Be An Average Joe

When I first started teaching in a teacher-led, project-based classroom, I remember always asking myself, “Why is it so difficult for my students to use their imaginations and think for themselves?” How could I have ever expected my artists back then to ideate and organically create on their own? I and others had been doing it for them their ENTIRE lives.

Independent thinking and making, weirdly enough, need to be structured, scaffolded, and supported from a young age. Once a child learns that they are incapable of having their own ideas, or that their ideas are not meaningful to adults (who supposedly “know everything”), they lose the ability and - more critically - the passion to imagine, ideate, and create.

Some art educators design whole units of study focused on developing creativity - but why is this necessary? Isn’t the goal to encourage imaginative thinking and authentic art-making all along? The only reason could be that we have unknowingly taught the creativity right out of our artists from the beginning.

It’s an awesome thing when our artists have independent ideas and create wonderful, original, works of art from them. But this takes the development of process before there can ever be a product.

I’ve been thinking too about the Pixar movie Soul, and about Joe and 22. The whole film is centered on following your passion, whatever that may be. To contribute your special spark - your soul’s purpose - to the world. As TAB educators, we are all Joe: serving as mentors for our artists, guiding them as they discover their passions, and helping them work through fear of the unknown. We help them earn their “Art badges'', their passes into the world of independent ideation and creation.

And that is our real goal.