Art Journal #9

4/3/2022

#RedefiningMyself

This past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the art teacher that I want to become and frankly just the teacher I want to be. One of the art education candidates said something that really resonated with me.

They asked, “Do you teach how you were taught? Or how you like to be taught?”

I instantly thought of my mom. My mom taught me art from 3rd through 5th grade and while I think she’s one of the best teachers I know, I remember sensing her exhaustion and stress in her voice while she taught. I always wondered if I thought that because I knew just how hard she worked at being an art teacher and even harder as a mother, or if it was noticed by my peers also.

Last summer when I taught summer camp, there was this moment where I caught myself doing the exact same thing as my mom. I was projecting my stress and exhaustion through my voice, and I knew the kids could tell.

My initial reaction was “damn Ana you sound just like your mom right now.” I worked harder to change my voice so that it sounded more positive and frankly opposite of my actual feelings. I wondered to myself, “Is this what teaching feels like?”

And when the candidate proposed the question of my teaching style this week, I really started to think about voice in teaching and what it means to redefine my voice. Should my students be able to sense that I’m frustrated? Is there ever a time for a teacher to show anger? Am I inauthentic if I hide my emotions?

I can’t help but play the devil’s advocate with myself. Would I want my students to show their frustration? Can artists show anger? Is the artist being inauthentic if they hide their emotions.

The answers to this more recent set of questions comes quite easily to me. Of course I would expect my students to show their emotions and their artwork is an excellent place for the documentation of such. Authenticity is defined by Tate Galleries as “a term used by philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin to describe the qualities of an original work of art as opposed to a reproduction.” So as long as my students are creating original works, that means that whichever emotions they choose to poetry are authentic , right? And as long as I am expressing my own frustrations and not those of another, I’m alright, right?

The phrase “say what you mean” comes to mind. I’m thinking of that last part of the question, “...Or how you like to be taught?” I learn best when my teachers tell me exactly what they feel or intend. I don’t enjoy it when they dance around the idea, expect me to understand what they mean, and then reiterate, “Did you note understand the assignment?” I need them to either be direct or ask me questions until I arrive at the intended understanding.

So, when I think about my voice as a teacher, I think the best action moving forward is to redefine my voice in a way that it illuminates with authenticity. Instead of instructions in way that my voice oozes with disappointment, I need to tell my students that I’m disappointed and why.

So, for my artwork this week, just as I am redefining Ana’s teacher voice, I went back and redefined some of the line work in my painting as it was starting to get lost in all of the other noise. And these elements that I redefined, being the yellow movement line, and the meditative white hatch marks, need to be amplified once more as they are just as important as the other aspects of the work.