CLASS #2: Art and Teaching the Whole Child

Overview of Day – Check in on the last 2 weeks

We will review the idea of self as learner we talked about in Class 1, what did you learn about yourself through taking the online survey and by writing a reflection about self as learner in your blog?
• What surprised you?
• What did you already know about yourself as a learner?
• After having taken the survey, what do you think about yourself as a learner?
We will have an informal class discussion about your blogging journal.

Reading Discussion: What is Art For? by Ellen Disanayake

Brainstorm some reflections about this reading and how it applies to art and learning:
• Where does art come from? Biological? Emotional? Cultural?
• Why is art necessary? Why is art important to us as a culture?
• Why is it important as part of a child (or adults learners) education?
• Why should we consider these ideas about art as art makers? As educators?
• What do you question?
Keep a list of ideas and answers to these questions to come back to later in the semester, we will log our discussion on class.

Designing an Art Experience Assignment

How would you use an arts learning approach to something you understand? All students will present the assignment given in Class #1 to present something that you are good at in an arts learning experience. We look forward to seeing what you have come up with!

NOTE: All class participants must engage in questions and dialogue about these experiences as your fellow classmates present - this is part of your class participation grade!

Reading Discussion/Reflection Exercise Teaching to the Whole Child by Nel Noddings

What is the purpose of education?
Referring to your blogging journal reflections on this reading, we will come up with a list of questions to lead our discussion in a Think, Pair, Share exercise.
• What are the big ideas?
• What do you question?
• What resonates with you the most?
Create a list of these ideas as a whole class - students take notes in notebooks

Introduce Studio Habits of Mind
The Studio Habits came out of Harvard's Graduate School of Education, Project Zero,
Studio Thinking Project. On the Studio Thinking Project website the SHOM are described as follows:
"The arts are of central importance to the education of young minds. However, educators know surprisingly little about how the arts are taught, what students learn, and the types of decisions teachers make in designing and carrying out instruction. The Studio Thinking Project is a multi-year investigation designed to answer these questions."

In class you will receive a handout about the Studio Habits, Here is a link to the SH from the Project Zero website - they are the same as the SH on the we will hand out in class:

• Eight Studio Habits of Mind

In this class we will talk about how as artists you use these habits of mind and how as educators they can be used in our teaching and learning practices. We will log our conversation led by the following questions:
• What implications do these have for teaching the whole child?
• In what areas of your own practice do you use any of these?
• What else is art for beyond making art?
• What is important, and possibly essential, in the process for human development, learning, culture, etc.?

HOMEWORK Due February 2, 2009


1. History and Ideas Blogging - Read the following 2 articles:

• 
Hetland, L. and Winner, E. Art for Our Sake: School arts classes matter more than ever – but not for the reasons you think.
• Tharp, T. The Creative Habit 


Write reflections for both of these articles in your blog journals. Look for the writing prompts at:
History and Ideas Blogging Journals

2. Studio Habits Thinking - Using your blog, write a reflection on your personal art making process and apply SHoM your process. Be specific - give examples. Be prepared to share this next week in class.

CLASS #1: Art and Learning/Self as Learner

Class Introduction

Introduce yourself, give us your background and interest in class – what you want to get out of this? Your expectations? A question you have about art and learning/art education?

Introduction Exercise – Drawer of Shame
1. Brainstorm list of things in the drawer
Select item from the list that could be a symbol, simile (cat is like a canary) or metaphor (cat is a canary) to connect who you are in this moment, what kind of learner you are and what you hope to get from this class.
2. Introduce self: NAME, item from the drawer with explanation of why you chose it and how it represents you or yourself as a learner and your intentions in this class. Also say where you come from, major, and something of interest about you that is not related to the class topic.

Introduction to Art and Learning - Inquiry and Understandings
What is a Throughline? This semester we will explore the relationships between the following questions:

• What is the relationship between art and learning?
• What is art education?
• What is art education for and why does it matter?

In groups of three you will talk about the following questions – then share out to the whole group:

• What is the relationship between learning and experience?
• What is the relationship between art and experience?

Listing Our Questions
As a whole group we will start to create a list of what you think arts education/arts learning is or what it could be and what it looks like. We will keep this list throughout the semester and revisit at the end of semester.

What questions do you have?
In pairs, generate list of questions that have about arts learning. Then share out to the whole group. We will add these questions to a list we will grow over the course of the semester.

Looking at the list of questions handout try to identify the similarities and different? – Work in pairs to find similarities and differences. This will help us to revise our list of research questions throughout the course. You will use this list later for to drawn from when for your their own inquiry project.

Introduce Blogging Journal (think of this as a process journal…)
You will need to go online and set up a blog on Bloggger. If you already have a Google account you can just log right in with this account. If you have never set up a Google account, you will have to set on up - you can do this from the Blogger home page.

You will be asked to write in this online blog/journal every week. You can also upload images, and video - be creative - but make sure we can read what you are writing about. We will be giving you writing prompts each week for your blog.

HOMEWORK - Due January 26th, 2009

1. Purchase reader (about $28.00 from Green Graphics on Broadway (near College). Read the following articles:
Noddings, N. What Does it Mean to Educate the Whole Child? p. 161
Disanayake, What is Art for? p.15

2. Take a Learning Styles survey. Go to one of the following sites and take an online survey. Write a short reflection about what you found out about yourself - What surprised you? What did you already know?:

• A Learning Style Survey for College
• Learning Style Questionnaire
• Learning Style Inventory
  

3. History and Ideas Blogging
Set up your blogging journal: (http://www.blogger.com/start) Please begin using it immediately, in conjunction with the first reading - Reflect on yourself as a learner and respond to the articles you read. Your blog/journal counts towards your grade and will be commented on online 2 times during this semester. It will be assessed on regularity, thoroughness, creativity and engagement with course content. Go to our blog site to see writing prompts for your blog:
History and Ideas Blogging Journals

4. Make sure that you have a notebook every week for class

5. Designing an Art Experience - Choose something that you understand really well - it can be anything (draw a face, set up a website, design a logo, making lasagna, etc) and design an arts learning experience of your choice that will make it easy for someone else to understand to do the thing that you are good at. Make sure to to answer the following questions in your presentation:

• How did you learn it? (This is how you learn about drawing a face, this is how you get really good at it...)
• How do you know you understand it? (When you can teach it to somone else, when you can do it quickly, etc.)

You can present this anyway you want – as a creative written piece, poem, Power Point Presentation, an artwork, spoken word, dramatic piece – your choice – be creative.

Welcome

Welcome to the History and Ideas in Art Education, Spring 2009
The Center for Art and Public Life, California College of Art
Instructors Louise Music and Trena Noval

We will use this blog to post all the classroom assignments, web links and readings for the History and Ideas in Art Education, Spring 2009 class. Please bookmark this site and refer to it each week as we will be posting new information up on it regularly.