A question

[kindofgirl]

I noticed a lot of the people in here took art classes in high school. Ironically enough, I became an Art teacher but I hardly took any art classes before college. Some of you have expressed very fond memories from your high school art classes, and some have had some really awful experiences with their teachers/assignments. So here's my question

Comments

[pendragon23]

I went to one school where the teacher wouldn't answer any of my questions when I was asking for guidance on a piece. It would always be, "I don't know, what do YOU think?" This was Art 1. At that point, I have NO IDEA, and obviously I had already thought about it, and wanted to, I dunno, learn something!

I transferred schools and had a great teacher, who combined very open-ended assignments with an eye towards getting people scholarships to college (he'd had over a million dollars in funds granted to his students over the years). Unfortunately we were in a room without windows so we had to make do using photographs and still lives (lifes?) as sources.

He was very, very good at keeping everyone working on a fairly similar project but using different mediums, or teaching a new technique but letting us choose our source material. When it was finished it was finished, if it wasn't then it wasn't. One piece took me basically the whole semester, and although he bitched at me a bit about it, it was with good humor.

When I went in, I reviewed my portfolio with him so that I could skip Art 1 and go straight to Art 2. I had done mostly small black and white pieces, so we agreed to go big and colorful. He pushed me into that and then kept suggesting new mediums. One girl wanted to try printmaking, so he dusted off a machine and taught her how to use pastels on a sheet of glass and roll prints onto paper. She was the only one who did that, and worked independently while the rest of us painted. I always admired that and that made me feel good about my options, knowing he would support me trying something new. That's important.

Having discussions is very good, I think, where you start off with a compliment and then ask questions about the part that's not working. I always knew where my problems were but often was trying to work through it and didn't know how, and those conversations usually helped me solve it. Even just a "I like this part here, what's going on over here?" was a good approach. Or a "would you like to hear my opinion?" Sometimes I was trying to figure it out on my own, and the answer was "No!" He'd wander back over a while later and it was either "are you SURE you don't want to hear my opinion?" or "better!"

I know this is long, but I had a pretty wide range of teachers, and he was awesome. I had him for 3 years and his wife for one, got AP art credits, and my portfolio got me into both governor's school and design programs at several schools.