Riding the Pendulum

Teaching is an interesting profession. So many of our days are filled with dramatic swings in student engagement, effectiveness of lessons, etc. Today was one of those days for me.

Let me start with the down swing first. We're supposed to finish up with a positive when assessing things, right?

Yesterday we were coming to the end of a long term art project and some people were completely finished while others were scrambling to get their work in order so they could present for critique the next day. I had posted some links on our class Ning to some artists that were working in the program that we are going to learn next and I had invited them to just get into the program and "play." The problem is that this translated into "this isn't very important," so many of them were getting out homework for other classes.

So I gave a speech. I talked to them about the importance of unstructured time and how that's often when the biggest breakthroughs come in because they feel free to think for themselves instead of just worrying about if they are doing "A" work. I also explained that this continues to be true later in life. Many of the greatest progressions in art, science, math, business, etc. have come at times when the person in question was involved in "playing" with an idea. I hoped that this conversation would encourage them to value that time. I felt good enough about what I was saying that I addressed the issue with all of my classes.

Fast forward to today and in my photography class I confronted the largest group of people doing outside homework I have ever seen. It was unbelievable to me. I asked them if I had missed their class yesterday when giving the talk, and they looked a little embarrassed and informed me that we had talked about it. Now photography requires a lot of planning and work outside of class, so I typically allow them to trade some of that time for "study hall" time so they can be stress free when arranging a photo shoot in the evening. But the timing of this mass of students led me to believe that I wasted my time discussing this with them.

On the other end of the spectrum, I had a great moment with one of my AP Studio Art students. She had turned me on to a new contemporary artist that I was not aware of. It was great to learn from my student. Then when I get home last night I have an email with a link to a video that she has made in the style of this artist. She had taken what she liked about her work and synthesized it into something that was new and uniquely her own. It's really all you can hope for from a serious visual arts student.

So the pendulum swings. I guess the goal is to just not get thrown off when it starts to swing back the other direction.