Though my personal philosophy and style of teaching will grow and adjust as I become a more experienced educator, there are many points of interest that I have taken away from this course that I will consider as I construct my classroom and attitudes for instruction. Prior to my first year of teaching, I want to establish goals in terms of student learning, motivation and creating a positive classroom climate. I will also create plans to achieve these goals, and means to monitor my successes (or failures) so that I can continue to learn and develop as an influential art educator.
Like many art teachers, I anticipate that I will end up teaching a variety of age levels throughout my career, and that I may even be shuffled around schools within a district. If this is the case, I will have to adjust my teaching style and lesson methods to the students I am instructing. In order to best engage student learning, it is critical for me to understand how children’s behavioral and cognitive learning skills develop as they age. It is also unlikely that I will be seeing students for more than an hour a day, if even daily at all, because art is quite often an elective that doesn’t appear in students daily schedules. This lack of class time with students makes attention to student learning twice as important.
Primarily, it will be important to understand what kinds of art (and art history references) are best suited for different age levels, and what sorts of artistic discourses and activities are most effective for different developmental skill sets.
One idea that I hope all of my students will be able take away from my class is the idea of what a critique, or “art discussion” is, and how they can become effective communicators when learning and talking about new artworks. Teaching students how to be respectful and articulate in discussing artwork, whether it be a piece of their own art, a work of a classmate, or an example from art history can be approached by behavioral learning methods. For example, the use of cues and prompts can be useful in getting students to understand how to approach these discussions.
Cueing is the act of providing an antecedent stimulus just before a specific behavior is expected to take place, in other words, setting the stage for a behavior to occur. (Woolfolk, 255). A cue in my art classroom may be having students get in to groups, or instructing them to put their work up on classroom easels. This sets the stage for a critique or discussion about to take place. Over time and practice, students will learn what is expected of them during these activities, including how they should behave and the kind of conversations that should take place. When the cue occurs, eventually they will know what is coming next and act accordingly.
Prompts are additional supplements to cues that provide a reminder as to what the cue signifies for expected behavior (Woolfolk, 255). A prompt for a critique may be a guide sheet that outlines the expected behaviors (pleasant language, constructive feedback, etc.) or even a checklist for what kind of artistic observations the students should be making (ex. “Make at least one comment on a student’s use of line in their image”). The prompts should be used directly after the cues, so that the detailed instructions from the prompt become subconsciously associated with the act of getting in groups or displaying their work on the board. Eventually, students will not need the prompts to have the artistic discourse necessary to a critique. This has now become a learned behavior, and chances are that many students will revert to their learned language and structure of supplying criticism when face with interpreting new art, even outside of the classroom.
Throughout the school year, I will be able to monitor the classroom discussions and make notes of how many items from the written prompt become a part of the student’s learned behaviors and are used throughout class discussion, even when not in an official critique session.
As a way to monitor student success, I will incorporate primarily authentic assessments (Woolfolk, 550) such as final portfolios as comprehensive collections of student work throughout the term. These sorts of overarching assignments help students learn organizational and time management skills while introducing them to foundations of careers in the arts. In order to effectively evaluate these assessments, I should design clear rubrics to grade by, so that there is a lower sense of subjectivity and students know what are expected of them. Qualities I may look for in a final portfolio will be organization, completion and selection of pieces that reflect the student’s best works throughout the term.
As an additional assessment, upon completion of each project or assignment, I want students to be able to present and discuss their works, either in writing or in front of their peers. Not all students may be comfortable sharing their work in front of the class, and with topics in art that may be sensitive and personal, it is understandable. For project presentations I will provide my students with the options of either presenting their piece to the class, or writing a short paragraph about their work and their experience creating it. Presenting in front of the class is valuable because students often take away artistic ideas and techniques from looking at work from their peers, but creating a comfortable, non-pressured learning environment is just as important.
I understand that art will not be every students’ favorite class, and that some may even have a learned resistance to it, based on their own self image as an artist or how they were brought up to understand the role of the arts in their school and society. Some students may simply lack the motivation it takes to be successful in an art classroom. Though notorious as “an easy A”, the art class does take a certain amount of mental energy, student effort and physical focus in order to learn and achieve. Motivating children, especially older ones, to do well, or even just to put in effort in an art room is especially difficult, because many believe that their grade in an art room is not nearly important as their grade in a math or science class. Understanding how students become motivated, intrinsically and extrinsically, and how that reflects in their efforts in my class.
Intrinsic motivation is the natural desire to accomplish a task or complete an activity for personal pleasure or reward, while extrinsic motivation comes from the drive to finish an activity for an external reward, or as an avoidance of punishment (Woolfolk, 431). Many students approach schoolwork with only extrinsic motivation – they study, attend classes, and complete assignments for the reward of a good grade, or out of fear of a poor future. I believe that intrinsic motivation can be refined and defined for a student as they learn more about the course materials and themselves. As a child, I used to clean my room for fear of reprimand from my mother, but as I grew older, I began cleaning for the personal satisfaction I get from an uncluttered space. For many students, art may present itself in the same way – first as a chore, but eventually as a hobby. At first, many of my students may only be motivated by grades, but with exposure to art as a process and not a product, I anticipate that some will begin to find motivation in the therapeutic properties of the creative process.
In addition to grades, peer recognition is often a motivator in the classroom, especially in creating visual art pieces that are easily observable. This can work both ways: it can motivate students to put in extra effort, so that they can be recognized for their artistic ability and achievements, or it may discourage those who have a lesser self image as an artist to try for fear of failure in front of peers. One way I can work to establish a balance between the two is in the emphasis on the process over the product. Developing assignments that may not have a glorious final image expected of students is a way to break down the barriers of self-consciousness that many students experience in the art room. Also, collaborative projects are a great starting point not only for developing group work skills, but also as an introduction to principles and theories in contemporary art.
When I reflect on my own art education, I lament that most of it was influenced by traditional, European art forms and movements. It wasn’t until college that I learned Picasso is most certainly not a contemporary artist, and even in my university art history courses, artists of different cultures, races, sexualities and genders were widely underrepresented. Despite age levels or learning abilities, I want to unsure that my students are exposed to diversity in their coursework – diverse artists, diverse art forms and diverse activities.
Instances in which societal inequalities expose themselves will arise in modern classrooms, whether it is in the use of offensive language, social exclusion, or even misinterpretation of course content among students. As an educator, I have the responsibility to intervene and educate students on how behaviors, thoughts and actions shape the world they live in and how it affects the way they learn. As an art teacher, I have the added opportunities to educate about social justice issues through visual culture. I will have flexibility in creating a syllabus rich with content that extends beyond the view of the rich, white, hetero male. Having the power to expose kids to art and medias from different cultures, religions and viewpoints than their own, there will be more opportunity to open the classroom to discussion otherwise discouraged or avoided in other subjects. Perhaps by getting students to talk and listen to each other about difficult topics, we can reverse or even prevent the internalized ideas of other people and the world that we were taught as children.
I am especially interested in making sure that my syllabus is enriched with artists of non-American cultures, and that both women and people of color are represented in my lessons. No matter what the racial, cultural or socioeconomic makeup of my school looks like – the art room is the perfect place to open up otherwise delicate subjects through the dissection of visual culture that influences our contemporary society. Creating a welcoming and safe environment where students feel secure to express opinions and emotions is no easy task, but can be achieved through a mutual understanding of student and teacher, establishing a relationship enriched with balance, trust and accountability.
When instructing students who are different than me, whether racially, culturally or socioeconomically, I have to continually remind myself of what privileges I have, and how my experiences may vary from theirs. Taking in to account the context of where I am teaching, the lives of my students and ideas such as the legacy of discrimination (Woolfolk, 219), I will have to redefine what I expect of classroom behavior and assignments so that goals are not too far out of reach for students, or too easily accomplished.
As I work on building an open classroom with a warm and inviting climate, I will notice the changes in my student’s abilities to articulate their artistic preferences or decisions to reflect on life experiences or emotions in their classwork. My job is not to be the school counselor, but understanding that the art room often becomes a stage for social, interpersonal or emotional issues students are facing is an important concept to remember as I interact and instruct children.
There are many more factors to becoming an impactful teacher beyond student learning, motivation and classroom climate, but these three components help to set the foundation for coursework and classroom management beyond a standard syllabus. With experience, my philosophies of teaching and learning will change, develop and refine themselves to reflect my effectiveness and influence as an art educator. Being prepared with the proper understandings of educational psychology can only better serve me as I enter my first years of teaching and become a stronger educator.
Reference
Hoy, A. W., & Ohio State University. (2013). Educational psychology.
Like many art teachers, I anticipate that I will end up teaching a variety of age levels throughout my career, and that I may even be shuffled around schools within a district. If this is the case, I will have to adjust my teaching style and lesson methods to the students I am instructing. In order to best engage student learning, it is critical for me to understand how children’s behavioral and cognitive learning skills develop as they age. It is also unlikely that I will be seeing students for more than an hour a day, if even daily at all, because art is quite often an elective that doesn’t appear in students daily schedules. This lack of class time with students makes attention to student learning twice as important.
Primarily, it will be important to understand what kinds of art (and art history references) are best suited for different age levels, and what sorts of artistic discourses and activities are most effective for different developmental skill sets.
One idea that I hope all of my students will be able take away from my class is the idea of what a critique, or “art discussion” is, and how they can become effective communicators when learning and talking about new artworks. Teaching students how to be respectful and articulate in discussing artwork, whether it be a piece of their own art, a work of a classmate, or an example from art history can be approached by behavioral learning methods. For example, the use of cues and prompts can be useful in getting students to understand how to approach these discussions.
Cueing is the act of providing an antecedent stimulus just before a specific behavior is expected to take place, in other words, setting the stage for a behavior to occur. (Woolfolk, 255). A cue in my art classroom may be having students get in to groups, or instructing them to put their work up on classroom easels. This sets the stage for a critique or discussion about to take place. Over time and practice, students will learn what is expected of them during these activities, including how they should behave and the kind of conversations that should take place. When the cue occurs, eventually they will know what is coming next and act accordingly.
Prompts are additional supplements to cues that provide a reminder as to what the cue signifies for expected behavior (Woolfolk, 255). A prompt for a critique may be a guide sheet that outlines the expected behaviors (pleasant language, constructive feedback, etc.) or even a checklist for what kind of artistic observations the students should be making (ex. “Make at least one comment on a student’s use of line in their image”). The prompts should be used directly after the cues, so that the detailed instructions from the prompt become subconsciously associated with the act of getting in groups or displaying their work on the board. Eventually, students will not need the prompts to have the artistic discourse necessary to a critique. This has now become a learned behavior, and chances are that many students will revert to their learned language and structure of supplying criticism when face with interpreting new art, even outside of the classroom.
Throughout the school year, I will be able to monitor the classroom discussions and make notes of how many items from the written prompt become a part of the student’s learned behaviors and are used throughout class discussion, even when not in an official critique session.
As a way to monitor student success, I will incorporate primarily authentic assessments (Woolfolk, 550) such as final portfolios as comprehensive collections of student work throughout the term. These sorts of overarching assignments help students learn organizational and time management skills while introducing them to foundations of careers in the arts. In order to effectively evaluate these assessments, I should design clear rubrics to grade by, so that there is a lower sense of subjectivity and students know what are expected of them. Qualities I may look for in a final portfolio will be organization, completion and selection of pieces that reflect the student’s best works throughout the term.
As an additional assessment, upon completion of each project or assignment, I want students to be able to present and discuss their works, either in writing or in front of their peers. Not all students may be comfortable sharing their work in front of the class, and with topics in art that may be sensitive and personal, it is understandable. For project presentations I will provide my students with the options of either presenting their piece to the class, or writing a short paragraph about their work and their experience creating it. Presenting in front of the class is valuable because students often take away artistic ideas and techniques from looking at work from their peers, but creating a comfortable, non-pressured learning environment is just as important.
I understand that art will not be every students’ favorite class, and that some may even have a learned resistance to it, based on their own self image as an artist or how they were brought up to understand the role of the arts in their school and society. Some students may simply lack the motivation it takes to be successful in an art classroom. Though notorious as “an easy A”, the art class does take a certain amount of mental energy, student effort and physical focus in order to learn and achieve. Motivating children, especially older ones, to do well, or even just to put in effort in an art room is especially difficult, because many believe that their grade in an art room is not nearly important as their grade in a math or science class. Understanding how students become motivated, intrinsically and extrinsically, and how that reflects in their efforts in my class.
Intrinsic motivation is the natural desire to accomplish a task or complete an activity for personal pleasure or reward, while extrinsic motivation comes from the drive to finish an activity for an external reward, or as an avoidance of punishment (Woolfolk, 431). Many students approach schoolwork with only extrinsic motivation – they study, attend classes, and complete assignments for the reward of a good grade, or out of fear of a poor future. I believe that intrinsic motivation can be refined and defined for a student as they learn more about the course materials and themselves. As a child, I used to clean my room for fear of reprimand from my mother, but as I grew older, I began cleaning for the personal satisfaction I get from an uncluttered space. For many students, art may present itself in the same way – first as a chore, but eventually as a hobby. At first, many of my students may only be motivated by grades, but with exposure to art as a process and not a product, I anticipate that some will begin to find motivation in the therapeutic properties of the creative process.
In addition to grades, peer recognition is often a motivator in the classroom, especially in creating visual art pieces that are easily observable. This can work both ways: it can motivate students to put in extra effort, so that they can be recognized for their artistic ability and achievements, or it may discourage those who have a lesser self image as an artist to try for fear of failure in front of peers. One way I can work to establish a balance between the two is in the emphasis on the process over the product. Developing assignments that may not have a glorious final image expected of students is a way to break down the barriers of self-consciousness that many students experience in the art room. Also, collaborative projects are a great starting point not only for developing group work skills, but also as an introduction to principles and theories in contemporary art.
When I reflect on my own art education, I lament that most of it was influenced by traditional, European art forms and movements. It wasn’t until college that I learned Picasso is most certainly not a contemporary artist, and even in my university art history courses, artists of different cultures, races, sexualities and genders were widely underrepresented. Despite age levels or learning abilities, I want to unsure that my students are exposed to diversity in their coursework – diverse artists, diverse art forms and diverse activities.
Instances in which societal inequalities expose themselves will arise in modern classrooms, whether it is in the use of offensive language, social exclusion, or even misinterpretation of course content among students. As an educator, I have the responsibility to intervene and educate students on how behaviors, thoughts and actions shape the world they live in and how it affects the way they learn. As an art teacher, I have the added opportunities to educate about social justice issues through visual culture. I will have flexibility in creating a syllabus rich with content that extends beyond the view of the rich, white, hetero male. Having the power to expose kids to art and medias from different cultures, religions and viewpoints than their own, there will be more opportunity to open the classroom to discussion otherwise discouraged or avoided in other subjects. Perhaps by getting students to talk and listen to each other about difficult topics, we can reverse or even prevent the internalized ideas of other people and the world that we were taught as children.
I am especially interested in making sure that my syllabus is enriched with artists of non-American cultures, and that both women and people of color are represented in my lessons. No matter what the racial, cultural or socioeconomic makeup of my school looks like – the art room is the perfect place to open up otherwise delicate subjects through the dissection of visual culture that influences our contemporary society. Creating a welcoming and safe environment where students feel secure to express opinions and emotions is no easy task, but can be achieved through a mutual understanding of student and teacher, establishing a relationship enriched with balance, trust and accountability.
When instructing students who are different than me, whether racially, culturally or socioeconomically, I have to continually remind myself of what privileges I have, and how my experiences may vary from theirs. Taking in to account the context of where I am teaching, the lives of my students and ideas such as the legacy of discrimination (Woolfolk, 219), I will have to redefine what I expect of classroom behavior and assignments so that goals are not too far out of reach for students, or too easily accomplished.
As I work on building an open classroom with a warm and inviting climate, I will notice the changes in my student’s abilities to articulate their artistic preferences or decisions to reflect on life experiences or emotions in their classwork. My job is not to be the school counselor, but understanding that the art room often becomes a stage for social, interpersonal or emotional issues students are facing is an important concept to remember as I interact and instruct children.
There are many more factors to becoming an impactful teacher beyond student learning, motivation and classroom climate, but these three components help to set the foundation for coursework and classroom management beyond a standard syllabus. With experience, my philosophies of teaching and learning will change, develop and refine themselves to reflect my effectiveness and influence as an art educator. Being prepared with the proper understandings of educational psychology can only better serve me as I enter my first years of teaching and become a stronger educator.
Reference
Hoy, A. W., & Ohio State University. (2013). Educational psychology.