TAB Teaching: Ideas and Motivation
- colringbk
- Dec 24, 2014
- 2 min read
As I keep working through Engaging Learners Through Artmaking, I am currently on Chapter 5: Ideas and Motivation. This was a neat chapter, mainly because it dealt with intrinsic and extrinsic motivators.
What I Read
The first part that stood out to me was discussing how waste of paper through the scribbling stage of media discovery is still important learning. One of the struggles that I deal with in the classroom is when students have extra time and paint a paper one solid color, or paint just a rainbow. In my eyes, it's a waste of materials when time could have been spent bettering skills. The authors talk about what art teachers can do in these situations.
First, paper can be reused, or if it comes to testing the materials, scraps of paper are a better choice. Another strategy is to encourage students to find parts of their paper they do like and remove the rest. That was my favorite idea. The other ideas included using a sketchbook, fold paper into quarters and test in each section, or rework old artworks.
Let's get to the rainbow idea. This shows up a lot with younger students when they can't think of something to draw. The authors point out that it is merely a process that less confident artists use: to create the thing you are most familiar with. So, as an art teacher, my goal is to encourage them to create beyond that rainbow. Bring up reference materials. Influence the artist to go back and embellish the rainbow artwork. Show how to use other materials to create that rainbow.
Others ideas that showed up in this chapter talked about how the standard art project is an external motivator, but when teaching for artistic behavior is utilized, students will work intrinsically and develop the themes they are interested in.
What I Thought
I really enjoyed this chapter and answered an important nagging question in my mind: If I let students create anything they want in any manner they want with any material they want, what do I do when a plethora of rainbows shows up in the student-artist studio? Thankfully, I can now start focusing on other questions. I'm ready to get those comfortable artists to push beyond the normal rainbow.
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