Helping Disengaged Students

http://www.psu.edu/feature/2013/10/10/beating-odds

                Over the summer last year I participated in a duel class/internship opportunity. The class was called CI295D The Urban Seminar; going into the experience I was not planning on teaching in an urban environment however after the class was over it became a very real possibility because of how much I enjoyed the experience. I was placed in two different schools one in a low performing high school art class and another in a neighborhood charter school middle school art. I was fascinated by the vast difference between both of my mentors’ teaching styles. Both were battling the issue of trying to teach disengaged students however, the teachers had totally opposite approaches. The first teacher focused almost solely on valuing her students’ opinions and getting to know them on a personal level. This approach seemed to get students to like her but the students still would not do their work. The second charter school teacher had a very structured class where he was in charge of almost every aspect of running the classroom. The students did complete their work but it seemed uninspired. In the article Pennisi addresses the problem of disengaged students in an urban environment and suggests as a solution, a completely new type of teaching that includes structure but also puts students’ ideas first, she proposes a negotiated curriculum(Pennisi, 2013).

            A negotiated curriculum allows for students to have a say in what they learn and connect what happens in the art classroom to what is important to them in their life (Pennisi, 2013). It is similar to the student run classroom that Gude discusses in her article New School Art Styles: The Project of Art Education but with a bit more layering to it (Gude, 2013). A negotiated classroom like a student run classroom functions much like an artist would in their studio where the students gather their inspiration, decide on their materials, and develop their own project ideas; the teacher only gives demonstrations to students upon request (Pennisi, 2013; Gude, 2013) . 

A negotiated classroom however also allows the teacher more and less control in a couple ways. The teacher, at the beginning of the year, will lay out a few things that will happen over the course of the class and these items are called “non negotiables” (Pennisi, 2013). The wonderful thing about the non negotiables Pennisi implemented (students must reflect on their work visually, verbally, and in writing) in the article was that they fit so smoothly with the way the classroom ran that many students would have been doing these things regardless (Pennisi, 2013).  They discussed work with their peers, looked at their own work while making mental critiques, and wrote in their sketchbook thinking critically about their work (Pennisi, 2013).

Next the educator will propose a broad general topic to their students and this topic will generate a discussion run by the students (Pennisi, 2013). The topic should be something relevant to the students’ lives (Pennisi, 2013). After the discussion the students will brainstorm and sketch how they believe they can represent one of the subjects that were generated (Pennisi, 2013). This type of structure turns students away from focusing and critiquing themselves on the formal technical aspects of art and towards realizing that their art should be about conveying a concept to their audience (Pennisi, 2013). This turn will help students who shut down during art class because they believe they are not artistic. It also gives students control over what they want to learn and how they want to learn it (Pennisi, 2013).

One of my favorite parts of this type of classroom is the interaction and diversity in activities that it has the possibility to generate. Once a student learns something from a teacher demonstration they can then pass on that knowledge by becoming an expert and teaching the other students (Pennisi, 2013). This structure also generates discussion between students so the teacher is needed less when it comes to questions about how to approach conveying a concept or solving problems along the way. The classroom also allows many students to work with many different materials on many different topics simultaneously but yet cohesively.

I think this type of classroom strikes a perfect balance between student and teacher run. The teacher takes a role as an authority figure that works more so behind the scenes and the students can then take on the role of the teacher (Pennisi, 2013). The teacher can then step back and actively let the students become the teachers only stepping in when asked and slowly allowing autonomy over the process of the school year (Pennisi, 2013). There is no more teacher standing in front of the room lecturing, there are students interacting and learning from themselves and each other about things that inspire them (Pennisi, 2013). It makes me curious, if my mentors would have known about this teaching style would it have helped engage the disengaged students in their classroom?

References

Gude, O. (2013). New school art styles: Project the of art education. Art Education, 66(1),

6-15. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1354332609?accountid=13158

Pennisi, A. C. (2013). Negotiating to engagement: Creating an art curriculum with eighth-

graders. Studies in Art Education,54(2), 127-140. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1355485207?accountid=13158