5 Minute Design (A warm up game)

 I’ve completely made it up and it definitely needs some tweaking, but the rules are essentially this:

The whole class is introduced to the method of the game. The point of the game is to increase ideation fluency, collaboration, risk taking and communication skills. To get them thinking on their feet quickly, I project the descriptions of the steps on the screen and just watch the clock and tell them when to move to the next step. If you are comfortable with using a timer, that might be nice too. It’s not really “design thinking” as much as it forces them to get moving fast. If you teach adolescents in the morning, you might understand the need this game is providing. :) So far, it’s been a warm up the kids have liked (middle school). The students work in groups of four – six. Sometimes they work by table and sometimes I break the group up into different configurations so they work with new people.

I try to pick objects for them to redesign that they already feel comfortable with and use on a nearly daily basis, and something I have in my classroom for them to look at as they think. Examples: backpack, flashlight, pencil case, etc

A crayon picture I made for an assessment workshop, just so this post wouldn't be visually boring. You're welcome.

1 minute – kids quietly and independently list everything they know about that particular object in their sketchbooks
1 minute – team makes a pro/con list about the object they are redesigning. They need to list all of the good things worth keeping and the problems they have had with that object. Ex backpack "pro" is that you can find it in many colors/patterns and a backpack "con" could be that the zippers can break.
2 minutes – team makes sketches and plans to enhance the "pros" and repair the "cons". Like they say at IDEO, “All ideas are good ideas” and for this game money and practicality are not obstacles. 
1 minute – team plans a creative presentation. I require my students to at least stand up front with their team, even if they choose not to be the one speaking. As the marking period goes on, I find that they gain a little more courage, and eventually, most kids will speak at some point. Now that we have crossed the halfway marker of the marking period, the presentations have actually gotten pretty good, despite the one minute planning time for them. They usually involve some sort of physical interaction with said object and jet packs or invisibility cloaks. 

We spend about 5 – 10 minutes watching the team presentations with time for clapping/cheering and questions/comments in between groups. If you wanted to extend this, you could have the kids ask questions and then ask the teams to go back and redesign their work and re – present. I haven’t tried that yet, but it’s an idea.

Using Science Fiction to Teach Creative Thinking, Part Two: Hybrids

This is part two of the Science Fiction Series.

Sci Fi Hybrid Monster by artist Kate Rah

You can always count on science fiction authors to come up with some pretty fantastic creatures.  Most of the creatures in Sci-Fi are made of pieces and parts of already existing creatures. Hybridization is an old standby for creative idea generationSwitch Zoo is a game you can play on your phone or online that students can use to play with hybridizing animal parts together.  I wanted to push my students a little further by encouraging them to think outside of the "animal only" mode.

. Take two or more disparate objects or ideas and Voila!, you have a creative beginning to a work of art.

We had only one week to devote to this exploration and experimentation with clay as a media.

How we played with hybridization:
1. Students by table groups of four make 4 lists. Each table made lists of 10 animals, 10 foods, 10 modes of transportation and 10 everyday objects/tools.

2. The students cut up their lists and put all of their little strips into a paper lunch bag.

3. We traded bags among the tables.

4. Students had to draw two or more words from the bag as inspiration for a hybridization.

Toaster Spider

5. Students made several wacky quick drawings of the new hybridizations and shared their results with the class. It was pretty fun to see what everyone came up with.

After a day of playing with ideas, students developed their favorite blend and set to make it come alive using clay and the pinch/pull method of construction. For most of my students, this is their first or second experience with clay ever.  I am pretty happy with the results considering they only had four class periods to have their hands in the clay!

Students self assessed the quality of their work by asking students who they did not sit by if they could guess what objects they were combining in their work.  If the body parts were not discernible to their particular character in mind, then it meant that they needed to keep working on it until they had enough details to describe their creation.  This was a nice way to encourage collaboration in the classroom and it also helped students reach a more sophisticated level of craftsmanship.  All works are low fire white clay, painted with acrylic paint.

Giraffe with donuts

Ladybug M &M

Octo-dog

Campfire Mouse (will hold rings)

Duck-tanic

Panda-phant

Rainbow Unicorn fully caffeinated
 on StarBucks

Dragon-Tiger

Bacon Chef

Shark-Taco

Pigskin piggybank

Vans with feet of their own

Pink Bumble-Mouse

Minnie Mouse Flute

Changing my job description

 

Ask any art teacher why they think their class is important and I'd bet most of them would mention among other things that their class teaches students to be more creative.  But let’s look at our practices critically. 

As an art teacher, do you actually teach kids how to be more creative? Is painting a color wheel a creative act? Is painting a copy of a famous artwork creative? What if it's a monochromatic self portrait? Is making a coil pot a creative act? Our are students more creative after having done these exercises? How much of your curriculum do you devote to skill based lessons? How much do you devote to critical thinking and creative ideation?

If you know my history as an art teacher, and I'm guessing if you are reading this, you do, you know I've gone through some changes in the way I teach.  I entered the profession in the usual way. I went to college and learned how to get good grades by by mimicing whatever style of art work my college teachers  made.  I was trained in DBAE (Discipline Based Art Education) and was well versed in all things a good art teacher should know about how to construct a solid lesson.  I know how to make a lesson that could rival the content knowledge of any other subject area in school. It should be rigorous with Art Production, Art History, Art Criticism and Aesthetics.  Lessons also are encouraged to be multi-disciplinary in nature, have a reading and writing component and include a "multi-cultural" angle.  

Whew!  But I could do it with the best of them.  If there was a "right way" to do something, I was going to do it!  Looking back at some of the things I had my students do (with all of the best intentions) I make myself cringe.  My elementary students made very beautiful copies of Van Gogh's Starry Night in oil pastels, high school students made spectacular large scale fingerprint portrait of themselves ala Chuck Close and my middle schoolers made fantastic color wheel versions of famous paintings. And at the end of the marking period, semester or school year, I would have a decent handful of these masterpieces tossed into the trashcan by their creator without care as they walked out the door.

When I applied for a Masters in Art Education Degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), I was searching for something more. Frustrated with the numbers of students in my classes who only thought art was "Just OK", I wanted to learn what I could do as the teacher to affect the level of engagement for my middle school students. Part of my studies included conducting classroom research. I sought out to compare the levels of student engagement when students are challenged with a traditional, DBAE style, closed art problem with representational constraints Vs a more ill defined art problem without representational constraints.  Problem 1: "Create a triptych of yourself with a realistic self portrait in the center panel, the left panel a drawing of a road with symbols that represent those events that have led you to where you are today and on the right panel, a road with symbols of what you predict will become your future." Vs. Problem 2: "Create a self portrait in a container form. On the outside, use those shapes, textures and colors that represent how you think others view you, and on the inside, use those shapes, textures and colors that express how you really are."

Without surprise, the more open art problem that did not require representational realism from my middle school kids elicited a higher engagement response.  It was during this study that I became familiar with the work of Dr. Sandra Kay, an art educator with an extensive background in gifted education. She is one of the coauthors of a book called "Creating Meaning through Art: Teacher as Choice Maker". In it she discusses something called an "Elegant Problem".  An elegant problem is one that  invites fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration in it's responses.  I also became familiar with the work of Sydney Walker and the "Big Idea". Big ideas are large and complex and can sustain an artists work over large swaths of time.  I began thinking about how I could give my students the opportunity to think and behave as "real" artists do.  I began to examine my own practice and explore teaching students about the art world through the development of elegant problems and big ideas.  Instead of coil pots, my students began making plates that represented dreamscapes. Paintings of still life objects soon became paintings that revealed their biggest pet peeves.  Things were getting better, my students were making art that held meaning for them. They were beginning to behave like artists.

Could there be anything more?  Are my kids really engaged? YES!!!  They are loving it! Way less art is making it to the trash can.  They are behaving like artists, (but are they thinking that way?).  Do they view themselves as creative?  So, I asked them.  There were still a handful that struggled with the "big idea". What did I do about it?  To be honest, like I think most good teachers do, I rescued them.  In all of my good intentions, I "helped" them brainstorm for ideas.  I set the problems up so that they could think about them in certain ways.  I provided brainstorming worksheets and had them search for ideas out of freewriting exercises.  Most of my students could fly with the ill defined prompt with these aides, they would create very cool independent looking things and would begin to see themselves as real artists, but there were about 4 -5 in each hour that needed me to hold their hand through the ideation process. Sometimes the projects of neighboring students would end up looking eerily similar.  I chalked it up to possible developmental delays, but I knew it deep down, I was not teaching them "how to think".  These were the future adults who would someday say "I'm not creative", "I wish I could come up with ideas like that".  Now what?

I did some more reading and scavenging.  How do you teach creativity?  What can I do as an art teacher to help my kids reach their full creative potential? 

Things didn’t really start to change for me until I begun to think of myself as a “creativity teacher that uses art as a vehicle to get kids thinking differently” rather than “an art teacher”.  

A creativity teacher teaches for creativity first, that means that a creativity teacher will be looking for different things when they are developing their units.  It is not unlike my earlier work with "elegant problems". But this time, I will be searching for fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration in my students responses first, all other elements of a problem's outcome are secondary(instead of equal).   Creativity is something that ALL students will need, regardless of what they choose to be when they grow up.  I finally admit to myself that most of my students will not grow up to be artists, but they will all have a need to be able to think and behave creatively.

 Imagine if all the subjects in school were taught with an emphasis on creativity first and subject secondary?  For advocacy’s sake, speak to the benefits of creative problem solving and critical thinking for your students. But first, examine your actual practice, are you teaching the kids how to be more creative or are you teaching them how to follow directions, or make art that looks like ______? Or in the style of ____? Or to demonstrate the skill of ___? Or to show that they understand the definition of a vocabulary word?” There is a difference between being “an art teacher” and a “creativity teacher”.  Which do you want to be? What do you think is more important for kids? Can you be both?  Let's talk!!