|  My
philosophy of teaching was formed not only by what I believe
as an individual, but also by my conversations and observations
of other teachers. Being able to see a variety of teaching
styles opened my eyes to the fact that there is no one right
way of teaching. It is similar to parenting. Everyone has
their own style but in all cases the children still progress
into adults. What I did realize though, is that in these differences
there were positive and negatives to each style and team teaching
can be more challenging than I thought.
Even though it might be the hard route, I have looked outside
my classroom to get involved with what other teachers are
doing. I
have learned so much from working with other
teachers that I know it will be necessary for me make sure
I always establish myself as a significant part of both the
school and art community. I am still in the process, and will
probably always be, of challenging my ideas and developing
my teaching to make it better, but I believe that is one
of my strengths.
I am a person that thrives on challenge. I always seemed
to somehow make otherwise easy situations harder for myself.
Instead of that being a negative, I feel that I have used
these in a positive way, as opportunities to grow and change.
Just the fact that I changing my career after 10 years, simply
because I wanted a change, is a good example of the way I
live my life. I believe that continuing this path and assimilating
this into my practice, will insure my success as a teacher
throughout my career.
My previous behavior is probably a good indicator of what
the future will hold for me as a teacher. A person that welcomes
challenges and seeks progressive ways of doing things. In
my professional art experience, I was rooted firmly in my
fine arts background, but always looked towards the new technology.
As a multi-media artist, I enjoyed combining the traditional
studio arts with the new practices of digital media. I believe
this concept is very important to bring into my classroom.
The only way I feel I can do this is to get
out of the classroom and stay connected with
the world around me. Reinventing my curriculum will be a way
that I can stay creative and keep my classroom fresh with
new ideas.
Getting out of the classroom and associating myself with
teachers
of other disciplines will also help to legitimize
art. In the past, the art world has been seen by others as
“flaky” or even “snobby,” and thus
separated from the other “hard” disciplines. It
will take a lot of courage to face these stereotypes in society,
but I believe we can overcome this obstacle if the art community
makes better connections with other people to show them the
benefits that the Arts have on students. In Parker J. Palmer’s
book, “The Courage to Teach”, he writes about
what we are up against – “the imagination is seen
as chaotic and unruly” and attributes this reason to
why “music, art and dance are at the bottom of the academic
pecking order and the hard sciences are at the top.”
(Palmer 1998, p. 52) Making better connections with other
people can happen when we wrap all the wonderful qualities
of the art our students produce into a package that others
can relate to. For example, gearing activities that show the
beauty of diversity or working with writers to tell a story.
We can also resolve this obstacle by engaging in more studies
that demonstrate the higher intelligence levels that result
from students engaging in art activities and convey this correlation
to society. There are so many programs that use art as a vehicle
to help troubled youth foster harmony, community and hope
that we never hear about. We need to work to continue to provide
children these outlets and remain grounded in the belief that
art is in intrinsic value to society.
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