Perspective

When I ask myself the question “What is drawing you to Africa?”, the big picture answer is: to change my perspective. My quest is not new. We humans seem to require a change in routine from time to time. Many European countries have acknowledged this and have a 4-5 week annual holiday built into their social system. Travel agencies cater to our need. I suspect that as our society becomes more interconnected and complex our need to get away and change it up, increases. Most of us regularly build small breaks into our routine, but occasionally the need for a big perspective change takes hold. In my 25 years of classroom teaching, I was blessed with the opportunity to take a two month hiatus each year, but once the school year started, I was locked into the saddle and rarely took a sick or mental health day. That’s a lot of routine. Jumping on a horse and trotting off over the horizon just to see what was there was a constant but quiet mantra that I kept in check by telling myself, “someday”.

Since my "someday" came with retirement, I am acting on a long held dream. My wife and I had planned to go to Africa together, but when the time came we had to face the realities of the physical limitations that this trip would put on her. With compromising health issues, she had to reluctantly decline. So the trip that has taken shape now is quite different from the one we had planned. The irony is that instead of taking a break from teaching, I am taking a break from retirement to return to teaching. This commitment has me examining what exactly I have been teaching all these years. Art, yes, but how? And did I really accomplish what I thought I was doing? And by what instrument do we measure success.

The last chapters of my teaching career involved me in the new wave of educational reform and accountability. Failing schools and outdated systems led to an increase in testing to measure the amount and kind of learning that is (or is not) taking place. Educational reforms are not news. What was new was the increase in standardized testing. Though the jury is still out as to how this is improving things, I was involved in helping to develop the standardized tests for art education for the state of Washington. I have since bought into the concept that some form of standardization in the teaching of the arts is needed and even desirable.

Prior to these reforms, the sacred cow of  art education was that each teacher has the freedom (and responsibility) to teach the arts in their own creative way. Since the majority of administrators admit they are poorly qualified to assess the arts, arts educators got a pass while other subject areas were under the scope for increased accountability. I enjoyed that “freedom” for a good part of my career but felt the alarm upon realizing that in the new paradigm, that which is not tested or testable will be destined to fall from the curriculum. The panic I felt on envisioning schools without the arts motivated me to get involved.

Working with other arts educators from across the state, we were tasked to come up with lists of standardized arts concepts that we considered essential to teaching the arts. This work led to a number of projects that the state eventually adopted as learning standards and assessments: http://www.k12.wa.us/Arts/default.aspx.
I have since gained confidence in knowing the arts are now being taught in a more systematic, accountable fashion. The teachers have at their disposal a data driven, sequential method to teach the arts as they relate to the skill and understanding at each class level. They still have the right and responsibility to teach in their own creative way, but with guides and support.

The ongoing work of getting art teachers to adapt these or any standards is truly like herding, not just cats, but paint-splattered, feisty, even fierce cats.  That work is now left to a new generation of arts educators, but the fact that classroom art teachers were able to come together to work on creating arts standards and assessments was novel, and I think, a necessity for eventual success.

None of the years I have invested in and outside the classroom has led me to say for certain, however, what any of this has directly to do with the task of bringing forth creativity. And that is the larger question. That question is being asked with urgency not only in the arts but in all subject areas. Standardization does not beget creative thought. And the world is in need of creative thought. Current brain research is telling us that humans are at their most mentally active and creative best when faced with new situations, new information, new environments and, consequentially, when we are out of doors. This is not what schools are set up for. We want to think we have figured it out with our standardized testing, lighting, paint colors, hall and locker sizes etc. , but this one-test-fits-all concept has many students struggling.

Teaching school for me was an involvement in setting up an environment where students would be challenged to use new forms of thought and action to solve problems. The environment and the curriculum was designed to challenge the old world view. That view included the idea that only some of us are creative. We need change. We need to have a new vision to address and work with our current world. Just as the first astronauts described having euphoric feelings looking at the planet from a whole new perspective. We have a need to get out and see new things.  Africa isn’t new, just new to me.