My Approach To Teaching
I understand the teacher as a kind of bridge between the student and a body of knowledge. As such, the teacher must know well both his student and his content. Neither end of this bridge can be weak; teens quickly sense when a teacher doesn’t know what he is talking about, and they know when they are not being listened to or respected as persons. With this in mind, I try to find out as much as I can about my students before designing their curriculum and I take pains to keep up my own practice of making and exhibiting art.
Even though few of my students plan to go on to careers in the arts, I teach as though they will—such is the value that I put on arts-thinking. I organize my curriculum not by media, or elements and principles, but by the visual problems of art history: how can I represent how I see, or how I feel, or what I think? Each unit includes both two- and three-dimensional expressions and I sequence the lessons so that the essential learning of each serves as a foundation for what follows. Lesson titles, such as Twisted Color, Mostly Sky, and Mad Hats, are meant to draw the students into a more playful, creative world. Parallel to my studio assignments are academic lectures that invite the students to engage with and critique artwork as well as to discuss the nature of art, artists, and art history.
My method mixes lectures, demonstrations, critiques and, above all, individual help. In the end, I try to model not how to paint a particular subject but a method for working, for thinking through complex problems. I create samples for each lesson, show my own work, and take care to prepare the classroom in an interesting and beautiful way. Academic material I always present and assess in both verbal and visual form. What I value in art education isn’t so much what it directly teaches, but the indirect: process, planning, seeing, a sensitivity to tools and materials, and a respect for beauty—these are the big take-a-ways, the larger life-skills.
My ultimate goal for the students, even those that “can’t draw a straight line,” is that they develop the habits and dispositions of an artist. Such would enable the growth in skills that the study and production of art especially promises.
I understand the teacher as a kind of bridge between the student and a body of knowledge. As such, the teacher must know well both his student and his content. Neither end of this bridge can be weak; teens quickly sense when a teacher doesn’t know what he is talking about, and they know when they are not being listened to or respected as persons. With this in mind, I try to find out as much as I can about my students before designing their curriculum and I take pains to keep up my own practice of making and exhibiting art.
Even though few of my students plan to go on to careers in the arts, I teach as though they will—such is the value that I put on arts-thinking. I organize my curriculum not by media, or elements and principles, but by the visual problems of art history: how can I represent how I see, or how I feel, or what I think? Each unit includes both two- and three-dimensional expressions and I sequence the lessons so that the essential learning of each serves as a foundation for what follows. Lesson titles, such as Twisted Color, Mostly Sky, and Mad Hats, are meant to draw the students into a more playful, creative world. Parallel to my studio assignments are academic lectures that invite the students to engage with and critique artwork as well as to discuss the nature of art, artists, and art history.
My method mixes lectures, demonstrations, critiques and, above all, individual help. In the end, I try to model not how to paint a particular subject but a method for working, for thinking through complex problems. I create samples for each lesson, show my own work, and take care to prepare the classroom in an interesting and beautiful way. Academic material I always present and assess in both verbal and visual form. What I value in art education isn’t so much what it directly teaches, but the indirect: process, planning, seeing, a sensitivity to tools and materials, and a respect for beauty—these are the big take-a-ways, the larger life-skills.
My ultimate goal for the students, even those that “can’t draw a straight line,” is that they develop the habits and dispositions of an artist. Such would enable the growth in skills that the study and production of art especially promises.
