Monday, 1 May 2017

Teaching Artist Response  Ch.1 & 2

       I have been seriously thinking lately about if I want to continue to pursue illustration as my major of study. In contemplating that choice, a major wall I have come up against has been whether or not it would benefit me with my future professional goals as an educator. 
       I really liked what this chapter said about the difference between an art educator and a teaching artist. The teaching artist is one who is practicing her art form and thus can draw enthusiasm and inspiration from her current practice into the classroom. The Art educator is one who has a deep love and respect for art and shares and communicates that through their instructional art activities. While both types of educators have merit and something great to bring to the classroom, I feel more inspired by the job description of the former.                   
         I want to be creating while my students are. To be inspired in my own life by the things I'm learning and explore with them those things. This quote really hit me:
"If you articulate what matters to you in your discipline, you are both creating curriculum and thinking as an artist."
        I think I am afraid of not being good enough for illustration and serious art practice and so I have held back from it. I don't want to hold back from something because I am nervous or afraid of being successful or measuring up. I need to just go forward with what I care about regardless of the consequences.
         I also really appreciated this thought:
"Teaching and art-making also share another characteristic: they are largely about identifying what is essential in a given context. An artist's power resides partly in the ability to identify what is essential to an idea, vision, association or functional characteristic so that it can be communicated, embodied or designed in a medium. Similarly a teaching artist, or any good teacher, must identify what techniques, concepts and processes in a discipline are essential to teach in a given context so that students can better make original work that successfully applies and extends past practice and knowledge."

It is important not to overload students but to choose the essential concepts and skills you wish to give them and scaffold them from there on, so that they may have a greater chance of success. This quote also greatly stuck out to me:

"We also need to have an attitude of curiosity about both the areas with which we are familiar and areas we wish to know more about."
I think the teacher who is most effective is the teacher who is willing to explore and learn more. I feel that Dr Graham was always really good at doing this as an educator and that really helped me as a student get interested and invested in what was being taught, because it seemed not like a task he was assigning us but a project he was exploring with us. I want to do that as well with my students.

From CH.2 

       I loved the idea that your teaching is as unique as your art is. I think once agin this is why the principle form Ch.1 of being a teaching artist , is so important to me, the more I reflect on it. 
        It makes since that you can only pull as much out of a garden , as what you've panted- that time you put into your artwork , becomes the seeds you plant and which you can one day harvest in your classroom. This is also why it is important to be continually learning and evaluating my work as an artist. 
        I loved discussions we had in class this year, and presentations form other students. So many of the possibilities we saw in art were informed by our knowledge of what other artists were currently doing. Especially in relation to the evening for educators we planned.
       I want as an educator to bring my work into the classroom and have the classroom influence my work. SO that its a collaboration type of learning rather than just a textbook distance type of learning. I hope me and my students explore together the possibilities found in art.

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