Earlier in the evening my Superintendent asked the following:
Later in the evening, my wife, Nicole, was working on some art work as she occasionally does being a pretty proficient artist in several different media. Tonight’s project was various paper cut outs assembled to build a raccoon. I’m always in awe of how she makes beautiful things from paintings to pysanky to all our wedding decorations and now paper raccoons so I asked her tonight about her talent and school.
“Are you talented because of school or in-spite of it?” She instantly answered in-spite.
Concerned by this I asked her why. Reflecting on her art classes through school she related to me that each year through secondary school she recalled having to draw a circle and shade it so it looked like a sphere. I’d probably have some difficulty doing this and could use a couple of years of practice but she’s naturally talented. She jumped through the hoops because she didn’t feel like being one of the students who the teacher had to cajole into drawing the circle. She felt the first time an art class in secondary engaged her was in a grade 12 art careers class. The art careers class challenged her to actually build something that could be of use in society like a campaign that used the arts to get others to participate or purchase a product. It was an authentic task, one that made a connection between a student and our society and actually had value to both rather than just a mark out of 50.
She’s a natural artist and picks up anything she wants as do natural musicians with instruments. Unfortunately school was often something to be endured. She reminded me before going to bed that “Talent can be killed, or nurtured.” Fortunately school didn’t kill her talent as she loves her arts. This brought to mind the Sir Ken Robinson video about creativity. I’ve embedded this one below as the animation enhances the already amazing talk.
Earlier today I wrote some thoughts down on a colleague’s blog about questions for a job interview. One of the questions was about leadership and difficult decisions. Leadership and Management are often related, and also sometimes diametrically opposed which regularly lead to those difficult decisions. A recent post from Seth Godin about teaching compliance and/or initiative gave a little insight. Should we be teaching how to make a circle into a sphere or asking for something more from our kids?
I’ve had the kitchen sink assignment before in secondary, (learning the “content” the day or week before and teaching it to the kids right after) and I wonder if the teachers who taught Nicole the circle each year were just a day before the students or were they tied to a curriculum? Were they teaching compliance or were they the result of compliance teaching? If they showed initiative instead and had the students do something beyond the curriculum, would they not get a job the next year because of their lack of compliance?
What if we asked students to use technology, social networks, and the vast amounts of instructions available online to learn how to draw a circle in art class and then ask them to use those skills to do something greater? How about we use those available tools for the content and the teacher help make connections with the students and the content areas instead of trying to pour knowledge into their heads?
“Okay everyone, today’s task is to draw a sphere in a 2-D plane. Use any personally owned devices to find learning objects online. Share them on the class wiki before the class is done. Check each others’ resources and draw a sphere that you’ve seen in the school, or the community, or in a movie, or something from your imagination! I’m going to try drawing the Death Star. Oh and please take a picture with your cellphone of your work and share it on the moodle forum sometime this week. Please post it to your facebook if you like so your parents can see your work too! Yes you can tweet your pictures, don’t forget the class hashtag.”
The tools are in place, the networks are there, so is the LMS. Twitter would be working too if it wasn’t for the Grammy’s. Now we just need to move from compliance to initiative. From management to leadership, from spheres to Death Stars…