Art Spirit

Learning from one another.

I swim on a masters team several mornings a week. In all of the six lanes at 5:30am there are a wide variety of swimmers. On any given day the adults that show up are a range that spans from new swimmers, to people who grew up swimming in age-group leagues, to several former US National Team members and a couple of former Olympians (one as recent as and alternate Pentathlete 2016 in Rio!). Cool. Yes, and not unlike our classrooms wherein students come to us each day with their levels of experienced to novice. The thing that I learn each time I swim is really there is more to learn about swimming and always WOW! The talent and practice is inspiring. But this really isn't about swimming what I want to talk about is the importance of modeling. How we model and what model to our students is then modeled in the work. It matters when are students gathered around to be shown the 'next step' or the 'how to apply' demonstration that I am intentional in my words and and actions. What is important about modeling is that everything is modelling. I believe that it doesn't matter the modality you are choosing to implement in your classroom that is to say TAB, Restorative, Gradual Release or any of them; what is important about what I do is how I am demonstrating through my actions that is not so much about talent but more about practice. Demonstrating practice in planning, in thinking through choices of images or color and all of the implicit pieces of art making should happen through in modelling. I look for evidence in student work after a demonstration that helps me see if the demonstration met the goal for the designated portion of learning. Not that the students are doing what I did; rather I know a demonstration has been successful when I see and hear an interpretation of what I showed. I rarely hang up the the demonstration piece ; instead leave it out on a table so students can 'check'. I do this because students who have executive functioning or processing challenges need the opportunity to listen, watch then 'check back'; leaving the demonstration piece out gives everyone the opportunity to 'check back'. So, back to swim practice. The opportunity to observe and apply the modelling in practice that I get each time I swim in a lane next to some amazing swimmer is not unlike our classroom experience wherein there is modelling by the coach or another swimmer and we are learn as well as move with these observations to another level of engagement and understanding.

Routines

It is the last week of September. We have been in school for a little over a month. I have seen all 450 of my students for two rotations. This means we spent approximately 8 hours together. A very short amount of time relative to the volume of work the students have already produced. To clarify: produced means sketch journal, processes, reflecting, discussion and all the pieces we do each lesson. In the studio classroom I maintain ‘an every moment counts’ approach. Another way to think about this; we use all of our instructional time all of the time. This looks like explorations in art applications and the sounds like students being given the responsibility through implementation and maintaining consistent predicable routines. There are as many ways to present and attend to routines in a classroom as there are art educators. My best thinking and reflection has lead me to create and maintain a community of makers who ‘…are caretakers of the materials, tools and each other…’ I say this quite bit. I use this phrase consistently with all grade levels for example : ‘…[student name] thank you for wiping off the table/using the brush to create these beautiful strokes…’ or whatever we are learning and I am reinforcing through language and action. 

The culture of a classroom is a direct reflection of the adult action in that classroom. A community of makers that are regarded with their names and with their individuality is a safe place to learn and succeed in the arts.

Make a place to sit down.

Wendell Berry tells us in poem ‘ How to Be a Poet’ to : ‘Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.’This is about listening; listening to the quiet. Classroom management is about listening to the quiet space between student action and student learning. Now, you might have already enlisted biases about how the art room looks different and that students need to talk to one another. I agree. Students do need to talk with one another about their art/art making and the art room does look different. The quiet is about routines, relationship, safe environment, consistent kindness and intentional adult action. All of which when in place instructional practices can and do thrive;conversely without routines, relationship, safe environment, consistent kindness and intentional adult action the very best resources, units and planning fall flat. 

Classroom management is a deep layer with in the strata of the studio classroom. It can and does look different with every teacher. And every teacher at some point in their day or week struggles with management of behaviors of the human beings they are charged with educating in visual arts practices. So, think about it. How are the routines going in your classroom? Do you have some? Are there consistent predicable things you do with your students? Do you have systems in place that ensure the safety of all students all the time? As the adult in the room, how do you follow up on those systems when a student/s are or become unsafe or off task?

In my studio classroom we have agreements. Agreements look like rules the difference is we all generated the pieces that we felt made artists and art making meaningful as well as doable within our studio classroom. So the change is that the students created the agreements instead of the ‘rules’ coming from the teachers(me) through group activity. The students decided what they felt was important about ‘what arts do…’ and ‘what art is…’; then individually made choices about what was important. In the ‘individual step’ each student from 2nd -6th grade completed some form of the following sentence: I agree to _________ and ____________ so that I can _________________ in our creative learning environment. Then we moved from the individual back to the collective by sharing with two thought partners (other students). For 1st grade we generated what artists do… and what is art… then each student shared with two thought partners (other students) what they felt they could do to be an artist and do art. The agreements are posted in our classroom on chart paper as a reminder; the sentences are in the student journals. The purpose in doing this is to create a collaborative and collective responsibility for the function of the daily environment in the studio classroom. 

Classroom management must be cultivated and attended to. Management is woven into instructional practices. There is not one without the other; to ensure student success in the visual arts we consistently must ‘make a place’ for the ‘quiet’ in the space between management and instructional practice.

How to Be a Poet

By Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

Source: Poetry (Poetry)

5th grade Fibonacci Sequence Expressions

 

Inspired by Fibonacci and this fabulous video, we explored the numeric expression as well as the artists expression of the Fibonacci Sequence. 

3rd grade Mural Inspirations

   

 

Art can function to inspire, educate and memorialize. Our city has many public art pieces that serve to teach, imagine and remember people ideas and topic that are important to the community.  Looking at art work that is not only public, that is chosen and funded by the public but also inspirational the student in the 3^rd grade imagined they were chosen by the school to create a mural for the cafeteria. The students generated ideas, created a plan and lastly defined their inspiration for their mural through their informational written artist’s statement.

 

5th grade Futurist inspired Figures

A challenge in figure drawing is getting everything in proportion. While there are lots of subtle differences between individuals, human proportions fit within a fairly standard range, the basic unit of measurement is the 'head', which is the distance from the top of the head to the chin.

This handy unit of measurement is reasonably standard, and has long been used by artists to establish the proportions of the human figure.

The proportions used in figure drawing are:
- An average person, is generally 7-and-a-half heads tall (including the head).
- An ideal figure, used when aiming for an impression of nobility or grace, is drawn at 8 heads tall.
- A heroic figure, used in the heroic for the depiction of gods and superheroes, is eight-and-a-half heads tall Most of the additional length comes from a bigger chest and longer legs.

Students in the 5^th grade created Futurist inspired Figures using the above rules of proportion. Futurism has been defined as a style of the fine arts developed originally by a group of Italian artists about 1910 in which forms derived chiefly from cubism were used to represent rapid movement and dynamic motion.

 

With this definition in mind students choose athletes as reference then created their painting showing movement.

BEAUTIFUL!

Dear (Art) Teacher

Dear (Art) Teacher,

Remember that you are, simply a teacher.

Humbled by the vastness and sacredness of the content you are privileged to have come to know.  Perhaps, more or not more deeply than your students. Perhaps side by side, with them or behind them.

You are the custodian of their path. Cleaning it, watching ahead for sign posts. Sign posts ahead showing what can be, what could become.

You are the storm wall. You are the landing pad, the spring board, the pillow. And it is not about you, it (the content, the meaning, the work) has never been about you. What IT is about is the truth that is creativity, that is a practice both individual and collective.

Remember we are contemplating ( and sometimes staring directly into) what is at the center of our (yes --OUR) collective learning.

Humble yourself dear art teacher. Collect yourself, my colleague. Find in yourself dear artist teacher  the practice to move you from outside the circle looking at the center which is making,  to joining the circle. Stepping down, walking into. Struggling, humbled, serving the content. In serving the content you are in turn serving the truth, serving and thereby honoring,  a  creativity that lives and is alive in all of us.

Circling

Reflective practice is so important.

This means that the, as Parker Palmer calls it, community of truth must shift from the teacher to the art.

We circle around the art. The art and the art making s our truth. It is that simple.

When art is at the center of the learning, then we are looking outward, leaning in and our collective focus is on the making of the thing and the learning of the making of the thing.

 

Expression by Jesse Brass

Expression from Jesse Brass on Vimeo.

Beautiful.

Mary Oliver

"The Summer Day"

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

https://soundcloud.com/onbeing/i-happened-to-be-standing-by