What a year this has been! The pandemic has continued to hold me back from blogging, thanks to the seismic shift to online learning and all of it new dimensions. One of my biggest challenges has been how to move my Art Education courses online – how do I teach basic art techniques to preservice teachers, many of whom haven’t made art since their own time as elementary students? And how do I do that with no access to a common set of art materials or tools? Lots of talking with my artistic friends and fellow art educators made me realize that mailing out a set of basic tools and materials would only add to the carbon footprint of the course, which is the opposite of what I’m trying to teach. Instead, I drew inspiration from Deborah Sickler-Voigt’s book Teaching and Learning in Art Education. In it, she promotes the notion of a comprehensive approach to art education, which is student-centred, inclusive, multidisciplinary, and most importantly, choice-based. What if I moved the focus away from technique and put more emphasis on mean-making? What if the tools and materials they used were based on what they had on hand at home, rather than on what I provided? I piloted this approach last spring for the first time, and taught it again this fall, with steadily improving results each time. I saw the same realization grow from week to week that my students are indeed creative beings (just like I have seen in my F2F classes), and that they could make art in lots of different ways, using a wide range of materials and techniques. Letting the ‘big ideas’ they feel passionate about be at the centre of the creative process ensured their buy-in, and we were all amazed at the incredible variety of artworks that resulted. We used the online app ‘SeeSaw’ to share our artworks, ensuring a rich trading of ideas between students. While I still miss learning alongside them in person, giving them more creative latitude and choice are elements I’ll keep in play in this course moving forward.
