Curriculum - Empathy & Meaning

Empathy:

Pink related several very interesting tidbits in this chapter. Since babies can't talk we have to read their emotions through their facial expressions. Therefore, most people naturally cradle babies on their left so that they can read their face with the right hemisphere of their brain. Another interesting piece of info, people with damage to their left brain are better at reading faces and detecting liars. Their left brain doesn't interfere with the intuitive emotion sensing nature of the right brain. Yet another, sometimes when you call a company and get an automated recording if you get irritated enough the machine senses it in your voice and transfers the call to a real person. It's somewhat embarrassing to admit, but I know this to be true from experience. Next time you get stuck in a endless loop of pushing buttons and holding release a few swear words, you might actually make some progress. 

Though many of these tidbits are interesting Pink's overall point is that empathy is an important skill for two main reasons. 1) It is impossible to outsource or automat empathy, so it will be an important skill in the future job market. 2) When we take the time to understand the emotions of others we can be more effective in our relationships, business or personal. 

I have in more recent years considered myself to be a fairly empathetic person. You had to pay for the EQ test that Pink suggests in the portfolio, so I found a free (and probably less reliable) one online. As I was taking the test I started to feel like maybe I am less empathetic than I thought, as I repeatedly responded that I avoid conflict in various situations. However, my results simply said that I have above average emotional intelligence. No number scales, or explanations, but I was pleased enough to be affirmed a little.

Early on in this chapter Pink quotes Oprah as saying, "Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate and connect with people for the purposes of inspiring and empowering their lives." (160). I was struck by this quote because I thought you could very easily replace the word leadership with the word teaching. Wanting to connect with others and make a difference in their lives is a big part of the reason that  I decided to become a teacher. This will come up more in the meaning section. I think we need to show students through modeling that empathy is an important quality. I think that we can develop empathy in our students through our curriculum by showing the art of other cultures, showing art that deals with issues of social justice, and creating a supportive, constructive environment for critiques. 

Meaning:

Speaking of Empathy, Pink's introductory story about Viktor Frankl was very moving. In his book Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl says that man's fundamental drive is the pursuit of meaning. I think that this has become more clear to me in recent years. Before moving to Columbia to pursue a Masters in Education I had a good job that paid well enough. My job helped others. I made IV mixtures for premature babies. But I didn't feel connected to others. I worked in a glass box and rarely saw those I helped. Pink says that a sense of calling, that is work done for its own sake, is poised to overtake material rewards as the number one reason for working. The highest form of happiness, he says, is not just a calling, but finding meaning. I knew that I wanted to love my job and I thought that having a influential connection to children was what I would love. The search for meaning in our career is certainly important in our line of work and will affect the type of teachers that we are. 

Meaning is also important in our students lives. One of the ways that students develop a sense of self is through finding personal meaning in their lives. We can help them uncover personal meaning in their lives by guiding them, through the exploration of big ideas (Ping, Eisner... and Unrath and Gude;). Though they certainly won't find the same level of deep personal meaning in every idea explored, those that stick with them will become a part of them and help them define the meaning in their lives. 

As Pink says at the end of the chapter, the purpose is the journey itself. This is important for us to remember, and though they will probably think it cliche, it is important to remind our studnets of this as well. They tend to be in a big hurry to grow up, but they would certainly be better served to enjoy the journey along the way. 

Curriculum - Story & Symphony

Story:

Pink starts out making the point that stories are how we have communicated since the beginning of man. Furthermore, he points out that stories are how we remember information. Many people see stories and facts as oppositional. However, since story is our way of remembering important information it is the glue that makes facts (and experiences) stick in our brains and therefore not oppositional to facts but rather a companion to facts. Often times we use mnemonic devices to remember facts, which are usually short stories.

I think that Pink expresses that value of story very well when he says that story is context enriched by emotion. That is why stories are so integral to our lives. Stories encapsulate context, information, and emotions. Thinking about stories as the intersection of context and emotion reminded me of today when Amy said that she can't watch certain movies because she gets too emotionally involved. As someone who was up most of the night last night after catching up on the last two weeks of Game of Thrones because it had sucked me in so deeply that even after several hours I had not emotionally or mentally calmed down. 

I think the idea of organizational story telling could be especially useful to school. The stories that our students would tell could likely explain a lot about the schools culture. Sometimes it is hard to see these things clearly when you are enmeshed in the organization.

Pink also explains that stories are used to differentiate goods and services in a crowded marketplace. He relates a story about buying a certain bottle of wine because of the story behind the company. This shows how story can create meaning, to the point that it controls our spending. This personal meaning that comes inherent in story is a strategy that we can use to help our students create meaning in their artwork. As Eisner says, "One of the most important pedagogical tasks is to help students formulate something to say that matters to them" (98). In the portfolio section of the story chapter Pink says "Listening is an act of love." I think this is important to remember when working with kids. Too often people dismiss kids stories (especially since sometimes they can be very long winded), however, I have found that when I take the time to listen to kids stories they respond very well. It's clear that sometimes they feel so important just for having an adult listen. 

Symphony:

"Symphony...is the ability to put together the pieces. It is the capacity to synthesize rather than analyze; to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields; to detect broad patterns rather than deliver specific answers; and to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair" (130). This quote makes it obvious why this sense is important for us as teachers and our students as artists. Strength in the symphony sense can lead to students that are able to think holistically and see the big picture. They can see a whole that exceeds the sum of its parts. This is a skill that art is particularly well suited to develop in our students we should highlight this to administration, parents, and students. As Eisner says at the end of chapter six, art teachers can help the public see the importance of arts education by making the cognitive development that takes place in our classrooms evident. 

Pink writes about a drawing class that he enrolled in to improve his symphony skills. Many of the stories that he relates are familiar from my drawing classes. These exercises are developed to help keep the left-brain from taking over while the right-brain tries to represent what it actually sees. 

"Boundary Crossers" is the name that Pink gives to people who have a variety of experiences of backgrounds that they bring together. He refers to these people as living a "multi-life." Though not completely intentionally, I think I fall into this category. I have lived in several places and worked in several careers. Hopefully, these experiences will help me to be a better teacher in the future. 

Curriculum - Design

Design:

I find the design chapter to be very interesting, especially since a majority of our students who go into an artistic field will go into a design field. Pink writes, "We may not be Dali or Degas, but today we must all be designers." I think that this is an important aspect of the right brained world to represent to our students. Pink says that design is the activity of creating solutions, utility enhanced by significance. Design is about solving a specified problem in an artistic manner. It falls in perfectly with Imagination First  practice number 6, "Think inside the box." Even if our students don't go into a design field these types of inventive problem solving skills are transferable to all types of tasks.

I loved when Pink wrote about "cute-tensils." The variety of silly kitchen items I own is kind of crazy. Oven mitts that look like frogs, a lemon juicer that looks like a bird, a metal trivet that says "hot", bird salt and pepper shakers, a collapsable cupcake carrier. These items (all purchased for me as gifts) were purchased because of the cute factor more than their utility factor. As Pink says on page 78 these items were purchases "...less on functional or financial qualities and more on ineffable qualities such as whimsy, beauty, and meaning."

I also really responded to the section on building design. I am currently working part time in a neurologist office, where many of the patents have motility and/or memory and confusion problems. However the office is designed like a narrow maze with dozens of unmarked doors. I get confused about where I am going in there. It seems like a terrible design, especially for a neurologist office. On the flip side while I was working in Northwestern Hospital in Chicago they had just finished building a brand new Children's Hospital. All of the rooms have beautiful views of the lake. Everywhere you go there are amazing, playful, colorful areas to explore. It shows that the people who designed this building truly designed it as a place for children to heal and grow strong, rather than just receive treatment. Since reading this chapter I have found myself (as he suggests in the portfolio) mentally redesigning the things in my house that I find to be lacking, my dresser, my windows, my couch, etc.

Even if our students don't design hospitals, kitchen utensils, or billboards the capacity to consider different solutions than those that we have stuck by for so long in many fields will position them to truly innovate and find success no matter how the world may change. The same answers will get the same results. They have potential for so much more.

Curriculum - Part One and Play

A Whole New Mind, Part One:

Pink opens with a quote from Samuel Coleridge, "The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous." It seems a little silly that this is a point even worth making. However, many people seem to think that the left brain is more important, at least to intelligent people. But as most of us already know, and as Daniel Pink spends the rest of part one proving to any doubters, the right brain is equally important. 

According to a scientist name Roger Sperry the right hemisphere of our brains reasons holistically (in addition to several other things) (14). This holistic reasoning should then lead to greater transfer and application of new knowledge rather than just good test performance. Therefore, it seems very logical to me that all teachers would want to encourage the development of the right brain is their students. 

Pink goes on to say that the right side of the brain handles metaphors and synthesizes, which once again seems important to everyone, but we can certainly see why the right brain attributes seem so strong in most artists.  He says that L-directed thinking is characterized by the, "sequential, literal, functional, textual, and analytical" (26). While the R-directed mind thinks in terms of the, "simultaneous, metaphorical, aesthetic, contextual, and synthetic" (26). While I agree with him that both sides need to be strong in order to work in concert together I will say that our side of the pARTy certainly sounds like more fun. 

In chapter two Pink discusses abundance, Asia, and automation. To sum it up very quickly he says that because of availability of goods, cheap Asian outsourcing, and computers that can handle human tasks we have to step up to the plate and be able to innovate in order to compete with these factors. What we produce through ideas or actual products must be aesthetically pleasing, well-planned, and not something your computer can "think" of. He even explains how computers are taking the jobs of lawyers (46). 

In chapter three Pink discusses how we have gone from the agricultural age to the industrial age, to the information age, to the conceptual age. Or our society has progressed from farmers, to factory workers, to knowledge workers, and now to creators, empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers (50). "More Americans today work in arts, entertainment, and design than as lawyers, accountants, and auditors" (55). Even a GM executive said that they are in the art business (55). If Pink is right, it will soon be our time to shine. Furthermore, this made me think of the changes at MoMA. A museum that once held "fine art" created by the dead white dudes, is now showcasing cars and video games. 

Pink descirbes a new test called the Rainbow Project which is apparently twice as accurate at predicting college success and seems to eliminate racial bias. However, it is not trying to replace the SAT. My question, why not? It is funded by the College Board, so some part of them is acknowledging that the old system might not be so great. Pink says that these test are specifically better at measuring "high-touch" capabilities such as compassion, care, and uplift necessary for jobs in the "caring professions - counseling, nursing, and hand on health assistance" (59). I think that teaching should be included in that grouping. 

Play:

Pink shows us how laughter, fun, and games can strengthen the right brain. Though I don't think I will have my students participate in the yogic style forced laughing that he describes at the end of the chapter, but I think he brings up a good point that in the classroom we need to remember a spirit of joyfulness. I want my students to love the art room and see it as a place where they can explore these right brained expressions of their mind that are often neglected in school. Pink also discusses games, specifically video games. This created a clear ping with The New Culture of Learning and our disussion in class last week. I will say that, in my opinion, the army using war video games as a recruiting tool is probably more irresponsible and dangerous than it is a good idea, I know that wasn't his point. He says that video games are about connecting and manipulating. These are certainly abilities we want in our students. Furthermore, I think that game design is largely about imagining something so new and inventive that it can blow the minds of others. If you don't let yourself play with the unknown and the world of possibilities, instead of logical L-directed answers, then you won't ever be able to create the new and previously unimagined. As we get older it seems to get harder and harder to do this. I think that Pink is right that this spirit of play is something we need to keep sparked within ourselves and within our students. 

Curriculum - Day 4

A New Culture of Learning:
Throughout this book I found myself creating an analogy in my head. I think the authors points can be illustrated as a swimming pool. Teachers are like parents  at the pool with their kids and the water is the world of art education. As teachers, we can't just tell them the water is wet and it makes you kid of float and you can move through it. If they have never felt what 'wet' feels like and never experienced swimming they will not benefit from a top-down explanation of it. So the teacher has to let them go and explore it and play in it on their won. The teacher's main role is just to make sure they don't drown. They can show them how to put their face in and blow bubbles and encourage them to try new things out. Of course, swimming is more fun with friends! From friends kids can learn to do handstands and race and dive in the water. They learn the most from one another. The kid might discover that they are very fast or full of grace when they dive. Then it is the teacher's job to stand back and cheer them on as they realize what they are capable of. The authors call this type of knowledge that is learned through experience "tactic knowledge"(77).

On page 93 Thomas and Seely Brown made another point that really resonated with me. "In the new information economy, expertise is less about having a stockpile of information of facts at one's disposal and increasingly about knowing how to find and evaluate information on a given topic." Recently I was reading a Bill Bryson book and he was lamenting about how his personal survey of teenagers revealed that most didn't know who wrote the Canterbury Tales and how shameful that was. While maybe I should be a bit embarrassed, I didn't know who wrote the Canturbury Tales. So I looked it up online. The internet has made fact regurgitation obsolete, but a lot of education still relies on the fact memorization model.

Eisner:
I feel that the opening sentence to this chapter says a lot (and connects to A New Culture of Learning). "Children, of necessity, develop from both the inside out and the outside in" (93). To me this says a lot about how kids learn. It is not a linear, top-down progression. On page 94 Eisner goes on to discuss Dewey's emphasis on supportive learning communities. Eisner goes on to explain the significance of how "situated learning" leads to greater transfer. Students are more able to apply their new knowledge to new situations. Of course, it makes sense to me that being able to use knowledge should be an important focus of education.

Eisner says that students should be given substantial periods of time with one medium with multiple sequential opportunities, without switching back and forth between mediums. I would agree that students need to build up their skills. However, it seems like spending a long time in one medium could be discouraging to some students who might feel that material is just not for them. I think they should still have to try new things, but maybe more choice would be good. Eisner relates it to sports saying that a kid needs multiple experiences to be good at soccer, but at the same time you don't want to be that parent that keeps pushing their kid when they clearly hate it. Maybe its just a fine line.

I don't have enough experience to really be sure but I think that I might be interested in teaching middle school. During his extended explanation of children's drawing development Eisner says something that makes me wonder what our middle school teachers think about it. He says, "For Davis the bottom of the "U" represents the low level of aesthetic interest in middle childhood, while preschoolers and adolescents have a keen interest in aesthetic matters" (120). ???

Freedman:
"New contexts cause new meanings to be constructed" (87). How can education be expected to keep up with that?! A more flexible model.

"To teach visual culture requires interdisciplinary investigations of the underlying assumptions that can be revealed in the conceptual space between images and objects" (89).
The context of the creation and interpretation are important to the uncovered meaning as are the social circumstances which we might not usually consider. Barrett's article which asks teens to look at the Destiny's Child magazine cover is a good example of this. What does the image say about femininity and sex? What does it say about power?

"In one study, high school students did not tend to view visual and textual fictional sources  of stereotypes critically unless they were specifically taught how to do so...In this study, the students saw the visual fiction of advertising as reality and compared their lived reality unfavorably to the world the created out of visual culture" (93). TERRIFYING!!! This is a great reason why kids should be taught to look critically at the images that they are bombarded with on a daily basis.

Curriculum - Day 3

Freedman:Freedman begins this chapter by discussing the history of art history. He discusses how art history should be considered as more than old, pretty drawings, but also in their wider social contexts including political, economic, racial and gender concerns. This certainly makes sense to me as it gives students a stronger foundation for the importance of the artwork, which they can connect to their lives and personal concerns. Freedman then goes on to describe the variety of art historical discourses that affect the place of visual culture and art history within art education. He explains that the presentation of a linear chronology of events in art history, “…has limited an appreciation of the profound consequences of influence by certain social, gender, and cultural groups” (48). To put it plainly, it seems clear to me that old white dudes have had a strong influence on how art history is presented in education and this influence is something that must be considered when discerning the biases, accessibility, and relevance of what is present to students. Freedman then discusses the importance of contexts in art history. He specifies two types of contexts: production contexts and viewing contexts. In my opinion one of the most important points that Freedman makes about contexts is that, “Contexts provide the conceptual connections that make images worthy of study and is as much as part of a work of art as its form, function, or symbolic meaning” ( 51). In Freedman’s discussion of quality he says traditionally, “…the only art worth teaching is ‘good’ art and good art conveys ‘goodness’ (such as elevated values, conventional design qualities, craftsmanship” (53). It is baffling to me that somewhere along the line people thought that they could accurately select the good art that should be taught. Setting a definition for ‘good art’ might be even harder than our task in class today of defining art. Furthermore, as Freedman goes on to point out this is dangerous as the definition of good art likely serves the interests of particular classes, genders, races, etc (ie, old white dudes). I was also intrigued by what Freedman wrote about emotions in education. He says that emotions have traditionally been considered separate from learning. However, engagement and curiosity and triggered by emotions. Shouldn’t we want students to care about what they are learning on an emotional level? The social and emotional aspects of learning have increasingly become part of the educational curriculum debate. Post-formal thinking includes the importance of socially constructed knowledge, social and informational patterns, process and connections, and contextualization (81).  It is clear that learning is not a simple linear presentation of facts and skills. We must connect our curricular content to the factors that influence the lives of students. Man of Steel:I think that Serra’s work is certainly one that makes you acutely aware of your sense of place. Not in the way that someone like Pepon Orsario does, but in that his work compels you to move around it and interact with it causing the viewer to become aware of their body’s position in time and space. As explained in the article by the filmmaker and the holocaust writer people find connections to Serra’s work in their own lives. As Freedman has been discussing, it is innate for people to seek to find a personal meaning in art. Humans have a draw to connect to other humans through many forms of communication, obviously including art. As teachers we seek to help our students make these connections that they can feel the spark to learn and create. Transmediation as a metaphor for New Literacies in Multimedia Classrooms:This article discusses how students are called upon daily to traverse and make sense of many different sign systems. However, despite students already understanding the world outside of school in a transmedial manner, education continues to push for students that are “verbocentric.” It seems clear to me that in our rapidly changing world a focus on reading and writing will not be enough to prepare our students to be  informed and engaged members of society. Our systems of communication are changing and our educational models should change to reflect this. By allowing students to choose to respond and construct knowledge through transmediation we allow for a greater degree of understanding and meaning.  Verbocnetric students should not be the only type of student that the education system chooses to provide a platform for success for. 

Curriculum - Day 2

Barrett:
Principles for Interpreting:
In this article Barrett stresses the importance of interpretation over judgement. He (is Barrett a he?) outlines several principles to guide interpretation in art education. He uses the term "aboutness" to stress this idea that art is about something. He says that interpretations seek to lead others to the same understanding of the artwork. However, I think that the area that is possibly more interesting is where there are differences in our interpretations. According to Barrett interpretations imply a world view. We can not ever separate ourselves from this world view. In so many ways we are affected by it without out even knowing it.  For me this idea creates a *ping* with Freedman's writing, in which he stresses the importance of articulating these influences.

Another of Barrett's principles is that feelings are guides to interpretation. I think this seems to be one that is easily forgotten. How we feel about a piece of art is an important element of the interpretation. He also says that it is good to be familiar with other works by the artist. This knowledge can affect the interpretation. I was thinking about Andy Warhol's Car Crash. If this was the only piece of Warhol's work that you had ever seen you would probably have very different ideas of what this work is about. This idea leads to another principle, Art is a part of the world from which it emerged. For me this also connects to Eisner's ideas about how art can be used to make meaning in our students lives.

In the last paragraph Barrett expresses the importance of not always making students speak for themselves about their artwork. A lot can be learned by hearing how others see their artwork and what makes them say that. In the Studio Thinking class that I took last semester I would have been very interested to know what my peers saw in my work if they had not known my thinking. I

About Art Interpretation for Art Education:
In this article Barret presents three new principles for interpretation. One of his new principles is "Artworks attract multiple interpretations." It could be interesting to occasionally have students share their interpretations with one another. Maybe on a critique day you could have students put post-it notes next to each others pieces of art explaining their thoughts on it. You could require each interpretation to be different, just to see how many ideas one piece can spawn.

On page 7 Barrett says you should take notice of what you do when you view a piece of art. I love the idea of having students simply making  list of what they do as they look at a new piece of work. Do they step closer, walk around it, mutter something? By writing a list students are required to articulate parts of their viewing and interpreting process that they might not be aware of. 

Barrett also discusses the idea of personal verses communal interpretations. He says that sometimes the personal interpretation gets over looked, but stresses the need to find a balance between the two. In my Contemporary Art history class last semester we had weekly discussions in which the professor would seek our interpretations of artwork. However, we would usually read an article by a critic first. I think that students often felt that the discussions were just meant to check wether or not they read, so the critics ideas were just restated. However, I believe that the professor actually wanted our personal interpretations. I think that sometimes it can be surprisingly difficult to get students to give their personal interpretation. I feel that the most important element in producing honest feedback when viewing a professional work of art is to create a comfortable community and tell the students that you want to know what they think about it. 

I loved Barrett's ideas for having students write about artwork as a form of interpretation, particularly his activities with Mann's photos and Skoglund's images. I think these would be great elements for a lesson plan, on identity or fantasy/story, respectively. 

Freedman Ch. 2:

In this chapter Freedman discusses various theories on the role of aesthetics in art education. On page 23 he says that ,"education has not been instrumental enough in promoting learning that will help students make meaning." He goes on to say that students "found processes of connecting meaning to form particularly challenging. This should be a clear signal that what has been the model for art education in the past has not been effective at reaching students on a deeper thinking level. Futhermore, I think that this is a sign that students should be looking at and discussing images in all of their classes, not just are. Visual culture studies seems to have particularly strong implications for use in social studies. 

Freedman describes a string of theories from formalism to Modernism to more contemporary meaning making approaches. It is concerning that many art education programs still focus on formalist approaches to aesthetics that were developed in the late 19th century. I think that formalism has its place in art education, however other approaches should also be considered in curriculum. On page 39 Freedman addresses John Dewey's views saying, "Awareness of form attunes us to the psychobiological conditions of being human and our senses work together to promote aesthetic connections, enriching our experience of form." "He viewed art as the extreme expression of the relationship material, process, and idea." Though Dewey's ideas are also dated, they resonate more strongly with me. Dewey sees art and life and dependent upon one another. Memorizing elements and principles does not reflect the profound and ingrained place that art and visual culture has in our life. 

Curriculum - Day 1

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!

My Art Capacities

I enjoyed exploring my art capabilities. It was a nice way to reinforce confidence in things I feel I do well and  consider ways to become stronger in the areas I felt were weak. I marked mostly ones and twos on my page. However, I think that is because I am not prone to thinking in extremes and the wording "no evidence" is difficult for me as I think it is rare for a person to have shown absolutely NO evidence of something.

That being said, some of my weakest areas are exploring marking systems, embracing stillness, utilizing mistakes, and taking action, with taking action probably being my weakest. I am not sure that my understanding of this capability is how it was intended, but to me taking action simply means being brave about moving forward with an idea.  I feel like I can come up with ideas, but then I get nervous and freeze up when it comes time to take the leap into creating art. I worry about making mistakes or feel that I don't know how to create the vision I have in my head. In general, I have a hard time making decisions which can stall me. However, this semester I feel that I have gained a lot more confidence in this part of the art making process. I think in the future it can help me to make a few small samples in order to discover what works best for me. In my last concentration piece I  just jumped right in and let the ideas and product morph as I worked. I think that sometimes I just need to be brave and jump in. I need to be unafraid of making mistakes (this goes back to one of my other weaknesses). I think it might also be useful if I embrace art making activities that have unpredictable outcomes such as dying cloth or burning paper or staining something with foods.

Though there are certainly some areas that I need to work on there area also several areas in which I am very strong. My strongest art capacities are noticing deeply, connecting diverse disciplines, exhibiting empathy, and questioning. Of these I feel that my strongest is exhibiting empathy. This is something that has developed in me a lot over the last 5 years. I was not very empathetic when I was younger. Now I feel that I try to think of most situations from the point of view of others. I try to consider how my actions affect others. This is brought forth in some of my artwork having to do with social justice. However, I feel that this capacity will be most useful in my future teaching. Though sometimes I lack confidence in my art skills and worry about that affecting my teaching I feel assured that I will be a caring, supportive teacher and those qualities are more important in my opinion.

Studio Thinking Concentration #2

In this concentration piece I am butting the structured nature of science up against the ephemeral nature of consciousness as it relates to art, yoga, and meditation. It is interesting to me how something that is so intangible can affect the brain in a very concrete manner. Furthermore, the act of creating art is a way of making the intangible become more tangible. 

Please fell free to let me know any suggestions or comments you might have. 

Secret Mission from NAEA

A lot of Lawrence's work makes me feel a little nervous. I kind of hate her lists. It makes me think of everything I have to do. I think that this a probably a really relatable feeling for  lot of people, which makes it kind of interesting. I also think that the unpleasant feeling that this brings up in me might be more common to women. I think there are a lot of conflicting pressures put on women in our society. Also, I think list making might be a practice more common to women.

Lawrence's stacks of junk mail also make me feel uneasy. The amount of waste that this advertising practice produces is insane. I wonder how often this form of advertising really drives a sale. I never even look at that stuff. It goes straight to the recycling bin. In my opinion looking at time through junk mail also speaks to the clutter in our lives and in our brains. We see and hear so much that we have to process, but we don't really care about it. How does this add to the stress we feel in our lives?

It could be interesting to have high school students explore this intersection of time and stress. Students have ever increasing demands being put on them. I think they often think that this is just normal and they don't look critically at the stress in their lives and most importantly how to reduce stress.

This past weekend I just happened to be exploring the idea of time on my drive to Chicago. I was thinking about how sometimes time speeds up or slows down on us. The seven hour drive to Chicago feels like an eternity. It is also a drive that I make pretty frequently and I know it well. I video recorded a  few seconds every hour or so. My plan was to edit these snippets into a short video called 30 seconds from Columbia to Chicago. It is interesting to see the landscape, weather and time of day rapidly change. What if sometime in the future this commute does only take 30 seconds? Even though it seems like I would love to be able to condense time like this, how would this change the world we live in? Would globalization increase to the point that we hardly have distinct cultures? Would races disappear since people would be more likely to meet people who don't look like them? And most importantly would all of the beaches be overcrowded on every nice day? This sounds a bit like the lesson a 16 year old stoner would create, but none the less, I think high school students would have some really interesting thoughts about this idea.

I had hoped to share my little video with you guys, but my iMovie is not working, so it will have to wait:(

Idea No. 89 Personal as Political

Bird describes "Personal is Political" art as a movement that rethinks the relationship between the individual and institutions of power. This art typically presents the message of marginalized groups. Bird specifically discusses the use of personal as political art in the feminist movement of the 1960's and 1970's. This art was not only a personal means of expression but was also used to generate meaning "with in a wider social system, social, political, linguistic..." Personal as Political art helped to bring women into the art world in a way that they never previously had been.

Though I understand Bird's explanation of this idea in art in terms of the political nature, however, I am not so clear on the "personal" part of it. Is he saying that it is personal because the feminist movement was important to the people who created the art? I am not sure that I am clear on the difference between this idea and the idea of protest art. In my blog on the idea of protest I discussed creating a message about gay rights. Since I am not gay does this mean it's not personal as political art, even though the issues concerning this topic are very important to me? I feel like this chapter should just be called the "Feminist Movement."

So in that vein of thought, I think that females have come a long way in the last 40 years. I do not feel ostracized as a female artist. I did feel like I was in the middle of a big boys club when I worked in advertising. I also think that in the fields of art criticism and art history females are still placed on the outskirts. I do not feel particularly compelled to create feminist art. I do have some interest in creating art about pregnancy and birth, but I would not have considered it with the intent of specifically advancing the view of female artists. I think just by being strong, confident and interesting artists females can continue the progression towards universal respect for all artists regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, etc.

Pen Tool Demo

Idea No. 79 Protest

Bird says that art as protest is one way of turning propaganda on its head. He cites Goya's The Third of May and Picasso's Guernica as examples of protest in art. I find both of these paintings to be very powerful. Clearly others feel this way since Guernica was covered at a press conference at United Nations meeting to discuss bombing Iraq. I think that covering the painting drew more attention to it and in a way strengthened its protest. It is clear that artists can have political and social influence. As the interaction between art and mass culture has increased so has the artistic influence in politics.

I love the idea of using protest in my artwork. I am strongly drawn to this idea. I find myself very frustrated by the lack of gay rights in our country, particularly marriage rights. This is something that is coming to the forefront in our society right now. I hope that I will be feeling more confident soon so that I feel prepared to take on a piece that communicates my views on this issue. I have a partial idea related to this that would involve a diorama/doll house that depicts a non traditional family. I think that major changes in society's view of homosexuality have taken place in our generation and I think that this change will be even more prevalent in the next generation, so a doll house seems like a particularly good way to present this idea. I have also considered replacing the people in old 1950's ads with new people to represent the vision of the new 21st century family. However, I am not sure if my intentions would be understood. I think this idea needs more development.

Idea No. 20 Icon

Bird begins this chapter by discussing icon in art as depictions of holy figures. Bird says that these painting began in early Christian times. Some people consider these paintings to carry part of the spirit of the figure that they depict and feel that they are capable of receiving prayers. Bird also discusses another use of the idea of icon in art as depictions of celebrities. This trend was popular amongst pop artists, notably Andy Warhol.

I think that the visual culture of our time has shifted, making seemingly insignificant elements immediately recognizable. People can pin point the font of certain companies or small fractions of a corporate logo. Saturation of advertising has made corporations into icons. I think that this is an interesting idea. Maybe I could use tiny snippets of corporate identities and other images to make a collage. I could also explore using text in my images that feeds off of these recognizable identities and their affiliated values. It might also be interesting to flip this idea on it head and create iconic looking portraits of everyday people. Maybe I could directly appropriate from old paintings of religious figures.

Idea No. 93 Body as Medium

Bird writes about how using the human body as medium communicates the human presence in art making. This is very evident in his examples of handprints in cave painting or human heads made of frozen blood. The artists' presence is brought to the forefront. Bird also discusses the body as a universal medium. It is at everyone's disposal and has been used across time and cultures. Towards the end of this chapter I think Bird is hinting at the dangers of crossing to line to the commodification of the human body.

I think what Bird says about the body as medium being traces of the artists is really fascinating. I don't plan on freezing my blood into the shape of a head anytime soon, but I think that the idea of the body as an imprint is neat. I think that fingerprints have a natural beauty and artistic style to them. I think it would be interesting to use the lines and repetitions in an abstract way. I am really interested in using things that are concrete and defined but in the form of abstract art, such as finger prints or topographical maps.

This chapter also remind me of a story that my husband told me a few days ago about a young girl, about six, that he saw playing out in the snow. She knelt down on the sidewalk next to a pile of snow and plunged her whole face into the snow and left her face buried for about 20 seconds and then popped up to survey her mark making. She then moved over about a foot and did the same thing. He said she repeated this the whole length of her yard. I was super excited by this story. It's so cool to see kids amazing innate desire to create. She was using her body as medium. This also made me think more about the idea of snow as recording human movements. I think that arial photographs of a park with snow would be cool. It would automatically map human activity.

Idea No. 40 Anatomy

Bird discusses anatomy as it relates to changes in art as the study of the human body in order to produce  convincing depictions of the human figure. He also specifically discusses art that shows literally what lies beneath the skin. Da Vinci made it a practice to spend time dissecting bodies in order to better understand anatomy and thus more accurately represent figures. Eventually following the lead of artists like Da Vinci the study of anatomy became part of academic art education.

As you will notice if you look back at my 50 Ideas List, I am very interested in science, specifically biology. Several of my ideas relate to science and the body, though not as literally as Bird describes. As I have mentioned, I spent several years working in a hospital. One of my duties involved spending time in OR rooms while surgeries were taking place. Where as this would be very disturbing to many people I was really intrigued by it. As Da Vinci suggested I loved being able to see what was inside. I think that the overlap between the human body and medical science is very interesting. My dad is a neurologist and I had an idea that involved using EEG (brain wave mapping) paper as a layer in my artwork. I think pen and watercolor on top of it could be really neat. There is some interesting research in how certain activities yoga, meditation, and art production change a person's brain waves. Art is the only activity that makes adult's brain waves exactly mimic the brain waves of a child at play. Meditation   produces a greater number of alpha waves (happy, relaxation waves).  However, they don't use actual paper anymore for EEGs, and I so far I haven't tracked any down. This could still be a really interesting area to explore.

While at the hospital, I also worked on the neo-natal intensive care floor and this further developed my interest in babies, pregnancy and birth. I think a series on pregnancy or giving birth might be interesting. Check out these super cool in-utero animal pictures from National Geographic. They're really beautiful. I think the pink glow and the veins and the lines are incredible.

Overall, though I was just doing it to make money, my experience at the hospital developed a lot more compassion with in me. This is something I hope to be able to instill in my students. 

Facilitating Critical and Aesthetic Inquiry

Engaging Students with Art Objects:
This article discusses strategies that serve as pathways for getting students to become involved with an art work in a way that generates a personal response. I found the short section on sound and movement strategies to be particularly interesting. I am currently in Belinda Smith's Pre-school through Kindergarten class and this seems like a particularly good strategy to use with young kids. We ask those little guys to sit still for so much of the day, but their brains are naturally programed to move around and explore as a means of learning. It makes sense to nurture this natural learning inclination by incorporating sound and movement into lessons. In a recent field experience I saw students participating in a lesson plan where they looked at some images of Kandinsky's work and then drew and painted line pictures that reacted to classical music selections. I think it would be interesting to add full body movement to this by asking students (maybe in small groups) to first practice reacting to the music with their body and then move that reaction into the creation made with their hands. Carroll and Tucker site Herman and Hollingswort saying that "Kinesthetic learning strengthens memory, enriches conceptualization and deepens understanding, promotes creativity, and expands the potential for aesthetic communication."

Orchestrating Conversations About Art:
By facilitating discussions about art we can help students to make connections between artwork and their own lives as well as develop and higher level thinking skills. Several models for artistic discussion are presented including VTS (though slightly modified from the way I have seen it presented). One method mentioned is to extend and create information though speculative questions. I think it could be really interesting to have studnets discuss and examine a piece of artwork as a group and then individually write about what they think might happen after the depicted scene. Connecting creative writing and art was also a strategy mentioned in the first article.

Employing Storytelling and Puzzle Problems:
This section focuses on how what we know about an artist or the historical circumstances surrounding an artwork can affect what we see in an artwork as well as our overall opinion. Personally, I love art history (and history in general) and it makes a lot of sense to me that we should employ all aspects of art, not just aesthetics, to develop student's interest and understanding of the subject. I also think that by employing storytelling in art and illustrating to students how other artists have made meaning in their art we can encourage them to make meaning with in their own work. I think we all know that we can employ storytelling to support meaning making through contemporary artwork as well.

Using Interpretive Strategies to Find Meaning:
I felt that this section was reinforcing the benefits that we have seen presented with VTS and through Mary Franco's work. Through practice with interpretive strategies students can develop descriptions and connection with in the artwork and evolve to development of connections and meanings outside of the artwork. This section also explores intertextual relationships that can be made to artwork. We can present connections with literature, culture, music, politics, etc. I have seen picture books used very effectively with younger students as a means for connecting artwork to literature, both through the images in the book as well and through the inspired images created by the students. Metaphorical thinking is also discussed. I think it would be interesting to present students with prints of a bunch of different artworks an ask them to select one that the feel can be used as a metaphor for a certain time in their life and discuss this relationship in writing. I also love the idea of using aestetigrams as a means for reflecting on the process of aesthetic response.

Promoting Critical Thinking Through Problem-Based Inquiry:
This section promotes the importance of teachers acting as "cognitive coaches." we can lead students to deeper thinking and questioning in order to develop a deeper understanding. By utilizing a problem-based approach we can promote this type of complex thinking. Peer collaboration can also create a support system through which students can push one another towards deep investigations.

Facilitating Student-Curated Exhibits:
Curating calls upon a variety of higher level thinking skills including making connection amongst a diverse collection of artworks, cooperative group work and presentations skills. In my Drawing II class this semester we were asked for the first time to "curate" our own work as a class. It was a very interesting and valuable experience. I can see the value in asking students to do this with their own work, however I don't think it happens very often in schools currently. Students must look at the meanings made in their own artwork as well as their classmates. They must find some way to connect their work and make a unified message come forth to viewers.

Using Models for Writing About Art:
 One of the strategies mentioned in this section is asking students to write postcards or letters to reflect on experiences (Hey! I've seen that somewhere before). This creates an opportunity for more candid and informal writing. I think that this would be a good strategy to use after visiting a museum or going on a field trip. In this way it functions like a art journal in that students can create and image and words to express themselves. We learned last week about how switching between symbol systems can reinforce learning.

Making Art Inspired by the Study of Art:
By creating art after viewing art students can explore the artists ideas, processes, subjects and techniques in their own work. Carroll and Tucker make a point of saying this is "more than creating art in the style of..."At least on the elementary school level I think that teachers sometimes have students look very shallowly at an artist and then ask them to create a piece that looks just like the work they viewed, such as layered Kandinsky-style circles. I think it would be much more interesting to see where  this inspiration leads students creatively rather than prescribing the path they should take.

Related Article:
Heintz, June R. "How does your garden grow?" School Arts.
This article looks at Heintz's lesson plan for a third grade classroom which involves viewing art, discussing connections between different artists depictions of the same theme, storytelling through art and creating artwork inspired by the study of art. Students viewed artwork surrounding the theme of gardens from four different artists. They discussed these works and the meanings they found with in them. In this discussion they made connections between the art and their own lives. Next they created their own art inspired by the influence of gardens and nature in their lives. I think it is important to note that the students developed very different responses to this aesthetic inquiry. Their art making was about personal meaning making and drawing connections between an art viewing experience and their own lives and artwork rather than following a recipe of how to create Van Gogh-esqu sunflowers. By engaging students in a thoughtful investigation of artwork we lay the foundation for creating meaningful artistic explorations and interesting products. 

Topic Proposal:
Effectively Embracing Cellphones in the Classroom

Cellphones have become an unavoidable part of life. As educators we seem to be fighting an uphill battle against cellphones in the classroom. Maybe we should be embracing the ways that cellphones can help us teach. I want to look at educators who are using cellphones as a tool effectively in their classrooms. I hope that this exploration will help us more consciously evaluate cellphone policies. 

I plan to present this information in the form of a video. I think that video will be a great way to show instances in which cell phones are being used as a learning tool. I would like to interview teachers and students (if possible) about the uses of cellphones in the classroom. Michell Livek has agreed to help with this portion of my inquiry and I hope to find at least one more teacher who is embracing the powerful technology that hides in their students pockets. Michelle is bringing me some books tomorrow  as well (She's awesome). 

Questions to Address:

• What are the drawbacks of cellphone use in a school setting and how can we respond to those concerns?
• How art some teachers artfully using cellphones in class?
• What do students think about using cellphones for classwork?

Other resources:

• The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future by Mark Bauerlein
• 21st Century Skills, Chapter 12: Technology Rich, Information Poor by Alan November and Chapter 13: Navigating Social Networks as Learning Tools by Will Richardson
• Education, Can Smart Phones Make Kids Smarter by Todd Hoffman
• YouTube, Idea Channel: Is Instagram the Best Thing Ever to Happen to Photography?
• Signs of Change: Art Education in the Age of the iKid by Kathleen Unrath and Melissa Mudd

Idea No. 9 Body as Surface

Honestly, I found this to be a kind of strange chapter. It discusses the use of one's body as art trough alterations such as cutting, tattooing and painting. I found it unusual that piercing and other forms of permanent jewelry we not mentioned here. Bird discusses how the body has been used as art to draw attention to issues such as sexuality and gender. I think that he makes an interesting point when he says as body images have become more common in mass media the human body as become a "highly politicized surface for art." He also discusses how tattoos have been used both as decoration and to signify status with in society.

I used to work a side job as an event planner for Indian weddings. As part of the job I wore a Sari and had my hands  painted with henna. I found this practice to be a really beautiful and amazing type of ceremonial use of the body as surface. While I am open to these types of non-permanent alterations to my body I really don't agree with the ideas of tattoos or piercings or any permanent alteration of the body. I do not consider myself to be a conservative person in the least, however, to me, permanent alterations to the body are disrespectful to our bodies. I do not feel right permanently altering my body because I feel as though it would not be fully accepting my body as it is. For this reason (and some others) I do not even have my ears pierced. Just to be clear, I do not judge anyone else who does have tattoos or piercings. I understand that they simply don't see this issue the same way that I do. 

Though this concept of body as surface is not one that immediately appeals to me I could possibly see myself using this idea in photographs of ceremonial aspects of body as surface. I do think that ceremonial body painting can be really beautiful and it communicates a lot about a culture. Overall, I find elaborate cultural and religious ceremonies to be really interesting. 

At music festivals I have seen naked people (usually women) who have painted their bodies in spectacular designs. While I think that this communicates something about females encouraging a sexually directed gaze I also think it can be a really interesting way to adorn the body. While I would never participate in this I think it is an intriguing use of the body as surface. 

Overall, I don't think this will be the most fruitful idea with in my own art, but it is good to think about the canvas in a different way. 

Alternative Canvases Lesson Plan (Judy Chicago)

In our group we discussed that having students look at "unsung heros" might be interesting. We thought that having students look at people within their school or community that are doing something special could be a good chance for them to think about the positive influences in their lives, just as Judy Chicago honored historic females that have positively impacted society. We would ask them to look at Judy Chicago's Dinner Party in order to understand the way that one artist has chosen to select and honor important people. This would also give them a chance to explore the way that Chicago used symbolism to communicate about the women she had chosen, which will become important when they begin their own work. We would also like to tie in the work of Phil Hansen. His Ted Talk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anujFqvCJsk) which I think Molly had previously posted, is a great example of how to think creatively about art making materials. 

Jimi Hendrix made of matches

David on a banana

We would then ask students to select a person that they would like to honor and create an artwork using an alternative canvas. Carrie's example was a lunch lady at her school that makes an effort to check in on several at risk students. She thought that a lunch room tray might make a good canvas. We also discussed having students use non traditional tools to create the image. Such as food on the lunch tray or maybe carving into a styrofoam lunch tray with forks and knifes.

By asking students to create using non-traditional materials we are pushing them to think outside of the box and use their problem solving skills. In the Carroll and Tucker text on page 121 they say "...More creative solutions are generated by tighter constraints and limited options that force new thinking and problem solving. Many artists often give themselves problems with constraints so as to help focus their own work." We are presenting students with constraints that help to compose an elegant art problem, however, we have left the problem open enough to allow for choice so that personal meaning making can take place. 

I also feel that this assignment speaks to Duncum's principle of intertextuality. The students have to think about what meanings and associations their chosen materials communicate. Is this the message that they want to communicate about the person they are honoring? How can they present the materials in order to bring forth the positive influence that this person has on them?