A Theoretical Renegade... Musings on Art Education and education theories and jargon

I've been asked, "Are you a TAB (Teaching for Artistic Behavior, or Choice teacher; or are you a DBAE (Discipline-Based Art Education) teacher?"  I wonder: why do I need to be one or the other?  (especially since I've been trained in neither!)

The short answer is "I'm neither one, or a little of both, perhaps".   I'll admit that I've listened to and been confused by the many discussions on the topic, particularly in the Facebook Art Teacher group, and I'm not going to go into much detail about the specific meaning of TAB or DBAE here, because there's a wealth of info available out there on the interwebs, if you don't already know what they are all about.  The fact is, neither TAB nor DBAE even existed as an art education theory when I began teaching, so obviously learning about and using them was not part of my teacher training program or my "repertoire".

Let me backtrack - I've been around a long time....  I graduated from college with a bachelor's degree in Art Education in 1974, and began teaching in fall of 1976.  Years later, an art teacher friend, who graduated from college with me, talked about his disappointment with the college for lack of preparation.  I was shocked, because I didn't know what I didn't know, and had functioned just fine all those years without knowing it!  (Does that even make sense? Are you still reading?)  The truth is, a lot of the education and specifically art education theories that we know about these days, simply did not exist during my college years.  I can't blame my college or the professors for that, and neither should my friend.  If you have some faith and trust in me and what I present on this blog, I suppose this information may make you wonder why I have any authority at all.  But I hope you'll wade through this post anyhow, and read through the the end before you make up your mind about me.  Because, simply knowing lots of jargon and all the latest popular theoretical practices do not necessarily make someone a good teacher.  So perhaps I don't need to be ashamed of being a "theoretical renegade". 

In NY state in the 70's, in order to make my teaching certification permanent, the requirement was simple: 30 graduate hours within 5 years after obtaining my temporary certificate (upon graduation).  And those credits didn't necessarily have to all be in education, or even in art.  There was no certification test, no required masters degree, no thesis to write, and no annual professional development requirements once you achieved permanent certification.  My 36 grad hours (I earned 6 hours beyond the basic requirement) were achieved in a combo of studio art, art history, education, sociology, and environmental geology, but I have no advanced degrees.  This was not the "lazy way out"; I was an excellent student, not a slacker.  Advanced degrees and tests were simply not required or expected, and of course were an additional expense.  So, no masters degree.

Common educational terms used these days simply did not exist or were not used yet in the ways we know them today.  When I began teaching, for example, I had never heard of or been exposed to these terms: rubrics (hey, we called them charts), curriculum mapping,  portfolio assessment (at that time, the term "portfolio" meant a folder filled with artwork, and instead of the word "assessment", we usually used the word "test"), authentic assessment, vertical alignment, benchmarking, and many,many more.  And many disorders didn't exist, or, I should say, hadn't been identified yet, at least as an acknowledged "thing", when I started teaching: Asberger's Syndrome, spectrum disorders, attention-deficit disorder, and so on.  As a matter of fact, we did see a film on autism in a required undergraduate Intro Psychology class, but it basically showed institutionalized  non-verbal children banging their heads against walls. Things have changed, a lot.
 
I had been teaching 10 years before I ever encountered a child labeled as ADD or ADHD.  I had been teaching probably 20 years before I first encountered a child labeled as having autism, and actually, his initial label was not autism, but instead was Sensory Integration Disorder.  By the time I retired, it had become quite common to have students labeled as having ADHD, or autism spectrum disorder, or even Oppositional Defiant Disorder, integrated into regular classes at all grade levels.  Were all these disorders there all along, but the kids were simply unlabeled, with unusual behavior?  Maybe a few, but honestly, I do not believe that kids with these disorders existed in the huge numbers that they do today.  I would have noticed.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, perhaps you've encountered some of my other discussions on similar topics.  You can find these posts in the following links: from March 2011 there's "They don't tell you this in your college art ed program"; from April 2012, there's "Ruminations - my hippie education and retirement plans"; from June 2015 there's "Jargon-du-Jour or Jurassic Jargon?"

But anyhow, back to what I was talking about at the beginning of this post -  Does the fact that I am neither TAB nor DBAE mean that I am bad teacher?  I do not think so.  Over my years teaching elementary, I developed, using my knowledge and experience, a program to be proud of.  I made a commitment to develop and present lessons that had students exploring a wide variety of materials.  I exposed them to a variety of famous artists and art styles and movements, as well as cultures from around the world.  I encouraged my students to think, explore, discover, make decisions, work both independently and in collaboration, and laugh.  I encouraged creative decision-making within the framework of the work I assigned.  I discouraged whining or complaining (actually that was my #1 classroom rule), and encouraged kindness and acceptance.  I made sure that each year, all students at all levels worked in both 2 and 3 dimensions, were exposed to and became comfortable with art vocabulary, and that they drew and painted from observation, as well as worked from their imaginations. I taught the Elements of Art and Principles of Design by incorporating them into everything we did.  My students learned to take care of their materials and become independent thinkers and positive members of the class.

If all my talk of independence and decision-making this sounds like TAB, you'd be wrong.  My classroom did not have centers, for example, like most TAB classrooms.  All students worked on the same projects or assignments at the same time, using the same materials, but had the ability to make choices within those parameters.  I believe I'm not meeting my responsibility as an educator if I just let students explore whatever they want, without specific direction and limitation.  I don't think someone can become an artist simply by being given the "stuff" of art and told to use whatever they want. I know in TAB, the focus is on making students artists.  But I don't think we can become an artist unless we can become confident and skilled at and knowledgeable in the "stuff" of art, any more than a student can automatically become a musician without learning how to make the instrument respond properly and how to read music, and so on.  The learning needs to come first.   A doctor isn't a doctor just because they want to be one.  They need to learn anatomy and chemistry and biology and all of it, and also need the education and hands on practice to properly uses the tools of medicine.  Am I making sense?

I'll admit I don't know everything there is to know about TAB, since I've never been trained in it, so perhaps you may think that I'm speaking from ignorance.  And I suppose you might be right.  A little aside here: I attended a workshop on TAB at my state conference a few years ago.  The presenter had us push aside the chairs and sit in a circle on the floor.  I was turned off immediately.  My not-young body is not happy sitting on a floor and even more unhappy at the prospect of figuring out how to get up.  And nothing she said during my 50 minutes on the floor convinced me that teaching by letting students make all their own choices was the right way for me to teach, or that it would even be allowed in my school, or that it would in any way protect my job and my program.  So I am sorry for all the wonderful TAB presenters and teachers out there, that they were represented in this way.  

Anyhow, back to what I was saying a paragraph ago....  If I had been taught art by being allowed to make all my own choices, I would never have been exposed to so much of the art world.  I am thankful for the requirements that forced me out of my comfort zone, and for a college program that directed me to not only have a concentration in one art media, but also to explore the others.  The result was that, in my college years, I took courses in many different mediums; some, like painting and photography, were "in my wheelhouse", but others, like ceramics, and printmaking, and sculpture, and gold and silversmithing, were not.   It made sense that if I was going to be teaching art, I'd better have as broad a knowledge base as possible, because I knew I'd have to teach it all.

I think structure and limitations can be a challenge and also a bonus.  Figuring how to to create within the framework of some limitations will encourage creativity, not discourage it.  I relate it to my book club. We currently have 10 members, and different person picks the book we will read each month.  We don't just read whatever we choose.  In this way, I've been exposed to authors and genres I would never have chosen on my own, often opening my eyes to something really exciting.

Does this mean my projects, before I retired, were cookie cutter?  Hell, no!!!  As I said before, my students made many independent choices within the framework of the assignments I gave.   I think that is the key.

Does my lack of training in DBAE and TAB, my lack of a master's degree, and the fact that I've taken no fancy certification tests mean that I've been a less effective teacher than those trained today?  I think if you ask the administrations I worked under, my students, and their parents, the answer would be NO.  Some of the most beloved and effective teachers I know were those whose educational backgrounds were similar to mine, in the era before jargon and acryonyms and labels and over-testing became so popular.  All the fancy terminology in the world won't make you a good teacher unless you can take your knowledge base and put it to use effectively with your students.   But this doesn't mean that I haven 't been open to learning.  Please don't presume that I'm cocky and think that I know better than anyone else.  I don't.  I'm talking about my own personal experience and what has worked for me.  Your situation could be totally different.

Was I perfect? No.  Sometimes I was disorganized, even after extensive planning.  Sometimes I was frustrated by a behavior I didn't understand.  Sometimes I lost track of time, and sometimes I came up with ideas that didn't work as planned.  (Actually, that happened again today; but that story is for another blog post.)  But my students were joyful and productive learners, and created art that they were proud to display for others to see.

Did we do a lot of writing in our art classes?  That's a big topic that I will save for a different blog post, sometime in the coming months. 

By the way, also more recent than my college education and my earlier teaching years are The 8 Studio Habits of Mind, Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences, and The Madeline Hunter Model of Mastery Learning, to name a few of many teaching models, programs, and theories I've encountered in past years.  Have I ever been officially trained in all of them?  No.  Oh wait!  I've left out Bloom's Taxonomy!  That's because, that's one thing that has actually been around long enough to have been learned during my college years.  Though I admit,  I still like calling it Bloom's Taxidermy.... 

Then there's concepts and techniques like Big Ideas, Bell-Ringers, exit tickets, graphic organizers (including Venn diagrams), think/pair/share, and so on.  These all come and go with new names every few years.  But you know, this constant flux isn't only in art.  When I first switched from teaching high school to elementary school, the elementary reading teachers were all gaga over Whole Language.  A few years later, they had moved from a literature based program back to phonetics and grammar, and then a few years later another change....  And the math methods have changed tons of times too.

My point here is that new ideas and concepts and methods don't necessarily mean the previous ideas and concepts and methods were all wrong, and don't mean that the students that were taught using them didn't get a good education.  I could include a discussion of technology here, too.  All of us who were educated in the age before the internet and fancy technology may have learned differently, but that doesn't mean it was inferior.  I believe that I got a good education.  I believe that my son, now 27+ years old, got a good education, enough to make him a confident intelligent well-rounded professional, socially conscious young adult.  And I hope that we do whatever we can to make sure our students today get a good education too.  And occasionally, that might mean you become a theoretical renegade like me!!!

By the way, thanks to my four goofy DragonWing Arts students for providing me with some photo breaks for this blog post!

STEM? STEAM? Where does ART fit in?

A rare blog post without pictures?  Well - that sounds like a bad idea, so, since in my post title I mentioned STEM and STEAM, here's a pic of a stem, and one of some steam (well actually fog, but it will have to do).

 But now I'm going to get on to what this post is REALLY about, and it will not include any more photos until the end.  Instead, I am going to discuss something that might turn out to be a controversial topic.  Well, it won't be the first time, will it?

I want to begin this blog post with a link to a Commentary column that was in the local newspaper (the Glens Falls Post Star) a couple of days ago.  The columnist is Will Doolittle, and he put into words something that I've thought about but never dared vocalize or share.  Until now.  Here.  Today.

The article is titled "Art is an unmatched subject".   The author is very supportive of art education.  I happen to know that the columnist's daughters are both college students, and while I have no idea what they are studying in college, it might well be art in some form for at least one of them.  I recall seeing their artwork in a prestigious juried high school art show, so I know that art was a large part of their high school life, and that they were very original and capable young artists.  So he, as a parent, certainly recognizes the value that art education has held for his own children.  And I thank him for that.

Anyhow - the article mentions a visit to our lovely little local art museum, the Hyde Collection, made by NY Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.  She and the museum director "made a point to endorse art as a subject for study in high school and college".  But, the article goes on to say, "They couldn't support art on its own, however.  To get art top billing, they've had to hook it to a curriculum superstar... STEM."  (Which of course then becomes STEAM, as he goes on to say.)

Doolittle defends the teaching of art as a stand-alone discipline, rather than a part of this STEM initiative.  He says "Art ...should be the foundation of public education.  Studio art and music should be compulsory subjects along with reading and math, from kindergarten through high school graduation."  What a powerful statement!  He further says "It's too bad that art's advocates feel they have to hitch it to math and technology to promote its importance.  Art came first.  Art is more universal and more useful."  And that, my friends, is the heart of the matter that I've thought but been too timid to admit out loud. 


I could quote the whole article here, but I will share Mr. Doolittle's closing lines: "Art doesn't need to get shoehorned in with the latest academic fad.  Art stands alone, and our students' time cannot be used better than in the study and practice of it."  To this I say, Hurrah, hurrah!!  I should note that he also makes some points about math and such that I don't necessarily agree with completely.  But I do like his statement that "we have gone overboard in our embrace of ...STEM".  Though not necessarily for the reasons he states.

I have been cautious in my endorsement of the concept of STEM and even of STEAM, even as I have sat at state art education association board meetings and listened to STEAM initiatives and so on.  But some of my reasoning is a touch different than his.  Don't get me wrong - I am not anti science and math.  As a matter of fact, I was, along with being an artsy kid, also a kid who excelled in math and loved science.  If my portfolio hadn't gotten me accepted into my chosen college program, I was prepared to instead choose a science-oriented education and career path.  Science is what makes the world tick, and with discoveries being made every day, and still to be made, to me science seems like the most creative of the "academic" disciplines.

But I am concerned about what is left out of STEM besides the arts. The humanities are ignored completely.   How about literature and poetry?  How about social studies/history classes?  Multicultural awareness?

Economics?  Global Studies?  Ancient civilizations?  (I could go on.)  These seem to be getting tossed to the side.  How can we expect today's kids to make our world a better place if we take away the importance of learning about our world works, and what has happened in it in the past that has made it the way it is?  Or if we take away the enjoyment of reading for pleasure?

I am worried that the intense focus on technology/engineering/math, whether through STEM or STEAM, is sucking the humanity out of education.  We need our children to become all sorts of adults, not just engineers and designers, and STEM is only a tiny part of what they need.  We need education to build compassionate adults.

While I agree that it is important to mention the critical roll that art and design play in science/engineering/technology/math, the arts are so much more than simply design.  We are not all interested/involved in art to be designers.  We teach and learn art for so many more reasons - to learn ways to express our humanity - to learn critical thinking and independent decision making - to make social statements - to simply make us happy! Again, to build engaging, compassionate adults, with a joy of the beauty of our world  The arts are the soul of education.  Do they have to be tied to STEM to have value?  Is the focus of education on STEM or even STEAM even a good thing?  What do you think?

I think I've made my point.  I'll close with a few of my old photos, randomly selected to hopefully remind us that sometimes art (and photography can be art, of course) need exist for nothing more than to bring peace and joy.  And isn't that sometimes enough?