Curation as a means of engaging teachers: looking in, considering

When we considered the BIG idea of Curation and apply it to developing teacher skills and comfort with arts, we discovered a few things, we explored a few things...

We were tasked to consider these three steps:

1. Use curation to help teachers explore their existing aesthetic judgement. Trigger finding analogies to other things using artists as coaches. Also include inquiry questions. 
2. Bridge to cultivating, expanding and enlarging creative experiences. This stage facilitates a practice of creating art without formal instruction. Could be a time to explore apps and digitial on-line 
3. Hands-On Dynamic instruction. 

Building a structure that uses existing technology. Applicable at all grade levels and applicable with all art forms. 

Who are you? Nice to meet you! 

Use curation to help teachers explore their existing aesthetic judgement.

Within this exploration, we want to keep in mind that teachers will experience success at each level. We also want to consider how the artist-educator is engaged at each stage within the level. 

Pinterest is Curation. 

"I know what I like and what I don't like." Teacher provides four or five "pins" or examples or links within a specific artform: visual art, music, media arts, creative literary arts, drama, movement.

"You don't know what you don't know." The Artist Educator begins to build a relationship with the teacher. 

Do Artist Educators create their own pinterest pages? Or provide their own links, videos, suggestions that provide a doorway or window into who they are... 

An important element of this phase is nurturing classroom culture. The artist educator is a mentor for arts and for the connection between arts and education, curriculum. 

CURATION to CREATION. 

Bridge to cultivating, expanding and enlarging creative experiences.

The artist educator's role as a coach is more solidified. We ask the teachers to become more aware of their aesthetic, why do they like or not like the pieces they've shown us?

We pose more enquiry questions, we provide them with links to professionally sourced and produced video tutorials, apps and online software. We ask them to create and explore the creation of foundational pieces of the art form. 

A secondary idea: we dissect their "pins" alongside them (on-line or in person.) We delve deeply into the process that went into creating the art and empower their vocabulary. Can we take the piece and then reverse engineer the process? What would be learned as a result?  (For example, in dissecting a video, we could create an editing room/space/app that will help them have a deeper understanding of the piece. In terms of their new understanding of media, we would see that the value of the medium/media is evident in teacher choices of media to share with his/her students. note: this could be an outcome of the level 2 of the curatorial process.) An editing deck app could be built. 

An app that is built on experiencing the foundations of the artform could be a wonderful assessment tool for teachers. The disadvantage of most apps is that the app manipulates the end product. The Drag/Drop and the Tap/Swipe actions of exploring basic content is important and then, any other part of the experience are are controlled by the artist/student.  Ideally, the second you make an artistic choice, you see, hear, and feel the difference. 

Creation- Scaled deeper

Hands-On Dynamic instruction.

We explored three levels of professional learning for teachers. 

Level One: Professional learning at this level will provide an arts experience that is connected to what a teacher will be doing with their students at a later date. The motivation to participate will be built into the mandate that the work will be facilitated as part of a bigger project/module. 

Level Two: Teachers can expect at this level that we'll refine arts creation experiences with advanced techniques. The focus will be on understanding and combining tools/foundational understandings. 

Level Three: Germinate creative endeavours. We anticipate this is a week-long exploration in a multi-disciplinary setting where open exploration with a master artist as mentor. The teacher will be encouraged to challenge their awareness of the art form, examine the systems and processes and then turn the art form structure upside down and re-create.

Could this happen on a school by school basis where an entire staff has a focus on professional development, work with the artists, community involvement and school-wide celebration. Could this be thematically oriented?