Amy: Welcome to “Jenny and Amy Sitting in Chairs.” Today’s conversation sort of backpedals on where we started our last conversation about teaching music and how we were so ill equipped to teach music, and yet perfectly equipped to teach music by engaging the creative process.
I have to pat myself on the back: my students voluntarily rehearsed their rhythm sequences yesterday. They didn’t have homework during their homework time, and they were given the choice to play a game, or color in their coloring books, and I just threw out if you want, you could get a jump start on rehearsing your rhythm pieces, and they were like “YES!” and they went out and they just started doing it. It is really exciting when your students choose to do the thing that they normally groan about doing, you are doing something right. I don't know what I'm doing right yet, but I'll figure it out, but we're all having fun along the way. One of the things, Jenny, you brought up and I think it is really what's going to steer our conversation today is this idea of the difference of teaching in an academic educational setting, versus teaching in a studio setting - specifically how does music change when you’re teaching as a vehicle for other forms of learning versus in a studio setting where the goal is to hone your skills. It’s really about the technique versus the exploration.
Jenny: There is an author that I really appreciate named Brenda Pugh-McCutchen who wrote the book Teaching Dance as Art in Education. This book is where I discovered that there's a difference between dance in a studio setting versus an academic setting. It has helped me become a better teacher in both settings because now I understand that in a studio, like you said, you hone your skills and really focus on the technical aspect of dance. At the end you have a recital or a finished product that showcases the skills students have learned in the past year. Many of my Westtown students ask me what the difference is between a dance recital and a dance concert. In my opinion, a recital is where students perform everything that they've learned, showing off skills that they have built upon over that year. In a studio you generally have students who are equal to the same skill level in each class. In an academic setting, where you may have students who have years and years of dance experience and students have never set foot in a dance studio, you’ve got to figure out a way to level the playing field and make dance accessible to everyone in the room. It may not be technically, but there are a lot of other aspects of dance that can be taught. Technical ability is still an important part of dance education, but the focus is more on teaching students how to pay attention to their bodies and how your body can move and how to use your body to create new movement. Brenda Pugh-McCutchen lays out four cornerstones of dance education which are Dancing and Performing, Creating and Composing, Knowing History, Culture, and Context, and Analyzing and Critiquing. Side note: I also think that if you’re using these cornerstones, you’re helping students develop critical thinking skills. This goes into feminine pedagogy... In most studios typically you have a teacher standing at the front of the class showing the students what to do, correcting them, giving all of the direction and students don't question it. They might ask questions about the choreography, but they’re not going to say why are we doing this? What’s important about this? The typical culture of the dance studio is that you accept what the teacher says and you don’t question it. You do what you’re told.
Amy: I would say that’s true for all traditional classrooms, period.
Jenny (11:49): I think it’s really cool that in an academic setting, students can be given the opportunity to ask questions and question why we dance or why it is important to dance or what feeds into these different styles of dance and it opens up this world like new cultures and new people and new ways of working and thinking. With the cornerstones of academic dance or dance in education, probably any art form in an educational setting, (12:53) are creativity, history and culture.
Amy: What I can respond to is this sense that in a traditional studio setting there is a lack of choice. By not providing choice, by not providing agency, you're also not supporting critical thinking skills. There is very much a place for teaching technique, a place for really perfecting and working towards virtuosity within your chosen artform, and I don't want to take away the importance of that. But I think when you are looking at using the art as a vehicle for exploring other skills, then it's really important to engage in the creative process versus the technical aspects because within that creative process you are offering opportunities for choice, that support personal agency. You are offering opportunities to make decisions which supports critical thinking. I think it is also important to recognize that putting too much emphasis on technique could decrease the safety of the lesson, particularly in students who did not seek out this particular art medium. Students who are frustrated at their inability to complete the task will be less likely to engage in the lesson being taught.
Jenny: I’ve got it, I’ve got it! Dancing and performing, creating and composing, knowing history, culture and context, and then analyzing and critiquing. It’s giving a student a more holistic approach to dance. Not only are you creating and performing your own stuff you're looking at stuff that's been created and performed before you and then you're also working as an audience member - learning how to be a good audience member.
Amy: I'm thinking about those four cornerstones and how they align to the national standards as laid out as elements and principles. I feel like those are the four umbrellas that all of the standards for arts education fall into. When you talk about using the standards as a guideline for teaching classes, I think that helps bring it full circle. I think probably the one element that I tend to gloss over is the analyzing part, because it's really hard to get students to be constructive, particularly at a younger age. I think it's such a critical skill that you can analyze and sometimes by analyzing somebody else that helps you to analyze your own thoughts and reflections. I can't put my finger on it today, but I’m quite certain that that is a huge social-emotional skill.
Jenny: It is. In my 6th grade creative process class, analyzing and critiquing is one of the skills I’m trying to teach, but I think I have a hard time doing it because I haven’t necessarily been taught how. I grew up in a studio setting and I would say these ideas are fairly new to arts pedagogy philosophy. None of things I learned in class went beyond performing and technique. Now I'm learning how to be analytical and how to critique things and so trying to teach a bunch of 6th graders how to do this in a way that doesn't hurt somebody's feelings or is productive is really hard. That's my weakest area of all of these is teaching kids to respond in constructive ways.
Amy: I think the easier part is giving you my criticism, the harder part is receiving it. Particularly when it's something that you created and it's something very close to your heart. And that’s the struggle for all artists - how do I make myself vulnerable in my art. Because what I put out into the world will be criticized and analyzed. Even just walking outside of your house can be an exercise in “I’m being judged”. I’m being judged by the dog that’s walking next to me, I’m being judged by the older woman in the grocery store, whatever it may be. I think that there’s a huge life skill in all of that, and what a great opportunity to practice that skill in a creative, safe environment.
Jenny: On that particular skill, I have had the opportunity to talk to other dance teachers and they suggest having students practice critiquing dances that are famous where the artist is not even present and practicing that way so that when it does come to responding to your peers, it’s much more constructive.
Amy: I think that's a really great way to learn how to create constructive criticism. I’m still hung up on helping students respond to the criticism. You don't want to tell them how to feel. You can’t say to them, “Don't take it personally.” I think that I will have to do some thinking, some research on ways to support receiving criticism and critique. That is probably the reason why I don’t do a lot of it. I know the population that I work with really struggles with how they’re perceived by others. We might be working towards it, but there are a lot of steps we need to take beforehand, and I want to be very cautious with not throwing them into something that’s just going to backfire, that I can’t do safely.
Jenny: Exactly, One of my teachers had us practice critiquing each other to notice something by saying, “oh I noticed when this happened, when you did that” and then you say, “I appreciated when this happened.” To offer a suggestion you phrase it by saying, “I wonder what would happen if…” but also giving the kids who are receiving that to say, “No, I’m not going to change it.” It’s a balancing act. But that’s something that really helped me be a better responder to my students when they were creating stuff and I could say, “Oh! I really enjoyed when you did that. That was really cool. What would happen if you tried it this way?” And they’re more open to receiving that and trying it, and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work and that’s part of the process.
Amy: I think that is a really great way to sort of circle the process. There are 5 steps to the creative process, but ultimately it’s a cyclical process. And it always sort of starting with a question, and when you come to the answer it almost leads you right to another question. When you’re offering critiques that way, you aren’t just saying “Well... that's not right. I want you to do it this way instead.” But instead what it’s communicating to the student is there are multiple ways to come to this answer and I'm going to try something different and it's okay to try something different and being encouraged to try something different. So what's going to be discovered in the next cycle, in that next journey in the circuitous route.
Jenny: I would say that's probably the biggest difference between arts in a studio setting and arts in an educational setting. In an education setting you’re focused on the process more than the product. The point is to continue through that cycle over and over again to come to a final product and performance, but it's more about that discovery and exploration than about the final product.
Amy: I want to circle back because I tend to get caught up in semantics, but I want to make it really clear, we’re saying ‘educational setting,’ but I think it could be misinterpreted. So I think there are actually maybe three different kinds of settings: There’s the studio setting where you’re working on very technical aspects. There is an arts class provided in a school that has to meet standards and very specifically follow a curriculum, and so that isn’t necessarily what we’re talking about either. Because that is again much more product oriented: everybody today is going to draw a copy of “Starry Sky” because we are studying impressionism. So yes, there are elements of historical and cultural learning, there's a technique that you're learning, but there is very little choice making. This isn't about the creative process. We’re not offering you a skill to explore to go and create your own art, we're saying this is the skill that we're going to work, the technique that we’re working on. So in that way this is closely related to the studio setting. I think the educational setting that we are looking at is somewhere on a spectrum in between those two where, again, the art is not about meeting a curriculum, it's not about needing a technical expectation, it's about truly just being able to explore it from a creative aspect.
Jenny: I might actually disagree with you on that. I think if it’s art being taught in a school, it should be about the creative process.
Amy: I don’t disagree, but I’ve also worked with enough art teachers to know how frustrated they are that everybody has to do the same project and they have to turn out the same way.
Jenny: Oh okay okay. Maybe I have the luxury of doing what I want because I’m at a private school. I think if you’re following the National Core Arts Standards, that still covers everything that state standards need to cover. But that’s the trouble with traditional education, and it's very much like the teacher stands in front of students telling them what to do, and there's a right way and a wrong way and I totally disagree with that form of education. I think it’s bogus.
Amy: I think most art teachers teaching in a public education who are given a curriculum and an assessment that they have to meet feel that frustration. So I just want to clarify when we’re talking about educational settings we’re talking about those classrooms that have a little more freedom. They’re not stuck with a mandated curriculum.
Jenny: Ok, so we’re saying the same thing.
Amy: So I think that actually now clarified what we’re talking about at the end, when we should have said at the beginning and helps us to bring this conversation to an end today. So thank you so much for reading the nonsense and nonsensical conversations that is Amy & Jenny Sitting in Chairs.