November 21, 2006

 

 

My art students get very tired of me saying, “Draw what you see, not what you think you see.” The students roll their eyes and just draw, but as the class and artwork progress, they begin to notice a change in their artwork. Students who didn’t even have the correct number of petals on their flower for the first piece are creating beautiful self-portraits that students from other classes know who created the painting.    Art is part skill, part talent and part inspiration much like Critical Friends work.

 

Critical Friends work requires you to let go of your assumptions and “LOOK” at the student or professional work on the table. My philosophy in teaching art has influenced the way I present Descriptive Review to a new group being trained as CFG coaches. Stopping and taking the time to really look helps the viewer/participant from jumping right to the evaluation or judgment stage.

 

Think about the last time you went to an art museum. How long did you spend looking at a piece of art before you decided you liked it or not? I heard that the average person spends less than thirteen seconds looking, before passing judgment. Thirteen seconds is shorter that any television commercial, an advertiser realizes that they need more time to convince that their product is what you need. Yet, we do not give an artwork or in the case of CFG work time enough to make an informed judgment based on evidence rather than emotion or assumptions.

 

Do your students and your colleagues deserve more than thirteen seconds?

 

 

Learning to Look

While writing this I was thinking, “I am preaching to the choir, teachers are not like this, the teachers I know would never prejudge a student.” Well, I was wrong. Just this past weekend I was at a football game with teachers from different districts and we were engaging in the usual teacher disgruntled banter. I was complaining that I couldn’t get my grades in because the network was down and we had progress reports. A teacher next to me said, “I don’t see what the problem is, I already know what my students are getting—I don’t need grades.” I was shocked. Didn’t his students deserve his looking, listening, and learning about them, before making a grade decision.

 

CFG coaches using the skills from the training, your obvious talent for teaching, and hopefully your inspiration from working with your CFG, you will help others to look and listen.

 

Coaching Facilitates Greatness is a weekly support newsletter from The Houston A+ Challenge for new CFG coaches. Questions and comments are welcome at tmartindell@houstonaplus.org. 

Looking, Listening, and Learning—these are active verbs I try to instill in my art students. (Artwork by Juanita, Grade 11, Art 1 student.)

Using Descriptive Review of a Child in a CFG

I have recently obtained a four new students that have very different needs than I am used to providing in my classroom. The past two months have been a real looking, listening, and learning process for me. I started with looking or observing my students behaviors and interactions with the materials, then I listened to the struggles they were verbalizing (some easy to solve I need a gray crayon and others still unsolved). After documenting and journaling about these students, I was able to accurately convey my dilemma, rather than “I can’t teach these students” type of comment.

 

Those of you that have been my critical friends over the course of the follow up meetings know of the struggles and challenges I am going through, yet each time we meet I learn more from you and this has allowed me to grow as a teacher. Thanks for learning with me.

 

Michaelann

 

Basquiat inspired paintings by two of my special needs students. Anthony on the left and Dominique on the right. Their perspective and view is inspiring. My critical friends inspired me to take a leap.