A hostile audience

"God! I do NOT want to do this! Art is stupid! God-uh... Why can't I change classes??" So sang B, the day after it became too late to change classes.

One of the things that attracted me to teaching as a career was the fact that it retained some of the most exciting elements of music as a career - creative, social, with a performance aspect - while adding more rewarding and frankly reliable elements - a state paycheck with state benefits, professional opportunities, and oh right, the chance to positively impact the lives of children. I think it is my background in those first elements that has made my career shift relatively smooth and painless. When I was a record store owner, I learned that if we wanted to be able to pay our bills every month, we needed to adapt to the slippery, evasive needs of our clientele. Perhaps more importantly, as a performer I learned how to negotiate a hostile bar crowd who has not come to see you play tonight, and is refusing to pay the $3 cover charge required if they want to continue to drink there. You stock the right records, you play the right covers, you contort yourself but don't sell yourself out. If we were saving a cover of Cheap Trick's "Surrender" for an encore, we'd open with it to appease the scowling bikers and hobos hovering around our girlfriends.

My brother, now a Penn State faculty member, followed a similar career trajectory from bar band to classroom. From tot to teen, I admired the rock star side of him, and was honestly perplexed by his passion for education. I remember him saying, after being asked by a confused little brother who had just inherited his vintage, no-longer-used Gretsch Chet Atkins Tennessean, that teaching was just as satisfying as performing. Standing up in front of a class of students, he assured me, was just as rewarding as standing up in front of an audience at a club.

I didn't believe him.

Now that I'm on the rational side of planning a career in the creative arts, I can understand where he is coming from, and yes, it is just as rewarding. Maybe even more so, because you know it matters. Songs are great, and I love nothing more than being told by a complete stranger that my music affected them on a deep level, but what fills me with happiness now is to see a student discover a love for art, or if I'm lucky, discover that they have a valid, even important voice.

That's why I take B's comments as a challenge, and one that I'm ready to win.

The project was Hand Drawings, wherein students practice and apply skills for drawing from life and observation - accurate shading and detail are preferred. Though seemingly simple, it is exactly the kind of project that causes a student like B to shut down. Drawing the human body, especially something as complex as the hand, requires a fair amount of skill and, because of the familiarity of the subject, leaves little room for error. Everyone is familiar with what their hand looks like (it's not like the back of their hand, it IS the back of their hand!), so for a student who feels like she can't draw, it is like being asked to speak Russian or breathe underwater. Most often, a student who doesn't understand will reject the project by either shutting down or becoming defiant. B was feeling defiant.

"Let's take it one step at a time. Now, how do you begin drawing hands?" I say. I had shown them some techniques whereby the artist simplifies an object into geometric shapes.

"I don't care, it's stupid!". She is looking away from me. But I'm still there.

"Well, can I see what you've done so far?"

"I didn't do anything. It's not good, I'm not an artist. God, can't I change classes? Can't I take Creative Writing or music instead?"

She has drawn something, in fact, and I move it closer. She is still looking away, and is very poor at hiding her annoyance with me.

It is a rudimentary mitten-shape hand - the first step in the process of observational drawing through geometric reduction. There are still three steps to go: contour lines for the shape of the fingers and hand, details in the wrinkles and lines, and finally shading.

"OK, well this is actually a good start," I encourage.

"No it's not, it's dumb. God."

"Look, you've only just started. Right, it's not beautiful now - I wouldn't buy this and put it in a frame and hang it on the wall - but you're on the right track. You just have to keep going."

She is looking at the drawing now, not looking away. She is quiet.

"It's like cooking. Do you cook? Well let's say you're making a soup. You melted some butter in a pan, cut up some onions, and then you push the pan away saying, 'I can't make soup'. Well you haven't made soup yet! You're only getting started! Wait til you make the soup and taste it, then you can decide if you can make soup or not. OK?"

She is still looking at the drawing. She has picked up her pencil, and is kind of tickling the paper with her pencil. I move away and keep my distance for the remainder of class, but I keep my eye on her. She will work on her drawing for the rest of period.

At the end of class, she comes up to me with a finished drawing of a hand like her own, holding a pencil. It is crude and simple, but she is beaming.

"Look, what do you think?" she gushes. I praise enthusiastically, it is the freaking Mona Lisa. I give her a verbal pat on the back, saying that I always knew she could do it.

She takes the drawing with her, and will come back periodically throughout the day to show me her progress on the drawing. A little detail added to the knuckles. A change in design to a baby hand holding a rattle, and oh yes, how do you draw a rattle? Some color, some shadow. How do you get the right skin tone?

She hasn't asked to drop my class since.

A little guidance

I learned quite a bit about the inner-workings of our school in the past weeks. I spent some time with our guidance counselors to discuss the issues raised in my last entry - namely, that students are placed in my class against their will ("dumped", a reactionary teacher would say) when a different placement may suit them better. The issue is more complicated than that, naturally. It seems there are across-the-board problems with the master schedule involving a sort of bottle-necking of students during 2nd and 3rd period. Classes are overcrowded throughout the building, and available electives are few. Students with gaps in their schedule may only have a choice between Art and ROTC (which would you choose?). And typically there are students who don't know where they want to be when they're signing up for classes - until they get there and realize that ain't it.

Still, I had a few students who were defiantly opposed to learning anything about art (?) and were desperate to switch classes. I went to guidance and advocated for a different placement for these students, expecting to be politely shown the door. On the contrary, the counselors were understanding and immediately accommodating. They actually changed two student schedules while I was there. This sort of thing is completely unprecedented - "Don't even bother going to guidance", other teachers warned me, "That won't get you anywhere." These teachers would probably be the types to storm in and slap their roster down on a counselor's desk demanding satisfaction. Instead, I approached them in a friendly way, as colleagues, and got immediate results. I was even able to express concerns about class size and shoot the breeze about the value of art education in general. This is not to say that my challenges expressed earlier are solved - I am still working to promote engagement and quell the drift toward entropy, always will - but it's nice to know that the powers that be are at least nominally sympathetic.

So it's hard to be a guidance counselor, I suppose. Especially at a school with the organizational horrors of ours. And hokey as it sounds, it seems people are just plain ol' people if you treat them nice. The saying about flies and the vinegar and honey may be true.

Now, what to do with those students who weren't able to change my class? (And there's quite a few of them!). Should I grade them on their ability to ignore me and sleep, or can you make a semester out of hand turkeys?

3rd period, home stretch

Some miscellaneous notes from last week with 3rd period, my most challenging class:

Class began with a disorganized ramble through the sketchbook review, prolonged by the half-dozen late comers. Was to end at 11, then 11:05. Finally, at 11:15, I said we have to move on.

T slept thru the sketchbook review with a hood over her head. I asked T to wake up and take the hood off, to which C thought she found another example of my blatant injustice. "You let (so-and-so) wear her hood all day yesterday, you better NOT be telling her to take her's off, I can't believe you Mr W".

T continued to sleep. When I woke her up and asked her to get started on her work, she blew up at me: "No! I'm not doing it! Go away! Stop talking! Leave me alone! Go!" (Imagine this in a sing-songy high-pitched whine). I imediately called her in my office, and to my surprise she came in right away. I started saying something about how this sketchbook review is the project we are working on, and it's an important part of her grade, and before I could get to the part about the importance of being respectful in her conversations with me, she broke down crying. Dumbstruck, I stammered something about how we all have a bad day now and then, but just did not know what to say (I think I managed a mumbled "Do you want to talk about it?") Did her boyfirend dump her? Did she get a paper-cut? Does her father beat her? Did she just find out she's pregnant? What other horrible calamity might she be afflicted with that I am grossly unequipped to address? I let her sit back down. She slept for the rest of the class.

Tried to get everyone's attention to make announcements about remaining schedule: turn in finished projects, finish unfinished ones (printmaking, research project poster), then start the optional 2-day project, Copper Embossing

The mention of a new project was met with an uproar. Granted, there are only 2 days left, but it is a 2 day project, is optional, and is actually somewhat fun. I heard micellaneous unfavorable grumbles about me, and others said they plan to sleep on the last day. Got many requests for a movie. Got firmly rebuked when I mentioned that this wasn't going to happen.

Rest of the class was actually fine, with all students working on miscelanneous projects and some not working at all (T, S, and M who planned to sleep the last day), but at least being quiet about it. Regardless, the projects they turn in will be just as half-assed as they were yesterday.

Halfway through class and still no work begun by S. Approached her about it, and asked her what she was working on. With headphones on, she replies, "Huh?" I ask her to take the headphones off. I ask her again. She says she didn't get the paper for Copper Embossing (it is right in front of her), and I move it an inch closer. She asks what she is supposed to do. Others around her chuckle at this, because I have just finished giving my instruction. I start again from the very beginning, anyway, talking about the copper and the sculpting tools. She interrupts: "Don't try to play me like I'm stupid!"

It's a new art school.

For me, anyway.

I am borrowing the title for this blog from a song by the Jam – “Art School”, side one track one on their first album – and I long for it to have symbolic meaning, but it would be a stretch. The art school The Jam sang about was a metaphoric one and the song was meant to be a statement of purpose – a manifesto for the first wave of punk (and one that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the fascist rhetoric of the Futurist Manifesto of 1909, which glorifies war and speed and calls for the destruction of museums and libraries). Probably not a total success as a manifesto – the "All Mod Cons" LP works better both musically and philosophically - but still something I keep hearing in the back of my mind as the soundtrack to the montage of images (the clip-show episode?) of the high school TV drama that was my day at work. “Say what you want, 'cos this is a new art school”.

It's a new art school, because I am a new art teacher. I am in the middle of my second year teaching art in a public high school, and it is a new career in a new town. My profession for most of my 20s was music – record store owner, shipping drone for record label, struggling musician, 4-track jockey – but my background was in visual art. After selling the record store and dissolving several bands I decided to look into teaching. Seemed like the perfect new path which held on to the best bits of the old path: creative, with a performance aspect, but most of all affecting the lives of other people in a positive way.

It's a new art school because it's nothing like the old art school. I hope. I have very few positive memories of my high school art classes, and certainly did not enter education because I had an inspiring art teacher. I went to a small private high school – less prep school, more country club – and was taught art by the wife of the headmaster. Well-meaning person, but not the kind of teacher who wanted to have challenging, philosophical discussions about painting or the state of contemporary art (as I did, and tried to do). Most of our projects were time-fillers. There was very little freedom to select content or media, and very few opportunities to analyze or evaluate our work. I hope to change that for my students.

It's a new art school because, despite expensive schooling and training and the first sprouts of experience, I really don't know what I'm doing. I went on to study art and art history in college (despite my ho-hum high school art experience) and art education at the graduate level, but I still feel unprepared for much of what I do. Too much theory, too little practice. I had some very helpful professors and an excellent student teaching mentor – I still hear his Obi Wan voice reminding me to use The Force in a sticky situation – but, for the most part, I was told that many things about teaching can’t be taught.

And they were right.

For these reasons, I feel it is necessary to keep a journal of my experience – a journal about the teaching of art, and the art of teaching. A place to reflect on the challenges and occasional successes of what has so far been the hardest thing I have ever done. Anyone got some pointers?