Renee's Practicum

Today was our second class and we were done breaking the ice and moved onto bigger and better things, like melting polar ice caps.

I hadn't really thought of asking my students about previous experience with art history or visual culture and I wish I would have seen Pete's comment before class.  In classes I've taught before there were a few students that either identify as (a) artists or (b) Goths (or Goths in training) and they often have a significant background with visual culture, even if it's self-taught.
It became fairly obvious today that many students had just no experience and were having a tough time.  This is foreign material on so many levels.  I'm beginning to question even more the necessity of this linear history, as students are thrust into the year 25000 BCE (what's the "E" for?, I was asked today.)  I wish I would have decided to teach this backwards.  Insert maudlin sigh here.

More than anything, I'm finding the rhythm of three hours difficult to manage.  I don't know how many slides to show.  The kids look bored (and I don't think that's just me projecting) and the activities seem a stretch for them.   For instance, today we worked on the cornerstone of all art history activities: the slide comparison.  I feel there's real value in this activity and it's not just one of those I'm teaching it because I was taught it things.
We've got two images, one Egyptian and one Pre-Historic European and I had them each make a list of similarities and differences.  Then we compiled a classroom list.  From that list (and their own) they each took 5 minutes to write a 4-5 sentence comparison and read it aloud to a neighbor, which elicited more than several eye rolls.
I acknowledged their very minor reticence to read aloud by explaining that if this had been a evaluative activity, a list would have earned a grade no higher than a C (and even that was a stretch -- it had to be a damn good list) and that they could learn from their neighbors as to how to craft an effective answer.

On paper, this felt like a good activity but in the classroom it didn't evoke an energetic response. 

Wait!  To end on a positive note: they are excited for the group project.  I think we'll get started really discussing it next week so they can figure out how to organize themselves.

   

Hitting Reset

Getting back into the classroom this semester was harder than I expected! 

What did you do/have you set up to connect with students and introduce the class?

I gave a lot of thought to this as I approached a new set of students.  I really wanted to do an ice breaker, partly so they could get to know each other and partly so I could get an initial idea of what kind of background knowledge students had.  I also thought this was a good opportunity to see a little personality and try to understand how classroom interactions would work.

I asked students to fill out an index card with their name and email that they check and, on the back, asked them to write their favorite piece of art.  I explained they didn't need to even know the title of it; they could just explain it.
Students then paired with someone near them and told them why this was their favorite artwork.  Then their partners explained to the class the what and why.  From my perspective, this went well, though a few kids were resistant.
There were not a ton of volunteers to be the first to speak, but once they started going it was fine.  I had no problem if kids didn't remember what their partners said, since I hadn't initially set the expectation that they should.  That happened maybe once or twice.

It's tough for me to find the right balance between student input and output (I tend toward higher output from them) and I think when I paired this with a later activity it became too much output for them.  I'll talk about that activity in my next post.

Oddly enough, I deal a lot with reading and writing in my own research.  I don't mean my students' capacities in this area, but the ability of the peoples I study to communicate visually.  Much of the time I begin reading an introductory article or textbook passage about the Aztecs, the Maya, the Incas, the Mississippians, it begins the same way "Though they did not have a written language..."
And it gets my goat every time.  I can't argue that the Aztecs had writing but they did communicate with each other in the written form.  Yet time and time again I see common elements such as pictographs, glyphs, locatives, and, in the case of the Incas, a complex system of abstract visuality that including a record-keeping device called quipu dismissed outright.  These are not writing.
Therefore, I am not new to the meta-question of devaluing certain systems of communication or forms of  language.

Kim Lovejoy's article dealt heavily with this issue and removing the focus from Standard English in the composition classroom.  Theoretically, I see this argument's capacity in a classroom where instructors are dealing with writing constantly.  (Yes in an ideal world, we all are.)  But the argument also struck me as rather behind the times (I don't know the date on it so it very may well be) in a system where blogs in particular are now more common in the classroom than even journals.  What better way to teach students difference in types of Englishes than through blogging.
I was surprised and frustrated that I was 7 pages into Lovejoy's article before he proffered even one concrete example of how to integrate different languages, as he called them, into the classroom. 

While Lovejoy dealt with different class-, race-, and  language-based Englishes, I would like to have heard a critique on the same sort of control of speech/language that is gendered female.  Perhaps someone can point me in the direction of an article on that topic?

Lovejoy pays brief lip service to the idea that students must have command overStandard English in order to access power in our culture.  To me, this is the larger issue that he completely glossed over.  How do we integrate this respect for alternative Englishes (which largely means Black Vernacular, for better or worse) with teaching students how to access the language of power?  Do we change the language of power?  Do we teach them the language of power?  We certainly can't deny it, and he doesn't advocate that.  But his approach seems more along the lines of suggesting that students need access to EAE, we know how to give it to even the most disadvantaged (which I doubt) and now let's all do a puppet show in Ebonics. 

In her book Other People's Children, Lisa Delpit addresses this issue of expression and the idea that we aren't allowing students (on a lower level, high school and elementary school, and specifically dealing with Black Americans) to express themselves.  We've largely overcome this through allowing students to journal and freewrite and a whole host of other activities.  These may not happen in every classroom, but they are the accepted standards of progressive educators everywhere.  The larger problem is teaching students to channel this expressiveness into the most effective language.  Again, Lovejoy mentions this but does not expound upon the ways in which to do so.  The language of the academy is certainly unfamiliar to less advantaged students, or those who approach it with a different English, but refusing to challenge the who, why, and hows of different points of access to it is, to quote an episode of The Office, treating ignorance with more ignorance.

Grading Rubric

Thesis

Excellent -- Thesis is clear and concise, generally contained in one or two sentence, and makes an argument for a position.  It is positioned at the end of the intro paragraph of the paper.

Good -- Thesis is appropriately located but is wordy and less effective at conveying the argument the writer is making.

Average -- Thesis is appropriately located but does not make any argument.

Below average - No thesis

Organization

Excellent -- Paper has a clear intro with a thesis statement, body, and conclusion .  Paragraphs have topic sentences.  Each paragraph relates to supporting the argument in the thesis.

Good -- Paper has a clear intro with a thesis statement, body, and conclusion .  Paragraphs have topic sentences.   Paragraphs may or may not support argument related in thesis.

Average -- Paper lacks organization into intro, body, and conclusion but has a thesis statement.  Topic sentences may or may not be located appropriately.  Paragraphs more frequently do not support thesis.

Below average -- Paper lacks organization into intro, body, and conclusion but has a thesis statement.  Paragraphs lack topic sentences.  Paragraphs more frequently do not support thesis.

Critical Lens

Excellent -- Student clearly attended exhibit and can provide descriptions of art objects and exhibit.  These descriptions always relate to and suppot the thesis argument.  Student used criteria of assignment to assess the exhibit.

Good -- Student clearly attended exhibit and can provide descriptions of art objects and exhibit.  These descriptions sometimes relate to and suppot the thesis argument.  Student used criteria of assignment to assess the exhibit.

Average - Student clearly attended exhibit and can provide descriptions of art objects and exhibit.  These descriptions frequently do no relate to and suppot the thesis argument.  Student sometimes used criteria of assignment to assess the exhibit.

Below average - There is little evidence that the student attended the exhibit.  Visual description is often based on text found on internet or pamphlets.  Student never used criteria of the assignment to assess the exhibit.

Revised Teaching Statement

We have all felt the intensity of another person’s gaze.  In that moment it isn’t difficult to understand that looking, or staring, has power.  It has the power to control and the ability to limit us. In those situations, we can forget that looking, or staring, has the power to expand our minds and even to open up new worlds.

In my classroom, we remember that every look isn’t a confrontation.  My students begin to use their gaze in the very first class.  Students become active lookers as soon as they enter the class, staring down complex paintings and developing challenging interpretations.

Students are immediately (and continuously) confronted with another important lesson: Active participants in the classroom (and in larger visual culture) can see art objects differently and oftentimes end with multiple, equally correct interpretations of the same work.  I develop lessons that guide students along in accepting this very important premise and that ask them to manage these different interpretations.  These lessons range from simple call and answer strategies during a lecture to jigsaw lessons that break students up and ask them to manage multiple interpretations in their own groups, without my guidance or mediation.  Often, these jigsaw lessons end in students accepting interpretations of art objects that they first saw as implausible as equally valid.

Of course, integrating the idea that there are diverse ways of understanding problems, questions, and art objects with the idea that some of these may be wrong is often difficult.  Many times students have questions about this apparent dichotomy, and I am confronted with the difficult task of conveying the nuances of the discipline of art history, how information has traditionally been conveyed visually, and how we have come to understand these conventions.  Because this can be difficult to do with art objects from earlier periods, I ask students to look at their own visual culture, fine arts and otherwise, to help them determine visual codes and conventions that communicate to them.  Subway advertising alone in New York City can help students understand that we do not just communicate through the written and spoken word.

As a specialist in non-western art, I frequently find myself saddled with the challenge of cramming thousands of years of distinct and varied histories into a limited amount of time.  This is particularly true in art history survey classrooms that tend to focus on the history of western art.  It is frustrating to constantly engage with a canon that has remained stagnant for so many years, excluding so many, but to paraphrase the poet Kazim Ali, I believe engagement with tradition is “radically important” to the understanding of art history.  Therefore, I maintain an attachment to conventional art history in my classroom and ask my students to engage with the canon.  We debate it (and each other), we question it, and at times we agree with it.  It is through this connection to the traditions of the field that we are able to have discussions of inclusivity and exclusivity.  Thereby, my students become aware and a part of larger questions in the field of art history.

When my students leave my classroom they are bombarded with visual culture.  Each semester, I hope that my students develop a newfound confidence to look and a new ability to see that leads them to continue questioning their own eyes.

CUNY/ACT and Open Admissions

In addition to I the open admissions piece, I read Tara Parker's and Richard Richardson's "Ending Remediation at CUNY: Implications for Access and Excellence" which further explores the argument that CUNY has become a stratified college system (especially pronounced, I would add, now with the "Honors College.")   

I was struck most in both of these articles by the statistics that seem to show the sheer number of Black and Latino students that are denied access to CUNY four year colleges on the first try.  I know they reportedly attend community colleges and are expected to transfer to four year colleges.  I also know from any number of transfer students I've taught that they are faced with a whole host of new problems in their four year school, including credits that don't fulfill requirements they were told they would.  My students who experienced this were discouraged and frustrated in their very first days at the new college.

Parker's and Richardson's assertion that students who failed the Basic Skills test did not ultimately enroll at CUNY but "enrolled at a four-year college outside of CUNY or, worse, did not enroll in any college" (12) was chilling.  Students were forced into a situation where both CUNY and the students lost.  In their conclusion, Parker and Richardson  argue that requiring students in need remediation to enroll at community colleges were not offered "equitable educational opportunity" (26) as many then chose to never enter the CUNY system.

This concern for the community college lead me back to the open admissions article and to wonder why students chose not to enroll in CUNY community colleges.  Is it a question of thinking it somehow puts them behind in their studies?  Realism, hearing the stories of counterparts who aren't able to successfully enter a four-year college after their complete of an associate's degree?  The open acknowledgment of two-year schools as remediation?  Obviously, CUNY is no longer open, but we have to wonder just how closed it is becoming.

Assigned Reading or Reading Assignment?

In thinking up a reading assignment for an art history survey class, I was struck by the fact that when I've taught this class in the past I haven't given any thought to what the assignments did or did not do, whether or not the students did them, how they related to the course, and really much of anything.  I had to stretch far back into my memory, back to when I briefly taught high school, to remember how to ask students how to find meaning or make meaning out of a reading assignment.
I fear I fell back on something a little too predictable, that I would like to have been more creative about it, and I know I will have opportunities to do that in the future.  But simply the act of thinking about the assignment rather than just assigning reading was important.

Teaching Philosophy: First Draft

We send very mixed messages to our young people about visuality.  At the same time we tell them "there is no shame in looking," we also tell them "don't stare!" with such vehemence that they believe us.

In my classroom, there is truly no shame in looking, and there is even no shame in staring.  In fact, my students begin to stare at objects in the very first class.  Students become active lookers immediately, staring down complex paintings and creating challenging interpretations.

Students are immediately (and continuously) confronted with another important lesson: Active participants in the classroom (and in larger visual culture) often develop multiple viewpoints of an art object and oftentimes end with multiple, equally correct interpretations of the same object.  I develop lessons that guide students along in accepting this very important premise and that ask them to manage these different interpretations.  These lessons range from simple call and answer tactics during a lecture to jigsaw lessons that break students up and ask them to manage multiple interpretations in their own groups, without my guidance or mediation.  Oftentimes, these jigsaw lessons end in students accepting interpretations of art objects that they first saw as implausible as equally valid and correct.

Of course, integrating the idea that there are multiple, correct understandings of problems, questions, and art objects and the idea that some of these may be wrong is often difficult.  Many times students have questions about this apparent dichotomy, and I am confronted with the difficult task of conveying the nuances of the discipline of art history, how information has traditionally been conveyed visually, and how we have come to understand these conventions.  Because this can be difficult to do with art objects from earlier periods, I ask students to look at their own visual culture, fine arts and otherwise, to help them determine visual codes and conventions that communicate to them.  Subway advertising alone in New York City can help students understand that we do not just communicate through the written and spoken word.

As a specialist in non-western art, my scholarship can be difficult to integrate into the most common art history classroom, the survey.  Because content is oftentimes treated as king in those classes, with little to no focus on arts of the Other, I most frequently bring my scholarship to bear on my own pedagogy itself.  At times it can be challenging to constantly engage with a canon that worked so hard to exclude so many, but to paraphrase the poet Kazim Ali, I believe engagement with tradition is "radically important" to the understanding of art.  Therefore, I do not ask my students to throw away the canon, but to engage with it, to ask important questions of it, and to make what use of it they can.  By engaging the canon and a variety decision on inclusivity and exclusivity, my students become aware of the larger questions in the discipline of art history and how they can participate in it longer after our class has ended.

It's been tough coming up with an article on the scholarship of teaching and learning particularly concerning art history.  I did receive something hopeful from the College Art Association in my inbox, though:
"In addition, we present two essays on assessment and outcomes for art-history classes, continuing a precedent of publishing on pedagogical issues in academia and the arts set two years ago. We hope these texts, divergent in their points of view, are thought provoking and useful as the school year begins."

The first essay I read, "History Lessons: Historians and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning," discussed how many (or little) progress is being made in this area in this particular discipline.  First of all, what struck me most was how much thought was given to it, that there were discussions about assessment and teaching, especially in comparison to my discipline.  Perhaps this is true of graduate students in most disciplines, but one rarely hears talk of successful teaching in my field, and certainly of learning.  In fact, most art history classes, including my own, don't diverge much from the ones I took as an undergraduate 10 years ago.
The major difference between traditional historical scholarship  and the scholarship of teaching and learning in history was this struggle to somehow make quantifiable something that isn't traditionally seen as such.  The authors go to great length to fit SOTL into historical scholarship, which they claim is mainly narrative, using pieces to form a whole story.  This, they claim, is very similar to looking at teaching and learning.
This piece in particular lead me to think of the different ways (art) history is practiced and how that impacts our classrooms.  While most of us are looking for evidence to create a narrative, some of us have both the evidence and the traditional (and therefore counter) narratives more readily supplied than others.   How does that impact what we do in our classrooms?

Both essays in the recent CAA Newsletter approach the subject of outcome assessment, a tool I heard for the first time teaching at Brooklyn College.  We were asked to provide these, and then given a very general manner in which to do so.  As a typical adjunct, I managed to forget to do it entirely and no one ever checked up on it. 
In his essay "Art History Survey and Art Appreciation Courses," Professor David Adams first identifies that he believes that teaching art history is teaching a set of skills and should be approached and evaluated under different terms than other disciplines.  Immediately, this raised a red flag for me.  How is teaching literature or history or math for that matter not teaching a specific set of skills?  He goes on to argue that the teaching of art history is a somehow more amorphous skill set without fixed standards.
I felt right off that he was trying to get away from our responsibility for outcomes assessment.  We can't define it, so you (or we) can't assess it!
Adams evaluates without data a series of traditional teaching methods and how "effective" they each are and clearly ends believing the way survey classes are taught (two slide projectors, dark room at noon, lecture) is the way they (I fear this term, but use it anyhow) should be taught.  These are the specific skills we are trying to teach students, but his emphasis is on interpreting art together rather than as individuals which he seems to view as progressive enough.
I can't help but notice the lack of mention of actual outcomes in this article, and the ways in which Adams strives to avoid data.  As another author mentioned in her essay, the only data we are accustomed to using in art history is images, and in outcomes assessment we must learn to use more.  Isn't it somehow our responsibility to do so, even if statistics aren't out forté?  Data mustn't always be quantitative; if art historians refuse to enumerate the problems/challenges/outcomes in their classrooms, we must find a different way to analyze them.  Simply stating our discipline is somehow unique or different just doesn't get the job done.

I've been chewing over "Inventing the University" for several days now, and I am still challenged by it.  It's interesting to read anything that discusses power relations in the classroom and/or university setting, but something about the way Bartholomae addresses these was bothersome.  It wasn't until I read Pete's comment on the main page that I was able to pinpoint that it was this "monolithic" view of academic discourse that was troubling. 
Bartholomae refers several times to students "being appropriated by" academic discourse,  participating in a "privileged discourse", and states that "a student must assume the right of speaking to someone who knows more...", all of which recognize the inherent power dynamics of academia.  I am only beginning to recognize the importance of helping students take these steps, or the responsibility of instructors to step outside of these parameters to some degree in order to best benefit students.  It's the why and the how I'm having trouble with.