6/6 Education: "...marry structure and freedom to create something altogether new."

After my first year of teaching I came to the conclusion that a successful learning environment is a balancing act of what remains within the control of the teacher and where the teacher can hand control over to the students.  "A New Culture of Learning Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change" By: Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown paid great tribute to the idea of putting the students in the drivers seat.

This book was not only an easy read, but I found it to be entertaining, helpful, and relevant.  I've always been timid towards having students work in groups and any group work I assigned were concise one day projects involving participation points only.  This book renewed my curiosity to dive back into the pool of risky group projects in order to encourage intimate collective learning environments within the classroom.

So many points made in this book ring true in the LTS 8740.  For example: we have blogs, we have a collective Facebook group, we are required to ask questions instead of find answers, grades are based on level of thought and articulation instead of regurgitated facts, and we are continuously encouraged to make mistakes and play in order to learn.

"A New Culture..." also related well to the Einser reading who took a focus on encouraging creating "...opportunities to converse and share one's work..." (Eisner, 93) within the classroom.  Experiences from discussions in class and from personal VTS experiences, I can't imagine not providing similar discussion opportunities for my own students.

Due to my lack of experience last year my 8th grade students seemed to be continuously busy with curriculum requirements and the amount of meaningful discussions had were few and far between.  This is one of my biggest regrets and largest goals for the future.  In contrast, I would have my kindergartners VTS a minimum of every other class and give them the option to share their artwork (practicing their art vocab articulation) at the end of any class with leftover time.  If there was no time to share then we would do a quick "gallery walk" so the students could see what their classmates were doing.  What I found when this occurred was that the kids would start teaching and learning from one another....why I never transitioned this up to my 8th grade I still don't know.

There is great benefit and importance in providing students with opportunities for interpretation (Freedman), suggestiveness (Freedman), individualized pondering on surrounding visual culture (Freedman), challenged to think in new ways (Eisner), sequential opportunities to re-work with a medium (Eisner), compressing ideas in order to better express them (Eisner), for peripheral learning (Eisner), for working as a collective, playing with their interests/ideas,
 and for understanding that art is a cultural artifact (Eisner).