Prairie Bliss

Peace

We have a class of practicing and future teachers who are all learning about arts integration into the elementary classroom right now. The focus is the prairie and its' enveloping sense of place. As they are composing their narratives I am writing for the blog. As I/we teach this class I have this uncomfortable feeling. I am not as much in control as I'd like to be. It is a disconcerting feeling but in many ways it is good for me, for this is what I ask the teachers around me to do- get out of your comfort zone and try something else. Stay in this place where you are not in total control and be ok with it. We plan the lessons around the big ideas of integration but the truth is we do not know how it will come out, what will fall flat and will succeed.

This morning we stepped into the prairie in Spring Creek right outside Denton. We spent close to two hours walking around taking photographs. Slowly as time progressed we hushed fanned out and spent time connecting with the surroundings- with photographs as the focal lens. The mood was muted and perfect for sensing and focusing on emotions. We took the risk and the time... Still there is a lot to do to help these practicing and future teachers as well as ourselves make connections and link all of this to actual classroom instruction.

It would be great to examine these experiences as they develop, my guess is that my concerns and feelings are not unique.

Another Denver Airport post: Creative Teachers

We had our end of the year meetings in both sites over the last 10 days, Nebraska and California. As Monique, Nancy and I discussed the energy and immense productivity we saw in the meeting we started recognizing how uniquely creative and collaborative our teachers are. Our approach focuses on key ideas while letting teachers create their units and variations. The idea is that fidelity is to core ideas and not a prescribed lesson. Our principles are about process, thinking and integration. Our teachers have become amazing at using this platform to be creative. Even though grades have created units together the products were often different in meaningful ways. For example all second grades created a stamp as one assignment- but those were not uniform in the classes- showing that kids are creative, not between classroom showing that teachers are creative. More than that they UNDERSTAND what are the key ideas and where they can be creative and create variations that reflect their classrooms, individuality and skill/ comfort level.
As a researcher this has cost me much- and they are constantly aware of the research asking " we don't want to screw up the data". But the results are exactly what we wanted- implementation that is powered by teachers, sustainable, meaningful. For a second there I thought - if I had to retire right now, I would have retired happy.
If we want a creative generation we need to let teachers be creative! For that to happen professional development must provide the space for teacher creativity to emerge.

More Thoughts about Creativity

Before I start I'd like to send a hello to Regina Murphy of Ireland, and invite her to contribute to the blog (let me know and I'll set this up). I never intended this blog to be a one person act and what Regine is doing I find extremely interesting (I'll let her tell about it...).

In my last post I focused on skill as a part of creativity and potentially a filter for measuring "higher order" processes.
The question stays- what is creativity? My understanding is still evolving and this blog seems to be one of the places I do my thinking, so here goes:
Creativity has a strong creative domain component- like expertise in any field it is highly contextualized. If you are a sculptor a painter or a mathematician your deep understanding of your field is part of being creative or it at least a necessary but not sufficient condition. Such domain knowledge is what enables the artist (and I use this term to include anyone attempting to create an art product) to translate a vision, intent to a product. As Mike Jackson explained to me [I am paraphrasing] For me creativity is when I can translate what I see in my mind on the paper, then it is a good product. I care about the process the most, once it is done I stop being engaged.
Yet, people who describe themselves (or by others) as creative seem to be able to carry some of their creativity with them into new domains explore them and finally be engaged with them in full. Looking at the Universal Learning Model that my colleagues and I are focusing on- creativity becomes a multi-dimensional construct that combines several aspects of learning. The first is knowledge of the domain, most important is procedural knowledge that drives the creative process itself. Second is focus- single minded focus of attentional resources (i.e. working memory) to the task at hand. It is the experience of Flow or just extreme focus on the work that is often romantically portrayed. Finally and maybe the characteristic that most often helps the artist transcend a creative genre and learn a new one- Motivation.
The most universal feature of creativity is motivation. Motivation directs attention and allows the focus described above, which in turn leads to learning of new knowledge of the domain and most importantly the process. In motivation I think the most important features are slef-concept, seeing one's self as an artist or creative person. The second is the longing for complete engagement or flow. I think that once you develop Flow, you constantly search for it. And if you cannot find it you look for new domains in which you can re-experience it. Oliver Sacks describes such a case in "The Case of the Colorblind Painter". A desperate search by the artist for the way to rediscover flow probably the experience that ancient artists used to describe as the presence of a muse.
More later

On Being Skillful

We often disregard the skills. We want kids to think (adults too for that matter). As we try to measure things like creativity, we try to avoid the skill threshold or work around it.
I am like that too to a certain degree. But, as I think about these constructs I strongly believe that creativity, intelligence, and learning are all deeply embedded in domain knowledge and a threshold of skills that allow you to engage meaningfully with the the subject matter.
In other words, Tiger Woods that cannot putt well is just a golf bum who thinks a lot about the game, Einstein without his knowledge of math is just a crazy dude sleeping on a park bench. Before we disregard skills in favor of other "higher order" thinking we must remember that when Bloom created his taxonomy he did not mean that knowledge is not as important as any other level in his hierarchy.
Sooooo, my point is that teaching skills and measuring them should not be disregarded. Moreover, if we intend to measure any higher order thinking about these things- creativity, interpretation. We must also measure skills- to make sure that skills are not the filter that mediates what we measure. If we do not, what we claim is creativity may just be a proxy to skill level and out of school experiences.
In fact, I would argue that the only way to reliably measure creativity is a dynamic assessment in which students are first provided a meaningful context to work in and provide content knowledge and then their actions with these building blocks are measured.

AERA

I just finished the AERA presentation on literacy and arts. Despite the fact that we had a round table presentation on a friday afternoon- 7 people showed up.
I presented our the results but on the way conveyed key ideas that have been guiding our research for the past three years.
The first thing I thought was- we need a better forum. As much as I like the Arts and Learning special interest group- too few people pay attention. We must make sure that we reach a wide audience. I think we have something to say. There were also two graduate students in the mix and I thought to myself... they seem to be getting their education in a place that cannot support their interest in arts yo... So nery few places do that. Maybe we need to advertise our expertise or offer a way for students to participate in classes across institutions.
As you can sense these are only beginning thoughts as I enjoy my free afternoon in San Diego.
I can see a number of institutions with faculty interested in education in and through the arts creating a consortium that would help graduate students the kind of classes that really enhance their thinking. Maybe AEP can be the organizing mechanism...
Another random thought- Oxford University Press is interested in a book about arts integration. The editor and I had some ideas about what is needed and how a book can be molded in that direction but I invite comments from others...
Off to get some fish tacos...

What did I learn?

In my last post I was just before my visit to Skinner Academy Arts magnet.
So what did I learn? I learned that things are much better than I imagined in many areas but not all the way where we should be in other ways.
What is encouraging? Well all of our teachers are enthusiastic, they are excited to participate and do the cycles and all of that even when the project stops. What they really have said is- these are well designed units and they are part of our teaching now. We like them, the kids like them, they achieve our learning goals and require some energy in maintenance. I think that the project really encouraged this pattern by focusing on providing professional development and supports that lead to independent application. Our teachers do with a lot of support and very little other resources. As a result once practices become entrenched these "scaffolds" can be easily removed and the building still stands. After we will be gone teachers will not miss the resources as much because they have not come to rely on stipends, lavish classroom products etc.
So if it's all so good what is still missing?
The ongoing struggle is define the boundaries between the arts and music specialists and the classroom teachers. We have different ways of negotiating the boundaries in our different schools (this goes well beyond Skinner). The patterns are- disconnect: you do your thing I'll do my thing, Soap box: I am the expert on this (classroom teachers do this too) you must listen to me, Servitude- Tell what you need me to do . These are all paths on the way to true collaborative practice. We are simply not there yet.
Finally, I've seen only some evidence that the practices we encourage are "spilling over" to the general curriculum as an everyday occurrence. But more on that next week...