Bell 1 Elizabeth Bell ENGL 1102 Elizabeth Hinnant 29 April 2014 The Art of Teaching When one walks

into a classroom, not everyone is excited to be there. One would understand that sitting through a lecture for an hour is not very appealing. Similarly, listening to a teacher tell you that there is only one way to do things in the world simply makes what you are learning less interesting. However, teachers can have a teaching style that allows students to be more creative. RJ Reynolds High School has examples of such classrooms. At Reynolds, it is a mission to include the arts into every class in some way. There are three studio arts teachers, who each reflect a type of teaching style that allow the students to create the best work they can. Mr. Brown had a teaching style that was very interactive, usually trying to talk with the students rather that lecture them. Through observation, one can easily see how Mr. Brown really tries to encourage students and supports them as best as he can. Rob Howard mentions that art can sometimes be taught to be more representative rather than imaginative (269). However, in Mr. Browns Art 1 class, he focused more on helping students achieve their vision of the project they wanted to make. While the students did have to create a certain type of project with some requirements that needed to be met, they were able to add their own vision to it. The students were able to use their imagination to create a better project. This does also tie in to Ronald Beghettos view that the way a teacher grades students can harm their creativity, depending on the situation (255). In this situation, because Mr. Brown is teaching an Art 1 class, it is assumed that every student does not know much about art, so the basics of

Bell 2 several different art forms are taught. He would have to go through all the terminology and the steps to creating each type of art, and therefore would want the students to produce a certain type of piece. Unfortunately, this would in fact hinder student creativity. However, one cannot forget that there are always techniques that would need to be learned for the students to actually create the art they want to make. Mr. Browns Seminar in the Arts class was taught in a drastically different way. This class is meant to be even more basic than an Art 1 class, and much shorter. For this class, they would only have a couple weeks in the Studio Arts portion, implying that a larger project would be near impossible. In order to cover the basic points that must be covered, Mr. Brown used a lecture-style approach. He used PowerPoints to teach about the topics, but at the same time talked more with the students rather than at them. Costa, Rensburg, and Rushtons experiment concerning teaching styles reflects both of the teaching styles used in Mr. Browns classes. As in the experiment, both of his teaching styles are effective to a point. While the study was done for an orthopaedics class, the main point is similar. Students prefer interactive discussion groups to didactic lectures (216). In his Art 1 class, students seemed to be more engaged in what they were learning. They were able to physically produce a more high quality piece of work, unlike the students in his Seminar in the Arts class. They were only able to make quick and simple drawings for the sake of notes. However, it is most likely due to the time constraints that Mr. Brown had to teach his Seminar in the Arts class as a lecture. Mrs. Whites teaching style is an interesting one. In her 3D Design class, she seems to give the students the instructions they need for the assignment, and then lets them work at their own pace until it is due. While she does have daily goals that need to be reached, she did not heavily enforce them. She would assist the students when asked, but apart from that she seemed

Bell 3 to let them be. One could assume that she was treating the students as adults. Students could easily goof off during class, and then throw together a simple project just to have something to turn in. On the other hand, giving the students that freedom to explore the medium allows them to find more creative ways to create their pieces. As stated by Rob Howard, if time is given to experimentation and exploration then every child has the potential to create exceptional art (270). However, due to the nature of the class and the fact that it was meant for the higher grade levels, the lack of interaction was probably also due to the fact that the students are expected to be more independent. Mrs. White also taught an Art 1 class, but had a student teacher teaching the class at the time of observation. Mrs. Black had a much different approach to the way the previous class was taught, most likely due to the fact that it was an Art 1 class. Mrs. Black made sure to be amongst the students, helping in any way she could. She guided them to their final product, while allowing the students to be able to create the type of project they wanted. Again, the students were limited by project requirements as to exactly what they could create, but they were able to be creative within those boundaries. This is similar to what Ronald Beghetto talks about in his article, being that it is the boundaries set by the project requirements that hinders the student creativity. He states that teachers must monitor how students perceive the assessment environment in the classroom (259). As in Mr. Browns Art 1 class, it is important to learn the basics before you can more freely create art. Mrs. Greens classroom was by far the most interesting classroom out of the three. The atmosphere of the overall classroom was more relaxed than the other classes, being that they had music playing and the students were more comfortable to talk freely with one another. In her Art 1 class, they were working on a more interesting project. They had to create giant models of

Bell 4 some kind of junk food. While they were required to create paper mache models, the project itself is not among the more traditional projects in an art class. Theresa ODonovans article about her study of the project done in the Women and Holy Writ class had a similar outcome. Mrs. Greens class had much less freedom on how they created the project, but the students were able to effectively work in groups and communicate to make their project possible. The same sense of community was formed between the students owing to the high level of interaction and mutual support among them (ODonovan 163). This project also connects back to Rob Howards article, in that the project was in fact predominantly representative. However, Howard mentions that children engage in a different way with imaginative work and may need to walk or move around and that it has the potential to be messy (270). The project in Mrs. Greens class required the students to get up and move around, and being paper mache, it was expected to be messy. That could easily make the project itself creative, engaging the students own creativity, even with the set requirements of the project. Mrs. Green also taught a Painting 1 class. This class is meant to teach some of the basics of painting. They were working on a painting where they would have to paint a landscape based off a reference picture. Mrs. Green did leave the students to their work for the first bit of class, but did get back in with them to comment on their work and to answer any questions. Again, this ties back in to Rob Howards article. This project focuses on the representation of a landscape, with little room for imaginative influence. Howard mentions that representative work offers no media exploration, little or no discussion, no consideration of viewpoint, shape/color or paper, etc (270). However, with this being an introductory course to painting, its important to learn how to accurately represent something, and how to use the medium. Once the students learn how to accurately represent something, they can more easily know how to manipulate it to reflect

Bell 5 their own ideas. Additionally, knowing how a medium works and how it behaves on certain surfaces can help students know better how to more accurately depict their ideas. For the studio arts teachers at Reynolds, each had their own way of supporting the students to help them create the best work they can. As expected, not all students are able to grasp some of the ideas and concepts of art as easily as others. However, that does not stop the teachers from assisting them in any way they can. According to Roger Johnsons study of perceptions of creativity, teachers see their students as more creative than the students see themselves (166). Without that view, the teachers would not be pushing the students to create the best work they can. They would not be working one-on-one with students when problems arise. The teachers know that the students have potential, but that they sometimes need help reaching it. They use their unique teaching styles to support the students creativity, which in turn allows the student to create better works.

Bell 6 Works Cited Beghetto, Ronald. Does Assessment Kill Student Creativity? The Education Forum 69 (2005): 254-263. ERIC. Web. 31 March 2014. Costa, Matthew L. Lee Van Rensburg. Neil Rushton. Does Teaching Style Matter? A Randomized Trial of Group Discussion Versus Lectures in Orthopaedic Undergraduate Teaching. Medical Education 41.2 (2007): 214-217. Wiley Online Library. Web. 28 March 2014. Howard, Rob. Teaching Art Creatively. GIFTED EDUCATION INTERNATIONAL 18.3 (2004): 266-275. SAGE Journals. Web. 13 March 2014. Johnson, Roger. Teacher and Student Perception of Student Creativity. Gifted Child Quarterly 20.2 (1976): 164-167. SAGE Journals. Web. 1 April, 2014. ODonovan, Theresa. Doing it Differently: Unleashing Student Creativity. Teaching Theology and Religion 6.3 (2003): 159-163. Wiley Online Library. Web. 1 April 2014.