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Lesson Plans


Re: Questions About Art Revisited

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Becky Alexander (Bekalex)
Sat, 30 Nov 1996 15:02:06 -0700

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>I have found that my students are not intellectually advanced enough - they
>are still pretty much concrete, even in 5th grade - to create their own art
>in reaction to a thought I might throw out. But they are *very* grateful
>when I teach them a technique because then they have one more tool in their
>arsenal which will enable them to create when the muse hits them.

This has been a most interesting and thoughful thread! Thanks all!

Memory lane: I was a Senior in High School before I could actually
transfer art lessons to an "idea" and create. And it wasn't in an art class
either. (I learned techniques and practiced skills in art classes although
God knows a couple of teachers tried.)

It was in an honors humanities class. We were to choose a famous
quote and create a work of art to express it. I don't know why it worked
in that context and not in the art class. (Was it the expectation of where
ideas belong? Was it the idea that the "quality" of technique would not be
judged as critically by either fellow students or teacher so there was more
freedom? I don't know.)

My work was taken from the line "Either we shall all hang together
or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." I used a collage of paper
arrows to demonstrate the point and got an A-. A friend hung hair curlers
off of coat hangers in a mobile to demonstrate some line or another. We all
felt free.

I remember this lesson 30 years later. Must have been something
there....

Becky Alexander
Porterville, Ca.

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