As I work with students, I always promote the concepts of play, practice, and perseverance as we approach their exploration of art, which will perhaps lead to them discovering a passion. Scholarship and theory have influenced this approach as well. I love Daniel H. Pink’s books Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, as well as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughanʼs Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, and Katherine M. Douglas and Diane B. Jaquith’s Engaging Learners Through Artmaking: Choice-Based Art Education in the Classroom.
As I read these works, however, it occurred to me that the four concepts that are threaded throughout the books are not enough. The more I thought about it, other positive words relating to lifelong skills began popping out all over the place.
