How important is it to allow freedom to choose? Today Sue and I were driving out to see a friend who needed to be hospitalized last night. We were discussing "what was the right thing for her to do in regard to her mother's visit this week. It made me think, oddly enough, of all the times through all the years I have taught when I didn't give my students the right to choose, ANYTHING.
I always thought of the "art of teaching" and "teaching art" as somewhat synonymous. I would get an idea of how to get across a concept to my students by having them create this "wonderful" work of art.
I looked around me at how other art teachers operated. I saw "worksheets" filled with value charts, color wheels, coloring book pictures fill in the spaces with value, and other time wasters. So learning by creating nice works of art seemed not only legitimate, but preferable to the alternatives.
Most of the time it just started with a simple idea and I would take them through the lesson one step at a time. They would ask, "do you have any examples of how this is going to turn out?" I would say, no, just trust me, it will be really cool. It was because most of the time I hadn't worked out in my mind how it WAS going to turn out. I thought of that as the "art of teaching" and justified it as such. So really I was creating art through my students. I thought that was a pretty creative thing to do. Some of the students did better at following directions, having hand/eye skills, could use the tools more effectively, and were well disciplined enough that their works came out REALLY nice. I gave them high grades. At the other end of the scale were students who didn't pay any attention to the directions, messed up their papers by going a different direction entirely, and weren't interested enough in the assignment to care about finishing it. They received lower grades. To be fair to myself (and why not?), a lot of my students did like what they accomplished, took the works home and framed them, and told me years later how much they enjoyed my class and that they still had those works and were proud of them.
So now I look at the works my students are doing with this new idea of ALL CHOICE EVERYTHING and look back at examples of art from my old way of teaching. Are these better? Are these more sophisticated, professional looking, mature, or creative? Should they be? Will observers of my displays comment that my former students work was better?
My answer is that students need to be appreciated for who they are and where they are in the scheme of learning. I have high expectations of my students and encourage them to do their level best. What I DON'T expect of them NOW is to perform at some professional level. What I am seeing from the finished work is pure individual performance. No direction following, teacher suck up, play to the audience works of art here. Will people look at my displays of art NOW and pat ME on the back? Ask me if I care. I'm not even sure how many of the works will actually be displayed because I have given the students the choice to display or take them home when they are finished.
As I continue this journey through Art Teaching 2.0, I want to take time now and then to reveal who I am...good, bad, and ugly. I've touched a lot of lives in the last 40 years of being in the classroom. I know for a fact that the ones I touch in the future will be a lot better off from making their own choices.
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