A "perfect lady" by Sharon Goodman, my teacher.
I forgot her humor.
Found art and art made from the things around us takes a moment.
It is almost so undervalued in our consumer culture now as to be considered laughably hippy or some other tossed off nonsense.
So take a minute to recall what feels good as a child, felt good. Being allowed to make and to do always felt good to me. Putting icing on a gingerbread house, sticking on beans on a turkey shape, wire sculptures from telephone wire, felt terrific to me. Being allowed to find beauty in the ordinary, to invent, it felt very good. Being able to communicate meaning felt like I existed and mattered. A breath of this is the fresh air our children need now after the stifling NCLB nightmare of being forced to focus on tests to the exclusion of being able to develop creative potentials.
I think I have found a book, Beautiful Stuff: Learning with Found Materials by Cathy Weisman Topal and Lella Gandini, to begin my re- celebration of Earth Day, with the kinds of environmental and holistic artistic experience building for children that really matter for them long run. It is a book with powerful message embedded in happiness, common sense and just good art educational principles refined through many years. All of Cathy Weisman Topal's books on children and art are the best out there to teach a teacher or parent what we are doing in working and living with our children. Every parent needs them and every teacher. Children deserve the training they give and this process reflects the best of the best out with it's ties to Reggio Emilia, which incidentally lived in process in this country in the lives of children in the 70's. My art teacher, Sharon Goodman easily could have authored this text.
And as an aside I CAN LINK TO MY TEACHER THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING FOR ME.
I took a long minute reading this with such personal joy and gratification today to become again in touch with my younger self, my better self, my childhood days where I invented every chance I got or looked at life with a kind of open sincerity and a desire to make and do. It hasn't left me, obviously I am teaching now from those early values. So when opening this book for a moment I thought, oh it's long ago and far away. Almost cried thinking of the days when I strolled over to Sharon Goodman's for our art classes and created from everything found. A time when collage meant you felt great for weeks just for saying it. Yeah the 60's never died for me either.
And as I turned the pages today taking a brief rest and planned for 1st grade teaching next week, I began to re-love all my junk, my saving, my storing. As an art teacher, credentialed and degreed in art and in education teaching in primary in southern, CA in a school as devoid of making and art aesthetic as I have seen, aside from deep inside South Central where it was a little worse, one of my purposes is developing art for students as a working constrcution tool to bridge to meanings. Creation blooms in strange ways and this book is going to be used planning after school art projects. My program is several weeks underway. I am older and tired but this re-invigorates you even after an operation which you simply did and hit the ground running 2 weeks later....so let me see. The book discusses noticing, observing, finding, looking aesthetically at found pieces and found things. These are collected and brought to the school where the text talks about ordering principles, seeing form, and the art process inner dialogs (I believe you say "meta cognition" now), talking of working through the process of re-invention from this found thing. From this point of observation the student is going towards this other place of reinvention..to a work of art, creation of beauty. We better understand that process or how will we re-create this pretty darn messed up world?
Listen to this Topal quote early in her book after children have brought in found things from home to begin the process of working towards creating many varied projects. I think this ownership in bringing from the child's home, their place, their finding, this piece of recycling things from home, and collecting there first is such a strong one...an empowerment tool. But then this leads into:
"Noticing, Sorting, Collecting
After watching children pick out and study one item from another-commenting on it, guessing what it is and where it came from-it is clear that the children's main interest is in looking, feeling, comparing, describing, contrasting and exchanging observations with one another. They are really not interested in making anything yet.
By standing back, observing, and recording the children's discussions, teachers learn that children have unique and unexpected ways of organizing and catagorizing and describing-ways adults may not have even considered. Being open and attentive to the fresh and unusual ways in which children think is to be open to new ideas. This is one of the ways in which adults can learn from children. But these moments often pass, unnoticed or forgotten, if not recorded."
Let me talk about that for a minute. Right now our students are invested all day in test prep. Period. A nation-wide insanity, leading, I think to possible critical loss of something that has made our nation singularly strong. We have lost ourselves to some test based "see what my kids scored" competitive nonsense and the desire for a million dollar child. It's as if we forgot the lessons of our own childhood and where we found our joy, the thing given us to fuel our life and bring it meaning. And we are taking our children as far from psychological health and happiness schemas as they can go before some kind of psychosis will set in. You can't do this as a teacher without speaking, noticing, seeing the repercussions sitting in your room worried, acting out, feeling stupid or wrong relative to whatever is the test definition of the day..... I see it close up in teaching Under performing children as creative projects are jettisoned, they can't even be happy in art. Do you understand how serious this is when giving effort to art is hard for them?
Sarcasm, freezing, inhibition in risking to think are running so high as I listen teaching after school art there are days I force myself to remain steady and tranquil. In testing regimens these things called imitation and teacher direction are being sold to our kids as academic rigor. It's appalling. That's it with rigid teacher control. Teacher directs, students do. No thoughts deviate, children are in monkey see, monkey do mode.... So the limits of your teacher (for a student) are in a very real way are your personal limits forever. There is no appreciation or "allowing" divergence, no room to create, no give of self, no self direction. The result is you go to teach art after school and kids are unlike any I've ever encountered, fearful, burning through things, unable to see subtlety, awkward, clumsy in form. Also unable to listen to you talk to this process....so you get work that lacks aesthetic construction. Oh...I thought, I am thinking... oh no..., I can't change the child can only change myself in relationship to the child. So I have to back up and teach design principles, how to see, what is art. They just haven't had it.
All of Weisman Topal's books do this. They help me put my feet back on this good earth the way Susan Ohanian puts my feet back on this earth. The way Nell Noddings does. The way Doug Noon and Mark Ahlness and his wonderful The Earth Day Groceries project does. Oh yes, children, yes, I remember. It's about you. I remember what good teaching is. I am remembering my love of working with those who see the lights burning. The potentials that we are gifted to steer. The importance of what we do is...... it's process.... Adults have failed to get to these meaning too much in recent test prep nonsense. These must be children who can make, they have to make the future.
I know the found material Topal is presenting true to experiences in classroom that "work". Well, I've lived it. We had no money to buy in schools, so we "found" for one thing. And used this making in thematic and Whole Language projects. I'm not apologizing for that no matter the political ramifications. But I could fall down on my knees and kiss her feet for this book. Because I have no one, no one, to talk to about this and this, my dear reader, is the all of teaching a child the art of seeing. I know this observational piece described here very well is the foundation that art can give to the budding scientist. We are looking at the world under a lens or a set of glasses as little artists. A set of glasses that is tuned to what works, how to organize, how to measure, how to work with choices, observe results, re try an idea, accept and work out of problems, view making as problem solving.
Listen to this observation from her text. Here she is commenting on teaching after a stage where children are processing their found pieces, looking at them , sorting out groups they feel go together, playing if you will with the group collections, a stage moving them into other aesthetic dialogs and considerations:
"Teaching is learning
It is a learning experience for us to watch this exploration take place. The children are totally absorbed by all the treasures. The tone in the room changes to a quiet hum. The little set ups that children create are varied and inventive. Some children choose only a few items and stop. Some keep going and going until their entire (sorting) pages are full. Some children are so involved in looking at the materials that they never get around to arranging at all-and this is all right! We discovered so many exciting and interesting things about children's interests, intelligence, and ways of working-and about our own insecurities by standing back and observing."
All of this rich material is discussed through out the chapters. So then the book relates exploring found materials, using "universal" design principals , story telling through making which is just a powerful part of the book, if you have worked with the young you know they will be talking their concepts and projects. When I was in art training I used to sit and record what the children said at these times, something that has never left me. Their decisions, their finding relationships just can be very humor filled and insightful. Picasso got it. . As children talk the work they engage in visual metaphor making. See this for the power it holds as the child invents, he or she creates the story of what they are doing. It is another kind of place bound in language now tied to making and this thing they hold. It is this process that is the connection of mind to reality. It is for me the science. Perhaps another doesn't understand but i just hear hypothesis and trial and error when I'm recording their thoughts. This is the earth...child...art.....meaning making connection.
She slides this into become sensitized to "listening" to the child in creation...my most valued role is simply a listener as the room begins to generate objects and images. Always.
And then...you go forward into your role. As teacher carefully you make observations.."I like this" ...or "that works". You ask questions and everyone is a listener to the answers given, group constructions of meaning found in this room, in this time , in this place which is the true meaning of the making.
Here my art teacher of old springs through my being reappearing working with children again. Less is more. The teacher role is an art.
I love the talk about grouping and collecting the materials incidentally. The sensualist in me is captivated by the pictures in her book (absolutely perfect pictures)...things in luscious trays awaiting an organizer and a story with children so glad to assist.
I made Fandango-esque puppets with my group Friday..we too slid into chaos and out again as you do in making and I felt anxiety levels rise and fall. My task was to gather things I heard the children say, record them, things to bring up as we talked of what we made later. In my hearing I'm telling the children essentially, listen in your words I hear important and valuable information. And we had several beautiful products...better products, ones we could talk about and use to re-inspire better work. It is absolutely wonderful to see a child take a handful of blue feathers and turn it into the best blue chicken puppet I've ever seen made. It was royal blue with the bright orange feet and beak. Color selection, his self dialog, all a part of things recorded. When I asked why a blue chicken he said, "I can do it because in art i can change reality." Yes, little man we can.
This book such a help in setting up my thinking about what was working right Friday and what way to go. My Gosh will the world just wake up to these kinds of truths please. It's the language of childhood.
There is at section on constructing with wood scraps. I know this from childhood when Sharon brought the scraps from the lumberyard and we sorted and constructed. I still have mine today 40 years later glued together looking like a Stella. I just think truthfully that this sculpture process combined with drawing these forms is invaluable. The book writes of sorting the forms, noticing the basic constructs. Imagine not a ditto with a name of a sphere or cone or polygon, but actually looking, naming , drawing and then eventually working toward linking and building with the pieces. Larger, smaller, balance, and practicalities like gluing and affixing...soon you are helping a child into being your budding construction engineer. Thinking three dimensionally is built in actual doing. Don't we want a doing world?
At the end of Topal's discussions in her book Beautiful Stuff she is relating the principles of Reggio Emilia as students draw their wooden constructions and use self reflection in written and drawn language. This becomes a part of the trip in this making experience which has had so many stages. She follows with a book making "reflection" where the process of the art experience has been re-created. With photos and writing, transcribing the dialogs heard and thoughts written down during all the process... combined with the children's drawings/sculpture/found art the journey of making is represented. I liked this, it's why I think I'm blogging actually:
"The Need to tell our story
Telling our story is a way of documenting experience. The process of documenting helps us understand the children's thinking processes, their desires, and the surprises that they have lived through. Documenting gives teachers an opportunity to re-examine why they think a particular experience is important. It also gives them a chance to think about what they might do differently in the future.
Documenting is a vehicle for communication between teachers and between teachers and children. It is also a vehicle for communicating with parents. Parents become stronger participants in the life of the classroom when they can follow the interesting work that is taking place. "
Again from Topal after displays of the entire found process bring in parents to view all that has been done,
" Parents respond with interest to the display. They look at other children's work, not only the work of their own child. They become more interested in the kinds of interactions between children and between children and materials that they see documented in the chilldren's creations, photo's, and dialogs. This is a way to begin to create a sense of community in the classroom. We feel that we are beginning to understand what it means to see potential in materials.We are amazed by the many ways in which we can use materials."
When I hear people talking of the need for "creativity" for schools of the future with "out of the box" thinking I will redirect them to this book, Beautiful Stuff, and this writer's series of books because her language of meaning gathered from these kinds of explorations are the coat hangers upon which the structures of children's real life future are hung.
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