In Chapter 5 we discuss the many decisions teachers make before entering ‘the room’ to teach – notably issues of goals, design, materials, and works of art to feature – and then the many decisions made once in ‘the room’ and facing the reality of a particular group of young people on a particular day. Once a class has started, lightning-speed choices are made, often overturning much of the plan that had been so well worked out in advance. This dy- namic is hardly unique to arts education, but the richness and complexity of art works and artistic processes present so many possibilities for exploration that it can often be impossible to predict the best path for a particular group in advance.
When discussing what high quality arts teaching looks like “in the room,” this combination of intention- ality and fl exibility was frequently noted. Being well prepared with clear goals and intentions for a class was considered critical, but being able to know when to let go of one’s plan and follow the interests and needs of the mo-
ment was equally important. Several people noted that this balance of preparedness and spontaneity is natural to many arts teachers, since it so clearly echoes what artists must do in their work. Indeed, we heard that you could actually see teachers “listening” to their students, both in how they took time to stop and pay attention to what stu- dents were saying and doing, but also in how they would sometimes then shift their next ‘moves’ as the teacher/fa- cilitator of the work.
Being prepared was not only an issue of planning a specifi c session, but extended to include the full design of the course, workshop, or project. It even broadened out further. Johnny Saldaña, professor of theater at Arizona State University, spoke of excellent teachers “having a mental rolodex of diverse pedagogical/artistic philoso- phies at one’s disposal.” This requires a deep background in both the arts and education and is not easily or quickly developed. Sometimes co-teaching is so valuable because a team can bring together expertise from more domains, when each partner does not have deep experience in all of them. With Saldaña’s ‘mental rolodex,’ teachers can at once be orderly and structured, yet responsive, spontane- ous, and fl exible to what students bring to the work.
In addition to paying close attention to students in order to read them as clearly as possible, the transparency
of the teacher’s intentions, actions, and responses was also noted as a sign of high quality teaching. Clear expecta- tions, plans, goals, and standards were discussed as being especially helpful to learners. In order to give themselves over to a learning experience – to prepare for engagement – students need to know in a broad sense why they are doing what they are doing and what’s expected of them. As dance educator Sara Lee Gibb points out, this is espe- cially important for younger learners. “So often students don’t perform as well because they think, ‘well what does she want me to do, or what am I supposed to do?’ An excellent teacher will provide [transparent purposes] and it will be so clear that the students will just go for it and really become engaged with the problem or the material or whatever is the context that day.”
We heard this from students as well as adults. At COCA in St. Louis, one student we spoke with explained her deep commitment to her classes and her own ideas about what constitutes high quality arts teaching:
The teachers have high expectations. They don’t set it so high that you can’t do it, but the teachers... if they know you can do it, they’re not going to settle for less. They’re taking an interest in your art so you can think about how to better yourself. You don’t want to go lower; you want to go higher. You give because you get so much. I am getting so much from the teachers, and now I can give it to the next genera- tion. I feel that’s a good teacher.
Quality as Seen Through the Lens of Community Dynamics
When asked to describe salient characteristics one might observe in a quality arts learning experience, many interviewees shared thoughts about the dynamics of the community in the learning setting – the ways in which people treat each other, learn with and from each other, and feel about being together. Most often, these ideas featured strongly in conversations about creating a safe learning space built on trust and respect and in which stu- dents are enabled to be creative and to experiment, both as artists and as people. and in which students are enabled to be creative and to experiment, both as artists and as people. The centrality of relationships in high quality arts learning was a theme resonant across many interviews on our site visits; the development of healthy relationships among all participants in the experience was also seen as critical to the quality of the learning experience. We heard, too, repeated references to arts learning communi- ties as “a family” or as “a home away from home,” both in relation to school programs, like the art department at New Trier High School, and in out-of-school programs, like Will Power to Youth, AMI, Marwen, and others.
From these discussions of relationships, safety, and community, we identifi ed three elements that emerged with frequency and intensity:
• Respect and trust among all participants, along