Advocacy For All K-12 Art Programs: 2019 Youth Art Month Address

In 2006, Art Education Association of Indiana President Leah Morgan appointed me to be our state art education advocacy person. Since that time I have served 6 AEAI presidents. I have spoken with parents, governors, mayors, legislators, state and municipal school board members, corporate entities, law enforcement and lots of other citizens. Our Indiana Youth Art Month event brings in families from across the state each year to the capitol. The AEAI floods the first floor with all kinds of 2-D art where citizens and politicians are able to view the work and read the artists statements.

The YAM Celebration event is a one hour spectacle that includes art advocacy talks, music and a recognition ceremony for the children.

Here are pics and my comments from our 2019 YAM event:

2019 YAM chair Carrie Wilson Billman addresses the crowd at the Indiana State Capitol.

AEAI President Elect Addie Thompson reads the proclamation from Governor Holcombe.

Indianapolis First Lady Stephanie Hogsett addresses students, parents, citizens
and reads a proclamation from Mayor Joe Hogsett.

Photo by Karen Hagen Kincaid, with Carrie Wilson Billman

It was my pleasure to accept Indiana Youth Art Month Chair, Mrs. Carrie Wilson Billman's invitation to speak at this years Indiana Youth Art Month celebration at the Indiana State Capitol on February 24th, 2019. Here are my remarks:

"Greetings Students, Families, Teachers and Supporters of Youth Art Month!

Would you do me a favor?

Can we do a quick survey?

If you can answer this question would you raise your hand?

How many people here, young and old, like art class?

Holy Smokes! There are a lot of you out here!

I remember when I used to teach elementary art…..….When it was time to clean up...children would tell me… “We don’t want to clean up! We want to keep making art!”

That’s one of the mysteries I’d like to solve... “why do kids love art class so much?”

The Youth Art Month Exhibit at the State Capitol showcases some of the finest drawings, paintings, photographs and prints produced by children in K12 schools across the state of Indiana! What we have to show you in the South Atrium are beautiful examples of what we call, two-dimensional art.

What I’d like to talk about now is a story about the power of three dimensional art…. Or sculpture.

I have this friend who is also an art teacher, his name is Clark Fralick. Clark is the Art Education Association of Indiana’s 2003 teacher of the year. There’s Clark now!

Clark and I have a friend at the Indiana State Museum. Her name is Bethany Nold Thomas. Bethany is director of educational programs

and last September, Bethany invited Clark and I to create sculptures at the museum’s Cardboard Engineering exhibit.

The best part about this exhibit is that kids get to build stuff!

For the past 4 months, Clark and I have been in that gallery sculpting with cardboard...What we also have the opportunity to do is observe what goes on in there.

What we see are lots of kids experiencing the joy of creativity and self-discovery with their families. The children realize they can successfully task themselves with the challenge of creating scary masks, wild hats, medieval suits of armor, swords, shields, funny puppets, miniature houses and buildings, costumes, boats, cars, trucks, ships, submarines even super-sonic space ships using cardboard, tape, scissors and little plastic saws.

The third floor of the Indiana State Museum hums with all kinds of creative energy!

Those kids and their families will build almost anything!

One of our observations ...and I feel bad about this...if an adult prematurely interrupts a young child from their sculpture making activity?

There could be trouble.

One time, we heard an adult say, “OK Johnny...it’s time to see the rest of the museum...it’s time to leave the exhibit.” Little Johnny said…”No...No...I don’t want to go!”

So...I’m thinking….the reason the child doesn’t want to leave the art activity? They are in a biological state of creative bliss!

Children are naturally endowed with the capacity for creativity! That’s why they love art!

What we know about creativity, and scientists are just now discovering how powerful this experience is, is that it is the best time for learning.

When the imagination, in concert with the mind, body and spirit all work together to achieve an idea or common goal, one remembers such experiences. There is no higher quality learning experience.

This is the essence of art education. Art rooms are the centers of creativity inside the schools where they exist.

Think of it, individuals who can develop ideas, and realize them in two, three or four dimensions, are like Leonardo da Vinci! They are super thinkers!

You would think elected officials who control education laws would understand this. They would make art education with expert art teachers more available to children in schools.

Unfortunately….that is not the case.

Instead, there are laws that have been written that cause schools to lose art teachers and children to lose time for art.

Authentic fine arts learning experiences are powerful, trans-disciplinary experiences that provide important developmental pathways for the unique in-born endowments of the child to unfold. Fine arts experiences have the potential to ameliorate violent tendencies and unleash the emotional drive of children. Increasing fine arts education is in the best interest of the Nation and is the foundation of real education reform.

As a parent or citizen advocate, you have a powerful voice. I urge you to advocate for children’s K-12 fine arts programs wherever and whenever called upon.

No more failures of imagination!

The Art Education Association of Indiana thanks you for your support!"

Video by Clark Fralick

A TAB Studio Center As Community Art Project

In March of 2017, Greenfield City Parks and Recreation Superintendent Ellen Kuker, Hancock County Arts Coalition member Steve Vail and professional artist Chris Sickels made a fascinating proposal to our art program at New Palestine High School. Could we create a large ceramic grid portrait mural, designed by Chris's 13 year old son Owen, of Indiana WWl hero Harvey Weir Cook. Weir Cook was born in nearby Wilkinson, Indiana in 1892 and was an American aviation pioneer. Indianapolis International Airport's terminal building is named after Weir Cook. I thought for a split second, "Yes! We can create a separate work space in the art room and include this project as an activity option for students in our TAB art program." The project would require the creation of 1247 2 inch ceramic tiles  the twisting of 2494 three inch wires. The portrait tiles would be tethered to a 7.5 foot by 5 foot steel mesh grid, so the presentation of the image would be pixelated similar to a Chuck Close portrait. It would be our honor to honor Harvey Weir Cook, a legend in American aviation history.

Our TAB art room layout. Students could create tiles at any of our work tables while the wire mesh frame could be transformed into the image of Weir Cook at our mural center.

Once the steel frame and grid was delivered to our room we began to experiment with the construction of the clay tiles. Considering the work would be exhibited outside, we consulted with Amaco-Brent Ceramics company for the best clay and glazes to use. They recommended White Clay

#25 and Teachers Palette Glazes.

Building the tiles individually became too slow and cumbersome. I taught interested children how to roll clay slabs of the right thickness and then measure and cut the tiles in larger batches so we could expedite the tile creation process. Making the tiles was the first problem to overcome. Assembling them onto the right grid became the second problem we would tackle.

I created portable menus for the project and a white board diagram for students to examine. I explained the project to our students. Their participation would provide them with an opportunity to be a part of something very special! Most of my students were involved in their own projects, but several seized on this opportunity and enthusiastically began producing clay squares. Unfortunately, a quality control problem soon became apparent. The tiles had to be perfect one and three quarter inch squares and a quarter inch thick. Not all of the tiles produced could be used for the mural. Some of the children, either because they lacked manual dexterity, focus or patience, were not able to execute with precision the square tiles that were required. More practice would be needed or a new method would need to be explored. We came up with a new method.

The tiles would be rolled out into a large slab, trimmed, measured and re-cut into uniform tiles that would be perforated then glazed. 

Not only did we have to cut precision tiles, but we would have to create custom colors by mixing glazes together in numerous combinations. There were 14 custom colors that we would have to create for this composition.

Working with larger batches of tiles became much more tenable. We loaded the kiln with glazed tiles in addition to our regular output of ceramic projects over the course of the project and fired our kiln up! Most of the time, we were happy with the results!

The kiln was fired to a temperature of 1800 degrees. Temperatures lower than 1800 degrees did not produce a finished glaze quality to out satisfaction. Our kiln got quite a work out!

Tiles would have to be formed, hanging holes perforated, glazed, fired and then attached to the grid.

Student on the right is rolling out a clay slab while another student attaches a tile to the grid.

Finding the correct position on the grid and selecting the right color for the grid position and the tile was a complex mental task that several of the children enjoyed doing. It only had to be done 1247 times. Twisting two wires to attach each tile required hand strength and dexterity that may of the children did not have so I did some recruiting. 

Selecting the right color of tile, attaching and then reflecting on the work in progress requires higher level thinking. The selection and assembly of numerous tiles in order to be true to Owen Sickels plan was one of the most complex tasks of this art experience.



Sometimes, students who worked on the project for long periods of time took a break in order to work on other collaborative experiences. In our Teaching for Artistic Behavior studio setting..there can be 20-30 different projects going on simultaneously.



Over the course of 13 months, with steady effort, we were able to complete this work.

On September 28, 2018, Ellen and personnel from the Greenfield Parks Department arrived at New Palestine High School to pick up the finished work!  Some of the students helped load the mural into the trailer.  We had finished what we had started! What a thrill!

We set the work carefully into the trailer, strapped it in for safe passage and waved goodbye!

The work now rests in downtown Greenfield, Indiana mounted on concrete inside the "Living Alley."

Thank you to the City of Greenfield, Hancock County Arts Commission, the students of New Palestine High School, Owen and Chris Sickels and of course, the Family of Harvey Weir Cook!

Best Wishes!

Clyde

With members of the Weir Cook Family, Owen Sickels, art teacher Monica Holden, Monica's students who created banners throughout the gallery space and the Mayor of Greenfield!

Clark Fralick: Conditions for Creativity in K-12 Classrooms

Clark Fralick is a voracious reader. He is fueled by a passion for understanding and promoting children's authentic learning experience. Clark and I have been team-teaching in one form or another since 1997. We have had countless discussions and collaborations, including our 1998, '99, '01 participation with the Indiana Department of Education's electronic portfolio pilot programs. Authentic creativity was the Holy Grail we were searching for. We were pretty good at facilitating project based learning and also good at designing rubrics with students in order to get the snappy projects we were after.  

One day in 2001, a child brought in his personal drawings and Clark and I asked him to write about his work. The results were dramatic. There was a vitality to the reflective writing from the boy's home art that was lacking in the reflective writing we obtained during our rubric driven experiences. We knew there was something amiss in our curriculum but we didn't quite know how to address change.

After our visit with Katherine Douglas, Diane Jaquith and John Crowe in Denver of 2004, we knew we had to feature agency, diversified learning, security, stimulation and inspiration to our curriculum. Here are the conditions for creativity we believe are beneficial to children's creative learning experience.

1. A responsive, generative art teacher managing a safe and stimulating learning environment is critical when considering creativity development. The child has to know tolerance of idiosyncratic creative processes will be accepted unconditionally including provisions of space and time. The incubation process varies between students.

2. Art teacher provides consistent opportunities over time where agency and self-direction is featured.

Interaction with art teacher is rich and ongoing. Interventions are non-threatening. Children cannot develop a sense of their intentionality without extended non-threatening interactions with these creative care-givers. A sense of trust and nurturing is essential.

3. Environment allows the child to progress through their unique developmental stages within the biological timeline endowed to them. Respect for the individual is paramount.

4. Environment is rich with opportunities for experimentation and exploration. Programs that advertise autonomy yet encourage passivity and helplessness by removing decision making from the individual's hands will have negligible impact.

5. Structure and clear parameters within the environment imbue a sense of security to the child. Firm yet reasonable limits within an environment of support, empathy and warmth are crucial.

6. Stable communities and neighborhoods are critical in allowing the child to focus on their creative and intellectual desires and interests outside of the art program.

7. An inspirational teacher who models creativity and artistic behavior, understands the unique cognitive conditions of his/her student groups and understands the developmental and psycho-emotional rhythms of his/her students.

Conditions for Creativity adopted from Stanley Greenspan's, "The Growth of the Mind: The Endangered Origins of Intelligence" 1997.

During the summer of 2017, Clark suggested we record a podcast so we could elaborate on

the conditions for creativity and critical findings related to our TAB practice.

You can listen to our podcast on iTunes or Podbean: https://blockspaperscissors.podbean.com/

Clark and I will be working with cardboard at the Indiana State Museum over the 2018-19 school year. TAB Teachers interested in working with us can contact us here: cgaw@newpal.k12.in.us 

Dueling Experiences Part V: Rhizomes Decentralize Curricula and They Expand

Educators and administrators interested in rhizomatic learning experience need to understand the power of emotional drive when curriculum is decentralized.

Be prepared. When student directed classroom activities intensify, the synergy of this curriculum model will provide students with authorization to connect their learning to subject areas throughout the school. Are educators who advocate for connected, innovative and authentic learning models like a Teaching for Artistic Behavior art program, prepared to deal with the logistical dynamics of such a curriculum model?

The teacher who is interested in releasing human potential, the child's innate desire to explore, to question, to find, to imagine, to connect, to take risks, to make, is unlocking a powerful natural force. 

A special dark room is available for this student to project images for a mural project.

Many students will desire mobility. They want to be in specific locations to execute their learning plan. Educators will need to consider if an individual's learning experience can be enhanced outside of the classroom.

A child considers the next color placement in her abstract composition.

When time sensitive learning events require learning outside the art classroom, is the school willing to accommodate student needs? How responsive is the school to students? 

Do schools advertise student-centered learning experience when actually a centralized, linear curricula that encourages learner passivity is experienced by children?

TAB art programs offer dynamic curriculum experiences where intellectual emancipation and integrative reconciliation can be realized by the child.  

Art is a very big subject. 

In TAB art programs, art class becomes a conduit to learning throughout the school, providing children with active, conscious minds opportunity to make powerful connections with their art ideas to learning content within the rest of the school curricula. Nothing could be more important than the school's mission to develop and refine the child's intellectual capacity through interdisciplinary learning. TAB art education experiences are transformative, catalyzing children to move beyond direction taking. The TAB art room becomes one of the most important learning environments in the school.

Dueling Experiences Part lV: Despite the Happy Talk, Does Data-Driven Instruction Impede A Child's Social and Emotional Development?

Are "innovation schools," educational efficiencies and market-driven education a good thing when it comes to child development?

Looking at The Center for Disease Control research archives, I am struck with the statistics of children in the USA who are either suffering from mental illness, trauma or have given up on this World and taken their lives.

Knowing what I know about abundant curricula and authentic experience, that authentic learning is profound, capturing the heart and mind of a child, one in which learning becomes spiritual, where the child wants to learn more. I am asking the question what is happening to children in this Nation's schools?

How are US schools doing in supporting the emotional and social growth of children?

This question: Are schools whose administrative and instructional focus is on computer-based information processing tasks, rewards and punishments, data collection and classification of a child's standing in their educational "cohort" with numerical data harming children?

Other questions for policy makers and citizens to consider:

Despite the outdated gun laws in the USA, if schools are sanctuarys of learning in this country, why are students returning to the school to harm others?

Are schools providing adequate learning experiences that benefit the child's social, emotional and creative consciousness?

Are learning experiences outside the decision making processes of the child, concocted to meet the needs of the state? Or....are learning experiences responsive to the time sensitive interests, strengths and desires of the child?

If a child is in love with his learning, why would a child want to do harm to a classmate?

My thoughts related to school shootings?

Guns are too easily accessible to disturbed or angry individuals in this country.

But we also have an education problem here.

Many children who become citizens in US society, become disturbed through the school experience of non-consensual high stakes testing participation, including behavior modification curricula experiences, i.e. grading and data collection. High stakes testing, corrupts a school's regular capacity to provide a dynamic atmosphere whereby learning is a spiritual and most joyful matter experienced by the individual.

Dueling Experiences Part lll: The Educational-Psychology Structures Where Teaching for Artistic Behavior Programs Exist.

Forty six percent of children in the United States under the age of 17 have experienced the marital divorce of their parents. While divorce can be an amicable process between married adults, for the child it is a time filled with immense anxiety. Many marriages are filled with dysfunction and that seriously complicates matters for the child. Emotional abuse, physical abuse, poverty, parental rejection, food insecurity, shelter insecurity, substance abuse and other genetic and environmental conditions outside the child's control impact levels of anxiety, stress, cognitive functioning and emotional receptivity to learning. Consider also that school systems are designed for efficiency, to mass produce standardized experience, an experience that externally tasks and controls children to move through a sequence of activities motivated via rewards and punishments. In radical behaviorist learning structures, administrators control thought and action. The organism is not in control. In K-12 learning experiences within schools, children are instructed what to do, thinking is managed by a daily schedule, thoughts and action incessantly prompted, controlled and monitored.

Is it possible that tightly structured radical behaviorist learning experiences might cause adverse neurological deficits of at-risk children affecting their emotional and intellectual maturation?

Children of divorced parents are at-risk from many forms of trauma. I won't get into the painful details of my own childhood experience, but I think often about students in my own classes who may be experiencing similar situations.  Shouldn't school be a sanctuary for children? Shouldn't the school's mission be to provide optimal learning experience, ameliorate psycho-emotional pain while the child is in the care of the school and expand consciousness and intellectual capacity? What I experienced as a child and observe today is that K-12 curricula experiences create additional pressure on the child because the school's mission is to imprint upon that child what the state values. What does the state value? The state values children who score well on timed, high stakes standardized tests, the content of which the teacher nor the child control. This situation guarantees that teachers of tested subjects must hurry children through a state mandated curricula employing radical behaviorist instructional practices.

Considering the mind, it is the single most important entity in the process of education. Looking at reams and reams of state and corporate sponsored documents and literature prescribing standardized content and best teaching practices, I have not once, viewed language from any state department of education document that defines the human mind or provides a description of the process of learning. This is a critical shortcoming of state sponsored departments of education because the mind and the process of learning at a fundamental level is physiological. Learning that lasts a lifetime, does not occur because the teacher is an expert at classroom management or instructional techniques, but results from a multiplicity of factors that takes into account a child's executive functioning capacity.

Despite authorization as a safe space by the state for the purpose of education, school can be an intensely difficult place for children.  In particular, how does the school ameliorate the emotional trauma children experience when their parents marriage's dissolve into a dysfunctional state of disunion. Divorce in the United States is a societal affliction that affects nearly
50% of all marriages.  Because large percentages of children already come to school having experienced violence and dehumanization within their family situation, classroom experience related to an explicit and prescriptive curriculum that has nothing to do with the child's current crisis state, exacerbates psycho-somatic maladies brought on by the parents divorce.  For educators, school counselors or administrators to make the pronouncement that children of divorce are plucky,  resourceful and over time will "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" while resuming regularly scheduled standardized test-driven curricula is totally inadequate as an educational intervention. The curricula should buoy the child during this traumatic time. The curricula should capture the child's imagination and serve as more than a work experience. The curricula should in and of itself  ameliorate any emotional distress the child is experiencing. The act of learning and the act of study should not be a rigorous chore, but a profound, self-sustaining spiritual experience. Creative learning experiences that compels a child to continue to pursue learning without the teacher's prompting are the experiences I regularly observe in my TAB classrooms.

YAM 2018 Celebration and Remarks

My sincerest appreciation to 2018 Indiana Youth Art Month Co-Chairs Carrie Billman and Shayla Fish along with AEAI President Mary Sorrels, our fabulous YAM Volunteers, the hardworking events coordinators Terry and Ned at the Indiana State Capitol, AMACO-Brent's receiving specialists Dale and J.C. and our keynotes, Indianapolis WFYI Radio Host Matthew Socey and Nashville, Tennessee based singer-songwriter Caroline McKinney!

Here are some pics of the event and my remarks to the audience:



Welcome!!!

Art class is the best way for children to experience creativity at school.

Fine Arts experience can excite the child's emotional realm and strengthen neurological systems while providing opportunities for creative self expression!.

Inside the body’s nervous system, myelin..a fatty protein that covers connecting axons between nerve cells, expands during these special learning events.

What does this mean? It means memory systems and action impulses work faster inside your brain, improving  the mind’s capacity to learn and think.

There is an immense amount of historical and biological evidence that reveals learning through the visual arts is vital to children’s cognitive development.



Five years ago, I remember speaking with a 7 year old child.

She was stretching packing tape over her wet tempera painting.

I asked her what she was doing.

She said, “I’m making shiny surface art.”

I said, that's fascinating!

She wrote in her journal, “ Art is a part of being creative. When you’re creative, you’re doing better than you are when you’re not.”

I thought to myself, “Why is she doing better when she is creative in school, than when she is not being creative in school?”

Think about this.

During critical phases of cognitive development, mental operations are realized primarily as a result of a child's interactions with the World around them.

There is a biological reason human beings are endowed with hands.

The hands are the key to intellectual growth!



Sadly, many children in the United States don’t attend schools where fine arts exist.

Compounding matters, there are scary trends in education today.

Among certain policy makers, there is this idea that tethering young children to digital screens and tasking them to select answers on multiple choice questions... is somehow a quality education.

I am here to tell you that finger taps on a flat, two dimensional screen, hardly passes as multi-sensory experience.

A school day consisting of screen-based learning is great for collecting numerical data but blunts participation in an abundant curricula. The worst case scenario? Excessive use of digital media introduced by the state during a child's formative development will increase the likelihood that child may become addicted to digital screens.

Seven years ago the Art Education Association of Indiana surveyed its members. We found 60 instances where arts programs were cut.

In 2010, Purdue University art education professor Robert Sabol surveyed over 3400 art teachers from across the United States.

A summary of the findings?

Children’s visual arts and creative learning experiences are being sacrificed on the altar of data collection and standardized testing.

I was admiring this years Youth Art Month exhibition earlier and I have to tell you it is a spectacular visual experience.

The children's art reveals they are developing special powers of creativity.

These children are fortunate to have families, teachers, administrators and communities who support their creative development and school art experiences.

As a parent or citizen advocate you have a powerful voice! I urge you to advocate for children’s art programs when you can. Send local, state or federal policy makers a loud and clear message either face to face, by telephone, snail mail or email to adequately fund and preserve fine arts programs for all children!

We cannot afford future failures of imagination!

I thank you!

Podcast Project: Clark Fralick and I Talk Teaching for Artistic Behavior

My friend and colleague Clark Fralick is a force of nature. We began team teaching art in 1996. Clark got me interested in technology integration the very next year. We collaborated on a state sponsored electronic portfolio project then and we began doing action research on creativity that same year. In 2004 we met Kathy Douglas, Diane Jaquith and John Crowe. From that meeting we immersed ourselves in choice-based art pedagogy that led to our Teaching for Artistic Behavior art education programs.

Our podcast discussions are a result of the hundreds of conversations we have had with each other and with the founders of TAB: https://blockspaperscissors.podbean.com/

Clark, New Palestine HS art teacher Nikki Gardner and I play with lines on a white-board.

Dueling Experiences Part ll: Examining the Educational-Psychology Structures Where Teaching for Artistic Behavior Art Programs Exist

Macky in 2004.

Taking on the job of training Macky would be a collaborative challenge for our family. Together, my wife Maria, our eight year old son Payton, six year old daughter Kelby and I would maintain rigorous experimental conditions inside our home. We were proud owners of a beautiful little puppy. Now we needed to house-train him!

Macky would sleep in a kennel and first thing in the morning he was led outside to go potty. At intervals throughout the day, whenever he was in the vicinity of the back door, our behavior modification team would repeat the question "Macky go outside?" Team members would open the back door and walk the furry animal outside. Within this learning structure, whenever Macky went potty outdoors he would receive verbal praise and a food treat. Our goal was to elicit an association of outdoor potty behavior with verbal cues and food rewards.

Macky in 2014.

Commands or meaningful words can be used to initiate behavioral changes when those words are associated with the behavior and rewards or punishments. Our use of command words, "Macky, go outside," was meant to become a first order association with food. In order for the association to become a strong stimulus we paired the command with food rewards, usually a small piece of chicken or a Cheerio. The recitation of that command phrase and subsequent rewarding of food, meant that over time, the recitation of that phrase near the vicinity of the back door, would create an anticipation and association of the tasty food treat, the reward for doing potty behavior. The verbal command spoken by one of our team members near the proximity of the back door, would be repeated regularly. The back door would become a second order association in our behavioral potty training process.

Ivan Pavlov, 1904 Nobel Prize winner for his work in behaviorism, would use sound cues in order to signal to his dogs food was nearby. The dogs began to salivate when they heard the sound cue. Pavlov learned that dogs could be induced to salivate when the anticipation of food, an unconditioned stimulus was paired with a conditioning stimulus like sound or visual stimuli. Training dogs to salivate with the introduction of a sound or visual stimulus was the basis for Pavlov's discovery of classical conditioning, a form of behaviorism in which the association of stimuli will lead to a change in behavior. Pavlov's method of behavior modification utilized positive stimuli. This is called classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is different from operant conditioning in which rewards and punishments are used to change behavior. Our family was using operant conditioning methods. We emphasized positive stimuli during our training process, but we did utilize negative stimuli whenever bad behavior was exhibited, an aspect of the training regiment I later regretted. Potty behavior inside the house would be punished with negative stimuli in the form of a smack on the nose by myself or Maria as prescribed by the lady who sold us Macky. Rewarding outdoor potty behavior with treats and verbal praise in order to create an association of food and utilizing negative reinforcement for unwanted indoor potty behavior, Macky learned to do his outdoor potty business in a couple of months. As predicted, we trained the animal with operant conditioning methods. I knew we would be successful in training our dog using behaviorist learning principles because behaviorism is an economically efficient form of learning experience, despite the autocratic nature of the training procedure. Throughout my life, behavioral conditioning paradigms were learning structures I was familiar with, particularly during my formative educational experiences as a as a young, unwitting K-12 student-participant.

My brother Kevin and I around 1962.

In 1964 I attended the Walkerton Elementary Kindergarten program and from 1965-'70 I attended St. Patrick's Elementary School. I remember profound differences in the educational experiences at these schools and from my own self-directed learning experience. Mrs. Gardner's kindergarten program was much different from my experiences at St. Patricks. With Mrs. Gardner, we made free association drawings and painted on big easels at the art center. Mrs. Gardner would read to us while we all sat around her at our community gathering center. We looked at picture books from the library center. We took naps in a part of the room designated for nap time. I learned to write my name but looking back on what I was producing, I didn't have the cognitive skills yet to understand the alphabet so when I spelled my name it read Cld.

Mrs. Gardner's Class (Photo courtesy of Jeannie Glasco Eiler).
That's me upper left corner, white shirt, behind the swan's tail.

I don't remember any behaviorist principles utilized in Mrs. Gardner's room. Class seemed to be an extension of our natural selves. I only remember Mrs. Gardner's calm voice. She was very nice to us.  I remember playing at learning centers and my first attempts to verbalize and communicate with my classmates in. I was born with a speech impediment and I stuttered quite a bit. ln retrospect, I appreciated Mrs. Gardner's pedagogy very much. She was a firm believer in holistic learning experience. I don't believe she ever used positive or negative reinforcement to get us to do anything. We were invited to participate in her activities. We had a natural inclination to learn. That is what I remember. Mrs. Gardner must have been incorporating pedagogical ideas from Maria Montessori or John Dewey's educational philosophies. I was a lucky boy to have been in her class.

My mother's family is Catholic and after my stint at Walkerton Elementary's kindergarten class, my parent's enrolled me at St. Patrick's Elementary School also in Walkerton, Indiana. Right away, I understood the administration of educational experience at this school was going to take a much different approach.  In first grade, we learned quite a bit about positive and negative stimuli. Particularly negative stimuli. There were negative consequences for actions that were undesirable in everything we did and within the learning structures we participated in. Catechism was a central component of the school curricula and so was radical behaviorism. If you follow the teachings of Jesus, you will be rewarded in Heaven. However, if you break any of the 10 Commandments, you will spend either a certain amount of your "afterlife" in Limbo, Purgatory or burn in Hell. To a small child, that knowledge gives you a fear of authority. When the nuns yelled at me for a rule infraction, my heart rate jumped and I became stressed. I had many joyful memories of my classmates at my Catholic school setting and some wonderful learning experiences related to self-directed learning and art-making (we had no art teacher), however the main thing I learned was to associate rule breaking with horrible outcomes.

One day at St. Pat's our 5th grade teacher placed a demerit chart on the top of our desks. We would receive an X for bad behavior to be marked inside a square designating a day on the calendar. You could receive a demerit for all kinds of infractions. Talking to a neighbor, not turning in your homework on time, not keeping a tidy desk, not listening to the teacher, being distracted from the lesson. We had to sit in our cramped wooden desks for 6 hours a day! I couldn't help myself...I was a squirmy, gangly elementary school boy with an active imagination. My thoughts might turn to questions about paleontology for example what might happen if a T-Rex and a triceratops faced off?  I couldn't sit still or pay attention much during formal lessons. The nuns who taught us were dedicated to imprinting traditional Catholic educational values, morals and ethics on us but strict and sometimes abusive. St. Pats was a tough school. Our local public elementary school sometimes sent students who were behavior challenges to St. Pats to be "educated." My 5th and 6th grade teacher called us "stupid donkey" if we didn't follow directions. I don't remember much of the content of the instruction from that time, but I do remember the pain used for emotional or physically punishment if we didn't follow the rules. Over time, my demerit chart seemed to have more marks on it than anybody else! I felt shame, immense guilt and self-loathing.

Once in 5th grade, my classmate Jack who sat at the front of class was sent to the corner for bad behavior. Unfortunately my desk was right next to the corner where Jack was sent. While I was sitting at my desk,  Jack took a pencil out of his pocket and started to poke me with it. I turned around and poked him back with my wooden ruler. Sister "E" saw me poke Jack, took my ruler away from me, told me to flatten my hand on top of my desk and proceeded to hit me half a dozen times on the hand and fingers with my ruler. In front of the entire class. Law and order would be maintained. Classroom directives would be followed! If classroom rules were broken, serious negative consequences would be administered to the children including corporal punishment!

It wasn't just at St. Pat's that radical behaviorism and operant conditioning was big. In 7th grade while attending Urey Middle School, my math teacher took me outside to the hallway, pulled out her wooden paddle and gave me 3 whacks because I failed to produce my homework on time! My science teacher did the same thing too! After talking to my peers at I.U. and throughout my lifetime, I found out paddling as a form of negative reinforcement to comply with curricula mandates was a regular occurrence for children of the United States in the 60's and 70's.  I felt shame and anger when corporal punishment was utilized on me. I learned if you don't follow the teacher's directions, you will suffer! I began to associate math and science classes with physical and emotional pain. I also learned there are figures of authority that are inhumane, obtuse and mechanistic.

If you attended the schools I attended in Walkerton, Indiana back in the 1960's and early '70's, you learned behaviorist learning principles were central to the school curricula. The reality of the school setting as described by Elliot Eisner, is this. There are two forms of curricula experienced simultaneously by the learner. The intended curricula as Eisner describes is "curricula in vitro." In vitro activities and content should impart authorized knowledge to the learner through a sequenced presentation of content, organized for the benefit of the teacher and scaffolded to gradually increase complexity for the benefit of the learner. The second form of curricula within the school setting according to Eisner relates to the globality of the learner's experience related to the teacher's pedagogical practice, instructional methodology, management techniques and classroom and school culture. Eisner calls this "curricula in vivo."

My "in vivo" experiences taught me if children do not conform to strict curricula guidelines then negative reinforcement will be administered either through psycho-emotional means or somatic means as an abrupt intervention to force compliance. The resulting stress, psychological pressure and physical pain experienced by the child is overlooked. Teachers and administrators can create first and second order negative associations with school, learning and activities with their students when curricula is structured around behavior modification. Children's formative K-12 educational experiences integrated within an "in vivo" curriculum structure that is narrow, organized around authoritarianism, structured around a narrow framework, forced upon children and outside their control will lead to lasting memories that may have immense unintended consequences.

Dueling Experiences: Examining the Educational-Psychology Structures Where Teaching for Artistic Behavior Art Rooms Exist, Part 1

In 2001 my wife Maria and I drove our son and daughter Payton and Kelby to Northern Indiana to check out a litter of Jack Russell terrier puppies. The puppies lived on a picturesque farm situated on land once connected to the Grand Kankakee Marsh. Seven year old Payton and five year old Kelby had grown up watching the PBS show “Wishbone” They wanted a little Wishbone of their own. I secretly wanted one too. We made the decision to purchase a family dog that was small, athletic, cute and full of personality. When the dog breeder showed us a litter of sleepy faced eight-week old puppies, a male with a black, white and brown mask bounced out of the pack wagging his tail and up to my son. Kelby cried out, "Look Mommy and Daddy! He's going over to Payton" He was a beautiful, energetic and irresistible furry, four legged force of nature. Payton named him Macky.

After we exchanged payment, the dog breeder gave us potty training instructions. We should keep Macky in a kennel at night and first thing in the morning, walk him outside. Anticpating he would do his business out doors and not in his kennel, he would immediately receive a dog snack. The dog breeder also cautioned us if Macky were to potty indoors, we should place him near the mess, then give him a smack on the nose. When she told me that, I was taken aback somewhat. But then I thought, "Why should I doubt her expertise about potty training? She was the dog breeder." She also instructed that Macky should be taken outside in regular intervals throughout the day and rewarded after making his potty outdoors. In fact, throughout my entire life, particularly in my early life, I have been rewarded or punished for desirable or undesirable behavior. I thought to myself, “We can potty-train this puppy in no time!”  Maria and I paid the dog breeder one hundred seventy five dollars and loaded up the mini-van with the kids and little Macky inside of a cardboard box.

Macky became the subject of our Family’s grand behavior modification experiment. My wife Maria and I discussed the plan with our children. Whomever was taking the dog outside would report to Mom or Dad if Macky had done his business and reward Macky with a treat from the snack bag. The words “bad boy,” and a smack on Macky’s nose adjacent to the “mess,” would be delivered by myself if he made a mess in the house. We didn’t want the children to administer that part of the training procedure because we didn’t want the dog to associate the negative experience with the children but we did want him to associate potty behavior and treats with being physically outdoors. That was the power of operant conditioning. The subject associates affect to certain stimuli and responds. We didn't want the dog to respond negatively to the children as a possible outcome. I thought our plan seemed to be a good plan, but the question remained, would there be side affects from the use of negative stimulus during the dog’s formative development as a member of our family? Despite my apprehension, the dog breeders advice was taken seriously.

Our family would duplicate as best we could, the methods and structure used in B.F. Skinner’s behavior modification experiments using both positive and negative stimuli.  I had learned about B.F. Skinner, Ivan Pavlov and John Watson, pioneers in behavior modification, from my high school psychology teacher Mr. Kupfer and took educational psychology classes at Indiana University. This behavior modification procedure would be implemented. The children, my wife and I would conduct an operant conditioning experience on Macky to strengthen his behavior to potty outdoors and not potty indoors.

What Is An Ethical Pedagogy?

The problem with administering standardized learning activities without accounting for differences of diverse cognitive capacities, desire and strengths in heterogeneous student populations is that individual flights of learning are blunted.

The scientific method is innate in human beings. The desire to be curious, explore, create, reflect and learn is a human trait that has served our species well.

When I think of Teaching for Artistic Behavior classrooms and art programs, I think of learning environments that support, nurture and expand mental growth through those innate capacities.

A TAB classroom is in many ways an umwelt, an environment where learners connect at a deep psycho/emotional/physiological level.

Within the environment of the TAB classroom, inspiration, time, support, opportunity and feedback are available to learners.

When I first began TAB practice, I began to witness unbelievable feats of creativity from my elementary students.

Natural pathways to creative experience are profound! Meaning making, memory formation is optimized during these profound experiences.

At the heart of natural pathways to creative growth experience? Emergence.

Baseline example of student art created in September, '14 and example from December '14 reveal changes in composition complexity of radial symmetry design ideas.

Kathy Douglas and Diane Jaquith's dynamic approach to art education that accounts for individual differences falls within the parameters of systems theory set forth by Aristotle, who writes in "Metaphysics,"...the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts."

A Question....Why Does Teaching for Artistic Behavior, As A Curriculum Structure, Optimize Student Learning?

After observing Dale Zalmstra's classes in 2014, the universal appeal of TAB curriculum structure became quite clear. Dale's students were absolutely thrilled to be in her art room, working together or apart, sharing, conversing, collaborating, creating and dialoging with one another. Dale had organized seven or eight learning centers and her students were all self-directed, autonomous and so excited to be in the classroom working on their art activities. But I had observed this special learning environment with similar student self-governing behaviors in Clark Fralick's room also. Just what is it about TAB that optimizes learning experience? What is so special and unique about Kathy Douglas and Diane Jaquith's unique curriculum structure that optimizes student experience wherever it is carefully implemented? There are a couple of things to point out.

First, learning experience in TAB classrooms is to varying degrees, democratized. In a democratic classroom, learners are genuinely empowered. Experience is generated consensually from the learning environment, inborn endowment or teacher collaboration. TAB teachers understand children are conscious beings and use their awareness, interests and desire to organize individual learning pathways. In TAB classrooms, learners own the experience because they consent to be apart of the activities by participating in the formation and design of the activity. Because self-reflection is consciously or unconsciously a natural part of TAB experience, a feedback loop is established. Students in TAB classrooms ultimately become self-governing and self-sustaining individuals.

I looked at the idea of self-sustaining curricula in earlier posts. Self-sustaining curricula, one that provides for unique learner interests and extends outside school settings where emotional drive is activated and stimulated was described with the Deluzian term rhizomatic curriculum. But I'm going to use another term because I think it also works within the TAB learning paradigm. What Kathy Douglas and Diane Jaquith developed while exploring art education curriculum structures and the optimization of individual's creative learning opportunities, is a self-sustaining curriculum structure based on general systems theory for K-12 public education.

TAB Institute 2016: Registration Link Here

TAB Institute held the past two summers at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design is a professional development opportunity for art educators interested in a deep, hands-on experience learning about Teaching for Artistic Behavior pedagogy and methods that optimize children's individualized learning pathways for creative and intellectual growth. TAB Co-Founders Kathy Douglas and Diane Jaquith teach this course along with Nan Hathaway, Julie Toole, Ian Sands and myself.

Register for credit or audit the course here: http://pcecatalog.massart.edu/tab/tab2016.html