Teaching and Learning as a Joyful Creative Process with Dr. Shamini Dias, director of the Preparing Future Faculty program at Claremont Graduate University // June 15 – 17, 2021

Hi Shamini - thanks so much for taking the time to be with us. My question is short, but (I think) complex.

What are your thoughts about using art as assessment?

In other words, many teachers certainly experiment with "art" in the classroom, but tend to do so as an activity - or as a pathway to learning / understanding. Can artistic expression be used as a form of assessment for students? If so, what recommendations do you have?

Thanks again!

My question is pretty similar to the one Erik posed. I like the idea of students having choices to employ various artistic media in class activities, but I’m not always confident on how to score assessments in a way that addresses content knowledge and artistic elements. I would welcome any thoughts you have! 

Hi Dr. Dias- This past school year has been a challenge for students and teachers alike.  Many of my students have struggled socially and emotionally. While I am closing out this school year, I have begun to plan for the upcoming school year.  I am going from a hybrid model to fully in-person next year.  Do you have any suggestions for how to bring back the energy of the classroom and help my students rebuild the sense of community that was lost a bit this year? How can I support my students and help them feel comfortable in the classroom after this past year?

Hi Dr. Dias, thanks so much for taking questions this week.  I really love to have students get hands-on and create tangible projects when it comes to assessing their learning (applying what they have learned over the course of a unit).  During this past year, we had to adapt the hands-on projects from actual physical pieces, to digital pieces.  While my students were able to make the transition from the physical to the digital projects, I did find that the quality of the work was not quite the same as years past when they were required to create an "old school" physical project.  Can you speak to any research that has been done on the quality of student work in terms of hands-on vs. digital?

Hi Dr. Dias. I was wondering if you had some tips on moving from traditional teaching to incorporating more creative expression in the class. For those who want to try, but are hesitant, what are some recommendations for baby steps we can take to help make the transition to incorporating arts into instruction? 

Erik and you pose a very important question. Art and Assessment ... what an unlikely pair! But what if we reframe "assessment"? We know that assessment - understood as gauging engagement and learning - is at the heart of learning. Knowing I am growing, seeing the my work emerge visibly in front of me can bring delight and excitement. But the way assessment is traditionally done hurts the heart of learning. No use doing creative holistic projects if we use the traditional punitive assessment frame. Some ideas I am playing with that I would love to hear everyone's ideas about:

1. Separate out content knowledge from artistic elements. But scaffold content knowledge formatively - example. In a wall collage project on creating a timeline of world events during the era of Romantic Poetry, students have the opportunity to take a number of open book, multiple attempts quizzes for content knowledge mastery. Highest score taken end of project. Project has a guiding checklist (aka rubric) and students get to add and modify the rubric for final grading. 
2. Holistic reflexive grading. Students have a guiding checklist or single point rubric as a formative tool through a project. Self and peer review as part of formative discussion (also builds metacognition of learning). Students do a final reflection on - what I learned, what challenged me and how I addressed the challenged, what I know and can do that I could not before. Everyone gets as A! Why? - the work is complete - there are visible signs of learning, they have checked off all the items on the guiding checklist, they have developed explicit knowledge of how they learn. 

I am sure there are many more ideas ... the critical thing here is first dismantling the assumptions of traditional assessment. Would love to hear everyone's perspective on this important topic

Hi Megan - what a heartfelt question and something I am sure so many of us are thinking about. 

This past year was a true radical break with life as we have known it; everything changed with the pandemic; the year also coincided with multiple social upheavals, not just in the United States but globally. As with any crisis, we all entered a kind of triage - being strong, managing, dealing with things to keep life going. In expending this energy and focus, we might not realize the impact of loss and destabilization. Now as we go on to the next thing maybe the most important thing to do is to pause and recognize the road we've travelled and that our students have travelled. And then to make a space and time for it. Also, to recognize that we are not "going back to normal" - we are moving into a "new normal" and the hopeful spirit in me thinks also that here - in this fluid space of an emerging new normal - we can actively find opportunities to alter teaching away from the more harmful effects of the traditional system. 

In concrete terms - to your question of finding a sense of community and scaffolding returning to the classroom.

TIME & SPACE. Let's explicitly give ourselves and our students permission to reflect about the past year. I find that creative forms of reflection are safe and healing ways to connect with each other. Letters to our digital selves - where students in the physical classroom write a letter to themselves in the past, their digital selves who did remote learning to express what they will miss, what they are looking forward to; Poems or drawing about "reimagining my classroom" where they can think individually and collaboratively about how teaching and learning could go in a new normal. Take time in the first few weeks for this kind of work.

Another way to create an on-going space is to create a dedicated wall space in your room for notes, letters, poems, drawings ... all reflecting the past year as well as anticipations of moving forward. Launch it with a dedicated session to make things to put up, and then after that, students can add on their own any time through a few weeks - important to explicitly call attention to it to ensure it remains active - a few minutes each lesson to gallery walk the wall to look for new additions. 

CO-CREATION OF COMMUNITY. I have always found that inviting students to help build community is in itself a means of seeding community. Make it explicit - we've been through a tough time and now we're in our physical spaces again. How can we create a good and joyful learning space together - what do they feel is important? What might be their ideas for feeling comfortable? - if we first assure them that we acknowledge that adjustment is not easy, that we are willing and invite them to think of the best ideas, students generally are forthcoming. Listening to then and taking action WITH them can build a strong sense of community. 

Thank you! While I absorb these notes, I want to tag in  Jason Manning for his thoughts. I think he would absolutely have some extending ideas to share. He has spent a significant amount of time reimagining "how things work" in his classroom. To be continued!

Hi Zachary - I am sure research will come but it's early days yet for any specific research on what you ask. But in the meantime, here are some considerations to think and talk about.

To what do we attribute the drop in quality of work? Is it just the online medium? There were many other adjustments in our transition to online learning - home conditions, equipment and space for working, consistent access to virtual time and space, level of comfort and familiarity in navigating and managing work online, our own levels of comfort and knowledge of online teaching scaffolding and support ... 

That we and our students were able to transition to remote teaching and learning while dealing with the larger life impacts of the pandemic is already pretty good. No matter what we teach, I would think there would have been a reasonable - sometimes significant - drop in work quality for both the student and leacher. 

What are the particular needs for digital work?  Apart from the technical access to tools, digital work needs a different consideration of deadlines and process, a significant explicit level of scaffolding (we do not have the informal spaces of a comment or question here and a work of encouragement there as we would in on-ground spaces). In short - much more open, emergent, and flexible design of how we assign, monitor, and assess work. 

I will come back and post some research on the above soon. But for now - I hope everyone in this forum will share ideas and thoughts from practice that speak to this. 

Sherry - so glad you asked this question. When educators are willing to edge in to creativity in the classroom, you begin a process of joy in teaching and learning. Here are some ideas that I hope you find useful.

The principle of small = radical. The word "radical" comes from "at the root" or "vital". So radical does not have to be a large and dramatic change. Small moves that get to the heart of learning and teaching to begin a transformation - are radical. 

1. Entering Self-Expression. Start each class with a few minutes of creative self-expression. Put on some music (lovely to curate a playlist with students and use that) and for about 5 minutes, students can draw, write a poem, a story (continuing a little each day), write a journal entry. They can share or keep it private as they wish (if sharing, I like to have a wall where they are invited to put their stuff)( This also by the way creates a transition for them from what they were doing before class to being present in class. 
2. Role Play the subject matter. No need to do a big drama production - do small role play activities where you can. Some ideas - role play characters talking about a topic from your subject area or debating something (these can be historical, contemporary, even fictional figures); write a letter in role - in a history class learning about the Civil War, students wrote letters as ordinary people living through the events of the period. They actually sent the letters to each other and responded (a soldier to his wife and children describing a battle and how he survived it, a runaway slave to family about the kindness of strangers, General Grant writing to a friend about dilemmas he must confront etc.) 
3. Create word-image collages. At the end of a topic, have students gather key ideas together in words/phrases and images (drawn or found) and make a large poster collaging it all together. Collaborate with other teachers and put up a quick public exhibition showing the collages along with any traditional assignment outputs. 
4. Find parallel texts. Think about songs, poems, movies, memes, TED talks etc. that reflect and address the topics you are teaching in class. Find a few - then ask students to also find something to contribute to your Creative Connection Collection. Look at this collection from time to time to make sure it remains visible. 
5. Use portfolios. Have students build a portfolio (digital or physical) in small groups. Each class session - they can add: a short reflection that you have them write at the end of class about the topic (these string together into a nice narrative), images related to the topic, quotes from their texts and quotes from the larger world that connect or critique etc. Make time in class for working on their portfolios if not each week, then at least every 3 weeks to keep it visible and sustained. 
6. Make a Zine. Have students collaborate to make a little Zine about a topic or about their experience learning a topic. Here are instructions how to make this home-made, folded sheet of paper Zine. I've used this for each student to write and draw what they found fun and meaningful about a topic (some will do little poems, paste pictures etc). And then on the last day, we have this little collection of Zines and can share with each other. Makes for a neat little mini exhibition too. 

I hope these 6 moves generate more ideas when you think about the specifics of what you are teaching. More ideas from all in this forum would be great. What are some small moves you make that are fun, bring in self-expression, allow different modalities of expression, and are meaningful to learners and learning?