your tolerance level and what you are and are not willing to speak up and say.

Tim:
That makes a lot of sense. And I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about how, you know, you being vulnerable, speaking up really helps other people. If there are other benefits for yourself along with, just being authentic, being vulnerable. Are there other benefits that come with sharing our doubts or sharing our vulnerabilities or or the worries we have?

Lyndsay:
Absolutely. I think it can, I think it can foster closer relationships. If you’re able to tell your best friend, maybe something that you’ve been wanting to tell him or her like forever, and then it can have you guys bond or, um, something else that I was thinking about is, um, opening up and saying something. It can, it can create change. It can really spark something in somebody else.

Tim:

Okay. So let me ask you then next, uh, I want to circle back to the idea of burnout because like I said, we, we know so many people who are feeling that way. So I would love to know what are your suggestions for someone who’s feeling burnt out or feeling like they’ve lost their, their love of teaching. What is the the best path forward for someone who’s feeling like that?

Lyndsay:
Good question. I truly feel stepping away from something does absolute wonders. It’s almost like when you when you’re home for so long and you haven’t had a vacation and you’re just so sick of your house and you’re so sick of cleaning, you’re sick of doing everything and you go on vacation and you’re loving vacation and you’re getting all these new ideas and then it goes on for a little bit and you’re like, wow, I really miss home.

You miss that source, you kind of miss that space that you were just so frustrated with before. um I am a big advocate for taking a break, taking a pause, taking a 10-year break, taking a sabbatical, whatever that looks like. And I know a lot of folks don’t out of fear of losing their job, out of fear, of fear.

Tim:
Right.

Lyndsay:
But I’m a big person for saying step away. And I did that after I taught at the K-8 charter school when it was just me.

And I was just so overwhelmed and depressed. and i I said, I don’t ever want to teach art again. This is just not fun. I don’t like it. I’m not even teaching art. And I stepped away from it. And I tried different things within that time. So I literally, I went to um a school that was offering culinary arts because I was really into baking because the great British,excuse me, the great British baking show came on.

Tim:
Okay, yeah. I was going to say that it’s a great show.

Lyndsay:
And I saw all these beautiful little desserts and isn’t it so great?

Tim:
I know, it’s inspiring.

Lyndsay:
You just want to like pick stuff off the screen. It’s so inspiring and it’s artistic. I’m like, oh my gosh, I can totally do this. So I went on a tour and I’m thinking about it. And could I really change my career midway?

And at the end of the day, I decided not to. I went and got my master’s in art. But because I needed to step away and try something different. I needed something different to remind me. of why I loved art in the first place. And it and it really gave me some space from the school that I was at to realize that that was not a good fit for me.

And I know folks have a hard time with that, with thinking, again, that desperation when I was going to take that parochial school job. I’m desperate. I need a job. I need this and that. But when we’re desperate and we’re making these choices based off of fear, it’s not in an alignment with our a authenticity and our balance of who we are.

Tim:
Hm, fine.

Lyndsay:

So if you’re feeling that way, you’re questioning things, you’re hating arts, you don’t want to teach again, this and that, but you know deep down in your heart, you’re a teacher, I would say just step away. So step away, take a breath, get some different perspectives and just kind of find yourself again. And, you know, you’re never really lost from yourself. I feel like we just get buried. I feel like our true desires, our passions, our desires, our happiness just gets buried under all the muck and the burnout and everything that’s required of us that is not teaching.

Tim:
Oh, that’s, I don’t know, it gives me a lot to think about. And I love the idea of, you know, we’re not getting separated from what we want. It’s tough to find it because it can get better. That’s a great analogy for that. Now, my last question for you. I love to close the podcast out with some advice for listeners. You’ve given us a lot of good advice already, but do you have anything else that you want to share, some words of encouragement or advice about authenticity, vulnerability, loving teaching, or just anything else along those lines that you would want to share with everyone?

Lyndsay:
Yeah, for everyone listening, I’m so proud of you and I’m so grateful for you and your choices that you’re making for yourself and for your students. You are making an absolute, absolute difference in their lives. And i just I just want to share that you’re more than just a teacher. Your students observe you. They look at you. They analyze how you talk, react, respond, and interact.

So if you’re not 100% yourself, if you are not going to be yourself, what your students are gaining from you is not your true self. And that is a big disservice to them and to you. So always make sure that you are in an alignment with your authenticity and your good as gold.

Tim:
Yeah, I love that. I think that is very well said and some very good advice. and Appreciate the encouragement for everyone as well. So Lindsay, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciated you being vulnerable, sharing so much ah about yourself, your own experience and and how that can help everyone else as well. So it’s been a great conversation and we really appreciate it.

Lyndsay:
Well, thanks, Tim, and thanks to the Art of Education University. I love you all so much, and I’m looking forward to seeing you all again in the future.

Tim:
Love it. Thanks.

Lyndsay:
Thank you.

Tim:

Thank you to Lyndsay for coming on, I’ve really enjoyed hearing all of her ideas, how she explains things, and just the message that I think a lot of us need to hear when it comes to how we think about our teaching. Two things, in particular, that stood out to me, were the idea that it’s okay for us to say no–in fact, it’s better for us to sometimes say no. That was a lesson that was very hard for me to learn as a teacher, and something we have talked about a lot on this podcast in the past. So if you are new, please take that message to heart, and if you are experienced, please take that as a reminder. The second thing that stood out to me from Lyndsay was the idea that we need to take time to ourselves. That’s another message we have talked about a lot on the pod, and another I would encourage you to reflect on. What are you doing for yourself? How do you take time for yourself? And how do those things make you a better teacher. Something very much worth reflecting on as we move forward through this school year.

Art Ed Radio is produced by the Art of Education University, with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you, as always, for listening, and we will talk to you again next week!

The post Teaching with Authenticity (Ep. 438) appeared first on The Art of Education University.

Art Room Superpowers: 3 Ways to Teach with Comic Books

Kyle Wood — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 10:00:32 +0000

Storytelling is a cornerstone of human communication and cultural expression. From the enigmatic cave paintings of Lascaux, which some scholars believe were for ritualistic or narrative purposes, to the intricate Benin Bronzes chronicling the history of a kingdom, to the ornate illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, visual storytelling has consistently captivated and informed societies across time. In this rich lineage, comic books and even contemporary internet memes emerge as dynamic evolutions of this age-old tradition. Comic books, with their unique blend of text and image, not only entertain but challenge, educate, and inspire. They reaffirm the enduring power of visual narratives to shape our understanding of the world and our place within it.

Don’t turn the page—reveal the superpowers that comic books can bring to your students with innovative artists and three big ideas!

Connect visual arts with other content areas.

Comic books offer an engaging platform for cross-curricular learning in the art classroom. Comic books are malleable and can easily incorporate other connections, such as technology, English Language Arts, and history. Challenge students to make comic books that capture historical events, explore mythology, or advocate for a social issue. By integrating different topics, students make meaningful connections between concepts and classes that are otherwise siloed. This shows students how all disciplines relate to each other. This also reinforces understanding, improves information retention, highlights different perspectives, and develops empathy.

While many art lessons aid students in developing visual literacy skills, comic books connect text and images, which is particularly helpful for English Language Learners. Comic books allow students ample practice reading, writing, illustrating, and visualizing characters, settings, and storylines. Students develop a greater understanding of story arcs and strengthen self-expression and communication skills.

Inspire students with these five comic artists.

1. Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby was a legendary comic book artist, writer, and co-creator of some of the biggest heroes in comic history. Before his comic career, he put his drawing talents to use scouting and mapping the terrain during World War 2. He helped to create The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, Iron Man, and more. Kirby proves how powerful comic art can be in making a difference! His concept art played a key role in a covert CIA mission to rescue hostages in Iran.

2. Jim Davis

Jim Davis created Garfield, which is one of the longest-running and most successful comics in history. Before he found that success, Davis had some major setbacks. His first comic, called Gnorm Gnat, lasted a little over a year before his publisher told him he needed to start over with something new. Davis created a comic called Jon, which evolved into Garfield. He had help from Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts. Davis was having trouble drawing Garfield dancing and Schulz suggested giving Garfield big feet so he would look more natural walking on his hind legs. Davis shows the importance of flexibility, resiliency, and applying feedback.

3. Sarah Andersen

Sarah Andersen creates delightful webcomics. She has a simple yet expressive art style, paired with relatable humor and observations about everyday life. Her comics are accessible and engaging for students. Andersen’s webcomic, Sarah’s Scribbles, demonstrates how effective minimalist drawings can be in conveying emotions and telling stories. Additionally, her success in self-publishing and building an online following through social media inspires students to explore non-traditional avenues for sharing their own comic creations.

4. Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis is an excellent example of the power of comics to convey personal and historical narratives. Her work demonstrates how comics can explore difficult topics, such as war, political oppression, and cultural identity, in a way that is both informative and emotionally engaging. Additionally, Satrapi’s use of humor and personal anecdotes amidst the serious subject matter showcases the versatility of the medium.

5. David Morgan-Mar

David Morgan-Mar, creator of Irregular Webcomic!, offers a unique example for students that blends a passion for comics with plastic building bricks. His innovative use of action figures and sets to create characters and environments demonstrates how to portray a story without traditional drawing. Morgan-Mar’s work encourages students to think outside the box, utilizing readily available materials and their own creativity to construct narratives. This approach not only lowers the barrier to entry for aspiring comic artists but also highlights the importance of resourcefulness and adaptability in the creative process.

Switch things up with these three different ways to create comic books with your students!

One of the greatest things about comic books is that they are an extremely flexible medium. They are adaptable to the tools and resources at hand, making them a perfect fit for any classroom. Choose a format that meets your budget, supplies, and students!

1. Make traditional comic books.

Brainstorm story elements and introduce students to the fundamentals of panel layout. Teach them how to use different panel sizes and shapes to control pacing, emphasize important events, and create visual interest. Show Piet Mondrian for another example of how to visualize similar principles of design. Encourage students to experiment with various angles and perspectives to make their pages more dramatic. Discuss the importance of speech bubbles and captions to clearly convey dialogue and narration. Use the student-friendly worksheet, Plan Your Comic Book, in FLEX Curriculum to help with ideation and organization.

Once the comic is complete, explore different binding options. Accordion fold books are a simple and effective way to showcase a continuous narrative. Traditional stitched binding offers a more polished look, while staples or metal rings provide a quick and easy solution. If you want a fun, unconventional book format, try explosion books!

2. Let students be the hero of their own story!

Using tablets or similar electronic devices, students photograph themselves acting out their stories. They’ll love transforming themselves into superheroes, explorers, or whatever else their imagination conjures. Use a green screen so students can place themselves anywhere. Source backgrounds from found images, draw using traditional media, or even craft within digital art apps. Most available apps provide intuitive platforms where students can easily combine photographs, illustrations, and text into captivating visual narratives.

3. Collaborate on a modular comic.

This idea encourages teamwork, creativity, and storytelling skills while still allowing for individual artistic expression. As a class, brainstorm key elements of a comic, such as the main characters. Ensure there are transitional panels at the start and end of each page to ensure a cohesive narrative flow. Think of this activity as a new version of the Surrealist Exquisite Corpse game.

For example, each page will be a day in the life of the character. The first panel of each student’s page will portray the character waking up. Each student will then tell their own mini-story to fill the rest of their page. The story will close with the last panel which will show the character going to bed. Once the pages are complete, digitize and compile them into a class slide deck. Students can make individual copies of the deck where they can select and rearrange pages to create their own unique versions of the class comic.

Whether students create traditional comic books, perform as superheroes, or collaborate on a collective narrative, students can use comics to explore history, science, social issues, or their own imaginations. These connections promote a deeper understanding of concepts that go well beyond the book. Introduce many innovative and inspirational comic book artists to help students embrace the versatility and power of the medium. Practicing visual storytelling empowers students to become creators, communicators, and critical thinkers in a world increasingly shaped by visual media.

Share a neat comic book lesson your students love!

How do you use literacy in your classroom to enhance visual art?

To continue the conversation, join us in The Art of Ed Community!

The post Art Room Superpowers: 3 Ways to Teach with Comic Books appeared first on The Art of Education University.