It has been twenty two days since my last post, and it is no coincidence that it has been twenty days since we returned to school to begin the second semester. What a perfect illustration of how busy we art teachers are! Sometimes the day to day classroom needs eclipse reflective thinking about our profession.
My last post compared a well-crafted art lesson plan to a work of art. This post likens an art studio critique to a teacher evaluation.
It is standard operating procedure in an art studio to hang a newly blossomed work of art on a wall and allow classmates and teachers to critique it. Critics will often go through a litany of concerns and say things to us like "The balance between the foreground and background feels uneasy to me because I can not stop my eyes from going back and forth. I'm asking myself which is most important, and this sets up a nice dynamic." Sometimes the words are not so thoughtful, helpful or kind. You might hear, "What were you thinking?" or "Try again." The point is that we artists are used to our work being critiqued and held to a more or less uniform set of standards.
My last post compared a well-crafted art lesson plan to a work of art. This post likens an art studio critique to a teacher evaluation.
It is standard operating procedure in an art studio to hang a newly blossomed work of art on a wall and allow classmates and teachers to critique it. Critics will often go through a litany of concerns and say things to us like "The balance between the foreground and background feels uneasy to me because I can not stop my eyes from going back and forth. I'm asking myself which is most important, and this sets up a nice dynamic." Sometimes the words are not so thoughtful, helpful or kind. You might hear, "What were you thinking?" or "Try again." The point is that we artists are used to our work being critiqued and held to a more or less uniform set of standards.
We art teachers must also get used to being evaluated and held to a uniform set of standards. It that feels uncomfortable, perhaps brutal, then we can call on our experiences as art students to help us understand and withstand the process. As we hung our fresh, precious works of art on the wall and braced ourselves for the worst, we sometimes got crushed. But sometimes we got praised, and sometimes we received little nuggets of truth about our work that propelled us forward. As teachers, we might sometimes feel crushed by non-art teacher's evaluations of us. And sometimes we will be praised, and sometimes we will hear little nuggets of truth that will propel us forward.
We are not going to always hit the mark with our lessons. Perhaps our pacing is off and there's a mad dash to clean up and line up, or a new procedure is tongue-twistingly difficult to explain, or the students just don't "buy" it that particular class period. As professional educators, we must stay humble enough to know that we don't know it all. We must be curious enough to continue to learn about the art of teaching. We must care enough to work at being better. And we must respect our administrators enough to trust in the evaluation system.
Let us teach on!
We are not going to always hit the mark with our lessons. Perhaps our pacing is off and there's a mad dash to clean up and line up, or a new procedure is tongue-twistingly difficult to explain, or the students just don't "buy" it that particular class period. As professional educators, we must stay humble enough to know that we don't know it all. We must be curious enough to continue to learn about the art of teaching. We must care enough to work at being better. And we must respect our administrators enough to trust in the evaluation system.
Let us teach on!
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