Student Teachers Tell TheirStories of CurriculumDevelopmentBY DEBORAH KÜSTER, KATHRYN O'NEAL, AND AMBER GOOCH

A s the student teacher supervisor in a public university in the mid-South, I have the privilege of witnessing my students making thetransition from student to art teacher. When an accomplished

teacher-mentor says that an intern "gets it," I know that this intern hasdemonstrated an understanding of the most important skills, traits, andknowledge needed to become an effective teacher.

I invited co-authors Katy O'Neal and Amber Gooch to write this article with me becausethey are novice teachers who "got it" during their internship in the spring semester of 2007.This article includes Katy's and Amber's narration of their personal pilgrimages into becomingteachers atid my commentary as a supervisor in their process of developing and teaching theirart curriculum units. We will explore the following questions:

• What factors most influenced the curriculutn design choices?

• What were the key components of each unit?

• What implications can be made for teacher education programs?

Curriculum and Novice TeachersWhen evaluating a teacher candidate's curriculum design, I assess the candidate's ability to:

(1) demonstrate knowledge of students' background, interests, and exceptionalities; (2) selectlearning goals that are appropriate for students; (3) connect lessons to past and future learning;and (4) extend .student thinking. According to several contemporary art educators (Popovich,2006; Roberts, 2005; Stewart 8c Walker, 2005; Walker, 2001; Walling, 2006), artistic skills shouldbe integrated into lessons that center on ideas, issues, or concerns that connect to students'lives and to their past and future learning. As a student teacher supervisor, I emphasize thateffective curriculum in visual art is relevant to students' lives and engages them in critical andcreative thinking. Art lessons designed simply to teach a skill or apply elements and principlesno longer suffice.

Research shows that generally novice teachers (including art educators) plan simplisticinstructional experiences that lack interconnectedness and rely on published curricularmaterials. Very often novice teachers include only the lowest cognitive skills in tbeir lessons,with only a small percent of lesson objectives designed to develop higher order thinking skills(Kowalchuk, 1997; Sultana & Klecker, 1999; TorfF, 2003). These findings give weight to the needfor an examination of exemplary curricular units developed hy novice teachers as a means tounderstand ways to better prepare and equip them to achieve with more authentic, challenginglesson planning and implementation.Examples of students'

gesture drawings meantto capture the essence ofstudent models' poses.

ART EDUCATION / J u l y 2010

I found myself in a technological society dedicated to

numerical specifics which ignored personal attachments.

• KatyPaul Gauguin believed that industrial-

ized. Western civilization was spirituallyempty, forcing society to seek material gainand neglect emotions.Therefore, he leftParis in 1886 to live among the peasantsof Brittany at Pont-Aven in western France(Janson & Janson, 2003). Though my ownjourney did not originate from my society'sperceived failure or neglect, like PaulGauguin, I set out for Pont-Aven seekinga community centered around artmaking.The summer after my sophomore yearin college I participated in a 4-week artworkshop titled "Experimental Works onPaper," described asa time for studentsto "immerse themselves in the uniqueenvironment of Brittany and to use theexperience of being in another cultureand having a different sense of place tocreate new visual problems and solutionsand to explore a variety of nontraditionaltechniques" (www.pontavensa.org). Someof the nontraditional techniques involvedsite-specific installations, using foundmaterials, wax from the local beekeeper,dyes made from local plants, and stains

from local dirt. The resulting artworkswere personal to the individuals, but oftenreflected the class'collective experiences.

After returning home, I did not makeartwork dealing with conceptions oi placefor several months. However, early onemorning while eating breakfast by myfavorite window spot, my thoughts driftedto online directions such as MapQuestand the Global Positioning System (GPS). !realized then that although this exact spothad GPS coordinates, there was a disso-nance between its scientific location and itsmeaning to me. How could anyone, uponviewing geographic coordinates, under-stand that this was the spot I ate off-brandCheerios* nearly every weekday morning?I wondered about which strategies wouldrender this place meaningful to others.I noted a parallel to Gauguin's industrialsociety dedicated to material gain, as Ifound myself in a technological societydedicated to numerical specifics whichignored personal attachments.

Later in the week I was at the library andfound a book about Robert Rauschenberg'soverseas cultural interchange (ROCI) work.

As I went through it, I felt a kinship whenhe discussed an idea he had while incollege—to photograph every square footof the United States. To me, Rauschenberg'sidea bridged the gap between the imper-sonal mathematical precision of the globalpositioning systems and the details andspecifics that give a place its personality. Ifound the solution to my"GPS vs. Reality"dilemma from breakfast! And it was justas impossible for me as for the collegiateRauschenberg.

I wanted to explore the idea of givingdefinition and a new experience of a placeto viewers in my artwork. In addition toRauschenberg, I was influenced by Cristoand Jean-Claude and Joseph Cornell. FromCristo and Jean-Claude I focused on thetransformation of the familiar into thefantastic. Cornell's intimate enclosures—simple glass-fronted boxes—create theirown space and place, separate from therest of the world. Rauschenberg traveledthe globe and created artwork about hisexperiences, sharing them to promotecultural understanding.

A Place: How It Looks, How It Feels. My unit was designed for a high school Drawing I class.My teacher-mentor's lesson, prior to this unit, focused on one-point perspective in charcoaland monochromatic acrylic washes, creating a surreal setting using symbolism to personalizethespace. My instructional unit about p/ace built on the skills of drawing realistic objects in aspace from observation, and communicating personal experiences to viewers.

Designing for a high school curriculum revolving around place, I chose to focus on Rauschenberg because his ideainvolved communicating about a place, rather than simply creating or transforming one. I wanted to create amongthe students a sense of community through a place, just as I had experienced in Pont-Aven.

To hegin the unit, I showed students the GPS coordinates for the location of the classroom. I had them guess whatthe numbers meant, and then asked them to identify them. I introduced my reflections of how GPS coordinates are aspecific way ofdescrihing a location, but are not descriptive or evocative. I showed slides of Rauschenberg's work andquestioned students about its form and content. I considered the idea driving the artwork to be the most importantelement, but practical concerns needed to he attended to as well. Designing the instructional activities. I consideredthat observational drawing of buildings (interiors and exteriors) would extend iheir knowledge of perspective. Afterintroducing the technique of measuring the angle of orthogonal lines and measuring proportions with a pencil, theclass moved to its out-of-classroom location. I asked students to select a location within a set perimeter {within sightof the teachers) that best represented their personal experiences or viewpoints of the school.

Students began by sectioning off part of their paper for the observational drawing, leaving a blank border for later.For the observational period students were limited to graphite pencil. I was surprised that the students expressed somuch enthusiasm about a drawing assignment that is generally considered basic and academic. Several students whostruggled previously were very successful. Next, in the remaining border around the observational drawing, studentschose imagery that conveyed their experience at school in a precise way. Students selected at least three images.

July 2010 / ART EDUCATION

Lauren Hansen surrounded her drawing of the hallway with a fantasy world.

5amontéWesiey'sdrawing of where he ate lunch.

including the symbolic, narrative, or abstract,to communicate their experiences and refinedthem with colored pencil or coliaged papers.Five lines of the observational drawing wereextended into the border imagery to beginunifying the drawing. As part of the unifyingprocess, 1 limited their palette to three colorsof colored pencil.

In addition to the artmaking techniquesand skills covered in this lesson, i wanted toplace the students in a position to communi-cate knowledge of themselves and their expe-riences at school. High school students longto communicate their thoughts and feelingsto others and to be understood.

I led a critique of the finished drawing, thefirst one for this group, which explored thecommunicative aspect of their work. In somecases, students who did not know each other'snames were touched by their similar experi-ences. I felt that the success of this lessondid not lay in the execution of new skills,although this was an important focus, but inusing their art to bridge cultural, geographic,and personal differences and promote under-standing in their classroom-community.

• AmberThe idea of essence came to me while I

was trying to write high school art lessonsthat conveyed meaning. I studied RobertHenri's Isadora Duncan sketch when my arteducation class researched several artworksfrom the Arkansas Arts Center in LittleRock. I was drawn to the gestural quality,the lines, the movement and the ambiguityof the figure. At the time, I did not knowanything about Henri or Isadora Duncan,but I could not have chosen a better artistand work to inspire the type of lessons Iwanted to write.

As soon as I began researching RobertHenri I was hooked. His charisma andpassion came through to me in the wordsofhis book, The Art Spirit, and in his manyworks of art. Art, he believed, should beabout something (Henri, 1923). Even if youare drawing a flower, you should commu-nicate to the viewer why you are drawingit. What is it about the flower that makesit worthy to become the subject of anartwork? Every line, every color, every shapeshould move toward this single idea thatthe artist wants to convey. Somewhere inthe midst of my reading I dubbed this ideaof the essence, and it stuck.

In this same class, I designed a mini-lesson for a small group of seven highschool students, inspired by Isadora

ART EDUCATION/July 2010

John Sykes used repetition .ind coloied pencil to captiiie a mood.

I decided to focus this lesson on gesturedrawing to capture what Henri was reallyabout—not just gesture, but essencethrough gesture. I asked students to lookat several gesture drawings. With thefirst three, I asked them to define gestureby discerning common characteristicsin these works. When we got to IsadoraDuncan. I asked them instead to tell mewhat Robert Henri thought of his subject.The students looked at me with blank,expectant stares for a few seconds. Butthen one of them ventured an answer:"She looks angelic." I noticed that theanswer came from Chad, the outcastof my group. Aware of my growing

excitement, I prodded him. "What makesyou say that?"Chad replied, "The Christ-like pose, with her arms out at her sides."Insightful comments followed withanother student noticing how the exclu-sion of her feet and the ground gavethe appearance of ascending to heaven.Then someone else mentioned how thegraceful line quality created a sweepingmotion up toward the heavens. Finally, astudent remarked how the backward tiltof her head suggested she was gazingserenely into the sky above.

I don't know whether or not I intendedto ask the next question beforehand, butwe were on a roll and it turned out to be

/ didn't just want

to teach any art,

I wanted to help

students understand

"the why"

the pivotal point of my later unit. I askedthem why Robert Henri would choosegesture drawing for his portrait. Why nothave Duncan sit for a portrait or even doa detailed contour drawing? The studentswere onto the answer instantly. Gestureconveys feeling and emotion in ways thatother drawing styles do not.

This was a defining moment for me. Ihad known that I wanted to teach art—even that I wanted to teach high school.But that lesson taught me how I wantedto teach. I didn'tjust want to teach anyart. 1 wanted to help students understand"the why."

Gesture: Capturing the Essential. My unit was designed for a high school-level DrawingII class. After a brief pre-assessment in contour drawing, I decided that students wouldbenefit from a unit on gesture drawing since it allows for more freedom, creativity, andcontent. This unit was designed to teach students how to draw the figure while simulta-neously teaching expression, capturing content and meaning, exploring different mediatechniques, and understanding the meaning of images in contemporary culture.

When required to develop a unit during my student teaching internship, 1 felt much calmer with the suggestionthat I expand on my ideas of essence. I hegan with my brief talk about Robert Henri. I showed students his picturewhen he was young, so that hopefully they could identify with him. 1 discussed his career as an art teacher, andhisrelationship to the similar esiCHte-related quests of Picasso and Matisse. I showed students some of his gesturedrawings, ending with Isadora Duncan, but at this point I did not ask much about her, since I intended to do thatlater.

Responding to a suggestion hy my teacher-mentor of making the content relevant to contemporary students, Iclicked my next slide over to an image of the popular American musician and actress, Beyonce Knowies, and asked,"Who knows who this is?" They giggled. 1 noticed that a student who had previously been zoning-out was instantlyalert. I told them that in order to understand the idea oí essence better, I wanted them to compare these photos from

July 2010 / ART EDUCATION

Beyoncé's photo shoot. I asked them, "What is Beyoncé saying aboutherself by titling these images "The Essence of Beyonce?" The previ-ously zoned-out student blurted out, "She's sayin' that she's hot!" Theclass erupted in laughter. I laughed too, and my nervousness evapo-rated. We compared and contrasted the images of Beyoncé, and thentvv'o Other magazine images.

After demonstrating gesture drawing and explaining the thoughtprocess, I directed student volunteers to pick from slips of paper iden-tifying distinctive qualities (such as angry, angelic, fearful, etc.) out ofmy "Essence Hat" and assume a pose that embodied ihat nature. Tlierest of the class drev/ the pose, trying to figure out what the essencev/as and capture it in a short 1-2 minute gesture drawing. When westopped between drawings, I would ask various students if I couldshow their drawings lo the class. By showing the drawings and tellingwhat was successful about them, I raised students' self-esteem whilecontinuing to show what worked when making gesture drawings,including expressive line quality and emphasis of the most importantpart of the pose. After numerous drawings, I re-directed students'attention to Henri's Isadora Duncan for discussion in light of whatthey had Just done.

The lesson progressed to the idea of capturing and transferring thefundamental quality of a gesture drawing into a large abstract mixedmedia piece. Students viewed and discussed several abstract mixedmedia works by Robert Rauschenberg. Miriam Schapiro, and DaveKinsey. I instructed students to use a viewfinder, select areas of theirprevious gesture drawings that summed up the essence of the figuresand create three preliminary compositions. Tlie students began workon their large piece once I had approved their choice of best ct)niposi-tion. I demonstrated a few painting techniques and created a sampleboard featuring eight different paint applications that they could try. itold them that they had to use three media and three techniques fromthe board, so that they would have a wide variety of styles on theirfinished pieces.

I chose to have them work on cardboard, since they were workingin large scale and mixed media when projects can become prettyheavy and textured. Some students chose to use spray paint withacrylic paints. Others layered tape and other materials on to thesurface of the cardboard. 1 showed them how to remove the top layerof the cardboard to reveal the corrugation underneath and severalstudents used that technique as well.

At the end of the semester I asked my students to fill out a survey,including a question about which of the assignments was theirfavorite. About three-fourths of the students chose the assignmentI am describing. They mentioned feeling freed from the pressure ofmaking it look realistic, and enjoyed the chance to be expressive andabstract. Even better, when I asked them to fill out self-evaluationsof their projects, al! but two students could tell me what essence theyhad been trying to achieve and how they had made conscious choicestoward that end.

Above: Kyle Looney's final mixed media workexpressing the essence of frenzy.

Below: Josh Bums'final mixed media workexpressing the esience of strength.

10 ART EDUCATION/July 2010

Conclusions and Implications'Iho units developed hy Katy O'Neal and

Amber Gooch give evidence that they wereknowledgeable about the high school artstudents they taught. Each lesson built onpreviously acquired skills such as one-pointperspective, contour figure drawing, andspecific media usage. Katy understoodthat high school students desire a way tocommunicate their views to others in aneftective way. Amher made a connection toher students by using contemporary mediaimages, such as those of Beyoncé Knowles.Units included as learning objectives thedevelopment of art skills and understandingssuch as drawing from observation, value scales,and application of various drawing and paintingmedia, while also focusing on art history andart criticism. Furthermore, the overarchingconcepts oí place and essence provided theseinterns and their students a sense of focus andpurpose that gave significance and meaning toall of the activities within each tmiL

Katy's and Amber's lessons were exten-sions of their own personal investiga-tions, experimentations, and reflections.Their testimonies support important ideasof authors—such as Hatfield, Montana,and Deffenbaugb (2006), Gradle (2006),and Kind, Irwin, Grauer, and De Gosson(2005)—that the arts can engage bothteachers and students in a shared experienceof new perspectives, connections, and artisticoutcomes. John Dewey (1977) eloquentlyacknowledged his internal conviction andawarene.ss of the processes or journeys oflearning in an essay first published in 1904.Speaking of the success of some teachers,Dewey states:

They are themselves so full of the spiritof inquiry, so sensitive to every sign ofits presence and absence, that no matterwhat they do, nor how they do it, theysucceed in awakening and inspiringlike alert and intense mental activity inthose with whom they come in contact.(p. 265)

The implication for art teacher educationprograms is to lead students to the realiza-tion that artistry in teaching concomitantlyrequires enthusiastic exploration of mean-ingful issues and significant artistic pursuits.

Deborah Küster is Associate Professor ofArt at the University of Central Arkansas,Conway. E-maii: dkuster@uca.edu

Kathryn O'Neal is an Art Teacher at LonokeMiddle School in Lonoke, Arkansas. E-mail:Katy.Oneal@lonoke.kl2.ar.us

Amber Gooch is an Art Teacherin Mayflower. Arkansas. E-mail:ambergooch @gmail. com

REFERENCESDewey, |. (1977). The relation of theory to practice in education. In ). A. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The middle works, 1899-1924,

Vol3: ¡903-1906. Carbondale; Southern Illinois University Press.Gradle, S. (2006). Developing artistry in teaching: Ritual art and human concerns. Art Education, 59(2), 12-19.Hatfieid, C, Montana, V., & Deifenbaugh. C. (2006). Artist/art educator: Making sense of identity issues. Art Education. 59(3), 42-48.Henri, R. (1923). The art spirit. New York: J.B. Lippincott Company.

lanson, H.W. ,& |anson, A. F. (2003). History of Art (6th ed). Upper Saddle River, NI; Prentice Hall.Kind, S,, Irwin. R. L., Grauer. K., & De Cosson, A. (2005). Medicine wheel imag(ln)ings: Exploring holistic curriculum perspectives.

Art Education. 53(5). 33-38.Kowaichuk, E. (1997). Differing perceptionsof art and teaching: Examining how beginning and experienced teachers think about

art in instruction. Prepared ÍOT Stories about perception: Honouring the work of Ron MacGregor Vancouver, Canada: University ofBritish Columbia.

Popovich, K. (2006). Designing and implementing: Exemplary content, curriculum, and assessment in art education. Art Education.59(6), 33-40.

Roberts, T. (2005). Teaching real art making. Art Education, 5S(2), 40-46,Stewart, M. G. & Walker, S. R. (2005). Rethinking curriculum in art. Worcester, MA: Davis Publications.Sultana, A., & Klecker, B. M. (1999, November) Evaluation of first-year teachers' lesson objectives by Blooms taxonomy. Paper presented

at the Annual Meeting of the Mid-South Education Research Association, Point Clear, AL.Torff, B. (2003). Developmental changes in teachers' use of higher order thinking and content knowledge. Journal of Educational

Psychology. 95(3), 563-569.Walker, S. (2001). Teaching meaning in artmaking. Worcester, MA: Davis Publications.Walling, D. (2006). Brainstorming themes that connect art and ideas across the cuiricuium. Art Education 59(1), 18-24.

AUTHORS'NOTEAll photos of student artworks are reprinted with permission.

July 2010 / ART EDUCATION 11

Copyright of Art Education is the property of National Art Education Association and its content may not be

copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written

permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.