Student Teaching Documentation #1 - Thinking like a Painter

My student teaching journey began about a month ago on January 4th at Cache La Poudre and Beattie Elementary. Since then, I have gained so much insight into the tangible world of art education through my mentor teachers, students, and the art they have created.

My journey began at Beattie Elementary on a Friday. I recall welcoming the students back to school after a long winter break and being greeted with friendly remarks and portraits of the new student teacher. A 5th grader gifted me this portrait of myself that you see below. She said that she drew me as hobbit, hence why my feet are abnormally large and hairy. This was one of several drawings that I received on that first day back to school. This phenomenon has caused me to wonder:

What is it about drawing teachers and classmates that is so intriguing to students?

I also have to consider that this phenomenon did not happen at CLP Elementary and I think it is because the Beattie art curriculum is TAB/choice-based and at CLP, it's very teacher-driven (students have less options when creating art). I've been thinking a lot about student-choice and creative decisions since embarking on this student teaching journey.

What do students tend to create when the options are unlimited?

What makes choice-based creations different from ones that are chosen by a teacher?

What is the impact of all of this?

To find the answers to these questions, I've analyze how choice and freedom looks within the Beattie classroom. Our first endeavor at Beattie was to introduce a liquid tempera studio to the students. Students were taught how to create a palette with the paints and experimented with mixing color. These were some of the results:

All of the students, from 5th grade to Kindergarten, were immersed in the process of experimenting with color mixing and differentiation of brushstrokes. I really enjoyed that students were approaching their work the same way that contemporary painters do. They established a color palette, made brush strokes, and then responded to those decisions with more paint and movement. Oftentimes, I think that when we think of painting in an elementary art room, we think of the medium as an efficient way to fill in color in a drawing. But, the truth is that painting is much more complex than that. Painting is the process of layering and connecting colors, textures, opacities, and ideas on a surface. And I feel like the Beattie students were doing just that in these works. The video below displays a student working in a painterly manner:

When I was taught how to paint, just a few years ago, my instructor used a very choice-based approach. He had us experiment with oil paint and mediums for three weeks before he gave us any concrete advice/suggestions. His reasoning was that if he showed us how he paints, then we would all paint like him and the notion of painting in our own unique ways would be difficult to return to. Artists develop their craft by stretching and exploring and that is precisely what the Beattie students did when we opened the studio.

Similarly to my painting instructor, the following week, I wanted to give students some suggestions for their painting processes. I wanted to show the Beattie kids how painters think and create art so we looked at combining painting with sculpture. I showed students the work of Jessica Stockholder in hopes that it would inspire students to paint on different surfaces than paper and canvas as painting is not just confined to two dimensions. I also wanted them to consider how they could paint on their sculptures that they had created in the construction zone. This is the results:

I loved how the students began to paint in a sculptural way and vice versa. From this, I learned that students are easily inspired other artists and concepts and their work transforms as a result. Although only two or three students decided to paint their sculptures, I felt that the lesson on Jessica Stockholder was successful because forced students to consider other possibilities in their work, We may never know when those ideas will surface and become works of art, but at least the students are thinking like artists in the meantime.