Chapter 2: Teaching as a Practical Art

In English language arts, there are opportunities for students to tap into their emotions and imagination: creative writing, writing about visual art, artistic collages, drama, and self-directed projects can encourage students to use language in a way that moves away from the limitations of literal description. Through variation in content, students also can develop an ability to “shift frames” and develop expertise in varied forms and across disciplines. An educational challenge, as Egan and Judson (2016) note is to “keep the mind awake, energetic, and imaginative.”(p.8). The “quality of the [learning] journey” is more educationally significant than “the speed at which the destination is reached” (p.16). First and foremost, teachers themselves need to role-model imaginative and creative thinking. Creative self-efficacy, notes Eisner (2002), can be encouraged when students become more confident about their capacities to be creative. A flexible and dynamic curriculum would move away from predetermined aims and objectives; a rigid adherence to a particular plan is not a necessity for creative learning (p.10). Using an artistic metaphor, an imaginative and creative curriculum is more open-ended and improvisational. “The more we feel the pressure to standardize, the more we need to remind ourselves of what we should not standardize” (p.11).

An artist is someone “who develop[s] the ideas, the sensibilities, the skills, and the imagination to create work that is well proportioned, skillfully executed, and imaginative, regardless of the domain in which an individual works.” (Eisner, 2002, p. 8). From the perspective, the educator can also be viewed as an artist and architect of innovation and imagination. Eisner (2002) writes:

The experience the arts make possible is not restricted to what we call the fine arts. The sense of vitality and the surge of emotion we feel when touched by one of the arts can also be secured in the ideas we explore with students in the challenges we encounter in doing critical inquiry…The arts are [also] a means of exploring our own interior landscape. When the arts genuinely move us, we discover what it is we are capable of experiencing. In this sense, the arts discover the contour of our emotional selves. They provide resources for experiencing the range and varieties of our responsive capacities (p.11).

The traits associated with creativity can also be applied to conceptions of “effective” and transformative teaching (Magro, 2001, 2019). A challenge for teachers is to see themselves more as researchers, co-learners, artists and educational architects, and not only curriculum planners and content experts. Creativity in literacy learning is rooted in a conception of learning that is dynamic, multi-layered, holistic, and mysterious (Magro & Honeyford,  2019). One of the great tools for doing this is the sense of wonder, and the sense that allows us to continue to see the world as wonder-full” (p.101). Particular characteristics such as the teacher’s empathy, compassion, flexibility, enthusiasm and expertise are vital if a learning climate that nurtures imagination and creativity can thrive (Magro & Honeyford,  2019). Creative teachers explore multiple pathways to learning and this can be done by connecting literacy to art and by connecting literature and non-fiction to other disciplines such as psychology, cultural studies and ethnography, history, world issues, and media.

Storytelling and Personal Narratives to Encourage Literacy Learning

Storytelling is fundamentally about making sense of worlds past, present, and future….Storytelling is a way of theorizing about the way the world works (Jackson and Shaw, 2006, p. 102).

Storytelling can be viewed as the foundation of so many art forms: visual art, sculpture, novels, non-fiction, dance, music, mixed media, and drama. Carl Leggo (2008) writes that stories are relational and reciprocal and as we tell our stories and listen to each other’s stories, “new steps on the living journey that shapes a life” can occur (p.109). He notes that we each have multiple stories that are subject to change and new understanding. These stories emerge from our lived experience and memories, shaped by our positionality and the cultural context where we locate ourselves. Senehi (2013) writes:

Personal and fictional storytelling has the ability to depict the inextricably complex interactions of society and the individual in multiple settings and dimensions in social life….Storytelling is a powerful and also accessible means to explore how the central issues of our times affect people’s lives in different ways. Storytelling is a flexible form that can be used in innumerable different types of activities and programs. It is always about identity, relationship, and meaning. This has the potential to create a generative space that allows for diversity within and toward problem solving and a just society (p.127).

As a catalyst for learners to explore emotions, images, metaphors, heroic narratives, and cultural diversity, the neglected art of storytelling can be an invitation for students to learn more about themselves and each other (Egan & Judson, 2016). Autobiographical writing and storytelling can be a catalyst for learners to express complex experiences, emotions, values, and beliefs. I have spent many years teaching Indigenous and newcomer youth and adults. My immigration research involved the participation of adult learners from the Middle East, Africa, South America and part of south-east Asia. Many knew the hardship of war, famine, drought, and the loss of parents, siblings, and close friends. The students’ remarkable stories of courage and perseverance have remained with me throughout the years. Many traversed diverse geographic, cultural, and social landscapes as they sought to build a new life in Canada. Through reading powerful narratives and by encouraging students to “tell their stories” either through oral storytelling or through writing, I was able to strengthen students’ trust, agency, intercultural empathy, and communicative competence. The sense of optimism, faith, resourcefulness, resilience, and courage emerged from my students’ accounts of surviving war, trauma, and the arduous journey of immigration. A young Sudanese man describes his experience:

I grew up in a small village and my job as a young Dinka boy was herding cattle. The civil war in Sudan changed everything. I was lucky to escape into the forest. Some of us crossed the river Gilo and made it to Kakuma, the largest refugee camp in Kenya. The older boys and the elders became like our parents…I used to enjoy listening to their stories. Life in the refugee camp still affects you….regardless of your age and regardless of your ambition…Looking at the larger picture makes you feel sad, even today. Some people walked 1,000 miles without their shoes. I lost friends who died. When you become a refugee, you are no longer a citizen. You have to depend on the United Nations to help you in the camp. Some people were shot or kidnapped. Both my parents died. I often asked myself, ‘Why was life so hard?’ (Magro, 2008/2009, p.85).

Newcomer adults often view education and the development of literacy as a necessary foundation; education is viewed as a precious opportunity and gift to “re-start” their lives in positive ways. As a teacher, you are in a position not only to teach important skills in communication, but you have an opportunity to teach skills for life. In designing and co-creating the curriculum with my students, I also stressed the value of integrating emotional and social skills such as empathy, self-awareness, motivation, transcultural understanding, and creative problem solving. Gee’s (1992) idea of the classroom as an opportunity to build “a community of learners” continues to be important as I plan and teach university classes with teacher candidates in English language arts. Emotions impact learning and if explored in ways that lead to self-awareness and personal agency, significant personal and social change can occur (Magro & Pierce, 2016). When applied in a transformative way, storytelling can engage learners in a conversation and dialogue that can lead to different forms of empowerment. Senehi (2013) writes that “storytelling can help people examine their past, understand the present, and shape a vision of the future that is at the core of creating peace and social justice” (p.121).

In Adult Learning and la Recherche Féminine, Elizabeth Chapman Hoult (2012) explains that the study of mythology and Western literary classics such as Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, for example, can open up subsequent literary readings; learners can connect familiar archetypes and narratives to new texts and the texts that they may create about their own lives. She suggests that each text can complement and illuminate the other; learners have an opportunity to explore the way a particular character addresses a life crisis or challenge. Learning and literacy can become a form of resistance and survival, despite the situational, personal, and institutional barriers that individuals face. Texts can illuminate and problematize timely themes and issues that arise in an individual’s life. Chapman Hoult (2012) emphasizes that a unique feature of transformative teaching is to create a climate where resilience can thrive. Too often, educational narratives have reflected “models of exclusion” and not inclusion. Autobiographical writing departs from the “familiar, logocentric understanding of the world” in its effort to explore new and alternative ways of knowing (p.17).

Revelation, exploration, discovery, and liberation are associated, for Chapman Hoult, with transformational teaching and learning. Learning journals, concept-focused autobiographical writing on particular themes (overcoming hardship, a chapter in my life, mentors, etc.), as well as instructional case studies of particular autobiographies can help widen a learner’s sphere of understanding human emotion. Writing reflects the ways individuals think, recall, and interpret experiences “The stories of significant transitions in throughout life, such as landing a first job, losing a parent, coping with major illness, or retiring from a career, when considered collectively express the meaning one makes of developmental growth throughout one’s life” (Clark & Rossiter, p.63).

Exploring personal stories and narratives through drama can also be a creative and powerful lens to encourage literacy learners. Contemporary Canadian forum theatre groups like Sarasváti Productions (www.sarasvatiproductions.com) concentrate on timely issues such as newcomers and immigration, mental health, and women’s rights. In Home 2.0 the theatre participants are youth who recently arrived from different corners of the world; the theatre script revolves around the challenges, hopes, and fears they face. The participants’ personal stories form the basis of a theatre script. Oral histories that are documented through digital storytelling, web pages, blogs, and collages that integrate new literacies are additional creative ways of self-expression that invite dialogue and conversation (Ohler, 2013).

Dimensions of creativity include a willingness to take risks, a high tolerance for complexity, the ability to discover and find new problems, flexibility and mental mobility, intrinsic motivation and a strong sense of self-direction (Jackson, Oliver, Shaw, & Wisdom, 2006; Sternberg and Lubart, 1995). Optimism and perseverance are personal attributes that creative individuals possess. Skills in critical thinking, synthesis, and communication, often through story-telling are additional features that Jackson and Sinclair (2006) refer to in their analysis of creative pedagogical styles across the discipline in higher education. Sternberg and Lubart (1995) write that successfully intelligent individuals succeed, in part, because:

[Individuals] achieve a functional balance among a ‘triarchy’ of abilities: analytical abilities, which are used to analyze, evaluate, judge, compare, and contrast; creative abilities which are needed to create, invent, discover, imagine; practical abilities which are used to apply, utilize, implement, and activate. Successfully intelligent people are not necessarily high in all three of these abilities, but find a way to exploit the patterns of abilities they may have. (Sternberg and Lubart, 1995 cited in Jackson, Shaw, and Wisdom, 2006, p. 124).

Learning outcomes are not predicted in advance and students would have multiple opportunities to practice, refine, and develop their skills. Assessment is more formative and the course should leave a learner with a sense of curiosity and the motivation to continue reading and research.

A Creative Classroom and an Artist’s Atelier: Opening New Spaces for Learning

We can use the metaphor of the artist’s atelier to describe a creative classroom open to new ideas. In a literacy classroom that is a creative atelier, teachers would design the “architecture” of learning environments by co-creating and co-designing the curriculum with their students (Magro, 2018). There is a freedom from rigid routine encouraging opportunities to imagine, to make mistakes, and to take risks(Magro, 2009). Interpretations of texts are more open-ended, and through self-directed and collaborative learning ventures, more complex and nuanced understanding occurs.

Transformative movements in art and architecture such as the Impressionist movement, the Bauhaus movement, and Post-Expressionist artistic styles challenged viewers to see art in a different way. In moving beyond a technical perspective of learning and education, I look to art and architecture as a foundation to explore creative literacy education. In many ways, the literacy classroom can be viewed as an artist’s atelier or a creative space where students can imagine new possibilities for themselves and the world. Just as a Monet landscape or a Van Gogh self-portrait can be a catalyst to see light and composition in a new way, so too might a novel, poem, film, or related text be explored as a way to understand human nature and the environment. In his book The Arts and the Creation of Mind, Elliot W. Eisner (2002) writes that students today are shaped by a variety of events and experiences and that studying the arts is a process that can “emancipate the spirit and provide an outlet for the creative impulse” (p.32). He observes that:

The arts provide permission to engage the imagination as a means for exploring new possibilities. The arts liberate us from the literal; they enable us to step into the shoes of others and to experience vicariously what we have not experienced directly. Cultural development depends upon such capacities, and the arts play an extraordinarily important role in their contribution to such an aim. (Eisner, 2002, p.10).

Educational experiences should provide students with opportunities “to develop their persistence, to explore their individuality; to share what they have learned with others, and to learn from others what they themselves do not yet know.” (p.69). A dynamic learning contextshould be evolving, inspiring, complex, and creative in a way that would challenge learners to develop a range of skills. Creative learning would encourage observation, critical insight, reflection, and acting on new insights.In Pedagogy of the Oppressed Paulo Freire (1997) emphasized how integral power and agency are in literacy learning. Too often, marginalized individuals’ voices are unheard or negated. Popular theatre, reflective writing, and discussion groups could provide opportunities for individuals to critically reflect on oppressive societal structures that impeded the realization of personal and career goals. A new vision of education and a “world curriculum” that integrates global citizenship education, environmental education, and education for peace and social justice challenges educators to think out of the box.

Conversations are needed to explore how we can restore a sense of wonder and imaginative thinking in our classrooms. One of Canada’s best-known Indigenous painters was Norval Morrisseau (1932-2007).  Morrisseau was the creator of the Woodland School of Art. Morrisseau used the power of art as a way to communicate the magic of his ancestral stories.  The dramatic colours in his artistic visions reflect a reverence for the majesty of nature, and the mystery of the Indigenous myths and legends that transcend barriers of culture, nationality, language, and history. In his paintings, he portrays universal mysteries and paradoxes of life: birth and death; sickness and health; family and belonging; existence and being; and, transcendence. Morrisseau’s mythic murals depicted the legends of the Anishinabe (Ojibwa) people and the cultural and political tensions between European and English traditions that impact the Indigenous way of life. Morrisseau’s paintings tell a story of existential struggles, spiritual themes,  the possibility of redemption, the power of healing, and mysticism.  Carmen Robertson (2023) writes that Morrisseau’s unique artistic style and “creativity pushed the boundaries of visual storytelling” (p. 1).  Morrisseau explained: “I have as much interest in my people as any anthropologist and I have studied our culture and lore. My aim is to reassemble the pieces of a once proud culture, and to show the dignity and bravery of my people” (Sellar, 2005, pp. 86-87).  He further explained: “My art speaks and will continue to speak, transcending barriers of nationality, language, and other forces that may be divisive, fortifying the spirit that has always been the foundation  of the Ojibwa people” (Morrisseau, 2005). Learners can be motivated by Morrisseau’s art to explore their own personal perspectives of life journeys. Compelling personal narratives as creative expressions can be viewed as works of art. An exploration of the story behind a myth or legend can be a catalyst for students to further research from cross-cultural perspectives; in doing so, they may develop a greater appreciation and insight into the way art, storytelling, and ancient myths influence present day customs, morals, and manners across cultures.To view examples of art by Norval Morrisseau and to read about his contributions to the art world in Canada and internationally please open the link here.

Students can also create stories based on landscape paintings such as the one featured here: