The short time that students spend in art class during the school year might be the only time they can fully experience their role as intentional artists. Personal interests and autobiographical events realized through art-making processes are potent opportunities for transdisciplinary learning. This issue of SchoolArts, focused on choice-based art education and Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB), will provide readers with useful art education perspectives.
I remember having a dialog about works in progress with a group of fourth graders in 2010. One student was busy applying the sgraffito technique to her painting. I asked, “What’s going on here?” She said, “It’s a tornado.” I asked, “Have you ever been in a tornado?” She replied, “Yes. Everything gets destroyed.”
That short exchange told me that the young artist was still processing her experience with trauma. Here in Indiana, tornadic events are terrifying. While art therapy is not something I practice or intended with this painting activity, I observed in real time a therapeutic aspect of art education afforded to this child in our program. By recreating the windstorm in her painting, she could control the tornado’s destructive power in art class.
Providing children with permission to direct their own learning means the teacher is prepared to be responsive to the child’s intellectual and personal interests. A curriculum complication exists when one considers the cognitive diversity that exists in the school. We learned from the founders of Teaching for Artistic Behavior that scaling up curriculum diversification is possible if the teacher enables it through learning environments that support differentiation.
Here, within a laboratory of art learning, individual stories can be told through a variety of materials and art-making tools. Activity centers based on media exploration and skill-building is a perfect set-up to support differentiation and the realization of independent art ideas.
As art educators, we know experiential learning in the visual arts is crucial to intellectual development because the doing part of art-making allows the artist to process internal thought. Art-making is a phenomenal experience that can reaffirm our humanity and refine our intellectual potential. When emotional drive, personal ideas, and active bodies are integrated with self-expression through art, a dynamic physiological event takes place that is life-enhancing.
I am reminded by my daughter Kelby and son-in-law Brock about the biological power of embodied learning experiences. Their newborn child, Presley, loves to explore with her eyes, ears, hands, and feet. She thrives in the presence of empathetically secure, stimulating environments, abundant tactile stimulation, and unconditional love. All children should be able to live and learn under these conditions where their irreducible needs to flourish can be met.
For many children, school represents the only place in their communities where this possibility exists. The short time that students spend in art class during the school year might be the only time they can fully experience their role as intentional artists. Personal interests and autobiographical events realized through art-making processes are potent opportunities for transdisciplinary learning.
This issue of SchoolArts, focused on choice-based art education and Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB), will provide readers with useful art education perspectives. Nancy and I have recruited a distinguished group of expert authors who offer important insights that may enhance your art education program. We are humbled by the incredible work of art educators from across the world who continuously weather adversity where conditions of trauma exist. The work you are doing is vital.
May you continue to create, grow, and flourish through the artistic process. Best wishes always!
Clyde Gaw is a longtime member of the Teaching for Artistic Behavior board of directors and advocacy adviser for the Art Education Association of Indiana. ClydeGaw.Blogspot.com
Art teachers present a variety of lessons that emphasize student choice and the Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) approach. Students work in groups to create a project using unfinished artwork; participate in an afterschool TAB program based on the Studio Habits of Mind; use the concept of the lighthouse to create personal pieces that honor who or what inspires them; embrace brainstorming and media exploration through sketchbook art journals; and more.
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