Blog Entry 2: Describe your work in relation to Transformational Learning as described in the article titled Transformative Learning Theory: Theory to Practice by Jack Mezirow.

In my blog entry for this week, I’d like to focus on how my practice as an art teacher fostered autonomous thinking. I think there are many ways my community based art program in Arlington encouraged autonomous thinking since I saw the production of art in itself as essentially finding one’s voice or developing a personal artistic style. This contrasts with conventional art education methods in which students engage in projects that are for the most part teacher-directed.

As I say, there are many ways that I encouraged autonomous thinking but in this blog entry, I will focus on only one aspect of the program. In collaboration with other teachers, artists in the community and parents, I developed a component of the program devoted to sketchbooks. But how can kids understand what to do with sketchbooks unless they are given specific assignments? Won’t they just doodle or scribble on each page and swiftly turn to the next? I had to figure out how to present the sketchbook idea without dictating what students were to do since that would defeat the whole purpose of the sketchbook idea. 

 

As a group, the teachers, artists, parents and others I was working with, came up with the idea of having artists in the community show the children their sketchbooks and describe how they used them. So we had several artists show their sketchbooks and talk about how they used the sketchbooks.  We also invited advanced art students from Arlington High to show the students their sketchbooks and describe the experience of keeping a sketchbook and what it meant to them. 

The artists and high school students fascinated the elementary students. Not only did they learn a variety of ways to use sketchbooks, but they also saw modeled, how to talk about their work and its development over time. The elementary students actually became self-reflective. Eventually they learned to present their own work in the same way.

In the picture above, David, a second grader, describes his sketch of a rocket blasting away in a starry sky with planets on either side of the rocket and the sun almost at the tip of the rocket’s nose. David is wearing a green and white striped shirt and holds the sketch at an angle so that he can see the sketch while describing it and so that the class can see it as well. He has a serious expression on his face but seems to be enjoying the spotlight.

I will include one student’s series of drawings to explicate how valuable this experience was for the students. The student’s name is Justine and her artwork really blossomed when she had the opportunity to develop her own themes and style. 

  Here is Justine’s self portrait completed at the end of the fourth grade. As Justine pointed out to me, the tiny face just under the small sun icon at the top, and just above the center of the spiral, is Justine. It is a miniscule face peaking out from above the whirling line of the spiral. The face is very small compared to the rest of the picture. There she is in the center of this powerful, vortex, being pulled into its force field but resisting its power, hiding, and trying to sustain a sense of her bearings. In fact, Justine’s self portrait is a graphic portrayal of the fear of becoming known and of the desire to hide that Carol Gilligan and her colleagues describe so vividly in girls who are Justine’s age. According to these developmentalists, eleven year old girls often do hide, and unfortunately often disappear in a psychological sense when they realize that what they have to say is not welcomed in this culture. This self portrait dramatizes this developmental threshold in which girls unconsciously decide either to become who they are or to hide. You will remember the Carol Gilligan article and how the girl began to hide her answer when she understood that what she had to say was not understood by the interviewer. 

In the sketchbook pages, that follow, notice the complexity, the detail, and the fullness of each piece that reiterates the sense of bursting energy reflected in the fourth grade self portrait. There is the sense of a mythical world infused with a kind of energy that is almost supernatural or magical. The world and nature are alive with power, with purpose, with mystery. And the fear of this world and this energy, that was so intense in the fourth grade portrait, have been transformed in these drawings, into a sense of wonder, almost awe, at the immensity and complexity of it all. In Kieran Egan’s developmental scheme, this sense of awe would be equivalent to “Mythic understanding”, a sense of the mystery, magic, and power in the world and in the self. 

The picture at right is of Justine's drawing of mountains and goats. The sun is a bright yellow with rays of deep red and blue. The sky is mostly yellow with other colors mixed in. The goat in the center is closest to the viewer, and the goat directly to the right of that central goat seems furthest away. There is an impression that space goes on and on: that what we see is only part of what exists. Furthermore, the entire picture has the feeling of energy moving through it that is reminiscent of Justine’s self portrait. Yet while the mood of the self portrait, executed with little color, is somewhat frightening and sad, the tone of this drawing and the ones that follow are filled with color, light and hope. The world of Justine’s art more generally, is alive with color, energy and feeling. 

This one Justine calls “Mountain Sky”. And again, there is the feeling of energy coursing throughout the surface of the drawing and of the solid mountains down below holding their ground. The drawing has a freedom of expression about it while at the same time evinces a great deal of control.  Is it ominous? Is it portending? It seems mysterious to me and as if some excitement hovers beneath its surface. Some godlike voice echoes commandments behind the picture.

 

This image explodes with the excitement that I sensed under the surface of the previous drawing. It is filled with color and with shapes. Justine points out how long it took her to draw all those little stars in the background.

“I made hundreds of little dots for stars. The picture is my idea of what space might look like if you were traveling at the speed of light

or passing through a black hole.”

 

 

This drawing has greater depth and complexity in that the birds and fish are moving at so many different levels in reference to the picture plane. The image seems to exude a sense of mystery at the energy and excitement and complexity of the world in all its activity. One can almost hear and smell the ocean and the sky meeting, and the fish and birds splashing and crying out as they play and reach out to one another.

 In this drawing two cats are climbing into a fishtank with fish, large and small, and with a black and shite cat in the center. The water is a deep green. The fish are many different colors. The picture has a lightness and humor to it that was not evident in the previous pictures. The bursting energy that had such an explosive quality to it, is now contained. What does this mean? I wonder if Justine would be able to articulate progression of her series. Unfortunately at this point, I don't remember. However, it seems obvious that the opportunity to develop her own ideas through drawing, surrounded by a caring community, triggered a change from feeling overwhelmed by an explosive energy to being part of it, to being joyful.

I hope this series of drawings by one student brought to life how autonomous thinking might be encouraged by one aspect of a community arts program: the sketchbook project.