Art Blog #6 due by Sunday night October 13th at midnight
Art.
If we had met as a class and I’d asked you to draw three symbols that represent you and then introduce yourself to the class by telling us about those symbols, many of you would have begun, “Well I’m a terrible artist, but here is what I’ve drawn...”
Why is it that we have such wounded artists? Why is it that we have to bash our art before we show it to others?
This week’s chapter is about complex cognitive processes and that means, for one, art. I believe the arts to be a rigorous academic discipline and that they can tremendously benefit students in the comprehension of other academic content.
I also believe that arts play a major role in what makes us most human, most complete as people.
I can’t wait to see what you think of the PowerPoint handout for this week! That sucker took me years to make! It shows the power and the need of art in our classrooms. This is a topic of great interest to me, just so you know. I teach methods courses here and they are very arts-based. Some like ‘em, some don’t. But I know that students really respond to the arts, especially in this standards-based, throw-the-arts-out-with-the-bathwater times we live and work in today.
So take a gander at this week’s readings and let me know what you think about art.
How do you use art with students to engage and deepen their understandings of the content you teach?
Or...
How do you think our own inner-artists get so wounded? Where does our self-abuse about our artistic ability originate?
Or...
How does the expression and power of art to communicate what our words cannot communicate help students be more resilient?
And maybe...just maybe...someone will even use art to answer one of these questions!