upgrade
These are some things I'm considering, questioning, and working on for upgrading the curriculum. This page is always a work in progress so if you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out.
Could the goal process be more flexible without becoming less efficient or effective?
With Art 1, consistency and routine are very important for their success. With a more advanced group of students who have worked through that somewhat restrictive process would be more intrinsically motivated to work through the process and would not need to be required to spend a specific number of days on a particular step or to enact them in a specific order. However, if the timing and order are student-directed, how would the assignments be added to a LMS in a way that holds students accountable and doesn't create confusion for the student or the teacher?
In considering this, I created a map of a potential goal process based on trial and error with repeated revisits to the research and critique phases. Could this mapping be a means to assessment, student reflection, or both?
Mapping of potential non-linear goal process
autonomy in assessment
How can I provide autonomy in how students are assessed? How can I allow them to self-determine their own assessments?
Inquiry & Indwelling
"What if, for example, questions were more important than answers?"
(Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 81).
Teaching students to make art as a response to their own questions and continue that process for extended periods of time is a challenge. Castro (2007) provides a great example of how to first model artmaking in response to questions before students attempt their own questions.
Indwelling is a deep familiarity with something that comes from extended inquiry (Thomas & Brown, 2011). Is indwelling the goal of curriculum for AP students?
I created this unit for my blended Art 2-4 class. The Art 2 students needed more one-on-one guidance, but Art 4 students did well with it even though they hadn't made art based on inquiry before.
This unit doesn't have complete implementation notes yet, and there may be other issues, but I wanted to go ahead and share it. If you have questions or would like access to something that's blocked, please let me know.
advocacy
How can I support teachers through advocacy resources?
Updated skill goal
After working with the skill goals as they are in the Play section, there were some issues I wanted to address.
students were still not choosing quality resources and using them to practice as thoughtfully or consistently as I would like.
The list of skills was causing problems. Some of the skills were too simple and thus had few resources. Some were leading students to resources that were giving them incorrect information.
Did you know there are multiple videos on one-point perspective that don't use a vanishing point or horizon line?
Did you know most websites don't define abstract properly? They often conflate abstract and non-objective.
Students were choosing from the list 99% of the time. In other words, it was pitting any ambition they had against any laziness they were feeling. Typically the ease of choosing from the list beat out their desire to find something else they may be interested in.
This list explains how the updated skill building unit deals with the issues in the older skill goal unit
There are three new lessons explicitly walking students through the process of finding, documenting, comparing, evaluating, and using resources.
Students are now expected to complete the skill building unit for shading and advanced color theory before moving to a skill of their choice. My middle school counterpart is having her students do value and basic color theory, so these will build on the middle school curriculum. We chose these based on our student's knowledge gaps and skills they most commonly wanted to learn. Going through the process with some of the most commonly selected skills together first, allowed me to guide their resource selection and teach better skills for selecting resources. For example, I know which sites have incorrect or misleading information on them when doing a search for shading. When students select these, I can address it with them and explain how they might have known that it was not the best choice of resource. This way, they pick up on those skills and can apply them to their research of a chosen skill later on when I'm not as familiar with the search results.
Before students choose a skill of their own, they are expected to reflect on skills they've already used that year and look at some skills they've never heard of. For the later, I found a couple lists online with some pretty obscure techniques and processes. After looking at their previous work and being exposed to some new skills, there was a noticeable increase in different skill choices.
Why don't unguided studio days have the same learning potential at secondary as elementary?
The social elements are vastly different.
Elementary students spend all day with their class. They're comfortable with them and have developed different types of relationships with all of them. They may not all be friends, but they have learned how to interact with all of them without hesitation.
Secondary students are the opposite. They may not even know everyone's name in their class. They may also have very negative feelings toward others in their class due to past relationships. Regardless of how much I try to get them to interact with someone, anyone, other than those at their table, they frequently refuse. They won't even ask a neighbor to borrow their computer charger, much less teach them a new skill or ask for advice.
On top of not wanting to "talk to strangers," they don't feel like experts. Yes, there are some that do, but the average student who learns a new skill does not feel they are equipped to teach it to someone else. They may not even recognize when they've learned a new skill. Elementary students share their knowledge freely. The teacher needs only tell the student they're an expert for the student to believe it.
In other words, all the magical stuff that happens on its own at elementary rarely happens at all in secondary.
The new "Learning From and Teaching Others" unit was successful in overcoming some of these issues for a few reasons.
1. Many students at the same table choose the same skill to learn in the first place, so they had to go to another table to learn a new skill.
2. They all had a specific skill they had learned and could share. They may not have felt like an expert, but they understood that anyone asking them to teach didn't know anything about the skill, so they knew more than them.
3. They had resources to look back at if they forgot. They had the resources they gathered initially as well as their own journal entries showing their daily progress.
4. Everyone was in the same boat. They weren't the only one going and asking another student for help. Everyone was expected to do it, so they weren't sticking their neck out as much.
discussion
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references
Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. United Kingdom: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.