Subversive Controls
I was reading a thread about a teacher's latest organization form on the feed of a Facebook group I moderate (Teaching for Artistic Behavior Art Educators) the other night when something struck me. It wasn't an OMG moment but more of a wondering moment. The group has grown immensely over the last year to over 5000 members. So with that growth, we have had to deal with all kinds of people, mostly good-intentioned "newbies" to the TAB pedagogy and a few teachers who only want to sell us something. The thing that I wondered about was how many times new teachers use some kind of form, either pre-project, during project or post project that they have their students fill out. These forms could be a preplanning sheet, a progress monitor, a rubric, artist statement, studio tracker or any other form the teacher developed to "track" student learning. I wondered why does it seem that teachers transfer their need to be organized to their students? In a TAB environment, you give up a large amount of control. It's a HUGE shift in teaching. In a TAB classroom, the student is the artist, the classroom is their studio and they figure out what it is that artists do? Now I am guilty as the next person in creating these forms for kids, that for the most part are forgotten and never get filled out. The reason is that it impedes their creative flow. I teach 850+ elementary students that I get to see once every four days for 40 minutes. That's not a lot of time. I want the time they spend in the art room making and creating, not filling out a form to make me or administration happy.
But back to the original thought. Is the filling out of forms a subversive way to gain more control over kids? Maybe. Is it a form for the kids or for the teacher? If a student comes into an art class and fills out a form that tells the teacher what they are planning to do on a given day, working in the drawing center with pencil drawing horses from observation. How does this help the student? They already know what they want to do. All the planning has been done in their own mind. What happens when a student is inspired by something happening in the room? Do they continue with the drawing or do they move towards the new idea?
As Candi Price mentioned in her response:
"I am a control freak. When I decided to go full-TAB, I had a very difficult time letting go of the control. I did the W.O.W. requirements, the deadlines, the tracking of centers, the planning sheets, the collaboration sheets, the requiring students to choose a new center after 3 weeks, the required reflection every week, an artist's statement on every project, etc. Basically, I was grasping for control and not trusting the students to be able to do meaningful work without my interference. With every controlling decision came a negative response from my students. I was drowning in unintended consequences. This biggest thing I noticed was that students were running to me and asking things like, "Am I done, yet?" and "What do I do now?". This started to wear on me and I had to look at what I was doing that made kids NOT be autonomous learners (which is what I wanted in the first place.) By putting so many requirements on my students and inserting my authority on so many aspects of their learning, they were constantly checking with me, wanting to please me, and some were constantly fighting/questioning me. They just wanted to make stuff. Period. Eventually, I let go of all of those requirements. (I keep them in a special place for students that may need them as an intervention to help them be more autonomous.) As for my controlling ways, I'm very picky about other things. Like class routines, opening centers, how centers are set up, what materials are available at what grade levels, how I want things cleaned, etc. I still have control, but I'm using it in ways that affect the structure and management of the class, NOT the students."
The Art room is very different from its general classroom friends. We aren't under the microscope and we don't have any standardized tests to capitulate to. But the skills we develop and teach are in great demand. The art room is not a place to install general classroom constraints just to please people who are uneducated about democratic and child-centered education. So is it a bad idea to have kids fill out these kinds forms? It's ultimately up to you as a teacher as long as the purpose is to help the kids and not to subversively control kids.
But back to the original thought. Is the filling out of forms a subversive way to gain more control over kids? Maybe. Is it a form for the kids or for the teacher? If a student comes into an art class and fills out a form that tells the teacher what they are planning to do on a given day, working in the drawing center with pencil drawing horses from observation. How does this help the student? They already know what they want to do. All the planning has been done in their own mind. What happens when a student is inspired by something happening in the room? Do they continue with the drawing or do they move towards the new idea?
As Candi Price mentioned in her response:
"I am a control freak. When I decided to go full-TAB, I had a very difficult time letting go of the control. I did the W.O.W. requirements, the deadlines, the tracking of centers, the planning sheets, the collaboration sheets, the requiring students to choose a new center after 3 weeks, the required reflection every week, an artist's statement on every project, etc. Basically, I was grasping for control and not trusting the students to be able to do meaningful work without my interference. With every controlling decision came a negative response from my students. I was drowning in unintended consequences. This biggest thing I noticed was that students were running to me and asking things like, "Am I done, yet?" and "What do I do now?". This started to wear on me and I had to look at what I was doing that made kids NOT be autonomous learners (which is what I wanted in the first place.) By putting so many requirements on my students and inserting my authority on so many aspects of their learning, they were constantly checking with me, wanting to please me, and some were constantly fighting/questioning me. They just wanted to make stuff. Period. Eventually, I let go of all of those requirements. (I keep them in a special place for students that may need them as an intervention to help them be more autonomous.) As for my controlling ways, I'm very picky about other things. Like class routines, opening centers, how centers are set up, what materials are available at what grade levels, how I want things cleaned, etc. I still have control, but I'm using it in ways that affect the structure and management of the class, NOT the students."
The Art room is very different from its general classroom friends. We aren't under the microscope and we don't have any standardized tests to capitulate to. But the skills we develop and teach are in great demand. The art room is not a place to install general classroom constraints just to please people who are uneducated about democratic and child-centered education. So is it a bad idea to have kids fill out these kinds forms? It's ultimately up to you as a teacher as long as the purpose is to help the kids and not to subversively control kids.
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