Content Area &  Pedagogical Knowledge

In my teaching practice, the process of inquiry and discovery are critical, as being able to explore new media and methods, evaluate your own approach, and make changes accordingly is a key part of working as an artist. This is demonstrated in this lesson, where students, given the ingredients to make salt clay, use nonstandard units of measurement in a trial-and-error process to develop a salt clay recipe. Students work in pairs to record their process, just like artists do, evaluating the texture and consistency of their clay and testing out hypotheses to improve it until they achieve a desirable result. 

This demonstrates performance descriptor 2B, which states that the competent teacher, "understands major concepts, assumptions, debates, and principles; processes of inquiry; and theories that are central to the disciplines." Open-ended yet supported and structured inquiry is critical to the process of art-making, where more postmodern theories of art-making highlight the importance of individual, contextualized meaning-making over mimicry. The artist's ability to make predictions, experiment, record their process, and make adjustments to improve until the desired result is achieved is necessary to developing an individual style and practice, and reflects the open-ended nature of the discipline; young artists in the classroom, like professional artists, must learn what tools and processes work to create the product they are making, including unconventional methods. It is less helpful, then, to simply show students how to make a certain consistency of salt clay, as this only gives them the skills to follow the steps of a recipe, rather than manipulate the medium to fit their purpose. 

A creative, open-ended structure such as this one also reflects performance indicator 2C, which states that the competent teacher "understands the cognitive processes associated with various kinds of learning (e.g., critical and creative thinking, problem-structuring and problem-solving, invention, memorization, and recall) and ensures attention to these learning processes so that students can master content standards." Learning is more successfully integrated and more robust when students are making meaning for themselves and in-context---rather than simply memorizing steps isolated from their use or purpose, the focus is on the process, and the problem-solving, creative-thinking skills that can be transferred not only to other areas of art, but to any other discipline. Tying learning directly to its purpose makes it more authentic, which not only engages students to learn, but also allows them to understand it on a deeper level: they recognize both the what and the why. 

In my drawing class, most sessions begin with a contour drawing study: a period of intense focus where students draw very slowly, following every line to capture every shadow, highlight, and detail, watching their subject more than their hand or their paper. This exercise is a staple of drawing practice, as it improves the artist's focus and their hand-eye coordination, allowing them to render more accurately, with fewer mistakes. It also serves to reset artists' focus, allowing them to transition out of the bustle of school, work, or travel and into an art-making mindset of concentration and attentiveness. I also find that it helps artists of all ages slow down both mentally and physically, which improves drawing performance. 

This exercise demonstrates performance descriptors 2F and 2G, which state that the competent teacher "knows how to access the tools and knowledge related to latest findings (e.g., research, practice, methodologies) and technologies in the disciplines" and "understands the theory behind and the process for providing support to promote learning when concepts and skills are first being introduced." Contour drawing is a well-established practice for improving hand-eye coordination and rendering ability, and incorporating it consistently is advocated for by professional artists and educators such as Kimon Nicolaides and Michael Hampton. In my own personal practice, I frequently use quick contour studies as a warm-up before working on a drawing or painting, and consistently use extended contour drawing studies to maintain my drawing skills in both figure drawing and landscape drawing. Contour drawing also serves as a wonderful entry point into drawing concepts such as "draw what you see, not what you think you see," by training artists to focus on patterns of value, improving use of line and shape, and to watch the subject rather than the drawing to render more accurately. Highly structured, controlled contour studies build student confidence and teach them that these practices really do improve their drawings, and allow them to carry those skills into other areas of art-making. 

Here is my personal portfolio of work, which includes a wide range of media and methods such as collage, painting, drawing, and photography. This portfolio demonstrates my versatility as an artist, broad content knowledge, and depth of knowledge/experience working with various media, all of which are necessary to create enriching learning experiences for students and design meaningful, scaffolded learning activities to build skills.