Arts Education

Making Spitballs In Art Class

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Last week, over at Dewey21C blog, Richard Kessler linked to the Arts cover story in American Teacher magazine (starts on page 10). The magazine is published by The American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the country so this is going out to a lot of people.

I know we have heard it before, but it really got my hackles up to read about the arts being viewed as a fun subject or a “frill designed to provide students with a break from their regular classroom routine.” So learning isn’t supposed to be fun, eh? Well I am glad educators finally came out and admitted what I suspected in elementary and high school. I hadn’t realized enjoyment was such an impediment to one’s ability to learn.

The thing is, an arts teacher has to great crowd control skills. Because students view it as a relaxed, enjoyable experience, arts classes engender the energy of gym class without the opportunity to expend it with physical activity. Teachers need to be adept at channeling that energy into creative outlets rather than goofing around. Classes can often require the materials supervision of a science lab so teachers need to make sure students don’t leave the room with substances embedded in their clothes that weren’t there when they arrived.

Besides, anyone who says learning about the arts is fun clearly hasn’t had a conductor lecture about a piece ad infinitum prior to a concert.

I am only half kidding about when I make that comment. There is plenty of serious scholarly work that has been done on the arts that can be taught. The fact arts can be fun and be the subject of significant study should be to its credit. I will admit that the arts haven’t done a good job showing its connection to other disciplines.

We talk about the arts’ inherent power to raise test scores but art is not created in a vacuum entirely independent of any other discipline. Maybe that fact needs to be explored and exploited more often. An artist often needs to be a historian and researcher. They need to know about the properties of materials and how they interact. (The number of times I have heard about ceramics being ruined when a person uses low fire clay in a high fire kiln is proof enough of this.) The artist needs to know about physics and mathematics. (Fibonacci progression in music, anyone?)

Paper making alone can be used in conjunction with history (Silk Road, preservation of knowledge, expansion of literacy) and science (what is the volume of water that different types of pulp can absorb).

This was what I had in mind when I talked about arts teachers needing to be good classroom managers. I was once involved with an outreach project where we went into schools with paper making. We didn’t do anything in connection with science and history and maybe we should have. But as far as I am concerned, any teacher who can keep kids engaged and on task when they have the ingredients for a massive spitball on the table in front of them is truly a master teacher.

Art That Scans

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I have a few more thoughts based on the Human Sigma book I have been discussing over the last few entries. However, I wanted to present some fun stuff I have recently come across as something of a palate cleanser before I move on.

In something of a reverse of Al Hirschfeld’s work where people would try to find a bit of information, the name Nina, in the lines of his art, a Japanese company has created art out of informational lines. Via Dark Roasted Blend are these great images made out of functioning bar codes. The company in question, Design Barcode, won a top advertising award in 2006 for their work which appears all over products in Japan. A short promo video they made claims they have never had a misread. To watch the movie, click the arrow in the upper left corner.

The other tidbit I thought I would share is a link to Richard Kessler’s blog, Dewey21C. I have been biting my tongue for the better part of a month over the comments he quotes in his entry, “The Things I Hear About Arts Education.” The tongue biting is my attempt not to make snarky remarks in reaction to some of the sentiments he cites.

Regardless, they bear reading since he says they are all real quotes because they represent a spectrum of views about arts education. Some of my favs:

We like arts because there are no wrong answers.
School Principal

We do not like the arts because there are no wrong answers.
CEO

Parents are the key to arts education.
Foundation Staff Member

Parents are a waste of time.
The very same Foundation Staff Member

Parents in low income areas don’t care about the arts.
Arts Education Consultant

We must do something about ensuring that artists entering schools have basic training.
Director of Arts Education/Cultural Organization

After all the training artists have already received, why should we have to receive additional training? We’re not teachers; we’re artists.
Teaching Artist

Continuing Mystery Gets Me Chocolate

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Okay, some updates on recent posts!

I posted about the state furloughing teachers 17 Fridays over the next year. I was happy to see a local theatre immediately jumped on the opportunity to offer a Furlough Fridays program teaching kids about musical theatre. One of the things I liked was that they require you to attend all the classes emphasizing that student commitment to their classes was just as important as commitment to the classes they were missing.

Parents have actually started a movement to pay the teachers themselves on the furlough days. This raises a number of issues about the use of the school facilities, workman’s comp coverage and insurance. It also raises the question about why people are resistant to having their taxes raised a little bit to support the schools for the whole year but okay with paying a lot more to have their children taught on a few days out of the year. Is this going to reveal the gap between the haves and the have nots if parents in more affluent neighborhoods are able to pay to have their kids taught while the schools in poorer neighborhoods stay empty on those days for lack of the same funds?

One of the biggest impediments actually is a decade old ethics rule that prevents teachers from being paid privately to teach their students. The rule was enacted to prevent basic concerns like whether a teacher skimped on the instruction during the day in order to guarantee the need for additional instruction after hours.

The other update I have is to the situation I covered in my entry titled The No Sell Sales Pitch. Recent events, I am afraid, have done nothing but renew my curiosity about the approach being employed by the two dancers who visited in late August. Today I received a package with a 1 lb bar of Trader Joe’s Belgian Bittersweet Chocolate with Almonds, a bag of Trader Joe’s Trek Mix and a tea candle in a blue holder. There was a card thanking me for meeting with them, praising the work we are doing and hoping our paths will cross again. Still no material about their company which I am assured by others does indeed exist.

Maybe they just aren’t that into my theatre.

Furloughs, Arts Education and A Silly Song About Schubert

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In somewhat depressing news, the state teachers’ union approved a proposal which will require them to take 17 furlough days a year as part of a plan to make up a projected state deficit. This will translate into schools being closed two or three Fridays every month. Teachers are even more concerned about being able to meet required instructional standards than before. I can’t imagine this will be any good for what remains of arts education instruction in schools.

At the moment, a school outreach we have scheduled on a Friday won’t be pre-empted by a furlough day. Hopefully the school won’t decide they won’t have time to have our program when the time rolls around. The one thing about this situation that chafes a bit is that sports events are not canceled on the furlough days but plays, concerts and dances (not to mention instruction) will be.

At the moment, things look pretty good for us. We have been giving a lot of building tours to high school teachers and counselors the past few weeks and many of them are interested in our shows and outreach possibilities. We have also been asked to speak about arts related professions at two career days this Fall which is a good sign. One of the invitations came at the recommendation of a donor and the other as a result of a tour we gave last week.

I was listening to the first podcast of Inside the Arts comrade, Ron Spigelman’s Audience Connections class and he suggested that conversations about the arts in needed to happen in grocery stores and other public places. You expect these discussions in performing arts centers, when they happen spontaneously in public places the influence spreads beyond the choir (as in “preaching to”).

He uses the example of shopping and having people compliment him on a concert they recently heard so this isn’t the case of people breaking into song for no reason whatsoever. (I love Schubert! Joseph Schubert! Actor Heinz Schubert! And that Schubert named Franz!)

I will admit that having a captive audience of students at a career day lacks a little spontaneity, but now more than ever it seems to be important to have conversations about the arts in alternative venues.