Finding home away from home

“It’s a funny thing coming home.  Nothing changes.  Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same.  You realize what’s changed, is you.”
from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

At the end of our students’ capstone project defenses, my colleague Craig Roland routinely asks what they will take away from their research experience and time in the program. Tonight I am sitting back at home in Columbus, OH asking myself the same question about my time at the 2013 National Art Education Association convention that just ended in Fort Worth, TX.  Following, is an answer to myself, in three parts.  (Craig, if you’re reading, consider this thanks for your help securing funding to help pay for my trip.)

First and foremost, I am grateful for the chance I had this past week(end) to reconnect with old classmates, professors, colleagues, students, and acquaintances. Although I hadn’t been to the conference in six years, it felt like just yesterday that I saw most of these folks.  Little seemed to have changed. I felt pleasantly welcome back in the clubhouse. Noone was judging me for not being on the tenure track somewhere. In fact it seemed, in many cases like just the opposite was true. People were jealous of some of the freedoms i enjoy, like not having to publish, lest I perish and not having to spend time serving on committees or attending faculty meetings.

Many people asked me about teaching online. Some were just curious about how we organize and manage courses at the University of Florida while others wanted to know about my personal experiences with this kind of teaching – was it really more work (that seems to be the rumor going ’round), did I feel as connected with my students as I did when I was teaching face-to-face… It was nice to feel like an expert of sorts about something. It sounds like more and more programs are adding online and hybrid courses.  Who knows.  In years to come I might just be known as some sort of pioneer.

Finally, I did recognize that I am a bit theory-averse. It starts with the fact that I would much prefer to read and learn through stories than explications of theories.  But it cuts deeper that that.  I am excited by theory but feel it is cumbersome.  Too often, I find it is treated as the main thrust of people’s presentations rather than a bolster for their reports on successful teaching and learning. Theory is most useful when it is put to use, applied to strong examples which it helps elucidate and give meaning.  So, I’m going to recommit myself to identifying theories and theorists who resonate with and help flesh out my thinking here, but I hope to present these ideas in a manner that is engaging not only to people inside, but also outside academe.

Six years ago, when I last attended NAEA I was a bright young thing, focused on one single goal, life in the ivory tower wearing a tenure golden.  Today, I realize I need more, or less depending on how you look at it, to be happy.  So, while I felt surprisingly at home with my academic friends and colleagues, and worry a bit about  the long-term course of my career, for the moment I’m happy being who and what I am, a work-from-home art educator.

What did you take away?

Dispatch from NAEA: The Final Installment

I ended my time at the 2013 National Art Education Convention in a business meeting for the Higher Education Division.  I was lured there by the promise of some conversation about, critique of, and plans for response to the new, forthcoming, common core standards for art education.  But we never got to that.  While I learned a bit more about how the division operates, I left with a renewed feeling that I don’t want to be in a full-time faculty position at this point in my life.  I don’t have the patience to sit through meetings focused on speculative agendas.  I’d rather be focusing my energy on teaching and my own learning.  Maybe that’s selfish.  Maybe I ought to be doing more service to the profession.  But that’s where I am now.  No apologies.

Dispatch from NAEA

Sitting in a session on the graphic novel as a form for presenting scholarship. Wondering what parallels or developments can be drawn from this example to blogging as scholarship.

Bob Sweeny talking about his article “What to do about chainsaw massacres” in Visual Arts Research.

‘Twas the night before the 2013 National Art Education Association Convention….

….and the sound of oldies music and the smell of homemade tortillas rose through the house.  I could have been pouring over the catalogue of presentations.  I could have been finishing my Spring A term grading so I could leave town with a clean slate.  I could have been brushing up my resume.  But instead, I was enjoying some time with my family.

Tomorrow morning at 7am I will board a plane for Texas destined for the 2013 NAEA Convention.  It will be the first time I attend a professional meeting in six years. (Hard to believe it has really been that long.).  It will also be the first time I am away from Cora for more than a few hours since she was born.  Obviously I’m excited, and a little bit petrified.

Aside from the tugging maternal heartstring stuff that I won’t bore you with here, I am eager and nervous about going to the track without a horse in the race. For the first time since I started my journey as an academic, I’ll be attending a conference without presenting any of my own research, planning to attend a business meeting, or participating in a panel discussion.  I’m looking forward to the opportunity to move freely between presentations and to engage in informal interactions with old friends, mentors, and classmates with no preconceived plans or obligations.  But, I’m also worried about how I might feel in the company of those same peers, particularly those I knew in graduate school, most of whom have moved on to full-time positions around the country while I opted to stay in Columbus to be with the man I fell in love with just as I was about to go on the job market.

Still from “Autobiographical Narratives: Teaching and Learning on the Telephone” with Amy Brook Snider, presented at the National Art Education Association Convention, New York City, NY, March 14-18, 2007

One of the people I am most excited to see is Amy Brook Snider, my mentor from Pratt.  Amy encouraged me to join NAEA when I was first starting in this field and sheparded me around my first convention.  I wrote about Amy in one of my first posts for this blog.  She has also had a long career of feeling like an insider/outsider when it comes to the academic world of art education.  Our 2007 NAEA presentation touched on this.  As the title suggests, Amy and I used to talk on the phone pretty regularly, but it’s been a long time now.  I know that spending time with her, talking about all that’s gone on in my life since we were last together, will give me fresh and renewed perspective on where I am and where I want to be.

Gotta go spend a few last precious minutes with my man.  More from Texas.

Toddler Time @ CMA: Explorations in Programming for Play

Through the looking glass at the Columbus Museum of Art’s Center for Creativity’s Wonder Room

So, I’m really excited about a project I’m going to be embarking on during my next stay-at-home sabbatical from teaching.  It has a bit of a backstory, so bear with me.

Last spring I worked with a student on an action research project in her arts-based preschool classroom.  The more I heard stories about what she was doing, saw pictures and heard the voices of her students, the more I wanted to experience what it was like making art with groups of very young people.  I couldn’t help wondering why I was sitting in front of a computer grading papers and wagging my red pen at the format of students’ APA citations when I could be finger painting or playing around with blocks and play doh.  In a way, my wish was fulfilled once Cora became old enough to explore these things with me in our home studio (a.k.a. the kitchen floor, the back porch, the bathtub, etc.).

In another way, I have been exploring making art with young children during Music Together.  As I wrote about here before, these classes have pushed me to reconsider the role of parameters in creative problem-solving and expression.  That program is fairly structured compared with ideas for working with visual art and young children that I’m most familiar with.  I have been amazed at what Cora has learned from the classes and from listening to the music over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again.  I’m still not sure what the visual equivalent might be.

I’m about to get a chance to try some ideas out when I help host a four-session toddler art playgroup at the Columbus Museum of Art in April.  I feel so grateful to Cindy Foley and her staff for allowing my friends and me to use the studio in the Center for Creativity as a gathering place.  I’ve already had thought-provoking conversations about working with 2 & 3 year olds and their parents with her and a few of the education coordinators who work with her.  Amanda Kepner and Susie Underwood have lots of experience working with visitors of all ages in the galleries and museum classrooms, and I’m excited to have an opportunity to observe their work and have them support me in my project.

The playgroup will be pretty loose, beginning with time for parents and kids to warm up and explore a few stations – beading, lightbox, large-scale coloring… – followed by a picturebook or time in the Big Idea Gallery, and then the activity of the day.  After we clean-up folks will be free to hang out at the museum to socialize while the kids play in the Wonder Room.  If folks are interested, we can also explore some of the galleries together.  If I were invited to this playgroup, I’d be psyched.

A few of the things I hope to address in later posts about these endeavors include:
Who’s art is it anyway?: The role of parents in young children’s creative development
Ready, Set, Play: Encouraging creativity on demand
Toddlers in the galleries: Big boats, buildings, and boobies

Of course my interests in this area are linked to my observations of Crafty Cora as she develops.  She’s had such an incredible explosion of interest drawing, painting, storytelling, beading, cutting, building, and sorting over the past few months. (The topic of another soon to-be-written post.)  Until now, these have been mostly solitary activities for her.  It’s often one of the few things that will get her to sit still for more than a minute.  A month ago, she sat for an hour with a pair of scissors and sheet of paper cutting a tassle-fringe around the perimeter.  Cora and her pal Maya have long played side-by-side with play-doh and did some finger painting together recently.  But I’m excited to see what happens when she’s in a group of 10 kids, making marks together with their parents.

WARNING: This could get very messy.

Coming to Art Education Outside the Lines: Spring 2013

While I didn’t find much time to write last month due to a big teaching load and not as much childcare help as I had planned on, I have been dreaming about my work here and hope to catch up in March and April.  Here are a few things to look forward to:

Elmo, Buzz Lightyear, & Pinky Pie: What can we learn about creative development from childhood obsessions?

Creative exploration explosion: 2.5 is the magic number

Cooking: Another 21st century skill starting with the letter C

Toddler time @ the Columbus Museum of Art’s Center for Creativity: Explorations in play and programming

Please be sure to check in for all the latest!  Starting next week with inspirations from the National Art Education Association convention in Dallas, TX (March 7-10).

“I should be working…”: Confessions from the cloud

I feel like I spend 99% or my life reminding myself of how much I have to do.  I know.  That can’t be healthy.  I blame it in part on my Jewish mother.  But at the moment, I know for sure that I should be working.

Most immediate are the folders of papers I have to grade, final presentations to attend, and loose ends to tie up with students I am advising.  Next, the family obligations up and down the foodchain.  From ailing older folks to needy wee ones, I’m a slave to others much of the day.  I’m heading out of town at the end of next week to attend my first professional conference in four years, and I want to prepare myself to make the most of my time with professional colleagues, but I also have to get the house and babe ready for my leave of absence.  This will be my first time on my own for more than a few hours at a time since Cora was born 2 1/2 years ago.  I’m excited, but I also feeling guilty.

Finally, there are all the things I want to be doing, like writing about things here.  And so, I should be working, but instead I’m blogging.  But what’s the difference anymore, really. So much of my life is happening in the cloud. So when is work work and when is it something else?  I find this line harder and harder to put my finger on as my home and work life continue to converge.  And I’m not alone, as this week’s stories about Sugata Mitra’s TED Prize for developing self-organized learning environments and Marissa Mayer ending Yahoo’s progressive work from home policy highlighted so well.

In many ways I agree with Mayer.  Sometimes I wish I could leave the house and go to work.  And I’m not talking about down the block at the coffee shop.  I’m talking about in a classroom, in a building, on a campus.  I long to be in the same physical space with my students and colleagues, to be having the kinds of casual conversations and unplanned interactions that happen best, for me, in person.

I do believe that it is possible to have such experiences online.  UFARTED (short for University of Florida Art Education, please don’t laugh) has a very active Facebook group for our program that feels a lot like a student lounge.  It is full of rich content and useful links.  Only, there aren’t any actual people speaking, instead are their comments, the traces of them, staring out at me from the screen.  All the same font.  All the same tone.  No matter how hard I try, it just doesn’t feel the same as face-to-face.

Which is not to say that I don’t value and cherish my job.  I feel appreciated by my students and colleagues, the work is fairly steady (or has been for the first 2+ years.  We’ll see if that remains the case after budget tightening.  Fingers crossed, but breath not held.), and while the pay isn’t great, it could be worse.  My position has allowed me to stay at home with my daughter these first few years as I maintained some sort of a professional life.  I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity at the time I found it.  But I’m torn.  I could always be doing more to make my classes more robust, to help students harness the power of the world of art and ideas that literally comprise our classroom.  But then I could also sit for hours and watch Cora play, clean up after her when she paints the floors of the kitchen with her watercolors, bake fresh bread, talk on the phone to my mom, sister, brother, friend Audrey, work in the garden…  You get the point.  There is a lot of freedom in working from home.  But there’s some fear too.

So, all I’m saying is, that like Debbie Mayer, I kinda agree with Marissa Mayer.  I recognize that Mayer’s speaking from a position of privilege about the joys of working from the office, which in her case includes a customized nursery for her infant (maintained by some high end-help, to be sure). But I’m just not sure that it’s really possible to have it all.

Now, back to work.

Refocusing

On November 25th, I set some goals for my self-appointed, stay-at-home sabbatical.  I vowed to spend more time with my kids, and to reflect on those experiences on this blog.  As this period is coming to close it’s time to consider the path ahead.

I started writing here for two primary reasons.  First, I wanted to start writing again, and I have.  Second, I wanted to explore the contours and boundaries of my life as a work-from-home art educator.

Since I started this blog, I’ve been wondering why I am bothering to write here at all.  Is it really  just to satisfy some intrinsic drive, or can I count this in some way?  Some of you may be asking, “Count for what?”  Those in academia will know that when I say count I mean in the course of hiring, tenure, and promotion in higher education.  The answer to this question could influence what I write or how I write.  It could influence how much time and energy I devote to this project.  Or it could have no bearing at all.

Writing on blogging in the sciences, Keener (2010) suggested “If scholars are to be truly evaluated on their impact to the field, a blog that fosters healthy debate and discussion, and ideally advances ideas or problems within the field, is a strong indicator of immediate impact.”  My blog isn’t generating as many comments or discussion as I would like at this point, but I do know that people (around the world!) are reading it.  I feel like my words are having an impact on people as many are responding to me off-site about how much they enjoy the writing and thoughts set forth here. That’s much more than I could say for my dissertation.

Seems like an argument that I am doing something useful with my PhD.  But is it scholarship or something else?

Writing about the work of historians, Kelly (2008) defines scholarship as “the result of original research; it has an argument of some sort and that argument is situated in a preexisting conversation among scholars; it is public, it is peer reviewed; and it has an audience response.”  Kelly goes on to make some interesting distinctions between digital scholarship and digital work based on his own work and experience with tenure review.

I’m not sure anyone is asking these questions in art education yet.  If they are, I would love to know.  Ours is a hybrid field.  We work in with students preschool-age through adulthood in schools and museums, private studios and public rec centers.  Some approach research through artmaking (with or without students) and others in the library.  In my own case, I am not a full-time employee of any institution at this point.  I don’t have the patronage of a program, driving or supporting me, to produce research for particular contexts. In other words, I teach 12 months a year.  I don’t have any paid leave time for research and writing.  I’m also teaching nearly 100% online.  The digital domain is my classroom so it makes sense that I would be publishing my ideas here. As we adopt new understandings of what a classroom looks like and how it operates, then wouldn’t it follow that we would reconsider scholarship as well?  In all likelihood, if I continue teaching online, I will never have a full-time position.  I may always be working outside the lines of traditional academic life.

Last year I developed a course for the University of Florida called “Art Education in Alternative Settings.” The course is designed for graduate students who are interested in teaching art outside of traditional K-12 school settings. Through reading and observation, we explore the role art educators play serving various interest groups including  people with disabilities, the elderly, LGBTQ youth, hospital patients, prisoners, and homeschoolers as well as those with general interest in the arts at museums, libraries, summer camps, community centers, artists’ studios, and online.  I’m beginning to contemplate this blog according to those terms.  In other words, how is this blog functioning as professional art education writing in an alternative context from journals like the National Art Education Association’s Art Education Journal?

One area I would like to focus on in the coming months is building my readership to include more of my professional peers.  As Kelly (2011) suggests, “Peer review does not have to take place prior to publication to qualify as peer review… what matters is the quality of the work and the quality of the peer review, not the order that these two things happen.”  I can’t be sure of exactly where this will lead, but I hope that it will enrich the conversations I’m trying to start with parents and other members of the general public about the importance of, and opportunities for, art and education in all of our lives.

Stay-at-Home Sabbatical

I haven’t been working much in the month of November.  December is set to be more of the same, though I will have some final papers to grade from one course and am trying to revise the syllabus for another course that starts in January.  I had hoped to get out of town during this time.  I feel a really strong need to be far away.  But I also feel compelled to stay at home, to get some things accomplished around the house that I’ve been putting off, and to reflect on the past few years in preparation for those to come.

One thing I keep coming back to in my mind about being at home is having the time and space to be with and observe the kids as they grow and to consider these observations in relation to my work in art education.  Of course watching Cora is infinitely interesting as the world is new to her and her explorations are constantly exposing her to things. But, as I’ve seen over the past few weeks of writing on this blog, the older kids have a lot to teach me at this time too.  I’m reminded again of George Szekely:

“Firsthand child study, including observation in homes, toy stores, and playground, is the true source of education for art teachers. One cannot become an art teacher without playing with children.  Children’s interests, inventions, ideas, and their own art history should be the guiding light of school art.  Art education for teachers cannot wander away from kid’s concerns and collections by substituting the adult’s perspective on art for children’s own creativity.”

So, perhaps I should think differently about not getting away.  Perhaps I ought to think of this time ethnographically, as a time for intense study of what’s going on in the wilds of my own backyard.

 

This Is Gonna Be A Lot Harder Than I Thought.

The Sleeping Cupid (1904) Illustration from “Vivilore: The Pathway to Mental and Physical Perfection”

Where is all the excitement I had for writing two weeks ago?  I think I lost it somewhere on the second floor of the house between the hours of 2 & 7 a.m. Friday night.  That was the third night in a row that I was up with a snotty-nosed Cora.  I feel bad for the kid, but I’m now totally devoid of energy for anything beyond the bare necessities.  This week those tasks including making two birthday dinners complete with cakes, helping my mother-in-law prepare for a trip out of town, responding to student thesis projects, trying to finalize the guest list for Thanksgiving, and baking 8 loaves of bread for a school Thanksgiving project.  (More on this later tonight if I can muster the brain power.)

OK.  Enough with the whining.  You’re busy too, I realize.

I think the positive thing I need to focus on now that I am sitting down and putting letters to the screen, is that I am feeling good about it.  It doesn’t feel like drudgery, I’m not checking the clock to see how much longer I have to work, I’m not jumping over to Facebook every few minutes to see if anyone “liked” my latest status update.  I’m just here, thinking and writing.

How can I find time for more of this?  How can I make time for this reflective writing practice once I’m teaching again in January if I can’t do it now?  But It’s probably time to explore some child care.  But, while I want to let go a bit, while I long to have time for myself, I also realize that my time with Cora is fleeting.  Before I blink my eyes she’s going to be as old as Rosa.  And I already feel like I’m missing out on things because I give her as much space as is safe to venture around the house on her own explorations and occasionally plop her in front of the t.v. once in a while so I can get the dishes done.  What’s she being exposed to in those moments?  What connections is she making that I’m missing?

Of course this could all be avoided if Cora hadn’t given up napping.  But, in the end, I won’t be with her for every moment in her life.  I guess I ought to start letting go now, before it gets much harder.  But not too much, afterall, she’s only 2.