Studio Thinking Teacher Exhibition Preparation

On October 28, our learning community came together to collectively imagine, dialogue and envision possibilities for our upcoming Teacher Exhibition. The Exhibition provides the opportunity to tell your stories as art teachers and teachers who use the arts by highlighting the intricacies, the in-between spaces, the essences, and the complexities of your daily practice in and out of the classroom. This is your narrative to tell.

From "Learning to Love You More"

The clip below, "Maxine Greene on Teachers College: Its People and History," served as a spark to our idea generation for the Exhibition. In this clip, Greene discusses the ideas of being "wide awake," imagining possibilities, embracing others and various perspectives, being awake enough to be enraged to resist, and other wonderful ideas. 

These are some of the ideas the group generated. We should continue to revisit these ideas as we move through the year. What else do you want to say? What else should the Exhibition entail? What don't you want the Exhibition to be about? We encourage you to imagine possibilities and share them with the group as they come to you.

As Kate and Matt listened to your thoughts and reviewed the conversation, these are some of the emerging questions we are hearing as a way to tell your story:

What do you wish you were teaching?
What are you not teaching?
What do you think others think of you?
What can't you leave at school? What do you bring home with you?
What do you bring into the classroom from home?
How does your vision of teaching compare to your lived experience?
How do you transcend the times and think of new methodologies?

SHoM and Student/Teacher Performance Evaluations

All of us at CPS are thinking about what our teacher evaluations will be like next year. We will now be evaluated based on student performance.  These evaluations determine who keeps jobs and which programs are cut. Of course, we have no clue what that process is, yet must improve and develop curriculae to survive said process.
So many questions....
How will student performance be measured? What rubrics will be used? How do we measure data that is not only quantitative but also QUALITATIVE? How do we balance the numbers-driven goals of CPS and the experiential process we know works in the Art Studio? How can student performance be measured in a way to show the VALUE of art teacher performance and our own effectiveness beyond student attendance, grades, and core subject test scores? I am thinking of music, theater, and dance teacher evaluations in addition to the visual arts.

We at CPS need to be sure that the way we are evaluated reflects the way we need to teach. Our curriculum will have to respond to the ways student performance will be measured in addition to the way teacher performance will be measured. I don't know about you, but we are all a nervous wreck here at Curie. It is hard to develop a curriculum without the slightest idea of what those rubrics will be. Not to mention working under the threats made about what happens if we (and our students) don't perform according to the unknown rubric.

So I have been asking questions about WHO is developing these student and teacher evaluations. That same day I got some answers. There is a group being formed by CPS to work on it. Cool, let's get involved! Let's make sure art, music, theater, and dance teachers are on that committee.

Of course I couldn't help but think about how SHoM can play into this process. I have had such success at using this program for the first time this year. I will continue to use it. I wrote to Kate asking how can the data collection developed through SHoM help in our quest to evaluate art students and teachers fairly. She asked me to put these questions on the blog.

So here you are. What will we do? I hope to be part of the conversation and not just  a victim to what is decided for next year. I hope to be able to make use of what we have all learned this year for years to come. I hope to lessen my fear of the impending evaluation process, knowing that some of us from SHoM were part of the fair development of rubrics. We all want  to measure our own effectiveness without sacrificing the experiential quality of our instruction. How can we do this? I put this question out there... help.

Valerie Xanos