Qualifications, and Fun

 

I often hear that "anyone" can teach the arts and do art.
And, for the most part I'd be the last person to argue otherwise.
I was trained to make that a reality.
Indeed my life has been in getting arts products from students-products that I'd argue are exceptional.
Artifacts that demonstrated understandings.
You can see that work in my photo files.
Products that taught art, math, science, social studies.
If I'm not anything else-I'm a master of cheap materials, short amounts of time, refining what I want to do and knowing why, and helping students create successful responses.
It all came from what the standards and frames laid out.
What I'm not interested in doing is selling myself. Or defending doing that.

However after thinking about it, due to a situation, and going to many arts related things in the area I decided to re-present myself.

I started drawing young. I took 9 years of instruction in the arts after my school day was over.
I created.

And in college I took classes both as a studio artist, finally in studio painting, and as an arts education major as well as arts major. My degrees led me to state certification as a teacher, and to a degree in art education as well as holding Fine Arts degrees.
I just pulled my transcripts to remember the courses I took in college related only to art-I omit a slew of math,writing and education classes and of course the year in student teaching in art. It seemed to me a rather long list. I went to a state university program that ran in semesters. Many of my friends took 12 or 15 hours per semester. I took far more.

Art 11-Drawing 3 hours
Art 105 Survey of Art-3 hours
Art 121 Visual Foundation-3 hours
Physics 8 Light, Vision and Color-3 hours
Art 12 Drawing-3 hours
Art 106 Survey of Art-3 hours
Art 122 Visual Foundation-3 hours
Art 260 Art After 1900-3 hours
History205 Renaissance-3 hours
Art114 Painting -3 hours
Art 126 Sculpture-3 hours
 Spch 137 Appreciation with Pictures-3 hours
Art113 Painting-3 hours
Art 200 Art History-the Renaissance-3 hours
Art 200 Art History-20th Century-3 hours
Art 130 Printmaking-3 hours
Art 131 Printmaking-3 hours
Art 200 Painting-6 hours
Art 211 Figure Drawing-3 hours
Phil 15 Introduction to Aesthethics-3 hours
Art 165 Art education in Elementary Schools -3 hours
Music 30 Introduction to Music-3 hours
Art 127 Sculpture-3 hours
Art 166 Art Education in Secondary Schools-3hours
Art 200 Painting-6 hours
Art 200 Art Education-3hours
Art 211-Figure Drawing-3hours
Art 200 Painting -9 hours
Art 200 Intermediate Printmaking 6 hours
Art 124 Graphic Design 3 hours
Art 200 Painting-9 hours
Art 212 Advanced Drawing 3 hours
Art 300 Painting in time I took 60 hours here.

Switching colleges
TED 756 Children's Art and Language 3 units


That's 121 hours in a Semester system in the BFA's and BA in Art Ed., 32 classes, plus the master's level later of 60 hours.
So that's a lot of courses. Actually.

We were "allowed" to take 18 hours a semsester-I often petitioned and took more as I said to get it done rarely sleeping.
Breaking that down, 30 hours each year, 15 each semester-plus the courses required out of the field and the courses I took in teaching, student teaching, in math, in writing. A lot.

That's a lot of "training."

I present this simply, but it wasn't so simple.
In those hours I constructed a broad range of products, using a multiplicity of skills both in materials, in design, and in mediums. At a college level the arts demanded the application of craft into competent projects. All I did was a project-interpret a challenge visually-you thought in terms of projects. I built, constructed, collaborated and found the work to be challenging.
I would argue that I was good at what I did.
But I made a conscious decision to serve others and teach for making my life, specifically in areas of high poverty. Specifically using the arts.
It was the empathy within the arts that guided that choice.

When you have a background in the arts, and in art and education, it comes to bear on your work.

A few years ago I gained the technology-late-to start documenting what I had students make, what they designed with me, what ways I integrated the arts. I built a blog as well- to accomplish that.
I built files of images. Student work that reflected not what "everyone else was doing" but what I offered to a school in a poverty area. That took the theory, the intentions I trained to gain and improved them through application and integration of the arts-especially important in work with second language students. I did not waiver in knowing the value of that -no matter when I came in contact with those not trained and who might well have resentment issues they brought into their relationship to teaching. A significant issue.

Often this arts work was done at my expense, often unrecognized, and almost always requiring extra effort on my part.

It seems to me that when I talk- I speak through that art training-it isn't an armchair interest in arts-though I love that in others. It's called "a beginning." And building these skills takes years. And work. Arts is significantly about creativity, initiative, problem solving, collaboration and inspiration.
It is through academic, creative and hard work that something is gained.
And work in this field matters.
My further development occurred in classrooms in 30 years of integration of the arts.
Or thinking from that frame, as much as possible.

And now...addressing "the fun teacher."
In our symposium yesterday John Zeretske, as he often does if you get to see or work with him, resonated- bringing up the FUN label.
He said that one thing that he finds difficult is after doing a complex and effective workshop, to be told, "You are all having such fun." Over hearing the acknowledgement of the high level of integration, learning, understanding, growth and content he is conveying/demonstrating.
Because, of course, in that statement is the implied opposite.
That...
Somewhere else someone else is doing "the hard work" of teaching some boring and more critical thing. That you are goofing off in the arts.

He acknowledged he had just taught us applied physics, made sound visible, embedded high level exposure to the language of several disciplines, accessed empathy, and dove into critical thinking.
But it was "fun." Especially to someone not participating, or labeling, or putting another down.
Or just jealous-or not trained-or someone not thinking in those frames-or lacking the skill and sophistication to KNOW WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING AT or saying.

I can relate to that.
I get over it, but I relate to it.
In the talk I attended before his -a high level physicist was talking about time. The perception of it relative to what you are experiencing. I grew up very early aware that engaged in a painting, drawing, sculpture, in the design of a writing project, practicing my violin, or working of something creative, time ceased to be perceived in the same way. So to pass time in that way-feeling that way I created. I can achieve this in teaching and I definitely  understood Our presenter talking about this concept in regard to her work. The relativity of time.
When I was growing up my sets of skills and learning things like crocheting, psysanky and just hundreds of native crafts, pursuing how people think making things, and why we should retain and use active learning and engagement in craft and art speaks to me about culture, to meaning, to metaphor and ultimately to learning and humanity- I was building this to inform my work.
To understand the world. Observing, responding, experimenting.

I can't extract the arts from what I have to offer.
Nor can I apologize for it, and as it happens in talking about critical thinking, the arts, I figued out something a long time ago.

IF YOU DESIGN A LESSON so that you both learn and "have fun," you may sustain that lesson and motivate that into the frames children take into decisions about what they do in their life.
You might examine a pattern in nature, draw it, it might be embedded later on in a budding scientist. 

Training, talent, practice and commitment. In which the later drives the rest, this was who I was.
I'd recommend we see the arts for what they are-thinking made visual.
I'd also recommend to others that they document what they do, why and develop a creative relationship to teaching.
It will literally lift the dialog.