AT: Week 12 - Reflection

Reflection

According to Hetland, “teachers in rigorous visual arts classes present their students with engaging projects, and they teach their students to connect to the assignment personally, to persist in their work, and to stick to a task for a sustained period of time” (42).  Throughout the chapter Hetland notes several lessons embedding within this larger theme including:

• motivating and instilling passion
• cultivating sustained attention
• combating frustration
• working hard to meet a deadline
• developing the ability to delay gratification (working without seeing the endpoint)

Reflect on how strategies you use to meet each of the aforementioned ideas in your own work.  For example, how do you (or have you learned to) combat frustration and persevere when something is not going right?  Once you have described how this impacts your own work turn the table and think about how this idea could applied to your student’s work and artistic thinking/actions in the classroom.  For example – what strategies do you use to help students combat frustration?  Reflect on both the personal level and classroom extensions for all 5 points above.  

I am incredibly guilty of being unable to make myself do something that I am not intrinsically motivated to do (this can be seen clearly in my undergraduate transcripts and MU's grand experiment in making us take 3 class the opposite our major.) Luckily for me, I am naturally curious and a life long learner. That is a real gift as an artist because it keeps me looking and continues to inspire the thoughts behind my work. I feel like as an artist, you have to just be motivated and have passion, you can't manufacture it. It has to come from inside of you. That spark come from inside. However, external forces can kindle it. So you can go looking for it. So, I don't feel like I can always provide passion for my students. What I can do is work to motivate them, create an atmosphere that is inspirational, give food for thought that starts gears turning, do my part to nurture motivation and not squash it. That is a teacher's role. We should get out of the way to allow students to find their motivation and discover personal passion. Now the next four I think a teacher has more control over and a good art teacher will help students develop these artistic habits of mind. However, coming back to this idea 24 hours later. I'm not sure how I do this. Nor how I do it with my students truthfully. I am usually just a really good cheerleader and try to design lessons that will leave room for personal interpretation, pique their interests, leave them room to be curious and explore. When things don't go quite right in the production of work, it is usually myself or another student that prompts further investigation that will keep students working. If someone figures something out that unravels this whole mystery, will you be sure to drop me a line? Just to elaborate though, I am constantly looking for quirky (or even not so quirky) things that will shed new light on what my students are thinking about. I'm a big believer in artist resources, visual examples, looking at other artist's and their works, and basically examining the worlds around you. I'm not so good at holding students to creative deadlines (other than the final one before grades are due). I believe that students at this stage need to be given time to explore creative self without the added stress of deadlines (although we discuss schedules and how much class time they will have to work, scheduling time, etc.) On top of 6 other class' responsibilities, the unrealistic time frame of only working for 45 minute spans, and an extrinsic motivator I feel students also need to be given the opportunity to work further if they so choose. Deadlines, schmedlines - - depending on work ethic. Deep down I think if as a teacher you design an experience that is rigorous, relevant, and you have a good relationship with your students you can meet the five ideas presented. On top of that, as artist educators, we have to be careful to structure assignments that also enable growth and students to see and feel like they are making progress in media skill development but also sometimes in the area of idea generation. 

And seeing as how I am now currently working hard to meet a deadline, I will end my post here. :)