
Puppy Colorwheel
4th grade
If you are reading this, thank you.
I think of these posts as a journal in a public forum. I’m doing this because I need a way to control what I can control, hold accountable and chronicle my thinking through this coming 2020-2021 school year.
Regardless of whether we are teaching in-person, hybrid or remote; in August 2020, we are teaching.
The structures I’m thinking about here are not in a specific hierarchy. All of these foundational pieces work together in our studio classroom to create an eco-system that is balanced and re-balanced moment to moment.
Here's the gist:
* Students work through concepts and applications in a series of 3-4 pieces.
* Students will post their pieces for everyone to see, comment on in Google Classroom (this would be the place for peer to peer conversations/interactions).
* At the start of the year we will learn a routine of posting to our Google Classroom stream. This will enable students to have the routine when/if we return to remote learning.
* Posting work to the stream will be the catalog of experimenting, planning and thinking that would traditionally happen in a sketch journal. Students create an online journal as they share and connect about concepts and processes.
* Material intelligence will surface and re-surface as students analyze their own works in the series and exchange reflections with their peers.
Here's my thinking:
Starting with this structure: Build an eco-system of creativity, risk taking, voice through peer and whole class interaction which reaches across in-person and remote learning platforms.
The foundational / back end of an eco-system built on creativity, risk taking and voice is holding space for “I believe in you because you are a human being with your own mind…” and equally holding space for “ You are capable of anything…”
My studio classroom is not a floor show where I am at the center. Art making is at the center. My studio classroom is a place holder for creative action. So, everything we do points to creative action. It is this creative action that made remote learning so challenging. How would I facilitate? How will I check in, engage and challenge? Voice, risk taking and creativity are learned. Acquired through a trial and error process. It is imperfect.
What routines can be implemented for voice, risk taking and creativity?
This year we will create in a series of works centered on a specific concept, application or material. The planning of a concept becomes a part of the series. For example, for years I have used sketch journal in my studio classroom. We’ve done all of things that every other Art Educator has done with sketch journals: practiced, planned, notes and experimented. Using a sketch journal worked well until we went to remote learning. Then well, not so well. Students did not have the buy in to plan their work the way we did in class. What was missing was the infinite/implicit studio environment which served as a way for students to interact with one another about their plan and their experiments. Sure, I had the students post and comment on their journals. This seemed like busy work. Gradually, I phased out journal assignments altogether. I refocused their energies on the concepts and processes they working on.
Considering allowing students to solely dig into the processes and concepts, it makes sense to implement a further (hopefully deeper) investigation of process and concepts through works in a series.
Yes. We look at artists. Yes. We have vocabulary, experimenting, skill acquisition. By working in a series of 3-4 iterations of a concept or process students may begin to locate their own voice, take risks because they’ve worked through something once or twice before and find their own creativity practice within the series.
I am interested to see this work itself out in the studio classroom ( in-person and remote). Logistically, students will post their pieces for everyone to see, this would be the place for peer to peer conversations/interactions. At the start of the year we will learn a routine of posting to our Google Classroom stream. This will enable students to have the routine when/if we return to remote learning. Posting work to the stream will be the catalog of experimenting, planning and thinking that would traditionally happen in a sketch journal. Students create an online journal as they share and connect about concepts and processes. Material intelligence will hopefully surface and re-surface as students analyze their own works in the series and exchange reflections with their peers.
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