The article discussed the typical way in which an art class
is structured and in my experience this structure seems to hold true.
Elementary art teachers seem to struggle with controlling the classroom,
keeping kids interested, following the curriculum and having the students
produce good quality art work. As a result of this list the approach and
general structure of lesions and the lesson topics themselves seem to be the
same. This may produce nice neat and well structured art works but it causes
the work to look similar from student to student and classroom to classroom. In
my observation hours I have seen elementary teachers fall victim to this despite
being some of the best teachers who are the most connected to their students.
I'm not sure if I follow the analogy of magic that is carried
throughout the entire article but I do follow the idea that even though it
appears that teachers are teaching in a way that allows for creativity it is
all an illusion. This was my experience throughout elementary school; the class
was given a lesion and allowed to create their own version however by following
along with the teacher’s instructions all the art ended up looking the same.
The older I got however, my classes did seem to become more student centered
and I was able to pursue and expand upon my artistic interests in relation to
the overall lesson topic or material.
This article has inspired a laundry list of ideas that I
would love to implement in my future classroom. It seems to me that a successful
classroom falls somewhere in the balance of letting the student drive and
inspire themselves and each other and giving them the tool and knowledge to be
able to do so. I do worry however that in allowing students to work in
different mediums on different projects at the same time will result in me as a
teacher not being able to budget the time each student needs during any given
class period.
I think this video from a student’s perspective really brings
up a lot of good points and reflects what is being taught in this article. A
student centered classroom where students are asked to engage in mastery
learning rather than memorization and replication seems to be the future of
progressive education in our schools. This is applicable to schools in general
and should not be limited to just art classrooms.
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