Hello and Welcome to the Fine Arts Educator Coaching Clinics Podcast.  I am your host, Eric Sanford.  I want to encourage you to visit our website, FAECC.org for resources and links to this podcast.  While you are there, be sure to send us an email about your thoughts on the episode, or future topics you’d like to hear more about.

In this session, we’ll explore the continued Evolution of Fine Arts Education. I will offer a disclaimer or warning for this episode - it’s not the typical “here are some skills you can use in your classroom” that I’ve done before this and will continue doing after. 

In different disciplines, fine arts education has leaped ahead, while in others, it’s found a comfortable niche, holding on to the traditional ways of the past 60 or 70 years.  

So what does the fate of fine arts education look like?  In what ways is it evolving? And, more so, is that evolution something that we should encourage?

Let’s first consider fine arts education as a culture.  As with any culture, there are rules, guidelines, and expectations. 

Fine arts teachers are passionate, inheriting that fire from their mentors. We have developed an identity of how and what we teach, shaped by our predecessors for generations.

So what happens when someone introduces new learning methods and requires a change from the methods traditionally taught?  

Well, what would you expect from anyone who is told that their culture, the way they have lived since they were a kid, the life they grew up in and that was successful for so long-  what DO you expect their reaction to be?  In most cases, it's not jumping for joy.  In some cases, I would expect an explicit and emphatic No.

We all know that change takes time, and sometimes, lots of it.  It also needs a goal, either something to work towards or, in some cases, to work away from, or both.

So what are the goals of what is to come? And, what are we moving away from?  

I would say that many, mind you - not all, programs from the past 70 years found their niche in group performances, teaching soft skills, and creating a family within their program that many times influenced the school community. 

Well, those sound pretty good!  If these and other traditional metrics no longer measure the quality of fine arts programs, then what is the new standard?

We hear increasingly the merits of "individual student growth".  Learning is personal, and we want to observe and track the shape of that growth.  And let's not forget Artistic Literacy - that caveat that includes both aspects of fine art - the performing and the conceptual understanding.  

You might be surprised at how many fine arts teachers continue to operate in a different way, one that they are the master of all information, with eager students awaiting the outpouring of knowledge during each class. Or, maybe you won’t be surprised.

So what do we really want our students to be able to do when they leave our class? What is it that makes students better off than they were?  Or better yet, what is it about our class that entices students, and what do THEY want to achieve?

The newest measure within academics and fine arts includes students being able to discuss concepts, of evaluating themselves and their peers.  Of knowing the historical relevance of a work, and how that fits in today's society.  Of recognizing and mastering the fundamentals while studying past artists throughout many cultures and histories. Of promoting self-expression and ingenuity.  Of exploring and using modern techniques and trends. All with a large emphasis on learning the skills to do it. 

For a moment, let us consider that there is some merit, some value, to this train of thought-  Fine arts students thinking for themselves, understanding the concepts behind their work and their influences, and elevating those ideas to the next level.   Being able to talk and write about it in class, and to develop a deeper understanding of the actual content.  

That doesn’t sound so bad, either.  So where is the hesitation, the reluctance to evolve?

Perhaps it’s in the content itself.  What if the teacher is not able to expand on these other concepts?  What if they're knowledge is not as extensive in these other methods as it is in the performance of that content?

I suppose that would be a significant deterrent from promoting turn and talks, question-driven learning, or peer critique.  

Maybe we hear the argument - “Students get enough reading, writing, and thinking critically in core academic classes. This should be their break, something fun to learn.”  

To that I would suggest that fine arts classes should not treat reading, writing, or thinking critically as a negative.  That kind of thinking devalues those academic habits and teachers that use them.  That perspective will minimize your effectiveness as an integral academic class, especially when teachers pull students from your time to complete their academic priorities.  After all, I’ve also heard their excuse, “It’s just band, an unnecessary fun class. Math is more important.”

Or rather, maybe it’s all the performance requirements and expectations for the group itself?  Who has time to offer critique to their partner when we have a pep rally and football game Friday, a community parade on Saturday, and next week is the first contest of the season.  

Well this model assumes that performances are the only purposes of a fine arts class, which isn’t true at all for many fine art situations.  What could be true for music or dance isn’t true at all for Theatre and Visual Art.  What was true in the past, doesn’t always have to be true in the future, either.

Perhaps the argument for not applying these other learning methods is because the instructor was never taught that way. Within the fine arts culture they continued, why fix it if it isn’t broken?  Those previous teachers did a great job, after all.  

The evolution of fine art education would require us to completely reimagine fine arts as we know it.  It might be scary at times, especially when we are supposed to be experts, and all of a sudden, we are asked to promote a skill that we have zero experience teaching.  

I can imagine why many fine arts teachers would push back against these new learning concepts.  It doesn’t feel very good to not be an expert anymore, or to question the culture and reality that we’ve created in our own classrooms and fought so long to maintain for decades.

I think it’s safe to say that growing up, most of us educators were probably in the top 20% of the artists in our discipline.  For most of us, we found a home, an identity within those top 20% of our fine art peers.  It wasn’t much of an issue to subscribe to the goals, ideals, and expectations of our instructors because, well, we were good at it.  

And as we matriculated from middle school to high school and closer to graduation, we found ourselves among an elite few that stuck with it.  

For a moment, let’s assume that the other 80% either dropped out of the fine art by a certain point, or if not, trailed along after the elite 20%.  

That means that the majority of students in that program did not subscribe to those ideals or identify in the same way.  That’s a lot of kids that don’t share the same perspective.  

With that information, I pose this question - can fine arts afford to NOT have those kids investing in our programs anymore?  

It puts us fine arts educators in a predicament.  The culture we subscribe to is not personally valuable to those we are recruiting for our programs.  

After all, students can learn many of the same work and life skills from cooperative play online video games.  And those are a lot more fun to practice.  

We need to offer students something different to entice and keep them in our programs, something that is personal and speaks to them because they choose it, not because we tell them they should choose it.  A model that promotes the true success of 100% of fine arts students, not just that elite 20% that found a niche in the top performing group.

If we are trying to convince the masses that fine arts have a place in modern education, wouldn’t we take a cue from advertising and speak beyond our own reasons, focusing on the values of parents, students, and decision makers  to entice new artists into the fold?  To promote the values, skills, and possibilities in fine arts that are also valuable to those we seek to join us?

Let’s consider our reality.  

If you are currently a fine arts teacher, our students are generations apart from how we learned, developed, and connected.  Our culture of learning, the one that kept us enthralled in fine arts as students and as teachers, does not exist anymore.  That reality is long gone. It really only existed for the elite 20% of us, by the way.  No wonder our shoulders are getting tired from carrying this weight.

We really have two options at this point.  One - stick with the ways that we are familiar with, our fine art culture that we might be completely and fiercely loyal to. Or, we seek a way to reach the current and potential students sitting in classrooms- the children that are growing up on 30 second attention spans, video games on a cell phone that, in 5 years, will be obsolete.

As education changes around us, we wonder why we are considered less and less an academic course, that we don't get the same support, priority, or considerations as other teachers, and that some schools rather ditch a fine arts program in favor of a reading and writing teacher.  

Ironically, if we incorporated more reading and writing in our fine arts, maybe those other writing teachers wouldn't be necessary.  And maybe, just maybe, quite a few students would enjoy writing about our content in ways that they don’t connect with in other classes.  

I'm not saying you have to enjoy or even approve of the direction that fine arts is leading.  If you are truly here for your students and Their experience, this won't even be a question.  

And I don't mean the top 20% of your students that carry the program.  I refer to the 80% of your students that experience your class differently.  The ones that get real quiet when they are on their own. The ones that nod their head yes like they understand, but don’t.  The same ones that you may say “I taught you this, why don’t you remember it?”, yet you have no data backing up that claim.

The ones that, as adults, will show little chance of being advocates for fine arts because their experiences are not positively connected to the inherited identity that defined the program for 50-70 years.

There is hope that students will experience fine arts on many more levels than the performing plane.  That their sense of self worth and success will not be measured by their performance alone, but by their deeper understanding of concepts and their personal connection to the art.

When it is all said and done, a person, a single individual, will remember how you treated them and the connections you championed for them more than some performance that was dictated to them, word for word, note for note, step for step.  

Did their teacher really invest an interest in how each child developed?  Did they feel important, recognized, and heard, or were they part of the machine, churning out trophies?  At what point is fine arts available for everyone, not just that top 20%?  In what ways will that be possible?

I understand and recognize that without the roles our previous teachers played, we would not have the opportunities we have today.   And just as they wanted the best for their students, so do we.

I wonder, what type of fine arts class will our student’s children get to experience?  Will it be personally rewarding on their level, or will it be their fine art teacher’s clenched and slipping grasp of a world that doesn’t exist anymore?

Will it be differentiated to highlight the strengths and improve the shortcomings of every fine arts student, or will it rely on the talent, work, and dedication of those amazing 20% to carry on the legacy of generations before them

I look forward to hearing your own stories, comments, questions, and suggestions.  Email us at faecchost@gmail.com. You can find this and other social links on our website FAECC.org. 

I’d like to thank you for joining me on this episode!  Tune in next time as we continue discussing teacher moves and practices with classroom management. 

I am your host, Eric Sanford for Fine Arts Educator Coaching Clinics.  

Until next time, Peace and Blessings.