First and foremost, I love Imagination First! I love the format. I love the ideas. I love the way it smells. I was inspired by all the awesome ways that everyone conceived of these sparks being used in the classroom.
I love the idea of practice number one. In one of my gym classes in high school we used to have relaxation days. We would lie on mats in the dark gym and our teacher would take us through guided relaxation. It was my not only one of my favorite parts of gym, but one of my favorite parts of high school. There is a lot of pressure on kids and their rapidly developing minds and emotions need a minute to rest. I think it would be good to have my students do a relaxation exercise and then maybe they could do a quick sketch of their thoughts, or write about it. Maybe even like every Friday for 10 or 15 minutes.
I also liked practice number two. To use this spark I would ask students to go to some type of event that they had never been to, a ballet, a football game, pokemon club, etc. I would ask them to journal about it afterwards. What stood out to them, what was unexpected. Then I would have them consider one positive new idea or feelings that they had gained from this experience and produce art around that idea. It could be neat to incorporate artifacts from the event: ticket stubs, candy wrappers, leaves. I could go on for a while about Imagination First, but I will move on.
Freedman:
Freedman introduces the possibilities in teaching using visual culture analysis. On page two he says, "Informal art education happens throughout our lives as we encounter visual culture and have thoughtful discussions or debates about it." This is one of the reasons why I love the idea of teaching visual culture. Some people think they don't know how to talk about art, but if you can talk about life then you can talk about art. Visual culture is such an accessible jumping off point for students.
Freedman also discusses how visual culture education can make students more aware of relationships and connections (pg. 3, pg. 5, pg. 14). This is made clear through the process of VTS. Students can look at a magazine image or a piece of fine art and make all kinds of connections. It helps them understand how images are constructed to create meaning whether it is on TV or in a museum. Freedman's discussion of "border crossing" (pg.15) also resonated with me. Not only can we make it a point to view images from different cultures in our classrooms, but we can also see how those from different backgrounds read the same image. The ways that our experiences shape how meaning is created is made transparent in visual culture studies.
On page 20 Freedman says, "We are on the edge of a new artistic renaissance. Images are becoming more pervasive than text." I would go on the say that the line between an image and text is becoming blurred. Not only do we analyze and read images, often without realizing it, text is often part of an image. How large the text is, what font and color is used is important in how we understand its relationship to images and under lying meanings. When we see something written in (God forbid) comic sans, it triggers a different association in our heads than a simple helvetica. Visual culture is part of everyone's lives. By uncovering our inner thinking we encourage students to explore their embedded meaning making strategies.
Eisner:
The first chapter of Eisner is so strongly connected to what Freedman writes about. Eisner says that the arts allows students to make connections, explore meaning, and extend ideas. On page two Eisner says, "It (art) is a way of creating our lives by expanding our consciousness, shaping our dispositions, satisfying our quest for meaning, establishing contact with others, and sharing a culture." I find it interesting that this sentence could just as easily be describing visual culture studies which Freedman writes about.
On page 13 Eisner says, "We design educational programs not merely to improve schools, but also to improve the ways in which students think." Our goal is not to teach kids how to put paint on paper, but rather how to teach kids how to learn. How to learn to experiment, how to learn to make meaning, how to learn to see new perspectives, and on and on. When students learn how to learn they know that the boundaries of that ability are endless and they can begin to grasp the power of their minds.
In Eisners second chapter he discusses the various versions of art education. Some focus on problem solving, some focus on practical application, some focus on cross curricular connections. Most of them have little pieces of others mixed in. It seems wise to me that all of the forms have benefits and we should aim to intermix a little of each throughout our curriculum. It gives all different kinds of students the opportunity to shine. As we saw in our chair activity today as much as we share many similarities, we also have a lot of differences. Students needs vary and by diversifying our curriculum approaches as much as possible we can more readily meet those varying needs.
Eisner speaks to the ability of art to capture this diversity on page 44 when he says, "The arts, however, march to a different drummer. In most of the arts we seek diversity of outcome. We are interested in the ways vision and meaning are personalized." YES! Not only is life a lot more interesting this way, but also we learn a heck of a lot more this way. That's why art rocks!
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