I am so excited to share with you all that I had the pleasure of traveling to Boston, Massachusetts this summer 2018 for the TAB (Teaching Artistic Behavior) training at the MassArt Institute. Bags packed, "Teaching Like A Pirate" by Dave Burgess with an open mind & heart ready to learn.
I absolutely need to start by thanking everyone for the support in making this educational trip possible for my professional & personal growth. Special thanks to our Art Mom, Beverly Fletcher FWISD Art Director, Chris Walk Executive Direct for the Visual and Performance Department, Mrs. Russell my Principal for all of her ongoing support in my professional growth.
The journey to attend the TAB training at the MassArt Institute has been a long time coming, started March 2017 at the NAEA New York City conference. As many of you know the 2017-2018 school year was a transition year for our Art Classroom to Art Studio, students to artists, teacher driven to artist driven. I spent summer 2017 creating a "Student Driven" curriculum, including a art studio website, art studio newsletter and centers all while branding the art studio with "Little Ms. Dominguez" art facilitator character designed by Stephanie Longoria. That summer I spent many hours researching online about TAB but never felt comfortable calling the art studio a "TAB" studio because I had not attended an "official" TAB training. In January I had the pleasure of hosting a full day workshop at South Hills Elementary and I had heard that we had a few TAB art teachers in the district and invited them to present with me at our waiver day. I had the pleasure to work with Gayle Record, Ronni Haslett, Rachel Varney and Denise Zwald. We were so happy to see that many of our FWISD art teacher were so eager to learn more about student driven art studios and TAB all while making the first steps to creating Art Centers to take back to their campuses.
Gayle Record had inspired me to pursue this Boston journey and gave me some really good insight on what to expect at MassArt. What I experienced this week has just been pure magical. Being a part of of a group of inspirational art teachers across the nation led by the amazing, advocates, designer of TAB Katherine Douglas, Clyde Gaw Diane Jaquith, Ian Sands and Julie Toole was surreal. These wonderful art advocates are my ART Hero's and to be taught by them has just been an unbelievable experience. Below I have added the link to the MassArt TAB website.
My professional journey in Art Education is coming together including my participation with the FWISD Curriculum Committee and getting a clear view on how to apply Curriculum by Design, TTESS (Distinguished & Accomplished) with National and State standards through TAB.
The most important aspect of TAB is creating a safe, fun, exploration and healthy environment where the artists can freely express their own creations on a higher thinking level with plenty of time to reflect on their own personal growth. I am a huge fan of Sir Ken Robinson and his talks about how the school systems are killing creativity and I am so excited to be part of the change moving our educational system forward with the macro perspective in mind for our children. (I have added the youtube link to his talk about Creativity)
Please read the following blogs as I document my journey at the 2018 TAB Training at MassArt.
https://massart.edu/teaching-artistic-behavior-tab
https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity
