Photo by Mike Hazard
A teacher at Heart
“I am a teacher at heart, and there are moments in the classroom when I can hardly hold the joy. When my students and I discover uncharted territory to explore, when the pathway out of a thicket opens up before us, when our experience is illumined by the lightning-life of the mind---then teaching is the finest work I know.”
Parker J. Palmer, "The Courage to Teach”
Parker Palmer’s book on the responsibilities, practice, and spirituality of teaching engaged me from first page. I felt a kinship and understanding of the joy and perils of the teaching life he presents. Effective and inspiring teaching is rooted in the identity and integrity of the teacher and their authentic participation in the learning community.
In a teaching studio or classroom the teacher formal challenge is to share their acquired knowledge, skills and experiences while providing methods and strategies for students to actively learn, building skills and techniques of their own simultaneously engaging in deep thinking, problem solving, and reflection. I believe in a Constructivist approach with a Sociocultural perspective, a student centered cooperative learning community, a place that actively engages all students from the place they enter. In this classroom, the teacher facilitates a learning environment where students make decision and choices, where real world applications are numerous and concrete where equity matters.
The responsibility of being a teacher is inter-personal and intra-personal. It is the relationships between learners, between teacher and student that fosters learning. I have discovered through experience and failure that in order to develop the mind, to strengthen the hand, the eye and the reach the teacher must rtouch the heart, initiate trusting relationships, building confidence, trust and rigor in the learning community. This is done through sincere caring, an awareness of students’ personal and emotional needs paired with the high standards, challenge, questions, transparent learning performance expectations, and critical reflection and feedback.
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As I prepare for incoming students I am faced with that same nervous feeling that I encountered on my very first teaching day. I feel apprehensive knowing my responsibility to each student - no matter the age - who walks into our classroom community. To make certain each student finds success I must continually rethink how and why I teach, how they learn, and how information and experiences are created. I must update, reboot, rethink and challenge the preconceptions and assumptions I hold about the content, education and my students.
Central to my teaching life is service and responsibility to others. Teaching means to create a learning classroom environment together that is supportive, reflective, and rigorous yet requires that we take our experience and learning out into the larger community. Working with others, sharing insights, raising questions, problem solving through making, thinking and questioning in the arts and through the arts, we change ourselves and those those we touch.
“...When my students and I discover uncharted territory to explore, when the pathway out of a thicket opens up before us, when our experience is illuminated by the lightning-life of the mind---then teaching is the finest work I know .”
For me learning, teaching, and leading come directly from ‘when the students and I discover’. Together we are greater and wiser than separate. In a place of trust and safety which encourages risk taking we come to knowledge not attainable alone. I see each classroom, each new group of students as small learning environment that feeds into and fulfills the needs of the larger community. When we address the substantive questions of teaching coupled with an attitude and capability toward a life of learning we develop partners who become effective collaborators in the larger arts and social community. . . . then teaching is the finest work I know. (1) ________________________________________________________________
For me teaching is an action which I hope to offer to others. In 1995, I was asked to create a Teaching Artist Preparation Program for the College of Visual Arts (CVA) in St. Paul. It would be the first accredited Teaching Artist programming in higher education for the visual artist. It has been not only my goal but my passion to help young artists discover and develop the personal skills and abilities necessary to work as teaching artist in the larger community. Believing that in order to connect into the larger community one needs to participate in it, I brought that community into the classroom and take the classroom to the community. The programming I developed for The College of Visual Arts in St. Paul Minnesota ran for 15 years engaging thousands of community members from children to older adults across a diverse population engaging hundred of BFA students teaching in community through the arts. CVA sadly closed its doors in 2013 after a productive and unique 80 year history, but the Teaching Artist programming found a new and renewed home at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) in Minneapolis as one of the first of its kind to be offered in higher education. MCAD's vision and commitment to young artists - drawers, painters, sculptors, animators, comic artists, photographers, graphic designers and more - has supported them by growing their teaching skills and providing real world experience as teaching artist in the community teaching 'in and through the arts'. This work has brought me immense satisfaction as my students have gone on to change and engage communities in ever increasing numbers. In my ever naive and positive commitment, I continue to believe that the arts can change the world. One person at a time.