As students settled into the art classroom at Hawthorne Elementary, art teacher Liz Bash set the stage for class on Monday.
The clay, collage, drawing and painting studios were open, she told them.
Inspiration station, which features a library of books and resources to help students as they work on their projects, was available. Students could also check out the student request tray, where images they requested from Bash of their favorite anime or video game characters were printed to help with their art.
Looking ahead, Bash hinted at studios soon to open: Fiber Arts. Printmaking. Architecture.
Before students selected a studio to work from, Bash shared a video that reviewed slipping and scoring, a process used to join different pieces of clay together. She noticed when she put some finished student clay projects in the kiln, pieces fell off — a sign that pieces were not attached properly.
“This video ties in with our artistic habit of developing craft,” she said to a fourth-grade class. “Remember when we’re developing our craft, we’re learning new skills and techniques to improve our abilities as an artist.”
This year, Bash revamped how she approaches her lessons and how she structures her class, putting creative decision-making in the hands of her students.
“I like it because sometimes when I’ve already done something and I don’t want to do it all the time, I can do something new,” said fourth-grader Aya Mubarak, who worked on a clay project. “I really like the studios because it has lots of materials and all the things I probably need I have here to use.”
Bash adopted the Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) approach, founded by art educators Diane Jaquith and Katherine Douglas.
How it works: Bash’s classroom is organized by stations that include all of the tools and materials to work within that medium. Each station includes step-by-step instructions, set-up and clean-up visuals, and folders that showcase examples of artwork. Students get studio experiences where they develop their own ideas and choose the materials to carry out their visions. They keep a portfolio of work, which they can always revisit if inspired by another idea. At the end of class, students share what problems they solved and what they discovered as well as show their projects to their peers.
“What does an artist do?” Bash said. “If we put artistic behaviors at the center of what we’re doing then we become more focused on what does creativity looks like? And how can I best cultivate it in students? In our art room, students determine what they are working on, what’s important to them. They are finding and solving problems. I’m there as a facilitator, a co-investigator and a resource.”
Bash has been experimenting with choice-based art education for years. She attended workshops, read books written by Jaquith and Douglas and gave students opportunities to choose what they wanted to work on as a reward at the end of a project.
“On those days, they were deeply motivated and deeply invested in what they were doing,” she said.
Bash was prompted to shift to a studio approach when she noticed a trend among her students shortly after the school year started.
“I felt projects that normally motivated students fell flat,” she said. “They weren’t engaged. They weren’t excited. I didn’t feel they were engaging in their artistic practice as I hoped they would.”
She reached out to colleagues in the online TAB community, asking for advice and reviewed ideas by them about implementing a studio approach in her classroom. By the second week of school, Bash pivoted to the new format, starting with fourth-grade students. Students embraced the open studio concept immediately.
“You see students motivated and engaged,” she said. “They are working on projects that are right for them, finding and choosing materials that best express their ideas, and working at their own level.”
When Bash introduces a new studio, she provides students with opportunities to explore the medium through challenges. For example, with the sculpture studio, she asked students to create a sculpture using four materials without using glue or tape. Students collaborated and experimented with different attachment techniques such as wrapping, folding, creating pleats, making notches or insertions with their materials. They ended the lesson by discussing what they discovered and how they created their art pieces.
The open studio concept has allowed her to address students’ needs individually or as a group as well as create lessons based on what students are working on.
When she noticed pieces were falling from students’ clay projects, she created a video demonstrating how to slip and score pieces of clay to ensure they stick together. When one student started to integrate shading in his drawing, she introduced him to drawing pencils and showed him how to use them to help achieve shadows and depth in his drawing. When students started drawing sunsets, she could dive into a lesson about warm and cool colors as well as how to create an ombre effect.
Through her new class approach, Bash hopes to not only cultivate students' creativity but for them to know their ideas matter and what they think is important. “I want them to feel confident in their ideas and see themselves as creative beings.
“I want them to run into obstacles and have the tools — or know how to find the tools to overcome them,” she said. “Learning happens in the process and often the process is more important than the product.”
During Monday’s class, many students gravitated towards the clay station, finishing sculptures, pinch pots and other designs.
Third-grader Yeabu Fobellah opted to work on a collage, using a paper crimper to create folds on a piece of construction paper and decorative scissors to add a patterned edge as she cut them. She cut several shapes from different colors of construction paper and glued them on a flat sheet of paper.
“I love to make stuff I can feel,” she said.
Meanwhile, across the table, Camila Ricardo finished up a clay project inspired by her favorite cartoon, Tom and Jerry. She also pulled out a collage she had started working on but wanted to finish her pottery project first.
What has she learned from art class so far?
“Practice makes progress,” Ricardo said.