My principal came into my eighth grade, year-long classroom yesterday, and within ten minutes had de-motivated several art students with comments and/or body language, about their work. We've just finished mobiles of birds, made from flat reed and paper. Several are beautiful, and several are awkward--but hey, they're eighth graders. My principal has no warm feelings towards the visual arts, probably because she was brought up in a rural area herself. (She has a Ed.D, though, so she should know about motivation.) In the interests of my students, I'm thinking of preparing a document for dissemination school-wide, about comments that are APPROPRIATE to art students.
I seem to remember something years ago on this listserv about such appropriate comments. Anybody have any suggestions?
