My thesis: What I care about

Developing and funding an after school inner city program using arts theraputically, enriching learning experience and reinforcing academics in a holistic nurturing environment. Field trips to cool places, hands on learning adventures, parental involvment, specialist visitors from health profession, art, sports yield real world and life applicable skills.

This program would take place after school until families picked their kids up. A mentoring program would develop connections and support for challenged students. Nutritious and yummy food that the kids would participate in making would nurture their bodies.

Tutoring and homework help would be balanced with physical activity, creativity and downtime providing kids with the positive new experiences that will build self esteem overcome personal challenges in and out of the classroom. Teamwork and respect for eachother are essential to this process.

Transportation is important.  This would either need to be an on site, after school program or transport would need to be provided.

Parental involvement is big. I know this is not entirely realistic given the single parent busy households of today’s society. Hopefully the positive benefits of involvement in a program such as this would convince parents how important their involvment could be to their children. Potentially the benefit of a nurturing and enriching after school program that helped families with monetary and time constraints woul create enough slack in busy schedules that parents could come in for a few hours a month.

Perhaps a stipulation of this ( did i mention it willbe a free to the students) program is that parents participate. I think this would be helpful in showing their support to their children as well as making it more of a family and community based project.

I would also love to have some sort of connection to the adult population perhaps having an occasional workshop or family day for the entire family with activities tailored to parents and childrens needs.

Health is important, finances and bugeting are important and of course discipline and support are huge. There needs to be better support for parents and families that want to do well for their kids but who are struggling. Many kids go home after school to environments that are less than what they need. A program like this has a lot of potential to fill in a lot of gaps.

i have been looking into similar programs. I heard of one today that exists in Pittsburg. Does anyone have any leads for me or any thoughts on how i could hone this into a thesis project??? I have taught in a church program in Anacostia that was similar in scope but not as focused on improvement. The areas i would like to improve upon are infusing an after school program with holistic therapy, focusiing on arts, academics, community and creating enriching experiences that connect to real life skills.

One idea would be to connect my ideas with the program i worked with before, setting up mini workshops for the students.

Here are my next areas to look into:

funding (grants….)

size?

staffing?

facilities?

curriculum?

What did you get out of this experience? Survey at the Corcoran!!!

That is what i really wanted to know. What i asked was:

Did this exhibit meet your expectations? How so?

Have you been here before?

What was the best thing you saw?

Would you come back again?

I asked these questions verbally and took mental notes which i jotted down in between people. I floated through the exhibition myself and looked for opportune times to approach and engage visitors. This worked out ok. Most people seemed to think i was working for the museum. I am not sure if this worked to my benefit or not (maybe the answers were biased??) but the visitors i spoke with seemed like they were happy to share their thoughts with me. I tried very hard to make them feel special and let them know how much i valued their imput.

When i approached a visitor i would start out with something like this… Hi, My name is Moana. I am doing a survey for class. Can i ask you a few quick questions about your visit? I tried to make good eye contact and rather than jot notes i tried to make it a conversation. I jotted down notes when they walked away. This may not be the most acurate way of handling this. Perhaps a recorder would be handy???

My questions led to a few very interesting conclusions that will hopefully help me direct the survey in the future. Some people i approaced seemed very interested in sharing their thoughts about the show, the museum and even the art speciffically. A few conversations gave me the impression that these were not run of the mill viewers but rather were persistent art viewers with keen eyes. I gathered this by their familiarity with the museum, the words they used when talking about the art or the show and their general ease in talking about art.

On the other hand i got quite a few people who had absolutly no clue what was going on. They were tourists who someone told to come to the museum, had no idea about what to expect and their experiences and assumptions were relative to this perspective. I think i made a few people feel put on the spot by my questions. When i sensed this i quickly back pedaled and tried to ask easier more familiar questions like where are you from? I think the thing that i learned to be most important is the value of reading the audience and their comfort level. It took a lot of effort for me to moderate my questions and questioning style for each interaction.

What i would do different next time. Make it simple stupid! Limit my questions an dtake some Ginko so my brain remembers the details better. Or maybe if i could get a recorder that would make it much more reliable but what fun is transcribing data after the even to meeting and talking to people.

Did anyone hand out a paper survey? I would be curious to see how that compared…

Who’s got the funds?

http://www.inca.org.uk/usa-organisation-mainstream.html

http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/public-school-curriculum.htm

According to this website curriculum is mandated federally, states control and direct the funds for schools. Money is raised through taxes and can come from the state local and federal level. The state and the district it is in constitute 90 percent of funding for schools. This poses imaginable difficulties in less affluent districts. State legislation is made that decides the constraints of each states control. States divide up the responsibility and control amongst local districts. Different states have mandated requirements that may not be common to all states.

Public Perception

The resignation of New York Governor Elliot Spitzer clearly highlights the divide between individual morality of lawmakers, the laws they make, and the behavior of their constituents. Less than 4 years ago,
Senator Joe Bruno – a vocal critic of Gov. Spitzer – changed 40 laws to protect children from sexual predators, Pornography, and prostitution found by the Senate to have increased as a result of the Internet. Less clear however is whether society disapproves of these activities or the hypocrisy of senior government officials failing to obey the laws they swear to uphold. What is the relationship between this clandestine criminal and the billions of dollars spent annually on private pornography purchases nationwide? The increase in adults selling sex, purchasing pornography, and committing adultery is less a sign of societal acceptance than the discretion provided by the Internet.

Prostitution is illegal in all 50 states yet nearly every newspaper advertises massage parlors and other pseudonyms for selling sex. In the last year, television-watching Americans made celebrities of escorts in Nevada’s legal brothels and sympathized with street-corner prostitutes. The federal government pre-empted pro-prostitution proposals by opining “The United States government takes a firm stance against proposals to legalize prostitution because prostitution directly contributes to the modern-day slave trade and is inherently demeaning.” However, this statement has neither prevented a growth in glossy graphics glamorizing gals like the governor’s nor the entry of escorts via more egalitarian online bulletin boards like Craigslist.

While the carefully chosen text of sites selling sex affords First
Amendment protection, thousands seeking sex via similarly styled sting sites face prosecution under state solicitation statutes. Those attending this summer’s meetings of the National Council of State
Legislators and the more-conservative American Legislative Exchange Council will hear discourse and debate on the use of social networking sites by sexual predators and sex workers, and those familiar with the topic expect the “slippery slope” of pornography to be raised by proponents and detractors alike.

The potential of the Internet to disseminate vast amounts of pornographic material within an unregulated marketplace with a large, international audience is immense. What is the impact of computer pornography on society? The content of Internet porn is not new or different from erotic magazines and videos but it is easy to get.
Children and young teens have access to this adult content in ways they never had before. The way teens view sex is changing as a result. The anonymity of users and easy access to pornographic material has millions of users viewing daily. Just how much time is spent viewing Internet porn? While some may say “What is the big deal about a little porn?” The statistics are impressive.

INTERNET PORN STATISTICS

$57.0 billion revenue world-wide
$12.0 billion of this is US revenue, more than all combined revenues
of all professional football, baseball and basketball franchises or
the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC (6.2 billion). $2.5 of the
$12 billion is related to internet porn.
The National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families
states that “approximately 40 million people in the United States are
sexually involved with the Internet.
“Sex is the number 1 topic searched on the Internet” (NCPCE Online,
“Current Statistics,” Internet, http://www.nationalcoalition.org/
PORN ON THE WEB
25% of total search engine requests are porn-related. (Top three
searches: sex, mp3 and hotmail.)
8% of total emails are porn-related. Average daily pornographic emails
are 4.5 per internet user
12% of total websites are pornographic
AFFECTING CHILDREN
100,000 websites offer illegal child pornography
Child pornography generates $3 billion annually
90% of 8-16 year olds have viewed porn online (most while doing homework)
Average age of first internet exposure to pornography is 11 years old
Largest consumer of internet pornography 12-17 age group
One in five children ages 10–17 has received a sexual solicitation
over the Internet.
Three million of the visitors to adult websites in September 2000 were
age 17 or younger.
AFFECTING ADULTS
20% of men admit accessing pornography at work
13% of women admit accessing pornography at work
53% of Promise Keeper men viewed pornography the previous week in one study
10% of adults ADMIT to having internet sexual addiction (Internet
Pornography Statistics: 2003

According the web, 25% of total search engine requests are porn-related. That means ¼ of all the queries were for porn. What is the effect of this diversion of time spent from our work? 33 percent of men and women say that they access pornography at work. The time spent at home viewing porn must be considered too. This is time that could be spent doing something else. How can there not be an effect on a relationship when viewing porn is part of the equation?

Repeated viewing of pornographic images either heightens sensitivity or desensitizes sensitivity to sexual images and experiences. We are programmed to procreate. By repeatedly seeing these revealing sexual images in our media our brain trains itself. What the brain takes in and saves as memories of the sensory data the image provides dictates what it means to us. This is a complicated equation of influence in the mind of an adult but consider that of a child.

Early exposure to porn can change ideas of relationships between men and women forever. What kinds of messages do explicit sexually explicit images convey to children? Pornography is intended for the purpose of sexual arousal. What response should a mentally emotionally and physically developing Childs body have to these same explicit images?

Gone are the days of the playful blonde and brunette bunnies, now we have humiliation, torture, rape, bestiality and sadomasochism to choose from. The Internet is quick access for young adults who are even marginally savvy, providing a whole new world of sexual images. Exposure to such complicated ideas about sexuality must present a difficult situation to comprehend when faced by someone who has not yet experienced natural intimacy?
If a young boy’s early stimulus was pornographic photographs, he can be conditioned to become aroused through photographs. Once this pairing is rewarded a number of times, it is likely to become permanent. The result is that it becomes difficult for the individual to experience sexual satisfaction apart from pornographic images.

By an adults perspective porn often fills in gaps in their desired sexual experience. By the prevalence of people using the Internet for sex one must assume they condone Internet porn. Pornography that depicts rape and the dehumanization of females in sexual scenes constitute powerful but deforming tools of sex education. Studies show that men who viewed porn over a 6-week period afterward viewed nonmonogamous relationships as normal and natural behavior.

http://www.protectkids.com/effects/harms.htm

Sex outside of marriage as normal and natural behavior is an idea that would destabilize America. A married relationship implies monogamy yet millions of Americans have affairs. A married relationship is valued yet divorces happen every day. Perhaps there is a connection between the prevalence and instant gratification available from porn and desires to find sexual satisfaction outside of marriage?

The problem is how do we study this connection? Daily there are more affairs, more Internet sites, more self made porn stars, faster connections, and easier access? Does this instant gratification market ever close? Once we had to go to a store and buy pornography, now it comes to us any time of the night or day. Surely this increase causes an effect in the minds of people who view porn and use it to relieve their unmet desires for intimacy. The question is what is the effect and how is it created?

Viewing porn creates a culture of acceptance behind closed doors and dishonor when shown in the bright lights of the media. Our president is married. We value marriage as a cultural institution in our society. The benefits in stability and prosperity for married couples are proven. We do not want our officials or lawmakers to have affairs or engage in prostitution. Yet, these same activities when visualized from behind a computer screen are perfectly legal?
http://life.familyeducation.com/boys/sexuality/36492.html
http://healthymind.com/s-porn-stats.html

Senior Thesis Statement 2008

Experience: The Source of Understanding and Tangible, Material Gains

Archaeologists found “Know Thyself” inscribed above the arched entrance to Apollo’s oracle at Delphi. Not found was any suggestion as to how. Children learn from their surroundings and absorb data that they later convert to knowledge. They sponge up information to deposit in their knowledge bank. The young girl certain tree branches are what makes the wind go Whooooooosh becomes a woman with wisdom and wonder for the world’s worth.

I’m intrigued by how we experience our environment collectively. Specifically how we interpret and discuss our experiences, and how we relate these experiences to others. To physically translate these processes, I assemble objects from daily life into compositions that I hope cause the viewer to question their own assumptions. I often deliver a twist, an addition to the composition that brings into question the validity of our interpretations. Often there is no single concept, but dozens of possible avenues of enquiry. Unlimited interpretations are created by the lens of the viewers’ own eyes.

I want to make work that is inquisitive. I draw from ideas concerning growth cycles, familial issues, material creation, accumulation and disposal. These are perceptions of reality that I encrypt within my work. The reaction of the viewer to the work is of as much interest to me as the production process. Their reaction is the measure of the work’s ability to communicate, as I intend to entangle them in a balance of multiple understandings. When considering my work visually I can provoke a number of questions wih it’s symbols, content and the context I bury it within. I want my work to challenge the viewers. The overall collection of viewpoints and experiences ultimately comes to define the work. For instance, my use of the American flag illustrates this point. It means different things to different people and yet it is a symbol that unifies America. I use tags and labels because they refer to a code of classification, and a quantitative value for the objects they label. They allow us not to have to memorize the SKU for Chilean cherries, the number is stuck on the produce. I use labels to highlight their usage and meaning in society today.

I want to make art as a response to my experiences of the world and of the many ways we all experience it. I am fascinated by the many experiences teaching art to elementary students has provided me. I want to embody for my students how to be a lifelong learner. I love the curiosity and openness to new ideas that children communicate through their inquisitiveness. I focus on the progression of ideas that create the concept and their resulting abstraction. Through my art, I pursue my own desires for knowledge and experience, while trying to understand how they impact the work I make.

I’d rather not show someone something new. Instead, I’d rather show them something they’ve seen a thousand times, a system, a life process, a symbol of something, show it again and again. I would be interested in what they tell me about the thing they see and how that differs from what I saw. When it comes to interpreting the visual world, context is everything. When I set out to make a piece of work I don’t think about what I want to make, I think about creating a context for what I want people to see. From within the old things I use, I want people to see them in a new way that reveals and questions their perceptions.

Art for me is not just what it looks like, but where it is and who sees it. I want to ask and be asked what came first and what will come next. I don’t think about what I want to make, I think about creating a context for what I want people to see. I am for art that tells something about the world today, something that contradicts and balances the complications of our daily lives and presents an honest response to life.

The quest for a classroom culture!

Classroom culture is about respect. It is about students who want to learn and who are capable of responding to the things the teacher is doing. Without this culture there little hope of producing a positive learning experience. This begs the question, how does a classroom culture begin? This is a tricky situation with many interconnected factors. Children have a role, teachers have a role, school administrators and parents also have roles.

The teacher sets the tone by how much they care and how well they can convey this to their students. Yet it is not enough for teachers to care and to show it to their students, it must be done in the right way. Teachers must be reliable, respectable and unwavering in the repetition of the patterns they use to create stability and positivity in the classroom. If a teacher is capable of balancing the fine line between discipline and care and is consistent, the students will respond accordingly. Classroom culture is made up of interdependent factors like the personality of the teacher, the teaching style of the teacher, the size of the class, the demographic of the students and environmental factors like the size of the classroom and the location of the school.

The prescribed pattern of education today leaves little wiggle room for teachers to develop classroom cultures that are tailored to the needs of their students. Students don’t all learn the same way or at the same pace. Teachers are burdened by bureaucracy created programs like No Child left behind and are forced to put the value of high test scores above all other kinds of learning.

The problem is that test scores dont provide an acurate measuring tool for learners of different types. Assessment should not be formulaic, it should be adaptable to the diverse needs of individual students.

A commitment to connection is essential for developing a healthy classroom culture. A classroom with a functional culture supports itself. The students are aware of what is expected from them and of their own role in the success of the classroom community at large.

Married people earn more!

I saw a sign at Dupont Circle that says Married People Earn More! I was curious about who this ad was targeting and who was paying for it. I couldn’t discern from my car an agency endorsing the message. I was surprised at the placement of such a slanted add in Dupont Circle. The picture shows a happy couple smiling as they wear their wedding attire. The couple was in their early twenties. This ad said to married people you earn more because you are married. Being married is good. To unmarried people it said you should be married.

Being married is good for the economy, married people earn more. We all want to earn more so we can do what we want. A man with the potential to earn good money is better “marriage material.” While love may conquer all, being able to make good money still trumps poverty.

Additionally, based on personal observations, men who want to get married are generally more focused and interested in being a provider – driving them to look for better income producing skills and opportunities. Additionally, married men earn more than unmarried men. In the U.S. the premium is estimated to be an extra ten to 50 percent.

Long before written history, primitive clans were living within small, highly inter-dependent social structures. Many of these groups had some type of ceremony marking the forming of a union or marriage between two opposite sex partners. It appears that since we began living in structured social groups, humans believe that unions of two people work best for maintaining a healthy, functioning society. Within different societies, independent unions of two people, were considered the best way to secure food and shelter, defend against outside aggressors, and raise offspring. As societies evolved, the marriage has increased significance within each culture.

In our culture being married symbolizes stability security and is thought on positively. Cross culturally, getting married is a celebrated event and life goal of many people. Marriage and home ownership, the family is sold as the American dream. This casts a negative shadow upon those who are not in line fulfilling this dream, on those who are not married. It is thought that married families provide better family environments to support the raising of offspring. Little girls play with barbies and babies and boys play with rougher tactics. Our roles are reinforced from an early age to support the cyclical nature of the culturally approved of practices of marriage.

Stable marriages raise children with good role models for their own romantic relationships. The problem is, it is hard to know what to do unless you have had it modeled for you. There are millions of American children who live in a single parent household.

My school is too gosh darn expensive!

The goal of going to college is to develop the specialized training needed to obtaining the job. This expectation creates a need to pay expensive tuitions in the expectation it will attribute to future financial gains. Sometimes costing upwards of 40 thousand dollars a year, expensive colleges with proven pedigrees don’t guarantee fiscal earning potential. What a burden to place on our youth when their college costs more than they will be earning. Families struggle with difficult decisions between the better and the costlier school. It seems these days that a degree is equivalent to opportunity. Where does it end? One degree often isn’t sufficient. As more students see the necessity for advanced levels of education, parents struggle to support their children in their pursuit of essential skills.

Starting teachers salaries are often in the 20 thousand range. Teachers have integral roles in the shaping of our communities and our culture. The values and approaches to learning that students are infused with become the ethics of the future. How can such a foundation not be seen as indicative of our society at large. What do we value in education today? What is really important to our future?

If teachers were paid more, teaching would be more competitive. Only teachers who excelled would have the privilege of shaping our future. How can this not be seen as immeasurably valuable boggles me. I’m not saying that just raising salaries would solve the problem but it would be a step in a good direction.

Educating our future should be something we do right here in the land of the free and the brave! Why isnt this sometrhing everyone can agree on? Taxpayers pay for schools shouldnt we be able to shape the type of learning experiences our children are getting? Who knows where the money goes? Dc is closing under enrolled schools citing the wastefulness of running schools that are not at full capacity.

John F. Cook Elementry is one of the schools deemed to be unnecessary. The students will be sent to other schools in the area. This is wrong. Cook is a community. The staff and students are proud of their school. Students line up early for free breakfast and eat lunch in the cafeteria which is also the gym and the auditorium. To some students this is the most stable part of their life. The principal is exemplery in his care and connection with his students. When he walks into a room, they hush and eagerly seek his approval. This man is a role model in so many ways.

I am not saying that everything is perfect at this school. It is a DC public school on North Capitol Street. These children see the capitol just down the street. The capitol that is giving up on a school they love. The students proudly write John F. Cook on murals and proclaim how proud they are of their community. Every day starts with a message to the community. I will succeed, we will suceed together, this is how we will get there, the word of the day is preparation, Go team Cook!

Cook Elementry had a pep rally friday to get ready for standardized testing. Students did cheers and raps and teachers preformed, parents showed up and sat in the last row and the custodial and security staff all participated.

Ok so, not all these kids are getting a perfect education experience. Many of them come to school disadvantaged to learn. The experiences they have outside of the classroom make it difficult and challenging for them to have success inside the classroom. Students come to class in bad moods and need ways to work through their feelings in a positive way. These kids need more one on one attention not less. The answer to a better educational experience is not consolidating and more kids, it is less!

These students desperately seek role models and one on one face time. Any positive connection or comment from an adult is met with such an immediate response it is ridiculous to think that there isn’t a better way to handle this problem. If kids respond so well to personal attention and interaction we need more of it not less. The model of having kids with behavioral and learning challenges and just one teacher isn’t working. These teachers need more support.

On friday i exerienced something a teacher hopes never happens. One of my students beat up another student. I ran to intercept but i was not quick enough to prevent a little girl from getting beat up by a boy twice her size. I am not purporting that this girl was an innocent bystander just that this kind of thing should not be happening. If i had not been on the opposite side of the room i would have seen the interaction and prevented the fight.

These kids don’t always see good models of conflict resolution and they often are mimicking adult solutions when dealing with their child views of the problems they encounter. When a situation becomes something they are hurt by they sometimes respond with anger and violence.

We need to start from the beginning. We need more teachers not less. We need more one on one time with students. Learning can’t happen when students come to class so upset by life that they have no desire to try their hand at the challenges learning creates. Part of the process of learning is developing the belief that you are on a path to success. Children need guidance to find their paths. Different strategies for diffusing the attitudes even elementary aged students are burdened with need to be developed. What might help these students to learn better and bigger and braver?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/19/business/19money.html?_r=1&ref=education&oref=slogin

DCPS why beat a broken mule?

I am confused and saddened by the mess DC public schools are in. We are closing schools and outsourcing responsibility for their success. We should be looking to other school systems in equally diverse socioeconomic ares and find out what makes them successful. Children cannot be expected to know how to handle themselves. This is what learning is all about. They don’t just pop out all ready to go, it takes years of learning to become a functional member of society. We complain about crime and poverty in inner city school neighborhoods but what can be done to alleviate it and who really is responsible?

We live in a time of blame. Its because they are poor. It is because the teachers don’t care. Its because their parents are single working moms struggling to make ends meet. Its because the kids have seen models of interaction that are dysfunctional and have a less than healthy perspective on problem resolution and self motivation. It is because the parents don’t provide the support and stability children need to develop correctly. It is because our students come to school hungry and parents rely on free breakfast and lunch to nurture their children. It is because we live in an environment that is marketed to constantly creating unnecessary emphasis on “needing” cars, clothes, houses and luxury commodities. This wastes time and energy. Value systems need a re haul. If the sought after things were books, if people valued experience and the perspectives of others as much as their own it would change the world.

It is because we are in a society where bureaucracy and the administration wield control over decisions effecting principals, teachers and students.It is because teachers are paid so little that there can never be any sense of professionalism and pride in their jobs. Elementary school teachers should be paid at least as much as college teachers. It is not about specialization, it is about impact. Young students need to be set upon the right path not criticized for not knowing where to go. Teachers need to stand up for themselves and recognize the value of the impact they have on the world. Who has a more challenging and potentially enormous impact on the future than the people influencing the mindset of generations to come. This generation effects their children and their children’s children and their community.

America, the land of opportunity provides selective distribution sites for success. How can we expect children to know about things if we don’t teach them. Schools should teach ethics from day one. It is about how we view each other and how we respect ourselves. Not all parents are providing their children with the information they need. At what point does society step in and say “This is not ok!” One of my students is 14. She is pregnant. Whose responsibility is it to tell her about that stuff? Parents are not equipped with the knowledge and skill to raise children. We require permits and licenses for starting a business or renovating a home but not for having kids.

Students need to be taught to take the responsibility for their own education. To create the desire to learn and be curious about the world. Feeling responsibility for the success of their learning pursuit would change the dynamic of teacher student interactions. We are in this together.We are all learning constantly. learning is not a stop and go thing or an on off thing, it happens 24 hours a day. Even when we sleep, our brains are busy processing and decompressing the myriads of data we receive all the time.

Instead of insular models of necessary skills like math and science, subjects need to connect to reality and keep up with the pace of living. Real world experiences and examples make learning exciting and relevant. Our world is changing. Relying on computers, PDA’s and Google, our scholastic system should reflect the pace at which the real world moves.

I live in the Nations capitol, in my neighborhood i know people from all over the world. 1st generation, second and third. We are all in this together. It is not that parents don’t care it is more that they are not equipped to succeed. Why aren’t there better support systems for students with single parent households. What would the potential impact of after school tutoring and enrichment in troubled children’s lives.

What if special programs were created to fill in the gaps of support that our students are not getting? What if school enrichment programs provided the athletic and creative outlets that would support the academics our students desperately need to succeed in the competitive global marketplace of the world today? If it isn’t happening in the classroom then where? Does it happen after school? What about on the weekends? What about at home? How can we encourage families to be better equipped to support their children as they grow? Why is there not more emphasis on adult education opportunities? How can we expect a parent to feel successful if there are skill sets and knowledge they have no access to? What better model for the success of a child than their parent overcoming hardship and creating their own success.

My students come to class ill equipped to learn, and I am tired of it. It is not fair to ask a teacher to teach a student that not only has no interest in learning but who has been so discouraged that they are incapable of rising to the occasion. I have watched the school system beat the joy of learning right out of students. We need smaller classes, More field trips and alternative outlets to compensate for they plethora of challenges that await students Kindergarten through high school and beyond.

The mighty power of Crit in the art classroom…

Using critiques as assessment and goal setting tools and planning guides can enable better communication and enthuse Art Students about their own work. I plan out my class critiques ahead of time. I try to think about what types of questions would be useful for getting kids to talk about and reflect upon their art. Critiques can also be helpful assessment tools to help teachers better understand where the student is coming from and what is most important to them about their own art. Also it can point helpful fingers in the things kids might want or need to learn about. Critique time is also a valuable chance for young artists to get feedback from their fellow students.

As an artist, I have endured many terrible critiques and a few good ones. During the awful critiques, students are not engaged and they only perk up when it is their time to present. I think a teacher has the power to set the tone of a critique. I have witnessed many critiques with negative tones and even seen students cry in response to a critique. This is terrible! A critique should be an empowering tool for the students to learn what others think and also to reflect upon their own intentions. In the combining of how they understand themselves and by relating to others, new understandings about oneself and a students vision for the future is developed.

The best critiques I have ever experienced have been by a sculpture teacher (God Bless David Page) at The Corcoran College Of Art and Design. His critiques were amazing experiences that I along with my fellow classmates looked forward to. He encouraged us to think about our responses to others work and suggested that we find something new to say that hadn’t already been mentioned. At the end of the critique he had an impressive way of wrapping up all the comments of the students and adding his on reflections and suggestions that often was a very inspirationally suggestive direction for future work. I got so much out of that class and I hold his teaching style and personal attention in very high regard. I feel lucky to have experienced both the ugly and the beautiful side s of the critique process. I endeavor to provide my students with critiques that are geared to their skill level, appreciative of their focus and interests and which provide jumping off points for future explorations. After all, the point of a critique shouldn’t really be the sole finished work but rather a focus on improvement to fulfill self vision.

Setting guidelines for how a critique happens is essential to its success. I try to have a critique at the completion of a project. Sometimes it is formal where students stand up and present and talk about their own work, sometimes I ask them to write a self critique and sometimes I just talk with them about the outcome and their ideas for their project.