Interventions and adjustments
January 26, 2010
In the last term leading up to the holidays I made some tentative adjustments in the drawing/painting studio. Although class runs for 2 hours, with sixteen students it can be difficult spending sufficient time with each one. The individual attention works out to 7 ½ minutes each, not including any demonstration time. Compounding this short duration of personal attention my tendency is to rescue those who are struggling and by doing so neglect the more skilled students.
The first small intervention has been to enlist the help of two long standing students to address problems in the work of beginners. Interestingly the benefit of this exercise has been almost entirely for the skilled student. After helping the beginner adjust the framework of their drawing, the more skilled student returns to their own work more capable of seeing the weakness in their own construction. The exercise seems to give them enough distance from their work to see it more objectively.
More recently, I taught a weekend of intensive drawing which was something of a marathon. Overall the progress was clearly visible, though one of the most capable students struggled to a halt. In his words: “I just locked up”. There were a number of contributing factors, but chief among them was my attempt to blend two approaches to drawing: the kinesthetic (feeling your way) and the analytical (construction). For most students the kinesthetic approach is familiar and the analytical is absorbed more gradually. But in the case of this particular student, whose understanding of construction was dominating his intuitive response, my exercise plan served only to “lock up” his approach.
Had I not been determined to cover such a wide selection of drawing exercises, I might have noticed his struggle earlier, and stuck with the more intuitive exercises, strengthening that angle of his work.
February 7, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Cynthia,
Well I am in a very inarticulate frame of mind today, so I doubt I will have much of use to say. However the thing that hits me from your post is that the student who ‘locked up’ probably got allot out of the experience. I remember occasions like this and while they were painful, they forced me to reflect on my methods and process and frequently led to some big breakthroughs. I know the design process is not the same as drawing, but there must be some commonalities.
The other thing I thought about when I read your post was the experiment with the more skilled students helping out with the less experienced students. In Stage 2 the last few years we have been doing peer reviews and this year we did a peer assessment. I think there is real benefits from students teaching each other. They actually know allot and I think they learn a great deal from working out things together. It makes perfect sense of course, but it just goes against a traditional idea of teaching or school. I mean if they can teach each other what do they need to go to school for. Obviously, there are certain complex thigns that are most efficiently communicated through effective teaching, but there are many things that students can develop and work through together. Anyway, I think you should definitely explore more ways to do this. I think you will see lots of benefits.
February 14, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Hey Cynthia,
I like this kind of reflection on the daily experience of teaching – it’s something that we do all the time I suppose but not always consciously and putting your thoughts into words in a blog brings the issues into focus so much more distinctly. Re the idea of having more experienced students help those who are struggling, it is a truism that teaching others is the most effective way to understand a subject, so you’ve tapped a valuable area there.
Your other reflection on working with the student who got stuck, I think Robert may well be right that the student learned a lot inspite of his feelings of stuckness. I suppose we’re always juggling between these experiences of serendipitous learning and the activities we have actively planned and intended!