The AM presentation on podcasting brought me back to where I left off in my last blog, with the idea of the Curriculum Liaison. One outcome from the most recent Visual Arts SAC was the decision to explore the need and support for a district-wide position that would place an art teacher at the disposal of other academic area teachers, with the mission and role of supporting their effectively bringing differentiated instruction into their classrooms.
Over the last few years, I and my peers have compiled a long list of projects that involve visual arts skills that we have:
- Observed being implemented into non-arts classes
- Been proposed and discussed, but never implemented (usually time to collaborate issues)
- Consulted on, or contributed to in some manner (whether in the form of up front ideas, or back-end, rubric suggestions)
- Been asked by students from other classes to help them with
Specific examples: a social studies teacher had students make propaganda posters, but in the end found he wasn't sure how to grade them, or how to explain to students why some posters seemed better to him than others. A science teacher asked me for help designing a science model to visualize a more abstract concept. Another teacher showed me drawings made by students in his class, students who have been in my art class and who I know could do MUCH better. I watched students make a video for their History class, and found myself biting my lip, as I knew that if I could have caught them before they shot their footage, I could have helped them communicate their ideas more effectively. So art is happening all around the school, and I love it-- I sincerely believe that some students can more effectively demonstrate understanding through non-traditional assessments. I worry/wonder about a couple of things, however:
1. Making sure that the project represents authentic assessment. A few years ago I was part of an accreditation team visiting a high school in NH, and saw an an English project that was displayed as an example of allowing students to demonstrate their understanding through art. The original goal was for the students to learn the themes, style, and importance of Edgar Allan Poe. The assignment was to create a "movie poster" for a fictional film adaptation of one of his stories.
The rubric for the project awarded 10 points for including the title of the story on the poster, 10 points for spelling it correctly, 10 points for including Poe's name on the poster, another 10 points for spelling that correctly, 10 points for having their own name on the work (huh?), more points for having an illustration on the poster, and so on. I was appalled that this was considered genuine learning. A student could easily have never cracked open a book and still completed this project, demonstrating only that they knew how to copy text from the cover of a book and apply a marker to a piece of posterboard.
My point is not to suggest that this is happening here in Ipswich, only that applying the arts as an effective assessment tool in other disciplines requires careful planning and understanding of the medium involved. Assistance from an art teacher trained in the desired medium can help in planning such projects, as well as developing effective rubrics to assess the end products.
2. Students are capable of some truly amazing work, if given instruction by experts in that subject area. It would be foolish to ask me, an art teacher, to try and lead students through an advanced calculus project, as it's something I haven't thought about for twenty years, and only barely grasped back then. Likewise, having an art teacher assist students in other classrooms as they produce posters, videos, illustrated books, animations, etc. would, I believe, result in stronger end products. The question for me is whether that level of craft is something other teachers would embrace. For example, Tim today explained how the "Godfather" video, to the outsider, looks like kids goofing off-- but as an assessment of their engagement with and understanding of the source material, it was in his eyes successful. As an art teacher who has craft itself as part of the course goals, I could see how with a few pointers and technical upgrades, those students' very creative idea could have been fashioned into a more cohesive end product.
Would having an art teacher in this type of classroom, teaching the craft of film in the English class, add anything beneficial to the project, or just take more time away from the course content as students learned these other skills? Would teachers appreciate and utilize this person if such a position existed? I'd love feedback and thoughts on this. It seems like a great idea to me, but would not want to pursue it more--and we as a SAC would love to pursue it-- unless there was a perceived need on the part of other teachers.
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