Chapter 7: Creative Teaching and Learning Strategies; Applying Artistic Ways of Knowing in the Classroom

 A Symphony of Possibilities

Katherine J. Macro and Michelle Zoss (2019) provide a useful handbook for arts integration in secondary English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms in A Symphony of Possibilities. The authors provide both a theoretical and practical insight into integrating the arts in creative ways. Several of the co-authored chapters focus on connecting visual art to poetry, drama, and literature. Each chapter provides practical teaching and learning strategies that are complemented with assessment rubrics and a valuable bibliography. Students can embark on research projects, narrative writing, storyboarding, and creating found and spoken word poetry complemented with visual montages. Through poetry, art, literature, and drama, students can “write about their lives, critique their world, and ‘unveil hidden truths.’ (Williams, 2019, p. 38).

Working with students from diverse racial, ethnic, religious, and linguistic backgrounds Michelle Zoss (2019) has used large-scale drawings that have been applied to creation stories from Mayan, Incan, and Aztec designs. Posters and large- scale mural drawings were created by students to highlight their understanding of Greek and Roman mythology (see Book 2: Myths, Legends, and Folklore, A Close Look at the Sea, and Fantastical Beings, Mythic Monsters, and Heavenly Inspirations). “In these large-as-life installations, students composed new gallery spaces to highlight their work both individually and in collaboration with one another” (Zoss, 2019, p. 139). Narrative, descriptive, and expository writing can complement the murals. “Large-scale images have room for details and nuances that might not be possible in smaller-scale pieces.” (p. 145). The journeys in both Homer’s The Odyssey and The Iliad can be conceptualized in art. Zoss emphasizes that artistic ways of knowing is a complex process of thinking and analysis. Multi-modality literacy experiences open up new possibilities for learning and creativity. Drawing/artistic representation is not simply a duplicative task to writing about literature; it is images and image -making are forms of expression and communication that involve critical analysis, synthesis, imagination, and understanding. Too often, skills that would encourage creative thinking are left out or minimized (Newton and Newton, 2016):

Schools do not consistently test for artistic, gestural, theatrical, physical, or social knowledge. So, indeed, language is important. But it is not the only means necessary within an English curriculum to develop student thinking and expression. Why limit the tools that students might use to articulate their understandings when they live in a world that is saturated with both moving and still images, with digital tools of computing power that can bring images and language together within seconds only to be shared across the globe in just a few seconds more? With the advent of the printing press, books and literature became more widely available. With the onset of social media platforms and unprecedented access to information via the internet, literature, images, and films are nearly always available and located as close as one’s pocket or handbag. (p. 151).

While Zoss (2019) raises important points with regard to the limitations and short-sightedness of language-based forms of knowledge and instruction. Despite these limitations, educators need to recognize that there is still value in engaging students in reading and writing diverse texts from all over the world. The skill of the educator in creating a learning climate that nurtures and engages multi-modal literacies that have practical implications beyond the classroom and into the larger classroom of life (Magro and Honeyford, 2019). Theorists like Paulo Freire, Louise Rosenblatt, Maxine Green, Nel Noddings, and Elliot Eisner have all in their own way advocated for a creative way to engage students in learning. Multi-modal literacy development provides a creative path for students to express the way they hear, feel, see, and experience the world.

Exploring Social, Cultural, Psychological, and Historical Connections through Art and Related Texts

Pictures can inform paintings and paintings can inform poems in new and compelling ways. The historical, cultural, and social context of any given poem or painting can also be a rich source of illumination. Abcarian, Klotz, and Cohen (2019) write that learners can enter into a “dialogue” between a work of art and a poem. Poems that have been inspired by a particular painting (e.g. W. H, Auden was inspired to write “Musee des Beaux Arts” after seeing Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s Landscape with “The Fall of Icarus” and Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote “In Goya’s Greatest Scenes” based on “The 3^rd of May” and Anne Sexton wrote “The Starry Night” based on the Vincent Van Gogh “The Starry Night”). Artists have also been inspired by reading great works of literature. Ovid’s The Metamorphosesand Homer’s The Iliad and The Odysseyas well as biblical verses have been rich sources of artistic images throughout millennia. The Pre-Raphaelite artists like Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, were inspired by the Celtic myths and legends. Keeping a journal that documents the poem and the visual image along with accompanying impressions. They suggest exploring some of the following questions:

Many of the chapters in this book included theme-based poetry with art that complements the visual images. Students can also find additional art images that best connect to the poem. Writing their own response to a particular painting can also encourage creative responses (including writing a narrative, a Haiku or other poetic form, a dramatic script that tells a story from the visual image; a descriptive or exposition paragraph, a letter, and other form of writing).

Visual Scoring for the Character Portrait Rubric (from Hartman, P.M, Berg, J., Schuler, B., and Knauer, E. 2019, p. 137)

Visual Responses: Strategies

In her chapter, Alisha M. White (2019) adapted a number of the ideas from Glee’s (2009) “91 Ways to Respond to Literature.”

Educators can build upon some of the ideas that White (2019) presents for students who are visually responding to literature or non-fiction through art. She suggests that students use quality drawing paper and that they also include a clear annotation or index of the images. Writing responses can complement the visual responses as well. Examples of artistic responses and role modelling the thinking process behind the interpretation of a work of art is vital. Providing choice (collage rather than a painting might be more motivational for a student). Student-teacher conferences, artists in the schools, videos of works of art being explored, gallery walks, and self and peer evaluation can help students build their competence and confidence. A character’s emotional, physical, and geographic “journey” or time-line can be visually presented with symbols, drawings, and collages.  The visual response may include a symbolic representation of the character’s fears, hopes, dreams, and life goals.

The authors note that rubrics and formulaic types of assessment for visual art should be used with caution. It is vital for teachers to take the time to understand each learner’s effort to express in a visual way the elements of fiction. This takes time and opportunities for students to practice, revise, refine, and share their works of art need to be built into the classroom lessons. As learners gain more confidence, their work will be more detailed and nuanced. Hartman, Berg, Schuler, and Knauer (2019) explain:

Planning and implementing effective artistic response activities is a time commitment for teachers both before and during implementation in the classroom. Although this commitment might be a concern for teachers who are worried about working through a curriculum or overwhelmed by high-stakes testing, the outcome of using artistic response strategies is worth the time and effort. We encourage teachers not to give up if students initially need a little extra time and instruction in order to adopt the kind of rigorous thinking needed for the strategies, especially if they have not had much classroom experience with artistic response in the past. Over time, we hope students will use artistic response strategies with more confidence and more independence. (Hartman, Berg, Schulaer, and Knauer, 2019, p. 136).

Seven teachers, part of an Arts Integration Community of Practice, used rubrics to measure student learning and artistic skills. Examples from five sites, across a variety of academic content areas and age levels, and with students of varying disabilities, are included in this article. Results suggest that rubrics may be a useful tool for measuring the impact of arts integration, facilitating teacher planning, supporting collaboration between artists and educators, and helping students conduct self-assessments.

Egan (2005) uses the example of a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly to highlight the potential and possibility of imaginative and emotionally evocative thinking. Earlier I referred to Eisner’s (2002) interdisciplinary approach to teaching the theme of “metamorphosis.” In this paragraph, he illustrates how a teacher might identify why the topic of butterfly transformation is important. The seeming physical fragility of the butterfly contrasts with the power and strenghth of the butterfly’s ability to travel thousands of miles. His example can be applied to myriad topics across the discipline. Egan uses binary opposites and vivid imagery to describe metamorphosis:

Stop and think about just what it is about the butterfly’s transformations that are important and emotionally engaging. The life cycle of the butterfly demonstrates something almost unique in the degree of transformation it goes through. It is a study in oppositions: from the caterpillar that does almost nothing but eat to the butterfly that eats nothing, only sips nectar; from the dull, narrow chrysalis to the bright-winged jewel fo the air; from the largely immobile caterpillar to the butterfl that sometimes migrates more than a thousand miles; from the incessantly growing caterpillar to the butterfly that is unchanging after it emerges from the chrysalis, and so on. Most creatures, including ourselves, go through dramatic changes as we age, but virtually nothing else changes so astonishingly. Knowledge about the butterfly gives us a vivid insight into the wonder of the forms of life on our planet (p. 49).

Egan (2005) writes that “if you think of the lesson or unit as more like telling a good story than conveying a body of information, then the need to focus on how to tell the story as crisply as possible comes to the fore rather than th eattempt to meet sets of knowledge” (p. 248). In the novel The Great Gatbsy, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s characters often reflect irony in “binary opposites” (e.g. Jay Gatby’s great wealth vs. emotional loneliness or emptiness). Learners can find interesting anecdotes about the historical characters, writers, or the socio-cultural and politic dynamics going on at any given time in history. Drama and role play can be used when students play the characters in a given text. The rhythm, rhyme, and patterns can be identified in a short story such as D. H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner” or “The Telltale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe (words such as “uncanny,” “money,” and “madness” reoccur throughout the texts). Cultivating a sense of curiosity and wonder is central to Egan’s approach:

A sense of wonder and an emotional response to material are important in engaging students’ imaginations. To help students connect emotionally to the material, teachers need to first identify their own emotional attachment to it. So this first question asks the teacher to feel for what is wonderful about the topic. This can be difficult if the topic is something like the use of the comma! The trick, though, is to try to re-see the topic through the eyes of a child, to catch at what can stimulate the sense of wonder about even the most routine topics….(Cultivating a sense of wonder) asks the teacher to do something that is probably quite unfamiliar—to begin by feeling about the topic (Egan, 2005, p. 53).

Egan (2005) provides an excellent structure for awakening wonder and imagination in learning. Some steps include:

Evaluation. How can learning be consolidated in a way that leads to further interest and exploration of a topic? How can we ensure that learning has occurred and that the topic has been understood? (Egan, 2005, pp. 52-53). To learn more about the cognitive tools that Egan describes, please open the link here. Depth and detail can be added to Egan’s (2005) framework that suits a teachers own approach to teaching and learning. A framework like the “four column lesson plan” can easily be adapted to a “creative teaching framework” with your own specialized teaching and learning strategies.

Artists in the Schools : Extending and Advancing Creative Partnerships

Much can be learned from artists who work with students in the schools. Sculptors, painters, actors, dancers, poets, and story tellers have a wealth of experience and expertise to share in the educational context. In addition, students may also be able to apprentice at a community art space or take part in mentoring opportunities with artists in the wider community (local and through online opportunities internationally). Hall and Thomson (2017) identified a repertoire of pedagogic practices of artists that have important implications for teaching and learning. They were also able to identify through close observation, field notes, interviews, and film the specific characteristics of artists that worked to encourage students’ creative interests and abilities. The researchers developed a “conceptual toolkit” that enabled them to identify “specific characteristics of the pedagogies developed by the artists, to suggest ways in which they differ from pedagogies of the mainstream, and to make claims for their educational value” (Hall and Thompson, 2017, p. 4). Artists bring their own professional knowledge, art community connections, and creative practices to the educational context; as a result, students can learn a wider repertoire of skills that they might otherwise have. How might artists’ skills inform and extend the classroom teachers’ experienced knowledge and approach to curriculum development and teaching? What can be learned about the way students learn from artists?

Drawing on the work of Soja (1999) Hall and Thompson (2017) write about the “third space” where hybrid pedagogies evolved that did not happen regularly in a conventional classroom/space/time. In some cases the architecture of the school changes; the physical structure of the classroom was altered (in permeable schools, walls were knocked down to create new learning spaces), space was built outside, and the appearance of rooms and corridors changed. The “time” of lessons/learning was also altered and there was not a rigid time frame imposed on teaching a particular lesson. Hall and Thompson identified five components of the hybrid pedagogies “the approach to inclusion, the importance of choice and agency, the challenge of scale and ambition, the role of the absurd and the carnivalesque, and the lived experience of the present” (p.8). Artistic and creative practices were viewed as “a way of developing students’ sense of their own capability and agency, of their ability to resist manipulation and make distinctive, autonomous choices about means and purposes” (p.9). The learning context was less formal and more open and less risk averse. The artists’ approach to teaching and learning seemed to be more dynamic, spontaneous, and creative. Kinetic movement that demonstrated the importance of physical skills, gesture, and mime was highlighted by many artists. Story-making and storytelling involved physical movements that coordinated with emotions and experiences in the story. Students were challenged with “provocations” or objects, images, sounds, persons, events, or actions that generated curiosity. These provocations acted as catalysts to imaginative thinking, perspective taking, and creative learning. Rather than use commercially produced objects, the artists encouraged students to treasure, curate, and display everyday objects (e.g. photographs, textiles, etc.) that had personal meaning to the students. The artists took more risks in moving beyond the traditional classroom to encourage create learning (e.g. utilizing public areas in the community; gardens and local places). Performance and presentations encouraged active student engagement.

The artists also shared their own experiences of disappointments, successes, and frustration; in doing so, they invited meaningful discussion so that students might open up about their own experiences and challenges. “The artists’ own uses of analogy, anecdote, and personal history, combined with a freeing up of the classroom atmosphere, a widely shared interest in local and community stories, and a readiness to improvise and use drama tools, supported the creation of rich narrative environments in many classrooms” (p. 13). Hall and Thompson further noted that the artists were less likely to make assumptions about a learner’s creative potential:

One of the most notable things that we observed in this project, and that we had seen in previous research on the creative arts, was that artists had a different approach to inclusion. Rather than see that some children had special needs that had to be taken into account and therefore that teaching approaches had to be adjusted for them in some way (usually through a reduction of difficulty), the artists began with the view that all children and young people were capable of having ideas, making meanings and participating (cf. the argument made by Rancière 2004 about assuming universal capability, not incapability, as the starting point). If they saw that this was not happening, then the artists generally encouraged and persisted, rather than changed what they were doing. Because the pedagogies they used were open-ended and because they made explicit that there would be a range of ways in which children could participated, we often recorded artists explaining that nothing was either right or wrong; that there was no one way better than another; that doing the very best that you could was all that was required (Hall and Thompson, 2017,p. 8).

In sum, by considering a wide range of teaching and learning strategies and by including more informal learning opportunities, there is a greater likelihood that the creative potential of learners can flourish Students can be inspired by artists who act as mentors, role models, and facilitators. Educators, administrators, and program planners could also be inspired to re-vision alternative spaces for learning that are more colourful, dynamic, and culturally inclusive. The value of extending learning opportunities to include more community based learning (theatre, community gardens, artistic ateliers, dance schools, etc.) can further enrich the development of multi-modal literacies.

To learn more about artists in the schools, please open the link here.