Chapters 20 and 21

These chapters were short and to the point. I had forgotten about DBAE, that is something I learned as a docent both in Utah and Anchorage. We always spent the most time developing good questions and a passion for the work we were highlighting in our tours. It truly is incredible how much students feed off your own interest and excitement for the art history material. After participating in discussions when I had to encourage shy participants more than the monopolizing ones, I think the dialogue suggested is much more positive. I'll have to paste that phrase into the top of my paperwork when I am conducting a critique or other discussions.

The section about keeping discussions concise brought up an interesting topic. "Some students in art classes think of art time as 'a time when they get to make things' and resent other activities that seem to be tangential." When I taught a unit in an Intro Art Class in high school last semester I also had to collect student feedback for part of my data collection throughout the project. In the additional comments section one student wrote "More Art, Less Talk". In order for me to meet the objectives of each lesson plan, and develop assessments that measured some skills that addressed more than the "making of art" section of the content standards... I had to teach some content. Students had a hard time with this process simply because it hadn't been done before. But I think that over time the students would be able to handle a succinct and "concise" amount of art-academic work. How much time is too much? Is 15 minutes of an 80 minute period too much for the academic portion?
I'd like to think of ways to encourage high order thinking processes in modes that are not discussion oriented. It would be nice to come up with ways to get students to stretch their thoughts, but perhaps give them a different venue. Not everyone likes to chat in front of a group. Written journal entries in response to prompts would work. I wonder if students would protest writing in art class...