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Week 4 - Pedagogy

Part 1

Pedagogy: to lead, to teach and to orchestrate learning, to help others learn. Pedagogy is the craft of teaching and attention to the others’ learning.

Good teachers are always empathetic because good teachers know what it means, what it feels, to not know the stuff that you know. I always tell my students that the really good students, the really smart ones, are those who are comfortable being not good at something. Sucking at coding actually empowers you to learn coding. Encouraging students to be comfortable not knowing at the beginning of the lecture. Acceptance of not knowing is the beginning of pedagogy.

The struggle with students is that they always feel this internal hurdle, that they feel they just can’t do this. The biggest challenge of a teacher is to convince the students that they are capable of overcoming this.

We often talk about the difference skill levels in a classroom, people come with different experiences. But imagine that …. (draws diagram: experience + skills when we enter, the distance that I “jump” in my learning is what’s meaningful to me. Not everyone’s distance of learning growth will be the same.) You can’t evaluate everyone’s learning on the same metric of their skills and experience. Identifying where the students are coming from and where they want to go is the role of pedagogy.

I always say there is so much to learn from bad teachers and I really encourage you to look at bad teachers as someone with a good heart but just bad practise. And think about how you can help them to become a better teacher.

When some things don’t work, what should a teacher do? The teacher should return to the ritual. The ritual of the class is super important. The ritual could be anything from calling out for attention, having a break, returning to the slide, but this ritual is the foundation of a classroom. Especially when you’re working with the general public who’s coming from different places, create this ritual right away. Rituals define communities together.

Patterns lead to cultures, Structures to nurtures

When you’re pairing a student in a group activity, give them a very very specific task. Because it’s almost like forced speed dating - unless you give them exactly what you want out of them it’s so much pressure to have to stick with this person.

And of course, create a safe space for learning and failure.

Resolving a conflict. Classroom is a site of conflict. There are so many things which can go wrongs, between students and between students and teacher. Make sure that you resolve the conflict outside of the classroom - don’t let your ego get in the way of trying to solve it and demonstrate how virtuous of a teacher or how generous of a person you are in front of everybody, because that’s not doing a service for the people who are actually in conflict.

And lastly, there’s a good silence, which is necessarily for flow of learning. There’s also the anxious silence, which is the sign of a rupture. So you need to identify which kind of silence it is because often times teachers have a tendency to talk too much and over-educate when everyone is really learning.

Part 2

Museum as a school - LACMA - Next Gen program which grants free access to the museum for any children under 18. These children have full access to the museum and what’s amazing is that they don’t need to be a legal citizen of the U.S. so this allows the museum to diversify since they can bring their parents. And when they’re 18 they can choose to become a full time member, starting at $30 a year.

Museum as a public space and a school where there’s no discrimination against race or nationality or class. Programs like these make the musuem feel quite exuberant - it feels like a space that is not just a shrine for dead art, its an active museum

I’ve worked with LACMA and we kept thinking about what museums mean for artists Because if its a public space, for the public - for the community - could the museum become a laboratory for the artists to experiment artwork? Usually the museum is where your artwork travels at the end of your career to be preserved, but could it be an experimental space? This is why I want to invite you to think about the museum as a school.

Autonomy and interdependence - My friends who work in the museum talk about how they can’t program some of the more politically charged programs, they can’t address the issues that they feel are most important - because they are dependent on the federal funding and circle of donors who are closely tied with those who support these political regimes - so there’s need for autonomy as an artist and museum and cultural producers

On the other hand, there’s an interdependence between the people who are cultural producers and practitioners - as opposed to independence, how can we become support structures for each other so that we can have these independent practices autonomous from the regime.

Local and global issues - the experience of being an other is not just about skin or class, it’s about the whole systems in which we live. So how do we connect the very local and culturally specific issues (el museo del barrio) with the larger communities and the global issues through art.

Museums should not be about the power - because the museum is a very powerful system but working with the museum should be about your practise. Meaning, the practice as a space that actually creates something, like a studio. Power is about representation (I worked with this museum so my work is this important). Practise is about trying to achieve something at a place like a museum. This approach is different and the Education department is often the place that can support these approaches because they don’t have this power of hanging artwork and having a retrospective etc. etc. Hans Haacke’s writing talks about his decision to show art is so closely tied to the art economy and real estate etc.

In Class Activites

10 Minute Professor

  • Activity in a pair
  • Everyone will have a learning map of their partner
  • Think about three topics you want to teach (topics you feel you are ready to teach)
  • Show the list to your partner. You can not say anything
  • Partner selects on topic. You select one topic from your partner's list
  • You have 10 minutes to prepare your lecture. Use the learning map to plan your lesson, especially for your partner
  • You must write / draw the syllabus
  • After the session, your partner will teach you for 10 minutes
  • You give each other feedback about teaching style and the syllabus

How to Boil an Egg

  1. Place uncooked eggs in a pot.
  2. Add water until eggs are submerged under the water
  3. Bring the pot to a full boil, uncovered
  4. Remove pot from heat and cover for 10-12 minutes
  5. Drain eggs and submerge in cold water
  6. Peel and enjoy!

Beuys, Albers and Clark

Joseph Beuys

Anni Albers

Lygia Clark

Notes

so far, we’ve been talking about standard forms of learning measurements + guidelines : syllabus is a contrat between teacher and student but the classroom and the actual learning envrionments are not always standard. not everyone’s learning can be quantified people will be coming in syllabi grading, accredation - measure their learning- although sometimes not fully so pedagogy is about helping students to draw out their own learning curve.