The space. Typical classroom. Not a lecture hall, as the classes were small that summer. Or at least mine were. Students seated at desks lined up in rows. Me, the instructor, standing tall and firm behind a podium positioned slightly to the right of the projector screen. I was still using a circular slide projector. Teaching as most of my art history professors before me: lecture style. Students listen. I regurgitate mounds of information, the mundane mixed with interesting, funny, references to pop culture. Front row: student challenges the information that I was presenting about Stonehenge. Information that was a conglomerate of the text and what I had been taught. My response: this information is correct to the best of my knowledge and "according to your text." Student: well, I've been there. And this is what I know.
My identity as defined by this event. At this moment, I was met with both a personal and professional challenge. The personal (and professional) challenge was to know and familiarize myself with as much content regarding the material I was teaching and the professional challenge was to learn how to productively facilitate discussions in such situations and encourage students to "challenge" and contribute to what their instructors were saying. Help students find a voice.
Art is a very powerful medium both as a means of creation and a vehicle for understanding. Unfortunately, the discipline of art history has the reputation of being elitist and irrelevant. Many fail to see the overall merits of the discourse. While the value of art history may not be apparent at first glance to my students, it is my goal to aid each one in seeing it as a discipline in which they can better understand the visual world around them, past, present and future. Therefore, this "open" microphone symbolizes me as an instructor as I seek to work through my teaching philosophy: By engaging students in the act of looking and creating a space in which constructive and open dialogue can develop, I use art and art history to teach and reinforce conversation, expand language, develop observation skills, cultivate visual literacy, encourage critical thinking, and build confidence in viewers as they come to see and believe that they have valuable and relevant contributions to the conversation at hand.
Taking Action. As I stated in my earlier post, I am no longer in this traditional setting. I am teaching exclusively online courses. Courses that are designed by another. Dialogue can be facilitated and encouraged through discussion exercises built into the course. However, interaction is limited to posts and replies and email through blackboard. My issue at hand is still how and where to insert relevant tools (i.e. social media) into my courses to encourage participation and continuous dialogue.
I love your metaphor and realization of your role as a teacher, to help students find their own voice. So often we can get lost in the role of an expert and lose track that our students ability to think is our product (for lack of a better word).
ReplyDeleteWhat a great representation of who we are as teachers! It is so important to take on the role of facilitator and develop our students' voices. I love that you took that moment as a challenge to not only improve your teaching methods but also to learn more about the content you were teaching.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your story on Stonehenge. We learn so much from our students that push us to be better educators. I always marvel at the student who has actually seen an artwork that I only have a computer/digital copy of such as the Mona Lisa. You are right, it does encourage the educator to learn even more so that when they present again, there is more knowledge to share with their students.
ReplyDeleteThese online courses probably give you some great insight and advice on how to create an interactive learning environment "in" your own "classroom". I always wondered how productive online courses were...one of my many reasons why I am taking my grad classes online. I have come to the conclusion, that you will get what you put into it. The more effort and communication, the more learning and knowledge you will gain.