How to stay in teaching? Teach with Purpose.
“The intent to leave or stay in a job is only one of the things that people are questioning as part of the larger human story we are living,” says Caitlin Duffy, Research Director. “You could call it the ‘Great Reflection.’ ….It’s critical to deliver value and purpose.”
The best part about working with a cohort of art teachers is having the opportunity to go deeper; to figure out together what we’re really teaching. And when I say “what”, I really mean “why”. It’s easy to figure out the “what”: painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, printmaking, photography, digital design; the arts offer an endless possibility of projects. The “why”, that’s more complicated because the why is what makes teaching personal and purposeful. Two teachers can teach the same exact project but to different ends with very different goals. This space; teaching with a deliberate purpose; is where, if we’re lucky, the personal interests and values of the teacher are gifted to their students. The result for the teacher is a job that feels ever more meaningful.
This year, we’ve added essential questions and enduring understandings to our curriculum so that our teachers can practice considering the why when they plan a lesson. This practice has long been an essential aspect of effective teaching. Backwards Planning or Backwards by Design or Understanding by Design; whatever you call it, this method requires teachers to sincerely question why they’re teaching a certain skill or concept. When we’re planning curriculum, we ask ourselves what we want our students to get out of the learning and then as we teach, we are reminded to consider and reconsider these goals. In this way, the artistic product is visual evidence of the learning but the bulk of the learning and even assessment, happens each day as students work.
Here are some quick tips for art teachers to keep the question of “why” as central to their classes:
Establish BIG goals:
When you have students draw a self portrait, is the goal that they are able to draw a self portrait? Does it matter, in the scope of their lives, whether they can draw self portraits? Instead, consider the enduring understandings that they can take from the project to other aspects of their world. And here’s where we get personal and intentional. The answer depends on what YOU want them to learn. It could be understanding that facial features are made of multiple shapes or that looking closely at an object (even if it’s yourself) changes your perception of it and makes it simpler to render. Maybe your goal is more broad: you want them to understand that artists make multiple self portraits in their lives to document themselves as they change and develop. No matter what it is, make sure it’s a goal that matters to you and to them.
Be explicit about your goals with your students:
The weeds of curriculum and lesson planning are sometimes thought to be the part of teaching that’s invisible or implicit to students; do they need to know what we’re doing next or why we’re doing what we’re doing? Yes! If you’re explicit about your goals with students, chances are, it’ll be a lot more likely that they shift their focus on what you’re aiming to teach them. Ask questions that encourage them to think about the concepts you’re teaching: i.e. “Why do artists make multiple self portraits throughout their lives? Why not just make one?” Design activities that explicitly support your learning goal: “let’s look in mirrors and talk about the shapes we observe in our face.”
Understanding by Design sometimes doesn’t acknowledge enough the impact this style of teaching has on the teachers themselves. If we teach with purpose, regardless of standards or pre-determined curriculum, we know that what happens in our classrooms is as unique as we are. What we give to our students only we can give and there’s no better reason than that, to stay in the field.