The Art of Student Teachers

National Art Education Association

The Art of Student TeachersAuthor(s): George SzekelySource: Art Education, Vol. 57, No. 3 (May, 2004), pp. 18-24Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3194090 .

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The student stood before me, slicing the air with his hands, as he tried to capture the change that had come over him. "This is a real job," he said. p*I em1

"I didn't have to think this way in college; I had everything laid out for me there. But now I'm the teacher. I take attendance and give assignments. I'm the one helping others find their creative paths."

According to Hanes and Schiller (1994), "The student teacher experience is the traditional transition from theories of the university to practical realities of public schools. It is in this experience that critical changes occur and determine the manner of practice that preservice teachers tend to adopt for their future classrooms" (p.218). The experiences of student teaching also shape student teachers' art practice. Student teachers reset the clock of personal goals to consider what is possible and what may not be easy to accomplish as an art teacher. Suiting up in an art teacher's mantle leads to adjustments, such as how to fit one's own art into a day of teaching.

ART EDUCATION / MAY 2004



Hickman (2000) observes that, "Student teachers of art are encouraged to reflect upon their teaching as a matter of course; they are usually actively involved in self-appraisal and lesson evaluation" (p. 11). But are student teachers encouraged to reflect on their artmaking? Beyond college art classes, artmaking is seldom discussed as a necessary preparation for art teaching. Traditionally, student teachers try on the role of the teacher, but not the artist- teacher. Art education students are prepared to be artists and teachers and not to abruptly cease making art. The uniqueness of artist-teachers and their special art interests and desires to make art, have to be nurtured as they move into schools that classify all teachers to be the same. As Michael (1983) puts it, "An art teacher's most immediate source of inspiration is themselves. Students tend to become interested in art areas in which teachers themselves are very much interested and involved" (p.148).

If student teachers are to engage in the time demanding task of artmaking, they need to know how to effectively set their creative clock. Setting goals and creating plans for students has to be balanced with learning to plan for one's own art. Student

teachers cannot neglect setting personal art goals or spending time sorting out what is important for personal artistic development. While learning to care for young art lives, it is also a time to take charge of one's own art.

My Art Exhibit * Hannah: Dr. Szekely, I am so glad to see you. These books you painted are incredibly moving. E Szekely: Thanks... they are actually prayer books. When my mother was diagnosed with cancer 3 years ago, I attended to her struggle and used these private notations to keep me company. During lengthy hospital stays I felt connected to her bedside by picturing hope and fear. To disperse the spell of difficult treatments, I searched for art pads-surgical supply catalogues, technical manuals, EKG rolls, and hospital forms-to draw on to exorcise all pain. Since she passed away this summer, I searched for her in my art. But tell me about your semester of student teaching. I recall how excited you were to show me your new paintings from studio classes and how worried you were that teaching would rob you of the progress you were making. It is hard to

finally become the artist you always dreamed of and then be dropped off at work the next semester. * Hannah: It was hard. I had no time to do the things I wanted. I had no time for anything. But the kids are amazing. The art is more exciting than anything in my studio classes or in museums. I just open my paint closet and kids applaud. I never felt such enthusiasm for art. I go home filled with ideas, and my students tutored me to paint freely. I had to learn to combine art and teaching. I do everything as art at home-the way I make my bed, the way I prepare my lunch. I make painted boxes to hold presents for birthdays. I painted our phone and toaster, and I gave the chair in my living room a painted pillow. * Szekely: So you changed from being an easel painter to using every opportunity and all surfaces as your canvas. * Hannah: Yes. My students enjoy seeing my painted objects. They look forward to seeing a differently decorated lunch-bag everyday. We talk about art as being part of one's life-how it can make everything around us more beautiful. My kids who sticker their rooms and lunch boxes understand what I do.

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* Szekely: Student teachers come from the most exciting artmaking stints in their lives and then feel like they have to abandon it during student teaching. I am glad that you did not let this happen. * Hannah: No, I figured teaching can be my art, and everything I do at home can also be art. You may not recognize my work, but painting the things around me explains what an artist can do.

* Fred: Right. I also never realized the physical stamina student teaching required. I am always tired when I get home. Two art sessions, two studios, taking out art supplies again at home would be hard. Art is exciting when I am in school, and it makes sense to work where I am most into it, with people who nourish my art the most. I seldom feel like making art at home. My weekend or

In my school we have an artist-in-residence who is the

"real" artist, which I feel is insulting. I do everything I can

to assert that I am an artist in our school.

* Fred: Hi, Dr. Szekely. Thanks for inviting me to see your show. * Szekely: I'm glad you're here. How is your series for our show coming along? * Fred: Children's art has been my inspiration. Everyday we make art together after school. I spread out sheets, drop cloths, or tablecloths, and we work together. Their art enlivens mine, and my art speaks to them. We trade pieces and add to each other's art. There is lots of laughter. I never had so much fun making paintings. We make "art sandwiches," drawing over layers of each other's marks on sheets of plastic. We sketch portraits and wrap them in plastic bags to draw over them. Art is a way we talk to each other. N Szekely: So your studio is your art class, your art is made in school, and the children are co-creators.

summer art will never be as exciting as these exchanges. * Szekely: I know it's difficult to finish painting with children in school and then start painting at home. You found a natural alternative. * Fred: When student teaching started, I used to paint when I felt like it. Most of the time I didn't feel like it. I convinced myself that art is supposed to be fun. If I was not in the mood it would not work. Now I see teaching and painting as my job, neither subject to moods. Collaborating with the children helps to build new ideas. Routine is important, even if some days seem less productive. When I graduate, I will always look for opportunities to exhibit. The promise of a show helps our art team keep going. * Szekely: Hi, Sarah. We were just talking about how our art has changed while student teaching. * Sarah: My art has been to make art for students. I make tiny paintings for their playhouses. As a classroom reward, children choose from small prints I make to take home. Some children told me they put up my work in their room next to theirs. The kids have been the best audience and critics of my work. Receiving my art all the time makes them feel free to share theirs with me.

* Szekely: So you found a caring audience in the children who see you as a fellow artist. * Sarah: Yes, my art is appreciated, and I am encouraged to make more. Even when I play with the children on the floor, I feel like a teacher, completely in charge. The way I teach is beginning to reflect the art teacher that I am. It is not a coinci- dence that for the first time I feel self- employed as an artist. I no longer paint for assignments, to solve someone else's problem; it is my call, my plan. And the art for the show is beginning to look like my paintings. Myjourney from school to debuting as a teacher and an artist required independent strides. * Szekely: Please bring these artworks to our student teacher meeting. We will consider how your teaching art and making art are related. * Sarah: I keep lesson plans in the same sketchbook as my art ideas. I figure it wouldn't hurt if they mingled. When we shared our artmaking goals and teaching goals at the beginning of the semester, I felt it was OK to keep one book. And it helps to be treated as artists by Dr. Szekely caring about our art. I wish the school felt the same way and did not treat us like every other teacher. In my school we have an artist-in-residence who is the "real" artist, which I feel is insulting. I do everything I can to assert that I am an artist in our school. * Szekely: And Roni, we haven't heard about your experiences and works in progress. * Roni: My challenge was not only to make art, but also to share artmaking with students. I set up a painting comer in class. I brought in paper samples and set up many of the objects I collect that inspire me. I brought in brushes I built for the kids to try. We tested new colors I purchased for my work. * Szekely: So you decided that it was important to move your studio to class. You had an older group this semester.

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* Roni: My adolescent art students have far less interest and confidence in art than my elementary students had. They don't feel art to be the center of their lives or relevant to their future. Rebuilding a dedication to art was the challenge. For my students, leading my artist life at home would not be noticed. Meeting a real artist had to be "cool" and make a difference. In my art corer I put up stage designs for my band, and I included my vintage cereal box collection to show my broad notion of art. * Szekely: So, you went beyond the day's art lesson, hoping to influence the way students thought of you as an artist. Your art is used to connect students to the art world and to seeing themselves as artists. * Roni: Yes. In teacher education classes it was assumed that art was something we did on our own. I make art in school and share works in progress. I talk about the ways I plan and prepare, how I shop, collect, and save things, even how I plot my time. Students are told where the lesson ideas come from and how they often derive from the same place I discover an art idea. For those who cannot visit an artist's studio, here I am- I come to them.

The Student Teacher Art Show: Five Months Later * Szekely: I would like to thank our student teachers who made great art all semester for this show. Thank you to all our cooperating teachers for attending this final celebration. I am happy to see many students from our schools. I know you have witnessed the progress of these works in your classes, and many of you helped in the gallery to put up the show. I see changes in your art. I also know that you had to make changes in lifestyles and in your approach to artmaking. * Tammy: Right. It is not easy for a single mother to teach, be a parent, and a sculptor. I am not sure how to do it all, but I felt that I could work better late at night. Did you all find a "best time" to work and then learn to stick to it? It was difficult to be realistic about how much I could accomplish after school and be satisfied with it. I guess it helped to find time to sketch ideas in school for the work at night. Planning and scheduling was always done for us in college, but now I see how art requires prioritizing and honest scheduling. * Laura: Your small figures look great; very different than the monumental metals you used to make.

* Tammy: I am not sure how I could have continued, but I would have been frustrated waiting for a studio class during the summer. I don't know about adjustments, but I had to learn to make metal sculpture on my kitchen table. I made everything inside my daughter's sandbox and used my kitchen tools instead of fancy equipment we had in school. Finished pieces sat inside her red wagon waiting to be pulled to the foundry. I am so glad I never put aside my art this year. It made me a more confident teacher. * Tammy: I like your wallpapered wall and painted floor. * Laura: The great big murals I used to paint certainly could not be painted in my small apartment. When I wallpapered the apartment I found a great solution. I couldn't believe how much great wallpaper I found. Each had their own rhythm and after painting they could be rolled up and put away. I can make great big paintings by putting together sections of wallpaper and pieces of floor tiles. Each space inspires a solution. Space is a factor in continuing one's art and consid- ering how to go on. It was also easier to attempt a series of smaller works that I could get to every night.

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* Tammy: I guess we learned to make art according to where and how we live. Fred, I like your painted shapes inside plastic pockets. * Fred: I had to learn to find my own space, set it up, find my own supplies, and find what to do. We never worried about the things artists have to worry about in school, like where to look for big plastic rolls and how do you seal them. We always had a teacher who had the solutions. But now I feel that art teaching has to do with supporting independence even in the youngest artist. I am trying to teach my students to work from their own vision and experiences. And now perhaps I am prepared to show them what an independent artist is. * Tammy: I think the children I baby-sit for behave more like artists than my students in school. School assignments create a dependency that can last a lifetime. * Fred: And no one is more interested in my art ideas and the art I am making than my students. They are always curious about my idea books, and it helps to clarify my thoughts to involve them in planning. Offering my plans freed students to talk about their art ideas and make their own plan books.

* Laura: Those tables with painted tablecloths spread over them are just great. Who did them? * Ted: My parents have wonderful tablecloths. I got excited about collecting others. The tables were in my house and I painted the tablecloths to feel like they were from home. I also found that making art was the best preparation for teaching and inspiring others. Having made art the night before made me more enthusiastic about teaching. I was more confident talking to children about their work, responding with sympathy and sharing my experiences. Even the youngest children became fellow artists I could talk to. You cannot prepare yourself for teaching art by just reading or watching others. * Ted: I presented myself to the class as the artist, and students always asked, with a certain respect, how my art was going. I often used my own work as an example, instead of slides and artists the kids did not know. I talked about art from the heart and from my own experiences. I shared the joy when my work was going well and talked about the difficulties. It was not until college that I met a real artist and visited a real studio. But I don't think kids should have to wait that long.

* Fred: And this exhibit is a great opportunity to take pictures and photograph our art in a gallery setting. My student teaching portfolio will include a lot of my work, my artist statement, and the invita- tion to the show. And I want the principal who hires me to know that they are hiring an artist. * Tammy: I guess that as artists we will always face competing demands. It has been important to make my art an important part of student teaching. It was comforting to face these challenges together with all of you.

Thoughts for Students Before the Gallery is Closed * Szekely: It is hard to change from being a school artist in university studios, to setting up your own work space, your own schedule, and discovering your own assignments for both the children and yourself. The scale and direction of your art had to be customized to complement your teaching lives. You experienced the difficulties of not having large studios, sophisticated equipment, outside budgets, challenging assignments and immediate critical feedback to direct you. On the other side, you tasted the joy of being free to create, to make your own art,

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"You proved to yourselves that it is possible to

make art and teach. Teaching did not impede your art, but nourished it. Your constant challenge should be to discover ways of connecting your

teaching and your art."

and to live the life of an artist the way it was meant to be. You have started your new lives as teachers with new routines and discovered that as independent artists you also needed routines. You all

began to find your own voice, along with plenty of inspiration from your new

colleagues, the children. You proved to yourselves that it is possible to make art and teach. Teaching did not impede your art, but nourished it. Your constant

challenge should be to discover ways of connecting your teaching and your art.

Conclusion Few people question the effectiveness

of bringing together artists and children. Artist residencies in the public schools are well funded and respected. Kihm and Odita (2002) state that, "[T]he artist's practice strengthens student's own individual artistic voice.... In effect, the artist is the curriculum, and the more students respond to the artist, the greater likelihood that the student will 'change places' with the artist" (p. 89). What about art teachers who practice their art? Can

they be considered artists in their schools? Can we support the student teachers to be the artists in their schools? It can be a goal of student teaching to induct young artist-teachers into schools and encourage the use of one's artist self in teaching.

After looking at the case for and

against the artist-teacher, Anderson (1997) summarizes, "Creative processes are understood to involve the need for singular aloneness and introspection (Newick, 1982), while teaching has been characterized as an ongoing analytical process. The artist may not necessarily be able to communicate or to articulate verbally to others the processes involved in creativity, or his knowledge may be too idiosyncratic for use by others-

especially school-age children (Ball, 1990; Smith, 1991)" (p. 37). Art teachers in public schools who practice their art are already accepted as expert teachers and communicators. Artist-teachers are in the best position to effectively relate their knowledge and contact with the art world to the classroom. Student teachers need to be initiated into teaching as proud artists and learn how to be the artist in the class and in school. Student teaching supervisors should see themselves as the necessary art community that supports the student teacher as artist.

Lachapelle (1991) describes the separate lives of art studio and art education faculty in teacher training insti- tutions. College studio classes build on a lifetime of interest in art and take place "across the hall" from teacher preparation courses. Even if the studio art and art education worlds are isolated in college, it took both to produce the public school art teacher. In the dual track system, studio teachers train young artists who become art teachers, but recede from participation when the student is ready to practice teaching. Art education faculty instruct the young person on how to teach

during their crucial entrance into the profession. The art education supervisor has to act as both the teaching and the studio mentor as student teachers enter a school climate where art and artists may have less respect than they had in college and where the important connections and nourishment between one's artist and teaching self may be neither understood nor valued.

REFERENCES Anderson, R. (1997). A case study of the artist

as teacher through the video work of Martha Davis. Studies in Art Education, 39(1), 37-55.

Ball, L. (1990). What role: Artist or teacher? Art Education, 43(1), 54-59.

Hanes J. M., & Schiller M. (1994). Collaborating with cooperating teachers in preservice art education. Studies in Art Education, 35(4), 218-227.

Hickman, R. (2000). Meaning, Purpose and Direction. In Hickman, R. (Ed.), Art Education (pp.1-13). London: Wellington House.

Kihm, E., & Odita, 0. (2002). Pointers and pitfalls in creating a visual arts curriculum. Planning an arts centered school (pp. 75-81). New York: The Dana Foundation.

Lachapelle, J. R. (1991). In the night studio: The professional artist as an educational role model. Studies in Art Education, 32(3), 260-270.

Michael, J. (1983). Art and adolescence: Teaching art at the secondary level. New York: Teachers College Press.

Newick, S. (1982). The experience of aloneness and the making of art. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 16(2), 65-74.

Smith, P. (1991). The case of the artist in the classroom with special reference to the teaching career of Oskan Kokoschka. Studies in Art Education, 32(4), 239-247.

George Szekely is area head and

professor in the Department of Art at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. E-mail: gszekOl @pop. uky. edu

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The Art of Student Teachers