Teaching Philosophy
Teaching and learning are not unilateral, but rather are correlated and interchanged like hand-loomed fabric. The hand-looming process involves using a loom to interlace two sets of threads. The aim of looming is to create unique and practical products such as clothing, blankets and carpets. Students are the threads and the teacher is the loom that supports, facilitates and motivates toward uniqueness and strengths. Learning is the process of intertwining threads in organized steps with complexity. Students absorb the knowledge through interacting with the teacher, peers and materials and through making connections to previous knowledge. The outcome of learning is the widened knowledge, skills and value like the big fabric is the outcome of looming. The purpose of teaching is not just developing technical skills and knowledge but is developing the skills of cultivating relationships. This leads to establishing relationships in society and broadening the perspective of the world. Thus, the aim of teaching is not only to discover each student’s strengths and distinctiveness but also to help the students to apply the skills and knowledge they learned to everyday life.
Every student possesses distinct individuality like many different thread materials are used in looming. The main goal that I hope for students to get out of my teaching is learning to be more open-minded about concepts in the art to develop their uniqueness. The collaboration of two different balls of threads is important when making a sturdy fabric. Likewise, the long-term goals I have for students are to develop students’ ability to cooperate and cultivate a passion for learning together. When these long-term goals are achieved, students’ learning will not be only limited to my class but will have life-long social skills of commitment and collaboration.
To achieve the goals of teaching students to be more open-minded while developing a passion for learning and the ability to cooperate, students will participate in art criticism activities, collaborative art projects and individual art projects. In art criticism activities, through analysis and discussions of artworks, students will learn art history as well as deepen their understanding of art. In collaborative art projects, students will brainstorm, discuss, choose a theme and construct an art piece together. For individual art projects, students will have ongoing projects with their own ideas and will also experiment with different materials. While students work individually or collaboratively, I will observe, listen and provide guidance such as teaching technical skills, introducing new vocabulary, posing a question or prompting deeper thinking. To further support the students, individual meetings will take place to discuss their individual progress, consider problems and solutions, note strengths and areas of improvement and also build respect and trust.
I want to be a teacher who not only teaches the students with the knowledge and technical skills but also values communication and creates a respectful and caring environment. A caring environment will allow every student to build trust, feel comfortable sharing his or her ideas and develop collaborative social skills. This will also allow every student to take risks and not hesitate to be more open-minded about concepts and approach their ideas with commitment and creativity. Furthermore, I want to be a teacher who does not stop learning. Continuing personal art practice and reading and researching about art and education will improve my professionalism and help facilitate a better learning environment for the students.