Ferry thnking...

"Use what talent you possess - the woods would be very silent

 if no birds sang except those that sang best."

Henry Van Dyke

Just sending in another post while I'm here in New York City for the next few days.  Having a wonderful visit with daughter, Kateri and granddaughter, Mathilde.  The weather has been perfect for the middle of November.  We took an evening ride on the Staten Island Ferry yesterday, watching the lights of Manhatten getting closer as we stood on the open deck in front.  The video is going out and past the Statue of Liberty at sunset.

As we walked from place to place yesterday, I had some time to ponder my program and think about a couple of students who I have had "talks" with about their attitude toward the class and their apparent lack of interest in what we're doing.  I'm told that if I'm even reaching half of the students with this type of approach, I am succeeding; and if some are not "getting it", but are still learning about art, so be it.  I don't disagree with the logic.  After all, this idea of self governing their learning is new to all the students.  So there is bound to be a couple that just wouldn't be interested no matter what approach I used to teach them.  But it DID make me think through the way in which I have approached the lessons and the projects themselves.

I may have been so intent on not influencing the students to do things a certain way so that ANY idea was THEIR idea that I didn't adequately prepare them with enough background first before I expected them to make informed choices.  The demos that I did were cursory enough,  I felt, to whet their appetites without steering them in any one direction.  I was hoping that they would be curious enough to glean information out of the texts, the art books and magazines, and the other sources of information, i.e., websites, etc. that THAT ALONE would be the impetus for them to proceed with a personally motivated direction.  I'm happy to say that this IS true for most, so, again, perhaps this will come and I need only to be patient.  

Since I'm not necessarily a patient person, however, I believe this cycle I will intentionally show the students some more elaborate video footage and demonstrations that some may go ahead and decide to try out if they have less curiosity than the others.  I guess I can still consider it "self directed" if it's what they want to do, regardless if it wasn't altogether their own idea.  They will still have the options of media choice and expression and size choices and length of time to work on it.  This IS a journey, as it were, so I suppose small little ventures off the main road of travel might be in order.  Of course, what I'm hoping for is that ALL of my students find the class not only interesting, but are able to find what they personally are doing to be interesting enough for them so they end up with a feeling of accomplishment.