I am a big proponent of telling students the why. I always make a point to tell them why we are doing assignments that we are doing; of course that doesn't mean that they always buy in! I am following a teacher that was full TAB, and in some ways very lenient with few procedures or expectations. No rubrics, no guidelines, ect. (I tell this not to complain or judge, but rather so you understand the students that I have this year).
When I tell my students that there are some things that everyone has to do, I get a lot of groans. Can't we just make art!? Many are convinced simply by my explaining why something is important for them to learn. Many are skeptical. I work hard to get buy in, because buy in equals motivation, but often that buy in is really hard to come by, and sometimes it won't hit a student until after the class is over that something was valuable.
One area that I find my high school students need convincing is when it comes to having students talk about and write about art, both their own art, and art from others. Some of the ways that I work to convince them of the value of being able to do this:
1. I show them the national and state standards (this helps so that they know that our learning goals are coming from above and beyond me). This helps so they know I am not sitting around coming up with ways to have them do busy work. Here is an example of a unit where I share the national standard with my students: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1J2_dY_zGmNDCafKIWDuGjPzHUSKSob1rn9oE4okvQ-g/edit?usp=sharing
2. I share how other artists are talking about and writing about art (this helps them to see that respected people in the art world, and students at other schools are doing this) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8UmHWI1yXE
3. I share current research that tells about the importance of what we are doing. Sometimes we discuss articles, sometimes I have them respond to articles, and sometimes I have them read and summarize an article (reading grade level scholarly articles is also an area that our high school is working to improve, based on feedback from students in college) Here is one about curiosity that I plan to use soon: http://ceramicartsdaily.org/ceramics-monthly/article/spotlight-january-2017/
How about you? When it comes to the parts of your curriculum that are not obviously "fun" for everyone, how do you convince your students of the value in the learning? How do you work toward that internal motivation for students to work at these types of tasks?
When I tell my students that there are some things that everyone has to do, I get a lot of groans. Can't we just make art!? Many are convinced simply by my explaining why something is important for them to learn. Many are skeptical. I work hard to get buy in, because buy in equals motivation, but often that buy in is really hard to come by, and sometimes it won't hit a student until after the class is over that something was valuable.
One area that I find my high school students need convincing is when it comes to having students talk about and write about art, both their own art, and art from others. Some of the ways that I work to convince them of the value of being able to do this:
How about you? When it comes to the parts of your curriculum that are not obviously "fun" for everyone, how do you convince your students of the value in the learning? How do you work toward that internal motivation for students to work at these types of tasks?
Comments
Post a Comment