Ideation of Freedom

Many of the articles in this class gave me ideas, which I could then implement directly into my curriculum. I especially liked the focus on the “Big Ideas” of sexuality and environmentalism and continue to ponder the implications and importance of animals in art. Though I’ve touched on many social issues during my years as teacher, I would say that the combination of seeing Olivia Gude speak at the Iowa Art Educators conference, and continuing to go in depth reading her articles I have been changed as an art educator this year. I have learned by adapting some of her methods of processing and ideation during a lesson focusing on sexuality how valuable it can be to spend time talking and moving with students. As so many of the authors have written in this class, the creative process is more important than the product. I have worked in schools where teachers were more concerned with the way the artwork looked, laying out step-by-step instructions for students, and I troll Pinterest enough to know the bad lessons that are out there. Heck I have been guilty of creating or copying “filler” lessons during times of great fatigue or when I just want students to sit down and work.

The writing of Maxine Green is inspiring in a very life encompassing kind of way, describing the freedoms that people take for granted, or are unaware they even have. Thinking back to the most loudly voiced examples of how freedom has been taken away in American History such as slavery or World War 2, it seems so obvious that if we can show people that they are indeed free, we can help them rise to the occasion to challenge the status quo, to be different and exercise that freedom and to rise above complacency. In this year of political elections, we need to help the graduating seniors recognize that elections have consequences and all votes matter.

I admit that while I am somewhat inspired by these Chapters of Maxine Green, and I also admit that as a last assignment I found it hard to read, re-read and overanalyze, as I believe the writings of Maxine Green deserves, I think of my students, who are born into adverse situations and some have only a small glimmer of hope to graduate high school and in some cases stay out of incarceration. What is freedom to these people? While Green talks about freedom being more about wealth, and more about laws protecting liberty, I know as I work with my population of at risk students that freedom is breaking out of mental illness, or the mental illness of a parent. Freedom is saying no to drug addiction, which they’ve already been in treatment for 3 times and they are only 15. Freedom is having a safe place to live, with legal guardians who don’t take advantage of them in any physical, monetary or psychological way. They manner in which so many of our youth do not feel in fact free goes on and on. So our jobs as teachers is to help them see a different way of being, of thinking, and to let them know that we believe in them, that their voice is worth listening to and that they have potential to be something more.