IU South Bend Conference

We had a fantastic conference at IUSB! My sincerest thanks goes to Norman and Dr. Micheline Nilsen for inviting me to participate in this wonderful event!
Dr. Marvin Bartel delivered one of the most important keynotes I have ever listened to: "Learning and Assessing Imagination as Intelligence." The gold nugget of his presentation? "Children are the designers and engineers of the adults they will become." Translation? The kinds of early childhood learning experiences available to children are so important. Using and refining one's imaginative capabilities during the developmental years is so important for intellectual growth. Creative and divergent thinking capacities are refined during this critical phase.
I am so happy I am a choice based art teacher (Thanks Clark, Kathy, Diane and John!). I would not want to be anywhere else right now.
In the picture above, Miriam Marcus, a choice based art teacher who teaches at an urban high school in Flint, Michigan (pictured third from the left), shared with me the challenges and joys of employing choice pedagogy with her students. One of the stories she shared with me about students she taught knitting and crocheting was amazing. Her students create all kinds of hats, blankets and other clothing articles and accessories with wooden sticks and dowl rods.....those kids are working on their art all the time and it means a great deal to them to be able to use their new found knitting and crocheting skills. Students are creating art from a truly personal context. I was truly humbled after talking with her.
I was also able to meet other art teachers from Indiana, Michigan and N.Y.! Many folks were very interested in the choice approach after our presentions. I was more than happy to spread the gospel. What a great conference.

Mr. Gaw and one of his 3rd Grade Artists!

3rd Grade Exhibit

2nd Grade Display

2nd Grade Display

IUSB Art Education Conference Info

Visual Arts in Education Conference Friday, March 27, 2009
sponsored by the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts, Indiana University South Bend

Abstract: This conference invites art educators and classroom teachers to a professional
day including presentations, roundtable discussions and studio activities. It engages the "issues
of the day" regarding assessment, qualitative learning, art across the curriculum and making the
arts inclusive.

Program
8:45- Meet and greet - coffee
9:00- 11:45 morning session in Northside- Recital Hall
Welcome: Marvin Curtis, Dean of the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts

Presentations:
Learning and Assessing Imagination as Intelligence
Marvin Bartel, Ed.D, Art Education, Emeritus Professor of Art, Goshen College
Art and the Mental Processes

Mary Beth Di Gann, Art specialist, Perley Art Academy, South Bend Community School Corporation, Teacher of the year, 2000.

An Introduction to Choice-Based Art Education
Clyde Gaw, Art teacher, New Palestine Elementary School, Indianapolis

Art Education Association of Indiana- Chair Arts Advocacy Committee

Round Table discussions with presenters.

12:00 Lunch (provided for teachers)

1:00-3:30 Afternoon session in Fine Arts studios

Studios:activities and demonstrations to “take-to-the-classroom”
Nyame O. Brown, artist and University of Notre Dame faculty
Bruna Wynn, artist, designer and art teacher at Clay H.S. South Bend
Alan Larkin, artist and IU South Bend faculty, printmaking
Ron Monsma, artist and IU South Bend faculty, pastel drawing

Digital image workshop:
Downloading visual image resources (bring USB drive)

Registration: Teachers and educators may register by e-mail. nnilsen@iusb.edu
A certificate of attendance will be provided to teachers.

Contact: mnilsen@iusb.edu
Micheline Nilsen, Ph.D., Visual Arts Coordinator, Assistant Professor of Art History
Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts, Indiana University South Bend, 1700 Mishawaka Avenue, South Bend, IN 46634-7111

This conference is free and open to the public.

Visual Arts in Education Conference Friday, March 27, 2009
sponsored by the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts, Indiana University South Bend

About the presentations:

Learning and Assessing Imagination as Intelligence

Marvin Bartel, Ed.D, Art Education, Emeritus Professor of Art, Goshen College
Art learning is a complex multifaceted endeavor that Prof. Bartel calls “Flying Lessons.” He compares common art learning and assessment methods in terms of power to inspire, to influence a student’s thinking habits, and to develop an imaginative mind. He presents the strategies for critiques, grading and teaching achieved in a “studio classroom culture.” How do students become prepared and informed; how do they become inspired to imagine, to materialize, to elaborate, and to refine authentic and evocative artwork?

Art and the Mental Processes

Mary Beth Di Gann, Art specialist, Perley Art Academy, South Bend Community School Corporation, Teacher of the year, 2000
What is the current research relating to the benefits of visual arts for students and integrating teaching visual arts throughout the curriculum? In her presentation, both informational and experiential, Mary Beth Di Gann shares her experiences as a teacher at a “magnet” school of the arts, a founder and director of Community Kids Network (an after-school program featuring the arts) and a curriculum developer

An Introduction to Choice-Based Art Education

Clyde Gaw, Art teacher, New Palestine Elementary School, Indianapolis, IN, Art Education Association of Indiana- Chair of Arts Advocacy Committee, interdisciplinary curriculum implementer Choice-Based Art Education fosters imaginative and creative growth by motivating children through the method of teaching for artistic behavior. Choice teachers frequently integrate language arts, technology and other subject areas within this teaching method. Clyde Gaw writes “Nothing in education is more powerful than authentic, student-directed, student-centered learning experiences constructed from the bottom up.” He presents how this innovative “art education concept allows students opportunities to take
ownership of their art experiences from conception to completion with teacher acting as classroom manager, environmental designer, art expert, facilitator, and student mentor.”

Studios - hands-on activities and demonstrations to take to the classroom
Nyame O. Brown, artist and University of Notre Dame faculty and Bruna Wynn, artist, designer and art teacher at Clay H.S. South Bend Community School Corporation
Together Nyame Brown and Bruna Wynn conduct a workshop related to their teaching experiences with community based art programs in the city of Chicago. They will show student artwork and demonstrate some contemporary methods of “non-press” printmaking.
Alan Larkin, artist and IU South Bend faculty, printmaking
Ron Monsma, artist and IU South Bend faculty, pastel drawing
Digital image workshop: downloading visual image resources (bring USB drive)

Dynamic Learning through the Visual Arts

The viability of art education programs are entering a critical phase in many school districts across Indiana and the United States. As state revenues decline and school budgets, presently cut to the bone, shrink even further, many decision makers responsible for shaping curricula may be tempted to marginalize programs vital to creative growth experiences necessary for fully developing the intellectual capacities of our children .

When I think of most of the educational activities in today’s classrooms, I think of student’s intellectual development facilitated primarily by listening, reading and writing linguistic and mathematical forms of symbolic information. Children spend much of their time in school completing paper and pencil selected response work sheets designed to prepare them for high stakes testing events. Learning in most 21st Century classrooms today require children to place a high priority on information processing. Don’t get me wrong, it is the role of our educational institutions to impart knowledge and skills upon our young learners. The problem is this: human beings are hard wired to think and dream with a multitude of sensory information in addition to using their visual imagination. It is hard to promote creative growth and divergent thinking capacity if children are deprived of learning experiences that do not stimulate these areas of the human mind. Creativity will be a critical component to the success of our future citizenry. Higher level thinking skills related to creativity cannot be developed within our children if they are deprived of experiences that promote such forms of learning.

Within our schools, the art room is that unique place where children are allowed to experiment, imagine, create and express personal ideas using a myriad of visual forms, artist materials, techniques and technologies. Much of visual arts education learning requires students to execute the steps to represent and convey ideas in two, three, or four dimensions. This requires individuals to develop the ability to focus their attention on a vast array of quality control details. The assembly of these qualities within an art work requires a synchronization of consciousness with imagination and the sensory, emotive and cognitive realms.

David Ausubel, the influential American cognitive psychologist defined meaningful learning as experiences where learners actively interact and interpret information and are engaged in substantive mental operations with the educational content they are to learn. He could have been describing the artistic process when he made this statement. Art teachers do not boast when claiming visual arts learning experiences can lead to transformational change within their students.

Scientific research by Nobel Laureate, Eric Kandel showed that stimulating sensorial activity boosts long term memory formation in neurological structures by the extra production of the neurotransmitter serotonin. Neural networks are strengthened and expanded when learners are engaged in stimulating, meaningful experience. Scientists and researchers using the latest medical imaging technology report rhizome like bundles of neural pathways interconnected throughout the human brain, illuminate like Christmas tree lights when subjects are engaged in meaningful activity. Likewise, the neural pathways are dimmed when cognitive activity is passive or repetitive.

From an educational perspective, Kandel’s research means regular opportunities for visual arts experiences can lead to increased cognitive capacity and expand learning and memory capability in the human brain. The hands, eyes, ears and body are the agents of cognition. Educational settings and experiences where students are reduced to passive recipients of knowledge produce learning experiences that are inadequate and unsatisfactory to learners. Regular visual arts experiences in our schools matter because without them, educators run the risk of providing a schooling experience that goes into one ear and out the other. Children thrive in school environments when they have access to the fine arts.

A citizenry populated with creative, divergent, imaginative thinkers will be most beneficial to this state’s future prosperity. Ideas and intellectual property dependent upon visual thinkers will become assets in the new economy of the 21st Century. The refinement of the imagination as developed through the visual arts will provide future designers, engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, innovators, professionals and others with the creative edge they will need to compete in an increasingly competitive and uncertain future. Brainstorming without perceptive, imaginative counterparts becomes an exercise of inconsequential group think.

References
Center on Education Policy. (2007). Choices, Changes and Challenges: Curriculum and Instruction in the NCLB Era. Retrieved 01/11/09 from: http://www.cep-dc.org/

Driscoll, M.P. (1994) Psychology of Learning for Instruction,
Needham Heights: Allyn & Bacon Publishers

Eisner, E. W. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

Gajdamaschko, N. (2005) "Vygotsky on Imagination: Why an understanding of the imagination is an important issue for schoolteachers." Teaching Education, 16(1), pp. 13-22.

Gaw, C. (2008) “A Rationale for the prevention of future failures of imagination,” Retrieved 01/14/09 from: www.clydegaw.blogspot.com

Kandel, E. (2006) In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind. New York, W.W. Norton & Co. Inc.

Greenspan, S., Shanker, H. (2004) The First Idea: How Symbols, Language and Intelligence Evolved from Our First Ancestors. Cambridge, Mass. De Capo Press

Winner, E., Hetland, L. (2007) Art for our sake. NAEA News, 49(6). Reprinted with permission from the Boston Globe.

Art Advocacy

I am inserting a copy of an essay I wrote for the Art Education Association of Indiana and also republished on the Teaching for Artistic Behavior Website ( http://www.teachingforartisticbehavior.org/ ) from 2007. The essay is entitled:
"A Rationale for the Prevention of Future Failures of Imagination."


The AEAI recognizes there are many spectacular fine arts programs supported by enthusiastic administrators and highly qualified teachers across the State of Indiana. While a small fraction of students who participate in these programs go on to seek further education in visual arts professions, it is important to remind the general public that one of the most important benefits of a quality visual arts education is the development of an array of thinking skills, related to the expansion of the imagination. The visual arts, more than any other subject within the school curricula, focus on the exploration and study of the image. Let us not forget the human mind represents ideas and dreams through images. The development and growth of one’s ability to express ideas with forms and images is the heart of the art education experience.

An examination of the activities taking place within the art room reveal learning distinctive from other kinds occurring in regular classrooms. Where much of the educational activity in today’s schools consists of text-oriented seat work based on extended and selected response assessments, the art room is that unique place where individuals are encouraged to experiment and create with personal ideas using a myriad of artist materials and techniques.


Eight-year-old Greg has an idea for a drawing. In an earlier lesson, Greg’s art teacher examined the expressive use of elements in the paintings of Van Gogh. This presentation has inspired Greg to incorporate many of these same elements of design into his own art. He begins by outlining the shape of a giant S vertically onto the center of his paper. U-shaped scale textures are rendered onto the surface of a giant dragon. Landscape elements are incorporated into the picture. Greg continues adding more details in order to animate his art. Working on a large sheet of paper, Greg knows his drawing will require a lot of work. He enlists the help of his curious friends Jason, Edward and Frank. The four boys discuss which areas of the drawing need further development and work cooperatively over the next several class sessions. Greg suggests they might render parts of the drawing with sophisticated drawing techniques learned in previous lessons. They agree to use crayon resist and crayon etching to enhance the drawing’s surface. Each day in class, the boys reflect and evaluate the progress of the work before making new changes.

The activities that unfold in the art room provide opportunities for children to practice conveying ideas into physical form. Greg’s example reveals the exploration of a complex story concept and its manifestation from idea to visual representation. Executing the steps to realize an idea and representing it in two, three, or four dimensions requires individual attention to a vast array of quality control details. The assembly of these qualities within an art work requires a synchronization of consciousness with imagination and the sensory, emotive and cognitive realms.
School boards and administrators, who control the curricular offerings of their local school districts, must be reminded from time to time that students, who participate in art education programs, have increased cognitive advantages over peers who have not had such experiences. Children with visual arts experiences are more skill- ful at attending to detail, observing, innovating, inventing, cooperating, and conceptualizing with visual and mental forms than their counterparts who have little or no practice in the visual arts. We are all born with brains but the mind is cultivated through experience.

Students engaged in comprehensive art education learning experiences have greater opportunity to become masters of their imagination. This is a bold claim, one that art educators do not make lightly. We facilitate the expansion of our student’s imagination on a daily basis. Whether we are studying the artistic creations of artists or cultures, exercising children’s capacity to express forms or ideas based on imaginative thought, sharpening our skills at observing and visual perception, the refinement of imagination is one of the key areas of development in a quality art education program.

Sadly, the AEAI has received a growing number of reports regarding the marginalization of visual arts programs in school districts across the state. Ex- act numbers are hard to tabulate because curricular deficiencies are something school districts do not like to publicize. During the next year, AEAI will begin to gather more substantial data and critically analyze this situation. A 2007 report from the Center on Education Policy indicates 44% of 349 schools surveyed from across the U.S. cut instructional time in one or more subjects at the elementary level in art, music, social studies, civics, and physical education since 2002. Currently, the Indiana State recommendations for student learning in the visual arts are approximately 60 minutes per week for elementary children and ninety minutes per week for middle school students. (These recommendations will soon be retracted by the state DOE.) High school graduation requirements for an academic honors diploma require at least two elective courses in the fine arts.

We know that learning is time-sensitive. When a student who is interested in the visual arts is denied course offerings because of program elimination or rule changes that deny opportunity, a student’s ability to fully realize their potential will have been short-changed. It is hard to imagine what might have occurred in the Renaissance if the 15th Century’s most important art teacher, Verrocchio, had not influenced and facilitated the development of Leonardo da Vinci.

A citizenry populated with creative, divergent, imaginative thinkers will be most beneficial to this state’s future prosperity. Ideas and intellectual property dependent upon visual thinkers will become assets in the new economy of the 21st Century. The refinement of the imagination as developed through the visual arts will provide future designers, engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, innovators, professionals and others with the creative edge they will need to compete in an increasingly competitive and uncertain future. Brainstorming without perceptive, imaginative counterparts becomes an exercise of inconsequential group think.

If the education that shapes our children’s thinking ability fails to engage the visual imagination at a psychologically meaningful level, the well-rounded education U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings believes "all children deserve" will have been skewed. The power to control curricular offerings within schools lies with elected school boards and the administrators who advise them. Teachers and parents must stand firm as a bulwark against possible arts education program cuts. Full consideration for the development of imagination in our future citizenry will be of critical importance if we are to face the challenges and solve the problems of the 21st Century.

References
Caouette, R. (2006, Fall)Embracing the creative and conceptual age. Reston, VA: NAEA Advisory.

Carp, R.M. (2004). Art education and the Sign(ification) of the Self. Semiotics and Visual Culture: Sights , Signs and Significance. Reston, VA: National Art Education Association.

Eisner, E. W. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

Gajdamaschko, N. (2005) "Vygotsky on Imagination: Why an understanding of the imagination is an important issue for schoolteachers." Teaching Education, 16(1), pp. 13-22.

Center on Education Policy. (2007). Choices, Changes and Challenges: Curriculum and Instruction in the NCLB Era. Retrieved 01/11/09 from: http://www.cep-dc.org/

U.S. Dept. of Ed., Teachers ask the Secretary, Retrieved 01/07/09 from: http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/reform/teachersask/index.html#arts.

Winner, E., Hetland, L. (2007) Art for our sake. NAEA News, 49(6). Reprinted with permission from the Boston Globe.

Spring Art Show at Sugar Creek

Welcome to the New Palestine Elementary 2008 Spring Art Show Exhibit at Sugar Creek Elementary.

You will notice, each art work is different from the other.

This is the hallmark of a choice based art exhibit.

You won't find"school art" here. Only the authentic stuff....

Individuals conveying their ideas, creating their art.

Theodore Potter Elementary Art Camp!

Wow! What a great experience! My sincerest 'thank you' goes out to Mr. Tim Clevenger of IPS School 74 for allowing us the opportunity to conduct Theodore Potter Elementary Art Camp!

We had a special guest on Wednesday of our camp. Mrs. Swinney the regular art teacher of TPES made a special visit to camp and spent time with our students.

We had several centers open: drawing, painting, architecture/blocks, puppet theatres, construction/invention, art library, computers, yarn and paper mache. We had many memorable moments during camp including the building of a city inside the Great Wall of China, a major puppet play by the TPE Art Camp Puppeteers, and the building and breaking of a huge fish pinata! Enjoy the pics......