EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
Autonomous Learning
For the student becoming self-aware, autonomous learning serves many purposes. As the interior world on the student grows the need for integration of inside/outside interests increases. In autonomous learning, validation of preferences and ideas in experienced outside of the stable bond at home. The opportunity to have authority on a subject but also, within the circumstance, to have authority over oneself is huge, particularly if it is held over the classic authority of teacher/parent.
Cultural Literacy
"If a teacher doesn't build awareness of language, culture, and social/political issues in the art classroom, then the teacher is cooperating in the marginalization of all their students in the global context."
I agree one hundred percent with this statement and would go a step further in opening the lens inclusively beyond the cultural signposts of art and culture. We are seeing more and more failures in the systems produced and maintained by a culturally biased western gaze. There are however great advancements in teaching how to listen to the stories of others, de-centering the standard line of one dimensional cultural perspective, and raising the value of lateral exchange. The opportunities we have to codify new these methodologies are tremendous and with them we endeavor not just in producing visually literate artists but culturally literate citizens of the world as well.
Teaching Students with Special Needs
It has been my experience and observation that the arts offer a foundational platform for self-expression, creativity, and personal growth, especially for students with special needs. My teaching philosophy is rooted in fostering an inclusive, adaptive, and supportive environment where every student feels seen, valued, and encouraged to explore their unique artistic voice. I celebrate diversity in learning styles by tailoring lessons to individual strengths, employing multisensory strategies such as tactile materials in visual art or rhythm-based movement in music to engage and accommodate sensory preferences. Assistive tools like text-to-speech devices and visual schedules provide structure and foster independence. Clear routines cultivate emotional safety and encourage participation without fear. I emphasize autonomy by offering choices in tools and mediums and foster collaboration by pairing students in roles that highlight their individual talents as well as teach to their development. Through patience, understanding, and the celebration of accomplishment, I strive to make the arts an exploration of connection, self-discovery, empowerment and boundless potential.
Language Art
“There are indeed many paths to the summit.” - Chinese Proverb
Language can be such an elusive signifier : both smoke but solid, here and there. A series of concrete percussive and coarse syllables, like a bag of stones, but illuminated and somehow greater than the sum of its parts. full of ideas which attempts to exceed its grasp every chance it gets.
Language exists as a biological emanation between the striving of the brain and its structural constraints. In learning we are endowed with the terms of engagement, the intermediary constructs between the spaces inside and outside of our body. As such it is so much more than conjugated verbs, punctuation, and grammatical hard rules/soft exceptions. To whatever degree we can explore new language in and outside the classroom we should do so bravely and playfully and in the doing we can consider ourselves both simultaneously a member separate and together : a part of and apart from the body.
Of all the methodology explored, each excludes to some extent a portion of the pie and focused with hierarchical fixation. The Classical Method is like using a sledgehammer to strike a gnat, effective but cumbersome and perhaps doing more damage than good. Audiolingual would have us chanting in unison with no shared concepts or sense of nuance. The Silent Method offers a uniquely private and interestingly sweet relationship to sound and color and perhaps dips its toe deeper into the places where language lives.
I very much appreciate this post-methodology era where hybridization is encouraged and creativity can remain in the foreground where it belongs.
Theory of Empathy
If it is indeed a theory. As a full throated call to the next evolutionary step for the species it indeed feels imperative that this theory be embraced. Coupling it with the firm assertion of our genetically compelled disposition is indeed a strong argument. I suppose I agree for the sake of our future and to reach beyond the brittle cynicism displayed by our collective past.
If empathy is part of the wetware in our coding, then it exists in the same dimension of seated language that Chomsky described and is therefore a means to an end not an obstruction, a function not a flaw. It therefore must play an integral role in learning, not just in what we learn but how we learn as well.
The best examples of this are modeling (both by teacher and peers) and contained in the mechanics of empathy itself : showing by doing and vice versa. It gets a little tricky here for me to pin down where/how it occurs but it can be deliberate and done with mindful intention.
Social Media and Self Image
At this point its well established that mass media and specifically consumerism is an egregiously manipulative and detrimental experiment on the minds and bodies of all who participate. And yet I have to believe the ad and copy guys of the 50s and 60s would stagger in horror at the seamless echo chamber today's consumers step into on the daily. And at a younger and younger age.
We can marvel approvingly at children in the 21st century, their ability to navigate devices, learn new applications, and yet at the same time become devout (albeit unpaid) brand ambassadors for multiple for-profit platforms. Instead of real time social interactions where young people can experiment and improve on interactions, taking note as to what is pleasant or unpleasant for themselves as well as their fellows, they have a surrogate digital field of transactional binary likes/dislikes. There is no sensitivity to nuance developed and, thus, no appreciation for it.
Unfortunately, adolescent ego development has had its challenges long before social media came along. Many variables exists which can impede a child’s progress. Chiefly among them : Environment. Poverty has been an ongoing reality for so many children in this country’s history. Economic disparity can create conditions in which the home life is unstable, where physical security is absent, and where nutritional sustenance is a fantasyland. Its my opinion that, as these conditions continue to persist, and are clearly a through-line in the development and wellbeing of so many young people, they should be addressed with equal footing.