Arty On

I love it when students keep me accountable. While I am trying my best to run a very student-centered, choice-based art studio, I am finding that I sometimes start to slide back into my teacher-centered ways.  Letting go of control is harder than I expected and the classroom can quickly turn into a 3-ring circus where the teacher is the ringmaster commanding full attention rather than directing it towards the real stars of the show (students, aka, trapeze artists, clowns, contortionists, lions...).  I mostly catch myself before it becomes the "Dana Show", but am also trying to train my students to let me know if I'm drifting in my purpose. From the beginning of last year, I shared with students a personal goal during their class periods: to talk less and let them work more!  I have trained myself to be aware of when "the wiggles" set in and I've talked too long.  I try to limit whole class discussions/reflections to 5 minutes maximum.  I know the student...

How does a choice-based classroom allow for student artists to develop their ideas in a meaningful way?  This is a question I am currently experimenting with and offering varied solutions for in my PYP art studio. For the most part, I'm finding that there is no end to the ideas that students want to investigate.  However, some of them enter the art studio with so many ideas that they find it difficult to stick with just one.  They are enthusiastic, they are motivated, and they want to try it all!  They ping pong from here to there, experimenting with one technique, then collaborating on another, engaging in making mistakes, and finding out what they like and don't like as an artist. I love this about running a choice-based art studio. However, I also wonder what the limit of these explorations should be?  At what point does a student need to choose a topic, medium, or technique and explore it more in depth?  What is the role of the teacher in ensuri...