The Room With A Hue

What if art class wasn’t just a place to solve creative problems, but also a place to create them? One of the characteristics of 21st-century learning that educational scholars often emphasize as a vital life skill is problem-solving. But in teacher-directed, project-based art classes, students are given an artistic problem to solve by the teacher. In some instances, teachers even give away the answers to the problems when they walk the students step-by-step through how to solve them. In our TAB studio, students are first challenged to CREATE an artistic problem to solve. These problems are born from ideas, which are mined from issues of importance, from artistic skills artists want to learn more about, or from their desires to try materials or methods in new ways. Problem-creation - ideation - is no small task. The variety of problems, depth of student focus and engagement, and quality of reflection in our art studio always amaze me. I love that I work with these incredible problem-cr...

I’ve noticed the use of the phrase “gone/going Full TAB” popping up frequently when referring to transitioning a classroom or curriculum into one that supports choice. So I just wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that Teaching for Artistic Behavior is not a curriculum or specific way of teaching art - it is a philosophy that believes the child is the artist, the classroom is their studio, and we always ask the question ‘What do artists do?’ TAB looks different everywhere you go - it depends greatly on the students, the teacher, the space, the materials, the administration… there is no one way to “TAB.” If you believe these philosophical tenets, and center the curriculum around your students’ emergent needs, you are a TAB educator in a TAB studio. So, you can’t be “Full TAB” or “go Full TAB.” You simply ARE are TAB teacher.

I often hear concerns about the "quality" of student artwork in TAB classrooms. Just today, a student turned in a piece (below) that I think perfectly highlights the difference in quality between "show-ready" products of project-based art rooms and the work that comes from process-based TAB rooms. Before reading beyond this paragraph, I recommend first looking closely at the photo of the student's work. Allow yourself to have an honest first opinion: what do you assume or think of it? Once you have done that, read the student's artist statement (copied and pasted below). "I made my piece “Wrinkled” because I wanted to make the piece a metaphor for what's happening to the world. My piece started out as a perfect sheet of smooth, silver foil. That’s the world before the pandemic. I crumpled the foil into a ball. That’s the world when we went into our houses and didn’t really leave. Next, I flattened it out again. That is us becoming more familiar with...

I have a group of 3 third-grade boys that love to trace on their Chromebook screens. Two weeks ago, I warned them that it would be their last week of tracing because I didn't want them relying on it like a crutch. I had it in my mind that they were "cheating" and looking for an easy way out, and I thought that taking the option to trace away would encourage them instead to develop their observation skills. I DID add some stencils to my drawing center before I visited them again, thinking that this would somehow satisfy their desire to trace and my desire to wean them off of it. The long story short is that one of the boys did not take it well at ALL. He got up shortly into the next class and left the room. One of the other boys seemed fine with the challenge, but the last one was pretty down on himself and his abilities the whole time. And then he asked me, "What's the difference between a stencil and tracing?" I knew as this whole thing was unfolding that t...

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...

Hi, I’m Jen. 👋  I’ve been teaching art since 2010, pausing briefly in the middle to raise my two sons. I’ve taught specialized high school art courses and elementary art, and love my current teaching position at Lane Elementary School in Bedford, MA working with grades 3-5. I am a TAB (Teaching for Artistic Behavior) art educator, who believes that the child is the artist, the classroom is the child’s studio, and that we should always ask the question, ‘what do artists do?’ We develop the Studio Habits of Mind, thinking dispositions used by all artists as they work in the studio. Our classroom culture focuses on growing the creativity, curiosity, and potential of each child by meeting them where they are and cultivating their emergent interests and needs. I love the work that I do, and I’m glad that you’re here to experience the magic with us. ✨

So I’ve been reading Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain , and it’s incredible. I mean, I’ve known for a while that CRT is critical to helping my students of color out of the achievement gap. But learning HOW the brain forms neural pathways and connections to make learning possible is something I’ve NOT been exposed to before. And I’ve had a realization I need to share with you. It is a fact that the human brain is wired above all else to avoid threats and to keep us safe at all costs. A brain cannot learn if its systems cannot meet the criteria for optimal performance. Basic needs such as food, shelter, social interaction and relationships (which have physical as well as emotional components), and a general sense of well-being are a few of the conditions that affect the brain and how well it functions. Events that cause stress or anxiety trigger a response in the brain that essentially shuts down neural pathways, making it near impossible to learn. That is...