Hands in the Air
Reflecting on my fit in the education universe.
March 2, 2022
This post is a rewrite of my blog entry from two years ago when I first began my teaching career and entered the my own classroom at West Carrollton High School. The purpose of the entry was to embrace and reflect upon the physical , environmental, and socio-economic context of my teaching practice and discuss how it aligns or conflicts with my teaching values. A lot has changed since then, however, I am still excited about my teaching career, energized by my students, and finding new ways to expand creativity and artistic practices at WCHS.
I teach digital arts at West Carrollton High School just south of the city of Dayton, Ohio. I was immediately informed of the community and the blue-collar ethos of the area on my first day of orientation into the school district. It is a small community with a population firmly grounded in the shadow of rusting factories in the area. Every generation since WWII in this community had counted on a good paying job and attainable upper middle-class lifestyle until the Frigidaire, GE (General Electric) and finally the GM (General Motors) plant was shuttered in 2008. With hourly wages averaging less than a third of what they were twenty or even thirty years ago, the community is vastly different.
This blue-collar identity and values structure reflected a vast majority of the students that I teach. Deemed unnecessary by most, education beyond high school is below 16%. When the factories went south, very few people had a working model on what to do next. The lack of importance placed on education is a palpable frustration in the education system. Partnered with a rising poverty rate, it is a demanding situation for the racially diverse population. My own background is similar, having come from a school that was both isolated and populated by working class families. I feel kinship and an obligation to open the eyes of students to some of the possibilities in higher education and specifically in the arts.
The teachers and administrators fully embrace the heritage and acknowledge our challenges in the school district. They eagerly take up the role of the underdog and are open to the ideas of expanding creative outlets in our school. When I began teaching here, the art department had two educators that both have over 10 years teaching experience and live in the community. Their insight has been invaluable. Since that time, we still have one of those art teachers, and have expanded with a third educator, who like me, comes from a background as a practicing artist. We strike a good balance of experiences in the classroom versus the real-world obstacles and problem-solving skills needed to navigate as a professional creative.
I knew what I wanted from my classroom and how I wanted to define it. The art room should look like the art room. I wanted to showcase the ability of art to be expressive, loud, and colorful. My favorite classroom of all time was my 3-Dimensional Illustration class at CCAD taught by Mark Hazelrig. There were giant monster heads, aliens and creature sculptures growing from out of every shelf in the chaotic, yet organized studio. When you walked in, it felt creative. Students walking by would slow down and gawk through the door to see what we were creating in there. It was an art studio and it looked like it. I wanted a space that made students excited about what we were doing there. Now in my third year in my digital art studio, I have transformed the space into a dual-purpose room, housing the Mac lab and the mural club, a program I started with the grant I was awarded in my second year of teaching. It is the perfect blend of individually controlled artmaking versus the raw collaborative creativity and chaos found in the everyday activities of community art. Students naturally congregate to the active space just to get a glimpse of the happenings in the playful and inspiring space. There is a tangible and noticeable creative energy that is alive in the active space that my students and I tap into, and others want to be a part of.
In addition to the mural club, we have made other improvements to the arts program and curriculum. In the digital arts department that I personally run; we have expanded the course offerings. Originally there was only digital art 1 and 2 plus a digital photography course, which struggled to keep the interest of students. I have since exchanged the photo class with a graphic design course from the business department. Both curriculums now have a better space, with graphic design having a better fit in the art department and the business arm coupling photography with an introductory course on video production. Courses in digital art have been expanded and redefined, giving more structure to course framework. Digital art 1 is a foundation course based in Adobe Photoshop, digital art 2 is anchored in storytelling and digital character design, digital art 3 is based upon making meaning with art and the Big Ideas work of Dr. Sidney Walker at The Ohio State University (Walker, 2004). Finally, digital art 4 is concerned with portfolio development and finding direction and outlets for higher education in the creative fields. This course redevelopment has taken place in the studio arts as well with new offerings in textile and fiber design, 3-D foundations, and a dedicated ceramics course. Each team member now runs a club in the art department, with an Art Club, GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) Club, and the Mural Club.
Physically, my classroom consists of 24 Mac workstations on one side and the dedicated mural space on the other. Those Macs should last us another (hopefully) one or two years until the construction of our new building which was awarded by the passing of the school levy in the first year of my teaching. I have been able to secure funding to place a Wacom tablet at every workstation giving pen and drawing input. I was surprised that there was not any form of pen/stylus input for digital art studio, and I was excited to bring that functionality into the classroom. This plays a major part in the research that I am doing exploring students’ feelings of success in the art room and whether these digital tools allow for expanded confidence in artistic exploration. Although Covid has come, gone, and come again leaving behind plexiglass dividers and scads of sanitizing wipes the setup of my class has gone through many physical layout changes. I have tried four major layout changes with the workstations trying to find a good balance of student accessibility to my lecturing/tutorials during class projects. The “smart board” is not centered in the room and there are only two data ports to feed all the computers, so the physical limitations are challenging. I have implemented a setup that can utilize work groups, allowing students to help each other as well as making sure that all lessons are posted to YouTube as a backup reference resource that allows for translatable access and remote learning.
I have been inspired by my learning in the graduate program on art education at Ohio State and I have been attempting to implement and improve my teaching practices. I am blessed to be able to work with the high school age group that I feel I can make the most impact with. They inspire me as I see my younger self in many of them and I hope that I can help to make that connection of love for art into a career opportunity.