Casting Pearls

This is an OLD piece (1995) which in SOME FORM sits in this blog where I CANNOT FIND IT. But I'm referencing it in something soon to be posted, so I'm putting it here, in the hope the two pieces talk one to another. I have a third piece to write related as well a kind of three layer cake, on the COLONY of school, but it waits later mind.

Children have a delightful way of seeing you for what you are and looking at your actions. You hit or you don’t, you yell or are soft, you are the nice lady that lets me draw or the one that took away my pogs. One thing I discovered in the first years of teaching in West Virginia and again in South Central is that when I teach art there is always success, no matter the image. All over success, all around. It’s like discovering you can dunk and no one else seems to know the move. From a pedagogical standpoint I’m not a “pre-planner” of these excursions. I just invent them from my experiences because I have painted, drawn and made things all my life. I was fortunately a student of Sharon Goodman and took art with her for years when I was young, in her home. Art was really making things up and it was safe, inventive, an excursion into many dialogs and trains of thought. You could mess up and use it, or mess up and toss it; find something with a touch of genius sitting mysteriously coming from you or best of all simply lose time and your reality. All of us essentially want to find activities to fill our time where we lose ourselves, lose time and make something, see something, produce something and feel we got somewhere. Sharon was such a wonderful person to allow me to come into her home, her family and to not only make things but think about the process as discovery, as transformative, as a construction representing thought. And then in time it was my “talent”. And everyone related to me through that talent. I learned to use this to define my relationships within the world. I expect as a teacher that is what we are after in learning. And every child must work out of and identify their talent. It is essential. I’ve worked out of mine learning to use this in teaching. Actually keeping it alive in teaching and using Sharon as my model. Sharon didn’t qualify much. She could be remarkably nonjudgmental. And she often just listened to what kids dialoged. She was calm and quiet. But she also presented you with information on an art process and with information about what artists had done and sometimes what she thought about what you did. She suggested I drop an incessant theme of round circle twenty petals, this comment certainly opened a door to new images and I still recall it. It created an instant problem for me, what was I going to do now? I realized then what someone we respect says carries a tremendous weight and Sharon approached it this way. So she spoke the truth and didn’t use the truth. She created tension, but not lightly. So I know today she’ll remember this happening too. The day I had to drop the famous 60’s flower, and just move on. Sharon responded to good work by noticing it, she enjoyed it. She said in essence in a joyful way, “This is good to look at and it works. “ And I can tell you my enthusiasm with student work is matched tenfold by the students; as I react with joy, kids react with joy. You don’t get anywhere falsely praising work that is less than a person’s best effort. These lessons are a breeding ground for fertile learning and trust is centered there. Students need to work in atmospheres where they will be appreciated for talents and find opportunities to develop these talents. If the atmosphere revolves around pleasing the “system” of rewards or punishments, if reduced to a behavioral model as was prevalent in Southern California upon my arrival to teach there, the cost is in the development of the kind of trust and creative environment necessary to identify talents, take risks and to nurture them. Then in essence the child then casts pearls to the swine who cannot free themselves from a “prescription” approach and work in a different model. There is much to be said on the topic but the difference is in modeling a way to the pencil sharpener versus a way of life. And the cliché give a fish or learn to fish does come into play. One approach gets you what you want right now and reinforces the concept that only the teacher came here with any ability to do anything. The other brings forth what you did not have the capacity to imagine was possible.

I attended, while in LA, a conference with my husband having to do with Special Education for Attentionally Disabled children amongst other things. Special education is dominated by models based in reward systems and notions of explicit model, extrinsic reward. It is dog school to the max. A presenter came named “Anita Archer”. She was, at the time, a kind of Southern California Education model. Definitely the Madonna of her behavioral field. It was “delightful” for my administrator to send me to see her. In our session we were roted through a fast paced, on target, to the point, totally controlled session of rote response and recall of trivial information. We adults “pretending to be students” spoke her text, thought her thoughts, gave her what she wanted with precision. In an exercise as a pack of lemming, we leaped off the Archer learning tower, ivory I know not. I had no need to know. My job was to chant. I chanted. Chanted and chanted. Chanted even as my husband stopped the chant and threw his binder down and put a foot up on the next desk. Chanted the chant of whatever we were to “learn”. Which was insignificant. My job was to get my cue and chant, damn it. I was Gumby, damn it. And off she marched at the session’s precisely timed end, no time for a question and we sat a group enlightened into “effective” teaching methodology. This was the way to get what you want with no distraction, no off-track content, no bird walk, and a professional session to get you exactly to the point. And forty-five pearls were polished up as swine right before your eyes. Teaching defined and argument over. This is what we do. Prepare “information” so tightly wound it matters not who is in the seat. The who is just beside the point. So is the what. In fact I’m sure Mrs. Archer has no memory of the entire experience. At all. Because there simply was no time to find anyone’s talent, to make a human connection, to enter the risky domain where a person might question her technique, material or simply wonder aloud. She was the “Anti-Sharon”. And I’ve never had anything of any of it. I’d rather spontaneous applause from my art lessons from a group of seven-year olds. “Anti-Sharon’s” can go on, politically mining away, and convince the public or the President for that matter that the sleek controlled way is “more professional” or “accountable” or whatever label is popular. But a group of thirty kids will show up everyday at 7AM over an hour early at any age to get into my room and stay till 5 to get at what I have. I know a pearl when I see it. Pearls will cast around for a nice oyster. But pearls get stuck with swine all too often.