Thinking about transforming, change, moving forward, out of the box…
Some days I just want to go for a paddle...
Lately I have been thinking about transformation, partially because I am aware that if arts educators become engaged in the statewide arts assessement initiative that is underway, that what we do as arts educators will transform. I say that based on what I have heard from the 18 arts teacher leaders that were identified in the spring and attended the assessment institute in August. What they experienced impacted the way they think about teaching and learning. And now into school for two weeks I am hearing that it has impacted the way they are teaching.
All employees at the Department of Education recently were asked to read Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning by Bea McGarvey and Charles Schwahn. To put it in a few words, it is about making inside of school be a more similar world to the outside of school. It is about providing opportunities for students to learn on an individual needs basis. To put it practically: I can purchase any song I want on iTunes, at any time of the day or night, in very little time. I can listen to it on my computer, pipe it through a large sound system, listen on my ipod or a variety of other devises. I can charge the cost to my credit card and not even have to pull the card out of my wallet because the system knows me or at least my card number. How can education mirror this? How can school meet individual and personal learning needs? At the Department meeting that followed we talked about what we might do to support an environment like this in schools across Maine.
I have been coming across articles and blogs that talk about how most of our schools are working with a very old model, one that was created for the farmers and factory workers. In fact, this is the 93rd year of the system we presently have in place. In this blog post written by Seth Godin called Back to (the wrong) school I am provided with the opportunity to think about what goes on day to day in schools. My brain gets pushed on when I read Mr. Godin’s blog posts. If you’re wondering why we should transform just read his post and I am guessing it will sense.
And my friend and colleague Ed Brazee sent me an link to an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Arts and Academe section, September 8, 2011. The article is called Desired Learning Outcome: Go a Little Nuts. The article is written by Charles O’Connor. It’s an interesting article that talks about the value of music, art, theater, dance, and film courses at the higher ed. level. He addressed the need for arts courses since we hear so much these days about innovation and creative thinking. Students in arts courses are naturally innovating and thinking creatively, always have, always will (hopefully). Some of his article including how accountability is important to the arts these days like they have been in other parts of the curriculum for years came through loud and clear. He asserts that accountability and innovation and creative thinking fight against each other. Hmmmmm….
His last three paragraphs I say “yay” to so I am re-printing all three so perhaps you go and read the article in its entirety.
The true value of the arts, the reason why they are essential, is that they are the last bastion of uncensored individuality. They ask students to think fresh and do things well. The arts are not the only disciplines on campus to require that, but rarely is it so explicitly central to the education at hand.
Arts students are used to being outside the mainstream; used to the routine risk, if not the fact, of failure; and used to envisioning and defining success in bold new ways. One is reminded of how Steve Jobs came to work one day after seeing a Cuisinart food processor and directed his staff to start making computers that look like that. Everyone thought he was nuts.
Couldn’t we use a little more unconventional thinking, and a lot less conformity on campus? Isn’t being a little nuts sometimes not just the acceptable, but the desirable, learning outcome?
This is a great time to be in the field of education. The arts are essential and we do fit into a mass customized learning world. Will you transform to meet the world of the 21st century learner?????
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