Art teachers share lessons that focus on student choice and Teaching for Artistic Behavior. Students use an everyday material to express their ideas in 2D and 3D form, experiment with digital drawing apps to alter self-portrait images through collage, engage in discussions about race and identity during a color-mixing exploration, participate in hands-on learning stations to investigate symmetry, and more.
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I want to welcome the readership of SchoolArts to this special edition focused on choice-based art education and Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB). I was delighted when Nancy Walkup suggested we select authors whose specialty is child-directed art experience. Nancy and I have assembled a diverse group of choice-based and TAB educators whose expertise is well-known among their peers. We hope this issue will provide you with support and inspiration!
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What does developmentally appropriate early childhood art education look like in the TAB art room? And how is it best supported by the TAB pedagogy? TAB is, at its heart, about building student agency through choice. Allowing simple choices for our youngest students has many benefits. It fosters independence, capability, creativity, and self-worth. It also mitigates many behavioral problems in the classroom.
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In this lesson, second-graders explored the processes, intentions, and ideas of Color Field painters during three class periods. Using Visual Thinking Strategies, we examined and discussed artworks by Color Field Painters, then watched a short documentary about Color Field abstraction. Students experimented with acrylic paint and water on small unprimed canvases, creating their own miniature Color Field paintings. The next class, students worked in small groups to experiment with Color Field painting techniques to create large paintings on canvas.
Working with a familiar material like cardboard alleviates mental barriers students might have when making art. What I like about it is that it’s easily acquired and a renewable resource with little or no cost. In our studio, I have a large box filled with pre-cut cardboard, scissors, brown paper packing tape, and sponges. After a brief demonstration of how to use the tape, students jump right in and start constructing.
I was a multiple subject teacher for nearly twenty years before becoming an elementary art teacher. When I moved to the art room, I decided to do a full year of math and art connected concepts. I was delighted to have additional time to cover symmetry, an abstract concept for many students, and develop concrete opportunities for experimentation. I opened up my supply closet and pulled out painter’s tape for students to use as the line of symmetry and manipulatives of all kinds that I used to create stations.
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Students are ready to think of themselves as artists when they are given choices, and once they understand that, the emergent curriculum, which is based on their strengths and interests, is allowed to grow. For students who are accustomed to being told exactly what to do and when to do it, the idea that they are the ones who make the creative decisions can intrigue even the most unengaged adolescent.
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Students are excited to make their own decisions about what to draw on paper and what to design digitally, but they need to learn how to manipulate materials and tools to achieve their desired results. When I decided to revise a traditional self-portrait drawing project into a two-day digital design assignment, I found multiple free online photo editing apps for students to explore. The goal was for students to alter their original self-portrait photo and create a digital collage or poster.
In years past, for the last quarter of the school year, I assigned students in my drawing, painting, and printmaking classes one final project that was ambitious and appropriately demanding, usually a large acrylic painting. I was never satisfied with all of the results because some of the work was rushed or incomplete. I decided to reverse that approach and assign a small work in a series of steps that would accommodate our class periods, which are shortened for two weeks in May due to state standards testing.
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Student choice and connections to what they create is important. As the teacher, we may like an idea and feel it is good for students, but we have to make sure there’s room for personal input. For the bulk of what we do, personal expression is key to students buying into the process, internalizing information, and learning beyond a superficial level. This is where the deeper problem solving happens, where art education shines in its benefits. Working through the process of incorporating or translating their feelings, ideas, and thoughts into their artworks requires students to solve visual problems at the deepest levels.
Based in Madrid, Spain, the anonymous artist group Luzinterruptus stages monumental urban interventions that focus on political and environmental issues. Their name comes from the Spanish word for “light” (luz), and the Latin word interruptus, meaning “interrupted.” The group creates large-scale installations that use light to transform common objects like books or plastic bags into evocative, glittering artworks.
