Cereal Box Sketchbooks and Modeling Clay at Double Helix

My teaching group shared our second day at Double Helix with a second teaching group, which meant there were 7 student teachers working with only 7 Double Helix students. Before class started, we worried it would be crowded and chaotic, but honestly, it was one of the best parts of the experience! We could all provide one-on-one attention to each student. Each group got to observe and participate in the other’s lesson. I think my favorite moment was getting to sit next to a student I had never seen talk before and getting to hold a whole conversation with her about her work!

A student sketches in a cereal box journal

I think the challenges that came up were somewhat negated by the splitting of the class time. My group quickly realized the lesson we had planned would not have taken the entire hour, and the half hour we had was almost a little too long. I think we underestimated how quickly the students would be able to follow along with our instructions to bind the cereal box sketchbooks, and how quickly we’d be able to convey those instructions. Next time, I’d like to take time to rehearse the instructions to see how long it took to give them, and maybe complete the project ourselves to see how it felt for us.

I think the students were excited for both lessons! Even those students who seemed withdrawn or quiet engaged in both activities and created something before class ended. This may have been because of the abundance of student teachers able to support each student closely, but I did see kids talking excitedly about their work, or getting creative with the activities.

My Spot Robot and a student’s Mushroom Snail

I wish I could share the feeling of fun I had when the other group was teaching and I sat down at the table with the kids and worked alongside them. We were making little robots or creatures out of modeling clay, the fancy foam kind that air dries and comes in bright colors. I made a little version of my favorite robot, Boston Dynamics’ Spot. I listened and chatted as students quickly began to experiment with the clay. One student discovered the clay could be mixed to create new colors. Another student worked on the same little mushroom snail creature the whole time, adding and removing features thoughtfully as we worked. I was fascinated to see the student sitting next to me choose to cut the clay into manageable pieces with scissors instead of tearing or pinching it—the thought had never even occurred to me!

A student’s Fish Creatures

I mentioned earlier getting to talk with a student I’d never seen talk before. She narrated to me her whole creative process. She decided to make fish-like creatures, deciding to make a smaller one after the larger one was completed so that there would be two. She carefully pressed short lengths of wire into the blue fins of the creature to create deep delicate depressions in the clay, only removing the wire after the whole creature was assembled. While looking through a bag of beads, I found a blue fish-shaped bead and handed it to her, saying it reminded me of her blue fishes. At first, she put it aside, and I figured she wasn’t interested. Then, a few minutes later, she explained to me the fish bead would be food for her clay fish, and she placed it nearby her work. I was overjoyed! She used my suggestion to come up with something new to add to her story. I’m so glad I got to experience that moment of collaboration with her!

Quilting Community Memories

I’m so excited to be involved in a community-based art project right now! This semester, I’m in a class with two other graduate students from my cohort, Meghan and Gabby. In the class, we’re all working in separate teaching groups, along with undergrad students, to design and teach a public art unit to a sculpture class at Clarke Central High School. Since this class is mixed undergrad/grad, the graduate students were asked to complete an additional project as graduate level work in addition to our work with the high school students. The three of us met early on in the semester and were a bit at a loss for project ideas! We wanted to relate our work to the work the high school students would be doing with us, but we weren’t sure what direction to take. Our answer came to us in the form of a wonderful guest speaker. We were able to join the high schoolers as they listened to a talk from Mrs. Hattie Thomas Whitehead, an activist and former resident of the neighborhood of Linnentown which was destroyed by the city of Athens and UGA in the 1960s. She shared her story of the terrorism she, her family, and her neighbors endured as they were systematically and cruelly removed from their homes, which had been labeled as “slums,” so the university could build “modern” dorms. Through her leadership, organizing, and activism with the Linnentown Justice and Memory Committee, a resolution was passed on February 16, 2021. This is the first ever official act of reparations passed in Georgia. There’s more information on their website, Redress for Linnentown.

Hattie Thomas Whitehead

We were deeply moved by the story, and were excited to see the resolution includes a piece of public memorial art. However, we were shocked and angered to hear Mrs. Whitehead tell us that UGA has refused to come to the table for discussion at any step in the process. She shared that the city is even planning to install the memorial work on city land, because they worry that the university would tie up the installation in red tape for years if the city moved to install on the university’s property. Meghan, Gabby, and I agreed: we’re in a unique position as graduate students. We’re inside the university already, and we have access to the student body that the Linnentown residents and descendants do not. This is where our privilege becomes a tool. We decided to create a quilt in memory of Linnentown, and invite residents and descendants to attend quilting sessions, where stories can be shared and community can come together. We’ll be working as facilitator-artists, supplying materials, quilting for those who would like to entrust their stories with us, and assembling the quilt as a whole. We’ll also be bringing in the fourth member of our cohort, Jake, to help us design and print collectable memory cards including information about Linnentown, the resolution adopted by the city, and the refusal of UGA to participate in redress and reparations. The cards will be trade-able and collectable; when the whole set is together, a larger image will appear! Once the quilt is complete, we plan to bring it to the dorms that now stand where Linnentown was and hand out the cards to the UGA community, in addition to displaying the quilt in various locations on campus.

A Linnentown House

Our hope is that our work will provide a way for the Linnentown community to bring their stories and experiences to the student community of UGA. We hope the student community will be moved and angered as we were, and call for the administration of the university to reach out to the Linnentown residents and begin the discussion. I’m truly excited to work to bring these two communities in touch and I hope that as artists and educators, we’re able to help the Linnentown residents share their story with the students of UGA.

Dream Rooms at Double Helix

I think the best moment from my first teaching experience at Double Helix was hearing each student share stories about their final works. We asked the students to create a collage “dream room” containing anything they’d want in their room if they could have whatever they wanted. As the students worked, they chatted with each other about why they were adding this or that to their room. By the end of our working time, some students had developed full narratives for their rooms!

Double Helix Student Work; a flying Dream Room including a framed window in the floor, a giant bird bodyguard, and a wall decorated with artwork

The most challenging moment (or maybe just the scariest) was starting the lesson! Our group had planned out our lesson carefully, and decided who would say what, but we hadn’t actually rehearsed how it would go. That moment in between walking in front of an audience and saying a first line is so terrifying and electric! I think next time I might ask if we can rehearse the intro just once before we get in front of the students, just to calm my nerves a bit.

Double Helix Student Work; a student shares their Dream Room design, including a shrine to Beyoncé and a fancy rug with some houseplants

Initially, I think the students were most excited to make a collage. Looking through magazines is fun, cutting up paper into weird shapes is fun, and getting to glue stuff together is fun. But, as we moved around the room and started asking students about their work, it became apparent they were engaging more deeply with the concept of the activity. Some students were imagining what it would be like to live in their Dream Rooms as they designed the collage. Some students were adding elements to the collage and then inventing backstories to integrate the new elements in with the old ones. I feel the students got more excited to think through fantasy elements of a Dream Room as they added detail to their collages.

Double Helix Student Work; left: a Dream Room with a fox pet, a very large window, an area for the fox pet’s supplies, and a soft green carpet; right: a Dream Room with a bed elevated on foam legs, two dressers, and colorful rugs

If I could share one element of the day with anyone else, I’d share the energy in the room during our making time. Students were really engaging in creative thinking and putting it into practice. The students were focused and excited to make something. Even the occasional conversational tangents tended to be about something having to do with the collage materials, or ideas for Dream Rooms. Students listened to each other and built on each other’s ideas. What a great feeling!

Considering Place

Graham writes, “Critical place-based pedagogy is significant because of its blending of the local and ecological with cultural awareness and social critique” (2008, p. 378). I remember, when I was younger, we did go on nature walks and learn about the environment, but we definitely didn’t connect our immediate place to what we were learning. We were all about recycling (it was the 90s), but that was very whole-world focused, and didn’t critically consider the local community. “Nature” was just kind of a huge monolith, being threatened by “pollution,” another monolith, which could be solved by “recycling,” a third monolith.

Well, though, I can remember a positive too—the mayor of my hometown would come down to the kindergarten every year, dressed up as a faerie named Recycle Rose, and give a presentation about how you can help your family recycle in your own home. I wish I had a picture! I really appreciate the mayor’s willingness to dress up and entertain a whole school worth of kindergarteners just to help us learn more about the importance of recycling.

The students, artists, and community members in Gradle’s 2008 article put into action Graham’s definition of critical place-based pedagogy: utilizing an invasive vine species as material, considering the Native community sensitively and respectfully, and focusing directly on a personal connection with the place. I find myself wondering if my hometown school system has moved on from the “recycle” phase of ecological involvement. And now that I live in Athens, I haven’t gotten to know the community very well because of the pandemic. I’ve started a little rock collection, where if I see a neat little rock, I’ll pick it up and think about where it might have come from and what made it. I’m having a good time looking for little rocks whenever I walk anywhere on campus.

in 2016, I was lucky to get to visit Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens as part of an office outing day. The park used to be a dumping ground, and the exhibition I got to see was specifically about the transformation of space over time, stewardship, and social/ecological structures. I had two favorite pieces. First, Concave Room for Bees by Meg Webster was a giant bowl made of elevated dirt, planted with nice native flowers good for pollinating insects. It was really sunny on the day we went out, and it was actually several degrees warmer in the Concave Room than it was outside of it! It was gorgeous and filled with little bees and butterflies everywhere. It was taller than me so it also obscured my view of the city across the river! I later learned that after the installation, the soil would be dispersed across the park to provide some much-needed topsoil to the area, creating a positive impact on the park and environment even after the piece is dismantled.

Meg Webster, Concave Room for Bees

I think most of the bees visiting the Concave Room came from my other favorite piece right nearby, Fugue in B♭ by Jessica Segall. The artist used a body of a free piano from craigslist as a home for a hive of honeybees, and put a microphone into the body of the piano to amplify the sound of the bees buzzing in the hive. I saw it near the end of the season, though, and the guide told us the bees had unexpectedly built wax caps over the microphone! The sound of the bees was very muffled, but the artist didn’t want to disturb the hive to uncover the mic again. The bees had their own influence in the piece!

Jessica Segall, Fugue in B♭

I was surprised to learn later that this piece, which I mostly thought was a statement on conserving and supporting local bee populations, was also about the community surrounding the sculpture park. That part of Astoria had been built around the Steinway Piano Factory, and the body of the piano was chosen as a place for the hive as an homage to that legacy.

I think these two artists are definitely practicing a form of critical place-based investigation through these pieces, and seeking to make connections between the natural ecology of the park and the people who visit. Both artists created a unique experience for the human viewer, like being submerged in a bowl of flowers or hearing the sounds of a beehive at work, and both artists looked to bring positive impacts to the park with soil, plants, and pollinating insects. I feel so lucky to have gotten to experience these pieces together!

Gradle, S. A. (2008). When Vines Talk: Community, Art, and Ecology. Art Education, 61(6), 6–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2008.11652071

Graham, M. A. (2007). Art, Ecology and Art Education: Locating Art Education in a Critical Place-based Pedagogy. Studies in Art Education, 48(4), 375–391. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393541.2007.11650115

Considering Play

My impulse, when I think of play, is to keep my definition wide and vague. In their book, Sparks of Genius, Root-Bernstein and Root-Bernstein take an entire chapter to lay out their thoughts about play, including anecdotes from across the breadth of human experience (2001). I’m inclined to define play as “a thing people do” and leave it there. However, there are some clear benefits to play: it helps us learn. It gives us safe ways to experiment with new ideas. It allows us to test rules. It’s fun (hopefully). So, potentially, I might define play as “an important thing people do.” I might go so far as to define play as “an important thing people do as a part of living life.”

Along with this wide definition of play, I try to use a wide definition of game as well. I like to think that a game is a form of play, involving rules, ending in a result. With this definition, a lot of things can become games! I can make mundane daily tasks into games just by adding a rule and celebrating a result. I think this strategy of “game-ifying” tasks can be used with older students to create environments better for collaboration and engagement. I know gamification is already a “thing” in education, and I’m all for it—I just think the definition of “game” there is too limiting. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a video game or a card game, or a game intended to teach core subject matter. When I was a young adult and had trouble making eye contact, I treated my body language as a game: the rules were to make eye contact and use active listening body language for as long as possible in every conversation I could throughout the day. The result was a little mini party in my head, no matter what, because as long as I tried, I was meeting the requirements! If I failed and couldn’t make eye contact, that was okay. I could try again the next round. I think giving older students this kind of playful framework could help students build their willingness to take risks and to learn from failure! I think playing daily helps build a positive foundation to life. Older students may be reluctant to do “little kid things” like playing icebreaker games, or playing group games. Reframing games as activities with rules that have results could help teens begin to feel more comfortable with playing out loud.

I like practice play because often it starts with a daydream. I hope to bring practice play in my classroom through creative brainstorming games, like free association, one-word-at-a-time group brainstorming, speed idea iteration. Maybe also I could bring practice play into my teaching through material exploration: how many ways can you draw with a marker? How far can you pull a piece of silly putty before it breaks? How fast can you make paint dry?
Symbolic play is a neat one for me because I come from the theatre world, and theatre is all about symbolic play. Acting is one big complex game. I also like naming things, or sticking googly eyes on stuff, or just drawing eyeballs on my tools. Just making some new friends (who happen to be inanimate) can be really fun! And it can help you learn to empathize with things outside of yourself.
I think from the above paragraphs it’s pretty easy to tell game playing is my jam. I love a good game. I hope to bring gameplay (especially collaborative gameplay) into my classroom early and often, and in many different forms! I think artmaking games are particularly exciting, and I really want to see what a group of kids armed with some rules and materials could make together when they play.

I loved seeing the kids at Double Helix play as they made their dream room collages! Many kids began constructing stories as they collaged their rooms together. I was particularly struck by one student who layered small squares of foam together to make legs for a bed that elevated right off the page. A few other students applied images of animals to their collages and told stories about the “pets” they added to their rooms. I think the fact that my group chose to give no requirements for what must be included in their collages allowed the students to freely explore their own concepts of a dream room, and begin to build narratives around their collages. I hope to continue building experiences like this, that allow for choice and play during artmaking.

Just one last thing—writing this post reminded me of a favorite Twitter account I follow called @each_wordsquare, which posts grids of letters which make the same words left to right and top to bottom. I love following playful little Twitter accounts like this one!

ＨＡＲＥＤ
ＡＧＯＲＡ
ＲＯＢＯＴ
ＥＲＯＳＥ
ＤＡＴＥＤ

— each_wordsquare (@each_wordsquare) February 24, 2021

Root-Bernstein, R. S., & Root-Bernstein, M. M. (2001). Play. In Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People (Early ed., pp. 246–268). Mariner Books.

Charters, Reggio Emilia and Listening

In my old neighborhood, I walked past a little charter school every day on my way to the train. It was housed in the first and second floors of a “nice” apartment building (there were balconies but also a colony of feral cats around the back) and had large graphics featuring smiling students on the windows. Sometimes I’d see classes in progress through the windows on my walk, and I wondered what it was like in there.

My understanding of charter schools at the time was largely based on what I had heard on the news: stories of frauds and failures. I knew someone could found a charter school, reap the vouchers, and then invest nothing in the school, leading to its inevitable closure. The founder keeps the money, and the students and teachers are left without resources and without a school. I had read stories of teachers showing up to the school building only to find a sign on the door informing them they were no longer employed because the school no longer existed. But, I think walking past the little charter school pulled the issue to the front of my mind a little more and I spent some effort seeking out information on why and how charter schools work.

Now I understand charter schools are established to provide an alternative to public schools, and often focus on specific specialties or needs in the community. Though there’s little difference in student achievement when comparing charters and public schools (TS&S Ch. 5 p. 158), charter schools provide an opportunity to explore and implement curricula outside of the state and local regulations. Charter schools also provide opportunities for students to potentially find an environment more conducive to their learning style than might be available in public schools.

However, my feelings about charter schools are still mixed. Relaxed regulations can be helpful in curriculum design and specialization, but can also be taken advantage of in ways that harm students and teachers. Vouchers turn students into dollars instead of learners. Students and parents may need to commute longer, or leave their communities entirely, to get to a chosen charter school. I’m interested to see how charter schools develop over the next decade, and how the impact of these schools ripples out into the larger education structure of the country.

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In Italy, far away from US charter schools, Reggio Emilia teachers use time, space, and listening to facilitate exploration for their students. I’m interested in the element of listening the most. In Reggio schools, teachers listen to students, engaging fully in discussion and posing questions to deepen the conversation. Reggio teachers help “children to develop theories in response to listening” (Wexler, 2004, p. 18). Outside of a few very rare occasions, I don’t remember being listened to like that in my experience in my US public schools. Looking at it from an educator’s point of view now, I understand how scary it can be to just let kids talk about something. What if the conversation goes off the rails? What if something bad happens???

It will be fine. Becoming comfortable with not knowing is a big first step I hope to take in incorporating listening into my classroom. I do hope to provide a space for students to discover their own interests and theories, and not just those put on them by adults in their lives. I don’t think discussion needs to be long or drawn out to be meaningful, it just needs to be routine and comfortable. I think if a class of kids are in the habit of discussing before and after a learning experience, it will become natural to express thoughts and feelings about the topics as they come. As a teacher, my responsibility is to facilitate a supportive listening environment and step back to let the kids work!

Past and Personal Histories of Art Education

When I was compiling this timeline, I was surprised to see just how cyclical certain ideas in art education have been over the centuries. I can see evidence of social reconstruction and John Dewey’s Art as Experience in today’s artist-as-activist and choice-based pedagogical approaches. But, it’s not like we’re reinventing the wheel—it seems like each cycle brings new knowledge and understanding to the practice of art education.

I’m excited to know that were I to choose to implement a TAB classroom, I could potentially look as far back as the 1930s for pedagogical points of reference.

I definitely need points of reference, because I don’t remember much of the art education experiences I had as a kid, and especially not from grade school in the 1990s. I know in 5th grade that my art class was renamed called “Venture Class” and focused on teaching creative life skills—that class is where I learned to read a map.

I think my early art education experiences in school were based around “school art” type projects. As a class, we were expected to follow instructions and create work with similar results. I wonder if my teachers were influenced by some form of DBAE, though honestly I can’t remember much besides completing some projects with strict instructions to follow.

At one point in my elementary art class experience, we were making scratch art as a class. I was determined to make a cool drawing of an alien creature. I even made one side of the crayon underlay green to be the grassy ground of the forest where the alien lived. I added stars to the border of the page my scratch drawing was mounted to and I signed my name both in cursive and print. I was so happy with my work. My parents hung it up and it was displayed in the house until this year, over 15 years later, when they gave it back to me.

Apparently, my piece wasn’t displayed in the library with the rest of my classmates’ work. My teacher pulled my mom aside and explained I hadn’t followed the directions of what to draw, and so my work didn’t look like everyone else’s. I’m lucky to have my mom, because she stood up for me: she was very proud of my work. My mom didn’t tell me this story until this past year, and I’m grateful to her for encouraging my creative expression.

In middle school I remember learning technique and theory, like drawing in various points of perspective and learning the color wheel. In high school, I had a bit more creative freedom, as my teacher set clear expectations and then let us work at our own speeds and with our own ideas. I also took AP art courses, in which the only requirements were completing work for the AP portfolio. Maybe my high school art teacher was influenced by TAB and choice-based practices… But he might have also just been a pretty laid back teacher. I remember him excitedly supporting students if they wanted to go beyond the basic requirements, and I remember him putting very little pressure on the kids who didn’t.

In my own practice, I’d like to incorporate choice-based approaches, studio thinking, and design thinking—maybe with aspects of John Dewey’s Art as Experience philosophy too. I strongly believe everyone can be creative. The teacher is responsible for creating an environment conducive to exploration and thought, and the teacher is responsible for guiding the student to the understanding that art is everywhere. Creativity can’t be dictated through strict rules, and art-making can’t be meaningful if it’s forced on the maker. Everyone can be an artist! They just need support to get there.