Reflection on Teaching Philosophy

What an intense and amazing and wonderful year this has been. I am so glad that my last assignment is this reflection because it reminds of who I am, what I believe in, why I want to be a teacher, and why I took this PDP program in the first place. Seriously, sometimes it has been a real struggle to remember my joy, wildness and passion when I feel encouraged to be everything to everyone in the world of education. The big question is: How do I keep my free-spirited way, joie-de-vivre, irreverent sense of humor, and love of play alive when I feel like I have to change lives, change the world, change almost the entire school system, fight colonialism and racism, and meet the needs of all of my 240 students at one time! Crazy making. But at the same time I have no doubt that I am on the right path and am meant to do this. I am sure that after a little sleep and a few days with my friends I will perk up again and reconnect to the artist within. 

One thing that I am really fortunate about is that somehow my artwork sustained me through this last year in it’s own way. I had some large pieces completed before I started PDP and I was asked to be in a few art shows, and in fact one of them has an opening tomorrow. And it all happened with total ease and joy and fun and flair. Other people were doing the work to put on the show and run the space and buy the wine and supply people, and basically I just had to show up. It was kind of a miracle. And I even finished two pieces for each show that were previously unresolved.

I often wonder about why art is important to people. I know it on a really deep level, but always feel like I have to justify making objects and producing work. For some reason art chose me first and I chose it back, and it just keeps happening over and over again. I was reading lately about LOVE, and the fact that it is actually a force, like in a Star-Wars-Jedi-Knight-use-the-force kind of way. I love that idea and have decided to cultivate more of it. I think that the energy or force that we put into our visual art comes back to us. I think that is what people experience from my artwork. I think that is the best way I can put it and understand it. When I am engaged in making the work, whether I’m happy and certain or I’m angry or uncertain, something comes alive and there is some kind of spark there. And luckily other people connect with that.  So the love force and other mysterious forces in my work is somehow sustaining me and re-gifting me, and bringing family and friends together at a gathering tomorrow, with kids and music and a craft table, and in creating a space where we can remember that we are all Jedi knights all the time. And may the force be with us!

This is all sounding a bit esoteric, but really it is good to balance out EPAD and differentiated learning and anti-racist education and assessment with the mysteries of life. And I think that no matter how my journey through the world of art, education and community is navigated that I want to stay most connected to that mysterious source while I integrate all the other stuff, which is really great and meaty (tofu-y) and chewy and thoroughly enjoyable and necessary too. 

One thing I think about a lot lately is the fact that we are multi-dimensional beings, and that art, music, dance, theatre, sports, movement, expression, freedom is also a human right, and we need to fight for it in our schools otherwise where will we be? Starting more wars in other countries, and in our communities, while our hearts literally harden?  I loved the readings in chapter 2 in the Eisner text about the different aims of art education and that there is no ‘one’ sacrosanct vision (same as science or math). 

Discipline based (DBAE) - OK I get it, pretty straight forward: skills, sophisticated thinking, high quality performance, cognitive achievement, historical and cultural context, and value and function of art and aesthetics.  But then you start getting to some interesting stuff with Visual Culture: decoding value and ideas embedded in popular culture and fine arts, and analysis of mass media. That gets exciting. Then there is Creative Problem Solving: kind of cool, makes me think of Emily Carr’s approach to a lot of their design programs. And then we get to Creative Self Expression, pretty much my soft spot. It makes total sense to me that this is one of the most important reasons to offer art in school. Lowenfeld and Herb Read actually attribute totalitarianism in society and the school system in Germany to WWII! Radical and yet it makes total(itarian) sense! They said the education system suppressed the normal human urge to express creative impulses and this set up the youth for a dictatorship. They said “Art emancipates the spirit and encourages an outlet for creative impulse - educational and therapeutic”.  They go on to say that self expression can’t be taught, and that the role of the teacher is attendant, guide, inspirer, and (achem) psychic midwife (I love those terms but a lot of people bristle at the sound of them, just like I love my African djembe but a lot of musicians think it sounds like hippy crap - but I don’t care). 

I know I need to be an advocate for the arts in school, and think I need to make a big poster of quotes to hang on my wall about why art is important so I can spew it out at will! It’s so hard to remember what to say and how to sound articulate on the spot, even about things you know well and believe in deeply, unless they are on the tip of your tongue. One quote I do love and always remember is from Winston Churchill. During the war Britain was poor and getting poorer and there was pressure to cut more social and arts programs. And he had the guts and wisdom to say “Then what will all the fighting have been for?”  True. But because of TV and so much disconnect from the creative process in music and art, people have become disconnected from the stuff of life. What if we all had one song to listen to, one poem to read, and one color on our house, clothes, or car - and what if that color was grey? I met some amazing successful (and Rastafari) artists in Ethiopia my age that said they were under communist rule from 1974 to 1992. I was born in 1974 that would have been my whole life up until my grade 12 graduation year. And they said they could have been  beaten and jailed if they read anything other than their manifesto pamphlets, and they were only allowed to paint the Sicle/scythe symbol. Wow, that would have been terrible, and also a powerful means of suppression. In our cultures we often pay for choice in aesthetics and content, we just don’t value it that much because we are inundated with excess, at a cheap price, often made in china.

Another reading I liked was “Why Do Some Teachers Resist Offering Appropriate, Open-Ended Art Activities for Young Children”? I struggled with this somewhat during my practicum because I felt encouraged to have a very strong sense of exactly where my students were going and to have a strong vision of what the outcome would be, and to figure out the steps to get them there. Hmmmm, that was a great learning experience for me, but also really tough to do over and over again. I have been told in the past that I would be a good Montessori teacher since I love setting up my classes and environments in a way that I know is going to produce successes, exploration, curiosity, play and be accessible. And provide lots of opportunities for trying new things and moving in new directions. I absolutely love to have the materials set up perfectly (yes I’m a perfectionist with certain things) with a few samples out so that the materials are within easy reach - so that the creative flow easily starts and just keeps on flowing. From all my years of making art a zillion different ways and taking classes I know that if the scissors aren’t there when you need them and you have to spend 10 minutes looking through drawers and boxes for them, that it stops the flow. That is just one small example. I realize I am good with getting the flow going by saying “ oh it’s easy, you just do this.....(quick demo)...and then get this....(voila)...see, it’s easy!”. Basically I make believers out of people that art is fun and exciting, and before they can convince me or themselves of the reasons “why they can’t” or “why they will suck” or “what will someone think” or “this isn’t an important or a good use of my time”, I have sort of lured them into the process and off they go! I have been told I do this with a lot of things. I think the thing I do best (and yes I am trying to remember why am here doing this PDP program, hence the pumping myself up) is that I share my excitement about life with people, and then it makes them excited to be alive too, and then we have a room full of people that are excited to be alive in that moment, and in it’s own unique way it becomes infectious, and it makes people forget their pain and their sorrows and their stress and their rigid little rules for a while. And now we are back to the Star Wars Jedi knight love force again. Hey that’s a great name for a band “Jedi Love Force”.

So this brings me back to the beginning in a way. The painting that I have posted of the little bird upside down and right side up is an important one for me. I painted the bird upside down because I was angry. I was angry at the world mostly for being so crappy for so many people. And so many people don’t understand, or worse, they think they understand when really they don’t, so they judge others who seems weak or have less, and even worse than that is the people who understand but choose to look the other way or don’t care in the first place. Yes I am talking about working in activism and in the Downtown Eastside for a long time. And yes it got to me in a way where I couldn’t function well, and I sure wasn’t moving between worlds very well. I have little sympathy for those who don’t understand there is a war going on around us - that what is happening is actually genocide and oppression on an epic scale. Phfew, ok take a breath. So that brings me back to the birds. So during my last days working in the DTES when I painted that bird upside down in my studio, I actually has an incredibly strong urge to turn it right side up, but my adherence to an ideology wasn’t letting me. I had someone else’s voice in my head. The voice of doctrine and resistance, albeit justified, but it wasn’t my voice. And bing, I made a choice to follow my knowing, that kind of knowing that you have in you from a young child, and I followed it and while very conscious of exactly what was going on there. I chose to be happy. I chose to remember how to be happy again. I chose another way. I chose to offer my gifts to the world in the best and most powerful way that I knew how. And that way was through joy and laughter and play, and empathy, and the force, all the way.  So, now I’m here:) That’s the story of how I found my way to living a life again as an artist, or living a creative live, whatever that looks like, despite what the social-political activist detractors might say. (And let me tell you, that is no small feat since they are smart and savvy and artists themselves). Joy, play, beauty, and definitely bravery, curiosity and a slight (or outright) irreverence and resistance to the rules that be - that’s where it appears I’m headed.

Oh and one last reference to a reading. I loved the “Your Brain is a Rainforest” article that talked about how we construct mini-niche environments for ourselves to flourish in, like a beaver constructs a dam or a spider spins a web. Or a bird builds a nest or a rabbit burrows a hole. We are in fact ‘neuro-diverse’ creatures that do better when we and our caregivers (and teachers) alter the environment to match the needs of our unique brains rather than requiring them to adapt to a static, fixed, and “normal” environments (yes that’s a quote, not my words). It also talks about using assistive technologies for people with ADHD, dislexia and anxiety to reduce stress and help in learning. I bring this up because  as hard and scary as it was for me to fall and get a concussion, to heal quietly (and alone/lonely), and then have to finish school, it was an immense opportunity for me to learn about myself and to honor my needs. And now I understand in some small way what other people with certain exceptionalities have to go through. I realized right away that I was one of them, one of the students I might be working with that I was studying about in my special education course...I had a disability. However temporary (and I still have symptoms), I was/am a person with an exceptionality. It effected my identity. Am I “weak”, am I a “sick person” who has to say “no” so socializing, riding my bike, live music 99% of the time?  While I  have to leave places early, and carry earplugs and advil at all times, and pretend I feel “normal” and cheerful enough. Getting a bump on my head and few headaches was just a small part of this experience. I am so glad that I had it, at least for a short time, because now I am going to be a better and more well rounded teacher. And I have undertaken a whole new area of study now too, quite passionately, which is ‘healing and our nervous system’. I can’t get enough of learning about the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. It has inspired me even more to want to be an art teacher, and to advocate for the arts in schools.

OK, now I get to celebrate, relax, graduate, get a job, make art, actually have some fun with my husband, and play - oh and change the world in some small or big way (that never seems to leave the list, no matter how unrealistic, idealistic, or cliche). May the force be with you.