If you were an art teacher, how would you structure your class?

[DokiDokiTsuna]

The answer for me is pretty simple: I'd pick a bunch of different media, teach one every month or so, and then at the end of the year/semester, I'd ask all the students to do a project with their favorite one, and maybe write a little about what they learned.

It may not sound like much, but if you've ever been in an art class like that-- no judgement, no favoritism; just learn lots of different skills-- I envy you. u_u

I've already complained about IB Art here, but even in elementary/middle school art when I was actually the teacher's pet, I still felt something was wrong with the way the classes were taught.

One thing that stuck out to me were the tests...they were mostly art history-focused, but at the end of each there was an extra credit thing where if you drew a good enough picture based on a random prompt, you could win a prize. I won that prize every time...because I was really the only student in the class who could draw.
There were also warm-up drawings where we were supposed to copy whatever famous painting we were learning about that day...and guess who always got perfect grades on those, too?

Not gonna lie, I enjoyed being the best (I always do~). But at some point I did wonder, "...What's the point?? I always win and everyone knows it...it's basically a formality now..."

Like, the tactics probably work out okay when you get a class where no one is particularly good at drawing or anything, so the winners will be kind of random...but as soon as you have just one (1) student with talent in whatever medium you favor (in this case, line art), the whole scheme falls apart and becomes meaningless. I think that's the mark of a flawed system there.

[elyss]

My art teachers, the ones that mattered anyway, measured the progress of each student separately. This method doesn't put any student above others when it comes to grading as everyone starts in a different play.. Funnily, my IB art class was the best at this outside of my college coursework.

[ninjashira]

One of my friends is a high school art teacher, and I like the way she sets up her classes. Every six weeks, her students have to complete at least one art project. They can do literally whatever they want with whatever media they want, as long as they write up a short paragraph about why they're making it and what they learned in the process. She winds up with students making some really cool things, like giant paper meche heads or dresses made out of candy wrappers or a cardboard vending machine that dispenses little artworks or a stop motion animation video. Once the students decide what they want to do, she'll help them with techniques and materials or help them find YouTube videos to teach them how to do things. Between projects, she'll do demonstrations of media or techniques for a few days to inspire people a bit or teach them something new, but they don't have to use what she demonstrated in their next project if they don't want to.

[redfrombluelife]

Not gonna lie, I enjoyed being the best (I always do~). But at some point I did wonder, "...What's the point?? I always win and everyone knows it...it's basically a formality now..."

I feeeel you. It is a burden.

Hahahaha

If I were an art teacher I will remove every option for any students to use any color but Red

[Llyrel]

Art history + technical drawing teacher here.
The way I do it is usually focusing on the necessary techniques that will be needed to complete the "big project" that will be done throughout the second part of the year. For example, the "big project" for this year will be putting together the demo for a 2D "videogame" of sorts in which players will be able to virtually explore a local museum. Multiple skills are going to be required for this... namely:

-Drawing perspective (needed for backgrounds);
-Reproducing a painting using the grid method (for the paintings themselves);
-Shading + some basic digital coloring;
-Basic character design (for videogame sprites);
-Minimum programming (we're going to use Renpy for the videogame, which does half of the work for you... still, some programming is required :D);

For now, I'm focusing on the portrait copy part: each student got to choose the portrait they liked the most from a bunch of paintings found in the aforementioned museum and they already copied it using the grid method. We're now working on the shading part given that we're working online, I'm sending them video tutorials to explain the most difficult parts, so they can rewatch them as many times as they want to. Same goes for the digital coloring part, I'm gonna record a bunch of tutorials for them to watch so they can follow them step by step. We already did some perspective drawings last year, so it should be fairly easy to do the backgrounds part. As for the programming part... well, most of my students follow computer science-related classes, so the idea is to combine what they already know with a bunch of new things most of the work is gonna be solo, but the programming itself will require some group collaboration as well. I try not to focus too much on group work, however, because I know that not all of my students enjoy it.

Also, on the matter of projects: I find them to be the easiest way to keep my students focused and give them actual goals. My workplace is not an art school and most of my students have little to no interest in drawing, but Art is a mandatory subject. One of the questions I'd get asked the most, especially during my first years of teaching, was more or less: "but what even IS the point of art? Isn't it, like... useless?" because, unfortunately, over here the idea that "art" is that thing "only children do", that "it takes five minutes to do it" and that "it serves no purposes" is very popular (...which is kinda ridiculous, given that we're the country of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, but oh well XD). So I try to come up with projects that are actually close to my students' interests (e.g. videogames, computer science), hoping to show them that art actually has a ton of different purposes and applications and that yes, it's very possible to find a job in that field

[NickRowler]

My parents keep pressuring me to teach art, tho I don't know if I have the stamina for it.

I think if I ever decided to do it, I would focus on Digital Art. I think the things I would focus on is getting students used to drawing on a tablet and using layers. I would also do a lot of color theory, because that is sort of my background. I would also encourage time management and deadlines. Some of the criticism I had of some art teachers is they gave too much time for assignments. While be projects are important, you also need to give students shorter exercises so they can understand techniques.

I don't think I would want to teach traditional art unless it is painting. Mostly because I never felt like painting was taught correctly in school. I have had teacher with the mindset of "If you can hold a brush, you can paint". I had one teacher who had us copy famous masterpieces but never taught the class underpainting. Students just ended up frustrated because they could not properly replicate paintings that use that technique.

[borzoiteeth]

The #1 thing I'd know I would not do is say, "I reward students that push their boundaries <3" and then proceed to give the students who do push themselves bad grades because it's unrefined and messy. What the fuck do you expect when someone tries a medium/style they've never done before??

I had too many teachers who did this.

[CosmicLeon]

I think this may have been isolated for just your school, because I mine was not like that at all. And i think it may depend on the teacher. In H.S my teacher Mrs. T focused on the principles of design, and terminology. Especially on the tool we would use too. Like don't get paint on the furrow of the brush. I have been through 3 art teachers in the public school system and each one was very different. Personally I think the best teacher it the one I left high with, because she did what a lot of other teachers i think didn't. first off she was open about people's styles. She told me once, that she is a realism artist, and that I am more of a cartoon artist, and that she respects our different styles. As a teacher, she pushed her students too improve, and respects them. She didn't force them to change what they were doing, but how. Such as be more bold in your reduction carving, try something new, try a new medium, take risks, etc... Our grades were based off of how we improved in our techniques, based off the principles of art, rather than preference. How well did you use emphases, composition, etc... and often times we were required to write about what techniques we used and why, which we would then receive feed back on. For my prior teachers were a different story. Ms. L did not feel as if she taught her class as well and if she didn't like it she made you change it. She ended up dismantling a tea set my cousin was sculpting because it wasn't quiet right. Like why!? but when i think back to her classes she was really inspired by other cultures' art. And we learned about them, which then followed by an assignment to try out the type of art style. You would be surprised how many people don't know what a scarbacho is. (if that is spelled right) She did have favorites though, I was also the art teacher's pet. And she didn't seem too interested in too many of her students, or seemed less involved. When I would ask questions to her, I was just told to draw from a picture. I understand her answer now that I am older that using ref. is good, but I think was need to be taught was how to see your ref. to translate it into drawing form. and how you should look at ref. is something I didn't learn until I was in college figure drawing classes. Under ms. L I basically self taught myself, rather than getting the help i needed because I didn't understand or it wasn't explained. The other teacher Mr. F was not there long enough for me to remember him, basically kindergarten. But, he would brought in artist to talk to the class, which I thought was really awesome. To note, Mrs. T also brought in artist, and would have guests ever few months or so.

As far as contests go. I don't there there was any in art class in particular. And if it was, all the other classes were judge as a group. such as all of the 5th graders rather than group A and group B. if that makes sense. And often times the work would be judged by someone who wasn't biased in the class or students.

[rajillustration]

My high school was super underfunded for art so I only painted on canvas because some guy who lived next to my art teacher died and donated them. Really thankful for that guy, RIP, he was a good guy.

But I have taught some private lessons before (not as an official teacher, but I'm very much trying to either get a job in that field or get a teaching degree to accompany the art degree) and I think what's really important is to draw in the WHY instead of the WHAT when it comes to art techniques. Especially when it comes to stuff like color theory and abstraction vs realism--you have to teach why you use it. Kids are kind of trained to memorize and have a hard time internalizing stuff.

Kinda like how in sports you teach people to play a game, and not just how to kick a ball. I feel like in High School art all I ever did was kick that ball around. It never actually clicked outside the classroom how to combine those skills to make my own pieces.

So anyway, that's what I focus on when I teach. I did a lesson like a week ago for a school nearby and we did it on how to illustrate the night sky (which was HARD over zoom). So I talked about why midnight is perceived as blue although moonlight is not blue. We talked about the science and anatomy of how our eyes work in low light, and the Purkinje shift. (because I think it's helpful to remind kids that there's a lot of science in art. Like a lot of science and needing to predict how humans observe the world--because we often observe things a little off.)

Then we looked at some famous art and I asked em--why does this look like night? Hoping that it would teach em how to approach classic art as a learning tool and not just something to memorize. Kinda like trying to reverse engineer it and ask "why does this work" instead of just being told "see, this works"

Then, afterward, I did a demo of doing washes in watercolor to paint our own take on night skies, since I know they have those paints, and washes are kind of scary to beginners. Plus, washes are kinda quick, and I didn't have too much time to do more than that. But that ended up being a good idea because technical stuff from a professional perspective is very different from an art education perspective, so I was able to explain things in great detail like...how to lift paint when you make a mistake, how to know what brushes to buy and which to use, and how to stretch your paper to prevent buckling. TBH their art teacher was really into the lifting paint thing. They were like "how did you ctrl-z? You can ctrl-z in watercolor???" and that was I think their favorite part.

But I came up with that lesson plan because I was talking to a friend of mine who teaches Drama and she said that she does a lot of "I do" and then "we do" and then "you do" so you want to lecture, then do some discussion or projects with them, and then let them go solo. It was...nearly impossible with zoom in that time limit, but I think they had fun painting, at the least. At least one kid was paying attention, haha.