- What events/moments/personal experiences change or refine my past perspective to look at art teaching and learning now?
- What current learning or art education theories do I learn related to this change or revision?
- How does my art piece (or the process of making this art piece) represent this change or revision?
- How does my current understanding influence my path of be/coming an artist and educator?
I used to believe that art projects were lead by the teacher, and were copy-paste ideas. Not that I participated with many projects such as this, but I didn't understand the concept that "The one making the decisions is the one making the artwork." I thought that artworks had to mimic the examples in style or execution, and I thought that there was a "right" way to do artwork. Ever since taking ART325, I have learned so much about choice education that competes with these ideas.
Now I believe that art projects are successful if students take charge with their ideas and the teacher helps them to extend their ideas. I don't think that teachers should have a teacher-centered classroom, motioning more toward choice based education. All these techniques were learned in ART325, but are always relevant, and only added to by all the new information we are receiving. These art pieces also reflect good teaching skills, such as quick thinking to react and support to innovation or ideas.
My art piece is the stitching of thread across paper as though it is fabric. I wanted to show how a planned idea looks versus me punching random holes in the paper to signify a teacher plan versus student planned. In the end, I went in and added more stitches that counter the line that the first stitches were making, signifying the teacher helping the student further their idea into a more complete thought. This is how teaching should be, a teacher encouraging a student to make their own idea with a commonality to the class (medium perhaps) and the student produces then furthers their idea with some teacher influence.
I hope to be a teacher that encourages testing boundaries of lessons and self exploration. My student-centered lesson ideas will produce many unique interpretations, and I will be able to help students reach their full potential and learn more about themselves. I will be able to adapt to different situations and encourage improvement through all of them. Hopefully I can steadily implement a more choice-based education in my school to help students learn how to self-manage and time manage.