Sharing the Joy.
I'll share some fish joy with you. I've been thinking about the principle of, choose your attitude, and how that looks in the art room. And I discovered its power. When the kids hit grade 3/4 they begin to doubt their ability to draw and they become anxious about every mark they make and continuously search for an eraser or start again and again and again. They believe that they are making "mistakes". For eight years I have been grappling with this and after trailing many different approaches little has changed. Today we discussed “choose your attitude” and applied it to the marks we make. We decided to either "think of a mark as a mistake or to think of the mark as a wonderful possibility." I love that!!!! I really think that this will assist the kids in their art making and can imagine the possibilities in other curriculum areas. Interesting. No wonder we are exhausted after one week. Every day takes our thinking in another direction. I guess that means we are lucky.
Comment
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Comment by Steve Mintz on August 14, 2007 at 10:15pm
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Di,
How did you orchestrate the conversation that resulted in seeing marks as opportunities? Did that come from the students or did you prompt it? It's a wonderful and beneficial perpective.
In my workshops, when I discuss CYA, we discuss it from the perspective of whether or not the chosen attitude helps the person reach their goal. If not, it is not a useful attitude. If it does, then forge ahead. It takes the value judgments about attitude out of the conversation - they are not good or bad, rather they are useful or not.
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Comment by Griff Wigley on August 7, 2007 at 1:30pm
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Di, this is a really interesting example of CYA. I see you posted this on July 26. Can you keep us posted on what changes, if any, you see with your students who are trying out this new way of thinking about a 'mistake' ?
PS: My apologies for not seeing your blog post and replying sooner... I can see I need some additional tools to keep track of what's been posted that's new.
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