In March I had the honor of traveling to New York City (for the first time ever) to attend the National Art Educators Association convention. It was such an eye opening experience and it left me wanting to do more with the art classroom. Many of the wonderful workshop and talks discussion where about Student Driven classroom, STEAM vs STEM, Teaching Artistic Behavior and of course all the freebies from the exhibition exhibit. (Can I just say it was three stories of art supplies, lesson plans and hands on workshops aka ART TEACHER PARADISE)
I came back to the art room with so much on my mind on how I could transition the art room into a student driven one. The kids wanted to hear all about New York and I quickly shared with them what I learned. We at the time just got our fall student teacher and while he taught them about pop up cards the students and I began the planning to make our art room into a studio. I would be a fool to think that I can do this transformation on my own but I am wise and asked the students for help and they have come up with some great ideas. I presented them with four questions and the planing grew from there which lead me to promise them I would spend all summer planning it out so that in the Fall of 2017 we could start implementing.
The Four Questions asked were the following;
1. If you could draw anything in art, what would you draw?
2. How would you like to learn about art?
3. What art freedom's would you like to have in the art room?
4. What responsibilities would you have to posses to make "art freedoms" possible?
The students were to share with their shoulder partners and tables for each question and share in a whole group. Each student wrote their own answer on a paper.
As promised I spent the majority of my time over the summer educating myself on both Student Driven Classroom and on Teaching Artistic Behavior via online professional art education website, talks and other teacher blogs. I have designed a new approach to help us transition from ART ROOM to ART STUDIO from TEACHER DRIVEN to STUDENT DRIVEN. We will continue to keep a safe, clean and organized art space and this first year will be a big transition but I am up for the challenge.
Make sure to follow along to keep up to date on the new and exciting growth in the art studio.
