Program Reflections: What and How I Learned in Graduate School

Reflective Practice

Over the past several years during this master’s program I’ve been through many changes; shifts in environment, new understandings, alterations to pedagogy, psychological adjustments, and alterations to many things that don’t fit neatly into the aforementioned categories. After putting it all down on paper, the common themes of order and chaos arose. More specifically, the push between these two themes and their value in teaching and creating art. For something to diverge from a common path there must first be a common path, and we build these “paths” through careful planning and order. I’ve worked these last 3 years to carefully craft a suitably ordered learning environment in our new school building, which was aided in no small part to the learning I’ve taken from the courses in this program. Order has often been the challenge for me and I’m grateful for the words and educational frameworks that I’ve accrued to better build that classroom environment for my students. In other courses I’ve enjoyed the opportunities to embrace the divergent thinking (or rhyzomatic thinking, as S.R. Walker would put it) that encourages ingenuity and creativity when creating artwork of my own and the lessons that generate artwork of my students. Having the opportunity to learn again as the student was also a great value in this program. There have been a very diverse set of experiences I’ve encountered while taking the role of student and they’ve helped me reframe how I think about how and where my own students learn.

Critical reflection and a careful analysis of both my environment and my teaching practice were an essential step in rebuilding a space that students can feel encouraged to explore their own personal creativity. This began with methodically taking note of what already existed in the physical and digital space; what is working, what isn’t, and what hasn’t been tried yet. Taking stock the current situation gave me insight into how both my students and I navigate the classroom through noting the common “paths” of interactions with materials, location, and people which was then used to make the map forward. If some well worn paths were leading in the wrong direction to facilitate learning I made adjustments to redirect the flow. This manifested as rearranging supply locations, switching supplies to meet the increasingly varied student needs, and adjusting routines to better facilitate student learning. New labeling systems were designed, adaptive art supplies were acquired, and student choice and voice was incorporated into classroom routines to promote active engagement. As author and educator David Darts explains, this practice is not different from other teachers’ acts to help students “make sense of their experiences and themselves, to facilitate critical inquiry and creative problem solving, and to support the creation of meaningful interactions and interconnections between and within the world(s) around them” (Darts, 2006, p. 12). Critical reflection and analysis is the process by which I look back in order to go forward, to design a better future out of deliberately set goals in the present based on the experiences of the past.

Much of my teaching practice is, not surprisingly, informed by what I’ve already experienced. Taking a reflective look at the artwork I’ve made over the decades and the lessons I’ve devoted the most energy into, I’ve found that I have always had an interest in environments and how we navigate them. I was raised until the age of 10 as an only child on a farm with open range to explore, imagine, and build things to fill my time and mind. When I started school I had to learn a new way of existing in the world with other people, and at 11 I had a younger brother that changed the dynamic of how things work at home. In Kindergarten I was diagnosed with ADHD, though I did not really understand what that meant until deep into undergraduate college. I did as I was told and took the medicine, tried hard, and did my best to stay engaged even when things were uninteresting. I didn’t understand that the way my mind worked was different than that of my peers. I was always told I’m “creative” by others, but most of these creative acts were almost entirely cognitive or physical accommodations that I made for myself because the world I navigate didn’t provide it. My artwork showed worlds I wished existed, and my “quirky” daily practices were accommodations I designed to make a task easier (which, coincidentally, my peers did not seem to have the same challenges with). Taking the UDL course at OSU provided me with a new list of vocabulary and concepts to describe what I have been doing my whole life. This prompted a journey of self-discovery to understand my own divergences that helped me better design my teaching to meet the needs of my students’ divergences. Having a name for these terms allowed me to discuss them more readily and plan for them more deliberately. In Design and Deliver, the author L. L. Nelson asks important questions of teachers in this vein: “What do you envision for your learners? How do you view your role? Are you preparing your learners to achieve the standards or are you preparing them to apply their knowledge and skills in their life? Are you preparing them to regurgitate facts or are you preparing them to create a deep cognitive connection to their learning?” (Nelson, 2021, pp. 17) The coursework I’ve taken in this program has helped me to reflect on what I perceive as my role as a teacher and what I hope for in my own students. I now see myself as someone to help my students find a way to express themselves and navigate their world in the way that works best for them, but more importantly to help them understand how they can continue to find their own way to do so. The world we live in will never be the world our students inherit, though some similarities may remain. I have learned that it is more important to provide our students with the tools to continue to teach themselves than to provide them with a set of facts to last a lifetime.

This program has also provided me with a chance to consider more deeply the need for advocacy for the visual arts as a way to help students find themselves and to develop their own creativity. It is a fool’s errand to attempt to teach someone a series of facts that constitutes everything you think they need to know to be a successful and productive member of society. My generation grew up in an education system that prioritized rote memorization of facts, figures, and formulas that were intended to get us through life. While many millennials still possess the core memory that “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell” and “a2+b2=c2,” what has proven the most useful has been the ability to think through a problem and devise a new solution. According to a study by the Americans for the Arts, 72% of business leaders state that creativity is the most important skill they look for when hiring new employees. (Engebretsen, 2013, pp. 7). In addition to this fact, 93% of Americans believe that the arts are essential to providing a well-rounded education (pp. 25). Through this program I have explored ways to advocate for the visual arts at the local level. Some methods used include designing projects that students feel they have had a chance to show their voice and interest in, and making those artworks visible and engaging to the community. To quote Darts again, “I found that when students are personally invested in a topic, they are more inclined to engage with it in meaningful ways” (Darts, 2006, pp. 7).

In 2022 I led Drawing classes through the process to create their own coloring book on a class theme, composed of their own designs, printed in-house, and distributed to students, administrators, and the community during the district wide arts festival. That same year Painting classes were taught methods of mural creation, and students collaboratively designed a painted vinyl sticker mural using words that described what they appreciated about their community. The mural was installed by students near the front entrance to the school and remained for several months and had a feature post on the art department Instagram account. When the mural came down each student could keep their painted vinyl sticker or give it as a gift to someone in the community. Through these assignments both my students and I learned more about the importance of having your voice heard. Often artworks can be relegated to the designated space for hanging pictures, a display pedestal, or a short-lived festival. These projects focused on advocacy gave my students and I permission to “take up space,” and make our work known to others in a way that changes how they interact with the common everyday spaces. The Australian art educator A. Elfland mentions his reasoning on changes in educational practice, which explains my own process well: “What is clear from these examples is that the impetus for change in educational practice came in large part from socially perceived needs” (Efland, pp.2). The intent of these projects was to improve the post-covid lack of student engagement that slowly crept in.  Through these assignments, created wholly new by myself, we learned together by doing the work. This provided students with a reason to create and make something meaningful for themselves. There were some ups and downs in the process, of course. Through trial and error, both students and I found that we learned more from small “mistakes” than big “successes” in the process. I liken this to practicing a basketball shot; if the shot is landed on the first try there will be a short burst of excitement, and no thought given to how it happened. However, if the first 30 shots end in misses, there are 30 opportunities to analyze what is working and what isn’t to reformulate a better strategy. Students learned that to be free to make mistakes is a boon, and thankfully we make them daily.

Transformative Courses

The first class that began making a difference in my professional practice was the course titled The Artmaking Process: ARTEDUC 7604 in Autumn of 2021. This course felt very encouraging about how and what I have already been doing as an artist and educator, but also provided me with an opportunity to expand my vocabulary and understanding of what exactly I was doing. I’ve explained to my students in the past that we focus on vocabulary at the start of lessons so that they can prove to me that they know what they are doing, and that good art can happen by accident, but generally not twice in a row. Once we have words for something it changes how we view the world, as if it unlocks something in our mind that let’s our eyes see it anew. Once I possessed the language to explain things like “rhizomatic thinking” and “deterritorialization” I was able to more readily incorporate it into my lessons and personal artwork. A goal I had set for myself when I started teaching was to help students find their creativity, which, as it turns out, is a very difficult concept to teach. Much of what was learned in my undergraduate studies focused on the physical product(ion) of art such as presentation, craftsmanship, and execution. Some attention was paid to the process, and a little given to the why, but given my experience I feel comfortable in claiming that traditional American schools in a capitalist society will focus more on the physical end product because it is marketable. As Professor of Social Anthropology Tim Ingold further explains, in visual art “the overwhelming focus has been on finished objects and on what happens as they become caught up in the life histories and social interactions of the people who use, consume or treasure them” (Ingold, 2013, pp. 7). To gain likes for a lovely Instagram worthy dinner, one does not need to know exactly how the sausage is made, and in general the audience isn’t terribly interested in hearing it. Through dissecting some of my lessons that yielded more creative results I was able to distill some of what made those lessons successful or engaging, and infuse that essence into other assignments that were in need of some “spicing up.” Many of these successful lessons engaged students’ interests through engaging the participants in some form of play. This play could involve interacting with their environment in a new way, learning by experimenting with materials, or looking at a concept from a different perspective. Once these aspects were identified they proved useful concepts to begin rework old and writing new lessons to better engage students in creative acts. Through this course and afterwards I have found myself coming back to the notes and readings of Sydney Walker and her book, Artmaking, Play, & Meaning-Making as well as the anthropological book by Tim Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art, and Architecture. I’ve found that many connection points made by Ingold in his book to what Walker explains about artmaking practices has taught me to seek other seemingly unrelated content to create new ideas.

The course over Universal Design for Learning also provided me with new insight and frameworks to infuse into my teaching practice and life. Much like the Artmaking Process course, I have been engaging with some of the processes for years but did not know the words to describe what was happening. The course provided opportunities for self-reflection on my life and classroom practices. Many daily tasks that I engage in would be considered a self-accommodation to function closer to neurotypical, including things like color-coding for organization, physical action to help encode memory, and establishing of clear routines (or breaking them, for novelty’s sake). Loui Lord Nelson’s book, Design and Deliver: Planning and Teaching Using Universal Design for Learning was instrumental in my betterment of my own understanding of how I have (and can better) navigate my own environment that may not always be designed to meet my needs. Through reflections in blog posts like our “Hmmm Collection” I was able to isolate items that commonly appear in my environment that assist me in navigating tasks and a space. After isolating the items, they could be turned into packaged and reproducible concepts and brought into new spaces, like a starter kit for each new environment. I could picture these items and related processes like creating a checklist for a camping trip; decide where to go, what will happen, and what form the tools and processes must take to get there and in what order they should be unpacked upon arrival. This method of thinking about how I navigate a space allowed me to look for the ways my students navigate their environments, either successfully or unsuccessfully. Finding ways to incorporate their own voice and choice allowed them to show me what adjustments to make and accommodations to create in order to facilitate a more accessible learning environment.

Key Changes

Much of the changes I’ve found that I am more engaged in within my teaching practice are centered around these ideas from UDL and artmaking practices. A core focus of my art education interests have always been teaching creativity, which has been merging with my long-term interest in environments and how people navigate through them. These have always been present in my own artwork, and upon reflection and drawing connections in a rhyzomatic process they are twining together in a few different forms. The first form is through creating readily packaged educational tools that can simplify processes for teaching creativity and craftsmanship. I have been designing (and redesigning) a version of a sketchbook that has taken the form of an activity workbook to streamline student engagement, provide resources for helping learn content, and engaging activities that push students to experiment with concepts to create their own creative work. This workbook is in process of being adjusted into a form similar to an activity textbook resource guide for students to complete assignments in a standard sketchbook that they have expressed more interest in using. My hope is that this resource could help other teachers streamline their own teaching practices and allow them to focus on their own strengths, without the need to design and redesign endless accommodated content.

Another form that my interests in creativity and environment have combined includes the exploration of new digital tools as part of the learning environment. My interest in incorporating new technologies into teaching has led me to pursue the possibilities of artificial intelligence as a tool to assist in both teacher and student accommodations. I have given presentations to both my school district and at the Ohio Art Education Association conference in 2023 on the use A.I. in the Classroom. I have also published an article with the considerations teachers must account for and the benefits of using A.I. in the art room in the OAEA Artline magazine in winter of 2024. This year I have been designing a class website to serve as a one-stop-shop for students, parents, and teachers to access resources I have curated to provide insight into the multitude of things that could improve accessibility in school and the visual arts. The site includes tools for teachers, digital artmaking tools, reference images, tutorials, and college and career information. I am in-process of including materials for each class offered, processes and information for peer-collaborators working with students who have different needs, and new tutorial videos and instructions for course content.

A third way these interests have combined is in how I have incorporated my own journey through navigating the world as an individual with ADHD into my personal artworks, which I have begun showing in galleries and museums alongside my artist statements that explain the work. I am finding that sharing my experiences through visual art are making connections with others, and helping to bring awareness to the value and benefit of visual art in education and the importance of making the school system more accessible to all participants. A recent artwork titled Interrupted has been on display in the Toledo School for the Arts, The Akron Art Museum, the Cincinnati Museum of Art, and will be touring with the Accessible Expressions Ohio Exhibit through several other locations in Ohio through the end of 2024. I have found through my research that most of my students and I learn best through experiencing new things, and for this reason I am working to create experiences and spaces that will encourage personal reflection. My hope is that these reflective moments will encourage others to seek new and creative ways to make a better, more accessible space for all. The world that I presently know is not the one my students will live in, and they will need to design it to meet their own needs through their own reflections and innovations.

Flint Garrabrant, Interrupted, mixed media, Third Place – Professional Artist, 14 x 17 inches.

References:

References:

Darts, D. (2006). “Art Education for a Change: Contemporary Issues and the Visual Arts.” Art Education, 6-12.

Efland, A. (1990, December). "Change in the conception of art teaching," Australian Art Education, 14(2), 1-11.

Engebretsen, K. (2013) “Arts Education Navigator: Facts & Figures.” Americans for the Arts.

Garrabrant, F. (2024) How Does A.I. Fit into the Art Room? ArtLine Magazine. 49(1), Winter 2024. 36-37. https://www.ohioarted.com/uploads/1/0/7/6/107687473/winter_artline_2024_web.pdf

Ingold, Tim. (2013). Making: Anthropology, archaeology, art, and architecture. Routledge. 1-44.

Nelson, L. L. (2021). Design and deliver: planning and teaching using universal design for learning. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

Walker, S.R. (2021). Artmaking, Play, & Meaning-Making. Davis Publications.

Walker, S.R. (2001). Teaching Meaning in Art Making. Ebooks. 6.

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