Dragon Mural 

"The Next Big Thing"

Clark and I presented at the IAEA State Conference last Friday. We had a nice group of interested teachers check in with us (20) and listen to our story of how we got to where we are today with our rationale, transition and current program with choice based art education. This was the 5th time Clark and I have done a presentation for either the state or national art education associations but this is the first time our audience members kept us speaking an hour and a half after we were supposed to end our presentation. They were very interested in everything we had to say....and had a lot of questions about our centers, assessment, facilitating and developing creative thinkers, classroom management and everything else we had to say about child centered, choice based art education. Clark and I each created a PowerPoint presentation and then on Thursday before our presentation, we worked everything out, combining the two presentations ...On Friday, Nov. 5th at 4:00PM, we delivered the presentation. I remember our audience was very enthusiastic and several left interested in beginning choice programs of their own. We finished up at around 6:30 PM. I was delighted the choice concept was recieved so positively by the art teachers who came to hear what we had to say about our new programs....Near the end of our talk, one of the teachers came up to me and said, I do a lot of DBAE, but is this the "next big thing?" I thought, "this is bigger than DBAE"....I said to her, "I don't know," but I thought to myself...It very well could be, ...and I think it should be, not just for art education but to a certain degree, for all subject areas....I think about John Dewey's works, "The Child and the Curriculum" and "Democracy And Education" Dewey speaks at great length about adults classifying knowledge, facts and learning away from their original place and away from relevancy to student's life and experience. With choice based art, we can connect directly to student experience....this is what makes this program so potent....and this is why I am so excited...Check back again....cg