hunting for credentials

I will feel more comfortable holding my instructor’s position at the college once I have earned a Masters degree. I have been thinking about this for a while. Recently there was an ad in the Newspaper that caught the attention of one of my students and she sent the information to me. As a result I’m applying as a student to the Simon Fraser University MEd in Art Education program. It’s a community Master’s program which will take place in Prince George from September 2009 until Summer 2011. Classes run on the weekends and over the summer which will allow me to continue working at the college. I have been looking for a graduate program that will fit into my budget and family lifestyle. Not only does program do that, it happens to be in an area of keen interest for me. I’m especially interested in Art-Practice as a form of research, studio-based inquiry and connecting the ‘Art as Social Practice’ movement to traditional aboriginal art.

So I am sending thanks out to the student whose name is withheld to protect her identity…(but you know who you are!) as she has applied also. We should know by the end of April if we have been accepted. Until then, I  hold my breath.

Kid’s Self Portraits

I meant to post these during the summer, but other things got in the way. These self-portraits were drawn by my kids during week long art lessons with Mom. It was interesting to see the progression.  I am not sure if my lessons made an improvement to their drawings or not. They progress from left to right with the left one being the drawing they made on their own, without my guidance.

watch the birdie?

I thought I would let you in on the drawing process from my point of view. I have been experimenting with ways to document artistic process. This ‘.gif ‘ image cycles through several stages of a drawing I did using an effective new pastel product called PanPastel in combination with graphite.

stats…

Today is the first day of the new semester. It always feels like a fresh start at the beginning of each term. I thought I was ready for this week, but I keep finding little tasks that I have forgotten. I think I will make myself a pre-semester check list for next time. It became difficult to stay organized when I took on a full course load. I now have 3 sets of students in two separate programs, 4 courses, and one ‘team-teach’ course. There is a lot to organize. Last semester I had over 150 computer files handed in to me just for ‘one’ assignment in one class. These courses are complicated to teach as they deal with creative software that is constantly changing. Last semester I taught students to use 6 different pieces of software, digital cameras, scanners, lighting kits, and 5 different drawing and painting styles. I marked 279 assignments, facilitated 163 critiques, gave 35 lectures and tallied 36 final grades. The number of meals I made at home were…. ha! I had you going, didn’t I? I think it would be interesting to keep statistics at home as well as work. Then when you ask yourself, “Where did the time go?” You will be able to answer yourself accurately. In the meantime, I started this semester with 1 lecture as of today…have a great new year!

completion

It feels so good to reach the end of something that you have worked so hard at. The fall semester is finished at the College where I teach. I have submitted final marks for everyone….my students, if you are reading this, breath easy, you all passed. Excellent work and I am looking forward to the learning we will do next semester. It it will be like a fresh field of snow. In the meantime I am going to rest, spend time with my kids, play, eat…maybe too much, and enjoy the many Blessings that are in my life! Shalom, peace to all over the holidays!

The Path of Least Resistance

It is Sunday. A day of work for me. I keep Saturday as a day of rest (see commandment #4 in the 10 commandments). My whole family does, therefore Sunday becomes a day of work for us. Typically I spend Sundays planning the next week of teaching. I have 4 classes to plan for, 3 in New Media: Multimedia (2nd year course), Intro to the Web (1st year course), Illustration (1st year course), and 1 in Fine Art: First Nations Art and Technology (1st year course).  Most of the classes have a digital element using software of various  persuasions and the lesson plans must be  updated every 6 months to a year to keep up with changes in the industry. Just that alone can make a person insane! A seasoned teacher of Fine Art at the high school level gave me this advice: ” Don’t try to keep up with the software, you’ll never do it! Just structure your classes as a series of problems to be solved, the software being one of the tools used.” I knew this, I used it all the time when homeschooling, but somehow I did not transfer the technique directly to my digital classes. I gave out problem solving assignments, but still thought I had to be the software guru as well. The students expect it, but realistically they will not have access to me at home, or after graduation, so they might as well start solving these problems on their own, right now. Perhaps human nature can be compared to water, if not challenged, it will take the path of least resistance.

decisions…

are those choices that I am not good at making. I have an opportunity to teach an extra class at the College of New Caledonia this fall in the New Media Program, “Web I”. The problem is that I am a bit rusty with my HTML. Oh, I could brush up over the summer you say, yes, that is true, but then I also had other projects in the making for the summer. It would be good for me to do this because I would use the creation of my own website as the guinea pig to refresh me. I would make more money in the fall, I would enjoy being with the students, but my shoulder would hurt from the extra use. That repetitive strain injury always returns if I spend too much time on the machine. What to do?

waste not…

One of the assignments I had the ‘Design History’ students work on this semester yielded some interesting results. They were to find and present a controversial art or Design piece. That is where I was introduced to the Cloaca Machine. Created by Belgian conceptual artist Wim Delvoye, this machine can be fed like a human, it then produces waste like a human which Wim packages and sells investment shares in. Yep, if you are an art collector, you can invest in sh*t art’. What a comment on the whole pretentious art collecting scene! Apparently the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has one; and Wim has been successful in selling shares. You know what they say, ‘do what you love and the money will come’.

think of yourself as a coach?

Idea #18 from the mini handbook How to Improve Student Learning* tells me I need to do this. It also tells me to be sure the students are performing for me and not the other way around. How many times have I felt like I was performing? I remember my first try at teaching adults. I was asked to present on using the internet to disseminate research information for a forestry grad class at UNBC. The students sat there looking at me with sleepy eyes. No matter what I said or did up front, I failed to impress them. Several of them began a ‘wave’ of yawning that knew no end. A couple of people folded up their books and replaced them in their backpacks. As Idea #18 says, I should have ‘blown the whistle’, I needed to ‘coach’, rather than to ‘impart imformation’. I have since applied this to my teaching. Now, if only I could apply it to my parenting.

*How to Improve Student Learning, Dr. Richard Paul, and Dr. Linda Elder, published by The Foundation for Critical Thinking

MFA the new MBA…

Or so says the Harvard Business Review (February, 2004), Daniel H. Pink, who claims that “an arts degree is now perhaps the hottest credential in the world of business.” This is exciting news to me, even though it is potentially 2 years old. I guess it takes that long for revelation to travel all the way to Prince George. September 2006, Frieze magazine discusses the demand for interdisciplinary studies to feed the creative economies. This is in action at IDEO who designs,’products, services, environments and experiences’. Its employees work in interdisciplinary teams whose collaborative ideas and ’stimulating creative hybrids’(frieze,The Art Market, R. Jones)are the natural order of business. Innovation is a desired skill!

I think I’ll be going ahead with my decision to pursue a MFA(MAster of Fine Arts)at Emily Carr College of Art and Design. It will require that institute to accept my ‘interdisciplinary’ background of post-secondary and experience on par with a Bachelor’s Degree. After reviewing their site on Prior Learning Assessment, I think it can be done, but it’ll be a long haul. None the less, “Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.” according to Frank Zappa, and that is what I intend to do.