The following column represents the viewpoints of the author, and not necessarily those of the members of the Interest Group they lead or the National Art Education Association.

Teaching Students to Learn From Each Other

by Brooke Brei

When I transitioned from teaching K–2 to teaching high school, I initially used a lot of the same processes and procedures and found that the collaborative atmosphere during my students’ studio time was much more limited. While both elementary and secondary students need to be taught artistic behaviors and skills for independent learning, younger students’ acquisition of these skills is much more natural in my experience. As I reflected on working with some elementary students, I recalled this moment. 

Some girls were cutting and pasting, so I sat at their table and started weaving paper. They asked me to show them what I was doing, and after just a few minutes, I was able to leave them to explore weaving paper further and share it with their classmates. (Brei, 2011, p. 27)

My elementary students were much less inhibited and more easily directed toward artistic behaviors with small nudges that would have a ripple effect across the classroom. They were excited to share what they learned, and others were equally excited to learn from them. These young artists were moving around the room so frequently that they would often catch a glimpse of someone’s new creation and ask about it. Conversely, my high school students typically didn’t ask what I or a classmate was doing if working on something nearby. There are always groups that freely share among one another. However, it is a rarity for that knowledge to expand beyond the borders of the group.

Why is it that secondary students struggle where they used to excel, and what practical steps can we take to aid secondary students in working as collaboratively as they did when they were younger?

It was still more challenging and less natural than working with elementary students, but we had some of those magical moments that fostered a more collaborative and supportive environment among the whole class for the rest of the year.

Elementary students spend all day with their class. They’re comfortable with them and have developed different types of relationships with all of them. They may not all be friends, but they have learned how to interact without hesitation. Secondary students may not even know everyone’s name in their class. They may also have very negative feelings toward others due to past relationships. 

High school students don’t often feel like experts. The average student who learns a new skill does not feel they are equipped to teach it to someone else. Elementary students share their knowledge freely. The teacher needs only tell the student they’re an expert for them to believe it. 

My students write goals for learning new skills of their choice. They follow a process that leads them through researching, finding demonstrations, practicing, and then using that new skill to make art. This year, after we had achieved a few of these skill goals, I realized what they really needed was to learn how to learn from each other. For the next few days, they were expected to either learn from or teach a classmate. Guidelines were given, explaining that the teacher would demonstrate while the student would follow along. At the end of the lesson, both teachers and students posted pictures of their work and their classmate’s work to their digital portfolio with a written reflection. Vada and Gracie sit across the room from each other, but you can see that Vada taught Gracie (Figure 1), then spent several days learning from her (Figure 2).

Many students at the same table chose the same skill to learn for their previous goal, so they were forced to go to another table to learn a new skill and were subsequently forced out of their comfort zone. However, they weren’t alone in going and asking other students for help, so this alleviated a lot of discomfort. It was still more challenging and less natural than working with elementary students, but we had some of those magical moments that fostered a more collaborative and supportive environment among the whole class for the rest of the year. ■

The following column represents the viewpoints of the author, and not necessarily those of the members of the Interest Group they lead or the National Art Education Association.

A Safe Place / I Am “Unorthodox,” and So Is Choice

Column by: Jamien “Coach” Phillips, incoming CAE Co-President

In many places, teaching is a highly revered profession. According to the National Education Association, Chinese teachers are on par with doctors. Doctors may perform surgeries to save lives, however, teachers often don’t realize our immediate impact on the lives of our students. Scratch that thought.

What does “unorthodox” mean? According to the dictionary, unorthodox means not conforming to rules, traditions, or modes of conduct, as of a doctrine, religion, or philosophy. Pin this thought. I will return to it later.

Prior to the pandemic outbreak, there was a certain atmosphere I experienced in the classroom that was like a breath of fresh air: Students were more willing to receive instruction. However, after the outbreak, students were more into “doing things” their way and not really into the techniques and ideas of the teacher. The students were more engaged by showing what they were interested in and more disconnected by trying to conform and cater their creativity to the teacher’s appetite for ideas and experiences. Pause this thought. I will play it later.

Unpin the thought from earlier. I am unorthodox. As a coach, I was able to reach and reason with those students in athletics. As the art teacher, I was able to reach and reason with the “antisocial social club” students, the “anime” students, and that “alone” student. Once the students realized their art teacher coached football, basketball, and track, the attention spans grew. Once the athletes realized that their coach taught art, art became not only cool but also more respected by the student body. Just when things started to gel together, I would throw in a wrinkle. I also taught high school math at one point in my career. Again, I am unorthodox. I do not follow blindly to the beat of the drum.

In this position as an art teacher, I have worn many hats, but the one that matters most to me is the one that makes my students feel safe, love, and respected. The hat of a coach is only one hat that I have worn, but other times, my position calls me to be uncle, counselor, “baby admin,” and many more.

As the world climbs out of this pandemic, my calling as an art teacher is to aid my students with their approach to life and their ability to think for themselves. Not only am I teaching them about the world of art, but I am also providing a safe place for them to make mistakes and to learn from their mistakes. With a plethora of information already at their fingertips, I feel privy to “learn them” some ABCDs: Analyze information; Believe in their dreams; Cope with the good, bad, and ugly; and Do what needs to be done when it needs to be done.

Play. I am unorthodox. In a class of 60 middle school students, choice-based teaching provided me the opportunity to remain sane. In the past, my classrooms fluctuated on the choice-based continuum between Choice as Reward and Modified Choice, with the most popular among the students being our independent study art projects. However, with multiple classes of 60 students after the nation reopened from COVID outbreak, Near-Full Choice became my new reality. (Inhale.) And the students thrived. (Exhale.) Ideas were booming and blooming as students began to take more ownership of their art and their actions. Instead of limiting my students to projects and assignments based on their teacher, I handed the reins over to them. Of course standards were and are established. Rubrics have had to become a little more generic but detailed. But now there was and is that certain breath of fresh air that feels even more pure than before.

Are there struggles? Of course. Choice is not a substitute for classroom management. It is like a pleasant aroma added to the atmosphere of existence where chaos meets creativity in the classroom. Will there be students that still don’t work? Of course. Now, this is when I reassure them that it is their choice; however, they do not get to choose the consequences for their choice. Advice given me by a retired coach: “Never make a threat when you are angry. Never make a promise when you are happy.”

Be Blessed.

The following column represents the viewpoints of the author, and not necessarily those of the members of the Interest Group they lead or the National Art Education Association.

Bringing Creativity Out of the Coffee

Guest columnist: Co-President 2023-2025, Mandy DeWitt

Not to start a fight, but I don’t like coffee. I really don’t understand the obsession with these expensive coffees that students walk into my classroom with every day. First off, I walk in there and I don’t know where to start. There are too many decisions for me to make in a short amount of time. But amazingly, my students can walk in and design a fun, new coffee every day.

So, where am I going with this? I recently had a discussion with some students about the “creativity” of their coffee. I asked why they couldn’t bring some of that creativity into their art. They didn’t understand what I meant. I started by asking them to describe their feelings when they walked into that coffee shop. They talked about the excitement, the smells, and the eagerness to get their hands on the caffeinated sugar rush. I asked if any of them had apprehension at the thought of making so many decisions about what type of coffee, what size, what kind of milk, or what flavorings to add, or if any of the other decisions stressed them out. The majority of them said no. They look forward to trying new things, and they know for the most part what tastes good and what works well together. From there, they know small changes are not going to make huge adjustments to their favorite drink or ruin their day.

This got me thinking about how our students can make split-second decisions over a coffee—but when I ask them what they would like to create in the art room, they freeze like a deer in the headlights. They can tell me that small changes to what they already know won’t affect them, but if I try to get them to use an image as inspiration instead of trying to copy it exactly, you would think I am asking them to create a whole new menu. So how do I get my students to see that they have the skills to make the necessary choices to make original work?

I don’t know how you do it, but here is my daily mantra to my students: “Do you want to paint, draw, sculpt, or collage?” From this answer we start branching off into the next set of decisions. If they say they want to draw, I ask, “Black and white or color?” And that branch takes us to another set of decisions, which might lead us to another, but eventually we come up with a place where they can start a project. And before we know it, a student that walked in with a very “creative” coffee and no idea what they wanted to do in here has now come up with a plan and a project. It might take longer than it did to order their coffee, but I hope they see that it all starts by making one decision at a time.

TAB for ALL

Guest columnist: Susan Weinman, Middle School Art Teacher, Los Angeles Unified School District, California

At UCLA, the teacher preparation program centered around constructivist theory. Students would take ownership of their learning. While I understood what that meant, I wasn’t sure how it would look in an actual classroom. I wanted real tools, not theoretical ones. After 19 years of teaching K–2 in a general education setting, I became a middle school art teacher to more than 200 students.

Five years after attending the Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) Summer Institute, and 7 years after developing a fulfilling art program, I am happily fostering a student-led art studio based on the principles of TAB: (1) The child is the artist, (2) The classroom is the child’s studio, and (3) What do artists do?

Sixty of my students receive special education services. With a few exceptions, I don’t have a lot of support. My classes meet daily and are mixed (Grades 6–8) and range from 30 to 38 students. TAB is successful for students who receive special education services because they get to choose what they work on, and the student-directed open studio allows these students to be successful alongside their neurotypical peers.

The term affective filter is often used in second-language acquisition circles to describe the imaginary wall students put up that prevents input and blocks cognition. Stephen Krashen (as cited in Gonzalez, 2020) proposed that there are three effective variables that a teacher can address to make their classroom more welcome: motivation, self-confidence, and reduced anxiety.

Motivation

In a choice-based art model, students choose what materials they will be using and what they will make. In my art room, students can use the sewing machine, paint, draw, build, and more. Making your own choices validates your ideas and imagination. Imagine you came to art class wanting to sew some new gloves and the teacher said that you have to make a copy of The Starry Night.

Self-Confidence

My school is roughly 70% Latinx and 28% Asian, and 30% of my students receive special education services. I make a conscious effort to highlight living artists who reflect the demographics of my students, including artists with disabilities.

Reduced Anxiety

In a student-led art room, anxiety is reduced because they are not under pressure to make art that looks like a teacher model. The art room has flexible seating. The teachers at our site are asked to greet students at the door, converse what them on an individual basis, and provide differentiated instruction to reach all students.

A student-led, choice-based TAB art room is the perfect place to reach those goals and create an environment where students feel motivated, confident, and anxiety-free.

Student Highlights

The names have been changed for privacy reasons.

I had shown a tape-image-transfer demonstration. Jacob, who often appears not to pay attention, came over and asked for some tape. We found the packing tape together, then he walked away. Fifteen minutes later, he returned with the most amazing composition. He transferred the image, grabbed some fluorescent card stock, used some confetti that I had handed out earlier, and put it all together. This piece hangs in my closet.

Frank is a new student this year, and he really took to cardboard creations. In addition to basic art studio supplies, the students have access to several types of cardboard cutters, hot glue, and special tape. Frank embraced the open studio and often had ongoing projects. He would walk in, get settled, then find his project and start creating.

Michael loved the large cardboard boxes that could fit around the body. He was having difficulty with his other classes but loved being in the art room. He would often linger after class. I had to coax him downstairs to the next class. We had a couple of acceleration days during spring break with three sessions per day. I had Michael for double sessions. He was so happy to be there.

At the end of the year, we are asked to give awards for the 8th-grade awards ceremony. TAB is not based on extrinsic motivation, but I did give the highest award to Charles. Charles sometimes experienced great difficulty interacting with others, but I felt he embodied what I wanted the students to embrace: Bring your idea, find the materials, make your art, put it away, and repeat the next day.

Reference

Gonzalez, V. (2020, September 22). What is the affective filter, and why is it important in the classroom? Seidlitz Education. https://seidlitzblog.org/2020/09/22/what-is-the-affective-filter-and-why-is-it-important-in-the-classroom

offsite link

Julie Jacobusse and Maggie Leysath, CAE Co-Presidents