MANAGING THE ART ROOM

Nina Silverman

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.

Expanding the List
In an attempt to distill the information into a simpler paradigm—one that students could easily remember—I extended these concepts by formulating a list of words that also start with the letter P. My original list of eight has grown as students have added to it, making me believe that they are really thinking about the principles and putting them into practice.

Here is what we have generated (take note that the word perfect is not included): play, practice, patience, plan, prioritize (i.e., organize), prepare, persevere, participate, possibility, produce, pride, purpose, passion, present, ponder, partner, pace, politeness, preserve, professional, and “phun.”

Benefits to Parents and Teachers
When speaking to parents about the visual arts program at my school, Iʼve noticed that they seem to understand and connect to these words better than art speak.

The goal is for students to apply this approach to art in all kinds of situations in which they learn, create, solve problems, and evaluate their own effectiveness.

The P words, or artistic behaviors, have become the anchor for teaching and managing the art studio. Speaking of the studio, I now refer to it as such, instead of the “art room.” The perception is different. There is an added layer of professionalism, and it conveys to parents and other teachers the value of art as an integral component of students’ schooling experience.

The P words also serve as a guide for designing units of study that incorporate and address many of the new national visual arts standards. Our department also partners with the lower and middle school teams to develop units that complement and enrich topics of study in other areas such as language arts, social studies, and science.

Benefits to Students
Not only do these P words unlock the fundamental goals of the art curriculum for parents, they also make artistic principles more accessible for students. The term practice drawing has a different connotation to a youngster than the word sketch. The term purpose can take on several meanings and often becomes the rationale or Essential Question.

I also use the list at the end of class as a way to bring closure to the day’s session by asking, “Which of the Ps did you practice today and how?” The goal is for students to apply this approach to art in all kinds of situations in which they learn, create, solve problems, and evaluate their own effectiveness for the rest of their lives.

Nina J. Silverman is a visual arts educator for grades 3–8 at Sanford School in Hockessin, Delaware. silvermann@sanfordschool.org