TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

The core support of an Arts Education is seen through examining the roles of the instructor, students, curriculum, and community. In my experience working with students, the most successful classes work to invite and connect with all these critical roles. I will establish my plans for connecting each of these components in the art classroom. 

Instructor

I see my role, as the instructor, as overlapping layers of artist, educator, and researcher. In the classroom as much as in the studio, I am constantly reconsidering boundaries, asking if the tasks I give myself and my students are for the sake of becoming a better arts student, or a better artist. A respected instructor visiting my studio once reminded me, “What questions are you asking?” That sense of inquiry is central to my role as an educator. Artists are visual researchers. They question, form methods, find connections, and that habitual cycle is what I want to cultivate with my students. I push them to consider what they question, and what is critical at the core of their artistic investigations. 

In my planning as an educator, I resist projects where there is no springboard to further investigation. I know that instructors are key to bringing up the energy in the room, so my units are built around fast-paced instruction, with demonstration and workshop days, including activities to focus technique, and building towards a capstone project. These capstone projects push students to stretch their skills learned, while considering personal conceptual investigations and voice. This format has been very well received by my students on evaluations, with the final portfolio especially representing a point of pride and growth.

Student

I invite my students to be progressive learners, to be willing to consider new ideas and techniques, and to find independent areas of interest and personal connection. Even entry-level drawing students can work towards capstone research opportunities and the ability to work conceptually, or across a series. Students are given opportunities to present on personal investigations and broaden the class resources for contemporary discussion. I plan curriculum that asks all members of our class to give and receive feedback through analysis, critique, and student-teaching opportunities. I do not believe in talent, I believe in desire and practice, and that these habits will build towards a recognized “talent” as students are excited to question and make consistently. 

Curriculum & Community

Art and film theorist Rudolph Arnheim talks about the work of art’s evolution to “represent a state of final equilibrium, of accomplished order and maximum relative entropy.” As an instructor, I work to hold my curriculum in that space, between confident understanding of the material, and maximum questioning of its limits. I believe it is critical that my students consider art being made in their lifetimes. My students learn to engage with conversations happening in contemporary art by visiting exhibitions in their community, researching artists related to their work, and listening to visiting artists brought in to work with my class. 

I highlight contemporary artists every day in class, whether peppered through my instruction, or given individually to students upon seeing a connection to their work. I also have arranged for guest artists to visit my classes and discuss their studio practices and careers. In Foundations classes this has included visiting speakers from different fields that utilized drawing: an industrial designer, a storyboard planner, and a practicing studio artist, among others. One of my students went on to intern with a guest photographer. Many of my students indicated visiting speakers as a highlight of the course. As we ask questions in our artistic practices, my students’ feedback pushes my growth as an artist and helps my instruction evolve. Their personal investigations help shape future projects and curricula.