Artventure: Lifewide Learning

Science fiction is one of my favourite genres. It mirrors certain aspects of real life and yet gives you a sense of anticipation. What's exciting is very often it depicts the downside of the future and because we are still living in the present so we remain hopeful of what we can or should not do to prevent the catastrophe. For example, in Black Mirror (available on Netflix), I like dwelling on the contemporary issues in the episodes Nosedive and Arkangel. 

Recently, I attended a pre-hackathon workshop and it felt like a fictitious event. The speakers include futurists talking about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, deep tech, blockchain, future shock, future-ready, future leading, future-shaping, ambidexterity, proof of concept, longtail knowledge, just-in-case and just-in-time knowledge. They also talked about microlearning platform such as the SmartUp app because gone are the days where you were made to sit in for 8 hours of training. HA! I have learnt a lot in that evening and it also meant that I didn't know what I don't know. The consolation is that now I know what I didn't know. Sometimes, I wonder why is it that people who are not teachers are frontiers of education whereas I'm standing in front of the classroom.

Learning is becoming more ubiquitous. Joseph Blatt at the Harvard Graduate School of Education talks about lifewide learning which essentially refers to an explicit acknowledgement that learning can and does happen in every facet of life, particularly beyond school hours. 

Before the end of Semester 1, my friends and I conducted a workshop for zonal art teachers. For a day, our audience was adults instead of children. As facilitators, it's a totally different experience to facilitate adult learning. When teaching children, we use the word pedagogy. When it comes to adults, the principles of andragogy sets in.

These are some personal observations from my experience:
I wouldn't say teaching adults is easier than children but in the context of this 1-day workshop, our audience was very cooperative and peaceful. During our group's meeting sessions in preparation for this workshop, we are aware that teachers always look forward to applying what they have learnt in their job. So, incorporating hands-on activity was definitely on our list. Our art workshop is not about teaching a type of craft so teachers can bring back to their classrooms. We strongly discourage that as most craft ideas can be found online and self-taught. Second, since our workshop is bi-annually, it would be an ineffective way to teach. 

It was an inquiry-based lesson where teachers do ideas generation. Through making our thinking visible, we discussed our unique positions and the circumstances that we are in which affected how we think and plan. We also found that sometimes teachers are too eager to incorporate new art techniques into their lessons without knowing their purpose. It could be a coping mechanism and it also meant that the teacher might be surviving instead of thriving.

Next, it also dawns on me that children are often tasked to create an artwork in an artist particular style. Why? Techniques and stylistic problems are not the only way through artmaking. An example is Cubism, Picasso and Braque fragment forms and presents them from multiple perspectives. It's the issue of reality, how we or artworks perceive or represent reality. Not all younger children are ready to hold such a discussion but introduce a picture book: They all saw a cat by Brenden Wenzel about perspectives in reality and we can make Cubism lesson a more meaningful one. 

Housekeeping: Artroom Display

Look at what leftover paint and gesso primer do to plain-looking mache letter! The art room wall is slowly filling up. Thanks to my fearless colleague, Candice, who can balance on the wobbly ladder and put up the letters with neon tapes :D

Art Class: Water art

The P2 children ended the semester with water art! We did orizomegami and water marbling. I was really glad to discover that my DIY paint holder could hold water well for the entire class duration. It was the right size for the children to contain water and empty it on their own. The first time when I tried this, I had to prepare everything myself using 7 excessive large plastic containers and that process was deemed too ineffective. 

The first 2 photos below show orizomegami by adults and I omitted a step to facilitate the artmaking process in class. Before I conduct any lessons, I will run the entire process and anticipated any hiccups in my mind's eye. Even though the children will not have define patterns as I decided to simplify the artmaking, they were still very fascinated by the process.

Art Class: The Colour Experiment

Behind the scene...

Substitute palette paper with freezer paper. I got mine from the supermarket. It works as well, is a cheaper alternative and you can customise the dimensions. In this case, I'm using my art room tiles (x2) as my measuring ruler :D

For my P3 pupils who will be learning about Diversity, we began the class with a story The Colors of Us by Karen Katz. This unit introduces socially-sensitive issues about racial identity through self-portraits. While most of the children in my school are mostly Asians, a number of them belong to cross-cultural families or second-generation immigrants. When we held discussions about skin colours, a boy aired his misconception that a person's culture can be determined by his/ her skin colour. Another talked about the evolutionary reason of the skin responding to the sun. 

I collected the lids of the paper reams and use them to distribute acrylic paint to the groups. Throughout the lesson, no water is needed. The children will clean their paintbrushes on the cleaning paper (which are essentially the wrappers of the A4 printing papers) and throw them away after use.  

The children were given a worksheet to record their tests and observations like an artist/ scientist. Their task is to try to get a shade of skin colour but not necessarily theirs. We had a discussion of some of the children's observations and getting them to articulate their thoughts instead of just doing the experiment as a means to an end which I think is more meaningful. Painting is definitely interesting, it encourages sensitivity to colours by rejecting the idea of teaching children culturally-agreed object colours.

Art is more than merely the expression of ideas and expression. In the development of artistic competence and enjoyment, children are encouraged to explore the potential of materials. Their ability to control these processes are learned through the freedom of spontaneous expression which can deepen their understanding, failing which, would produce a sense of incompetence and frustration (Robinson, K. 2008). 

Last month's issue of Nat Geo is such a coincidence!

Listen to photographer Angélica Dass on how her work challenges the way we think about skin colour and ethnic identity here.


Dr Ken Robinson, 2008. The arts in schools: Principles, practice and provision. Lightning Source, UK.

Art Class: Emotions

When people say that you have to know your students as a teacher, it's really not just about understanding their ability and skills in executing the artwork. Often, it's also about understanding the emotional aspect. Dr Tim Elmore, author of Generation iY: Our last chance to save their future, wrote that "most young people are advanced biologically and emotionally backward". In other words, their emotional maturity is not as advanced as their biological, cognitive and social aspects. In 2003, MOE introduced social and emotional learning (SEL) into schools to improve the current status of students' social skills. I've met many children who are so advance in their academics but they struggle to self-regulate their behaviour. On the other end of the spectrum, I have children who are so uncertain of themselves that they tried to seek my approval at every stage of their artmaking process. Thus, I like to incorporate discussions about human's emotional responses such as anger and fear of failures. 

In this unit, we discussed human emotions through Pablo Piccaso's The Weeping Woman (1937) and Edvard Munch's The Scream (1893). Conversations revolved the artist's chosen palette and non-verbal language of humans and animals. We started with blind contour drawing and the children worked in pairs to observe each other. The drawer poked their pencil through a paper plate to prevent them from looking at their drawings. They were encouraged to do drawings of their friend's front view, side profile and a freestyle. Next, they do individual drawings of a self-portrait by looking in the mirror each. 

Art Class: Patterns Around Us [Part II]

The P3 children are transferring their pattern studies into a mixed media artwork. Their observations of patterns are from the school environment can be read here. They did watercolour resist work by drawing patterns with oil pastels first and applying a layer of black watercolour. I find that there is a fine line between choosing to give explicit instructions in art lessons and allowing children to discover for themselves. I will further elaborate on this point in my subsequent post. In these lessons, explicit instructions are necessary to ensure safety in the art room even though some of the instructions might seem trivial. We should never make assumptions in our teaching. Occasionally, I will still get a child who would fill up his water container to the brim and other children would help to remind him of the right amount of water that goes into it. Gaining the confidence to carry the filled containers from the basins to their workstations can easily be overlooked. Other instructions such as using sufficient pressure on the oil pastels and getting the paintbrushes to hold enough colour pigment before painting especially when we are using the watercolour cake are just some habits of mind the children have to adopt and practise regularly.  

Art Class: Self Portraits

The children read a story It's Ok To Be Different by Todd Parr. It's a book packed with wit and delivered with sensitivity. We discussed artists' self-portrait from Georgette Chen, Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Piccaso and Frida Kahlo. These paintings offer varying styles, composition and personal stories. I usually choose other artwork from another class when doing class critique for the first time so that the children will not be self-conscious. Then I would explain that if their work was chosen for class critique in the future, they should listen to everyone but not necessarily follow their friends' suggestions. I numbered the artworks on the whiteboard to allow pupils to participate in the class critiques.