My teaching philosophy, and reasons why supporting the arts is important.
Teaching Philosophy:
I teach art because I believe it is something crucial and important to the human experience. Throughout time people have been creating art. Before the first letters were ever written people used pictures to communicate ideas, record history, and express feelings. Art connects us to our most fundamental human characteristic: creativity.
I teach art because I know how important it is to be able to express yourself in ways indescribable with words alone. Everyone has heard the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words," but most people don't stop and think about what the phrase actually means. In a world where we are continually more connected and more aware of the events taking place around us it can be difficult to make sense of it all. It can be especially hard for young people who are already experiencing so many ups and downs. Art gives people the ability to express and convey emotions and thoughts. It gives people the opportunity to say so much without ever having to open their mouths. Art gives a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless. It gives everyone a chance to tell their thousand word story.
I teach art because I see the value in being a creative thinker, and meeting challenges with new ideas. The vast expanse of human knowledge is available at our finger tips. Employers aren't looking for people who can tell them things which are already known, they are looking for people who can think creatively and come up with new ideas. The visual arts train the mind to be flexible. In art there can be one problem but a multitude of right answers. The visual arts also train to mind to create images and ideas that no one has ever seen before. Originality is key. By teaching visual art I am teaching ingenuity.
Great Article that Echos a lot of what I believe about the Importance of Visual Art in Curriculum:
Alongside a need for drawing skills for those entering employment identified by a range of industries in the creative sectors – animation, architecture, design, fashion, film, theatre, performance and the communication industries – drawing is also widely used within a range of other professions as a means to develop, document, explore, explain, interrogate and plan. This includes the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine and sport.
Surely, this should affirm drawing to be an essential part of the curriculum at all levels for all subjects, and something for which a clear commitment needs to be made. If we really want to move the STEM to STEAM agenda, drawing could be the connector at the heart of it all.
Anita Taylor is director of the Jerwood Drawing Prize and dean of Bath School of Art and Design
Read the Full Article!
Ten Lessons the Art Teach- By E. Eisner
1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it
is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution
and that questions can have more than one answer.
3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity.Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.
5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.
The arts traffic in subtleties.
7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.
All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.
When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.
9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source
and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young
what adults believe is important.
I teach art because I believe it is something crucial and important to the human experience. Throughout time people have been creating art. Before the first letters were ever written people used pictures to communicate ideas, record history, and express feelings. Art connects us to our most fundamental human characteristic: creativity.
I teach art because I know how important it is to be able to express yourself in ways indescribable with words alone. Everyone has heard the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words," but most people don't stop and think about what the phrase actually means. In a world where we are continually more connected and more aware of the events taking place around us it can be difficult to make sense of it all. It can be especially hard for young people who are already experiencing so many ups and downs. Art gives people the ability to express and convey emotions and thoughts. It gives people the opportunity to say so much without ever having to open their mouths. Art gives a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless. It gives everyone a chance to tell their thousand word story.
I teach art because I see the value in being a creative thinker, and meeting challenges with new ideas. The vast expanse of human knowledge is available at our finger tips. Employers aren't looking for people who can tell them things which are already known, they are looking for people who can think creatively and come up with new ideas. The visual arts train the mind to be flexible. In art there can be one problem but a multitude of right answers. The visual arts also train to mind to create images and ideas that no one has ever seen before. Originality is key. By teaching visual art I am teaching ingenuity.
Great Article that Echos a lot of what I believe about the Importance of Visual Art in Curriculum:
Alongside a need for drawing skills for those entering employment identified by a range of industries in the creative sectors – animation, architecture, design, fashion, film, theatre, performance and the communication industries – drawing is also widely used within a range of other professions as a means to develop, document, explore, explain, interrogate and plan. This includes the fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine and sport.
Surely, this should affirm drawing to be an essential part of the curriculum at all levels for all subjects, and something for which a clear commitment needs to be made. If we really want to move the STEM to STEAM agenda, drawing could be the connector at the heart of it all.
Anita Taylor is director of the Jerwood Drawing Prize and dean of Bath School of Art and Design
Read the Full Article!
Ten Lessons the Art Teach- By E. Eisner
1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it
is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution
and that questions can have more than one answer.
3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity.Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.
5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.
The arts traffic in subtleties.
7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.
All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.
When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.
9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source
and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young
what adults believe is important.