Awakening Creativity by Lily Yeh, chapters 7-10

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a restful and enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday. 

The home stretch of the semester is suddenly upon us. Due to last week's holiday, I've amended our schedule in a way that I hope will not present a major inconvenience. Rather than final papers/updates/comments being due next Sunday, I would like to suggest that we take this week to discuss the last two-thirds of Awakening Creativity by Lily Yeh. This would push the due date for final papers/updates/comments to December 9th (instead of the 3rd).

If you made plans ahead of time based on the dates printed in our syllabus, please do not hesitate to email me about your situation. The sooner you notify me, the better. I will work with you on an individual basis, depending on your needs.

For this week, I am looking for three students who have not yet written discussion questions for the class to give us questions and/or discussion topics based on our readings. One student can pose a topic or question for chapters 5-6, another student can address chapters 7-8, and another chapters 9-10. This is your chance to step up if you have not yet written a discussion question for this class!

Most students post their discussion topics without asking me to read them beforehand, but this is not always the case. If you would like me to go over your question/topics before you post them to the blog, please feel free to email me your questions. I am always happy to help!

In the meantime, I ask that all three question-writers identify themselves as soon as possible, and let us know which chapters you plan to address.

Thank you!

carolyn

Happy Thanksgiving!

All -

I looked at our syllabus and to my dismay, saw that I had given you a homework assignment for over Thanksgiving break. I hoped we could get all the way through Lily Yeh's book before semester's end. But we are running out of time. 

To remedy the situation, I'd like to offer a compromise. The reading assignment is the same - chapters 5 - 6, but I will not post any discussion questions this week. I trust you will do the reading anyway since it is such a pleasant book with so many beautiful pictures. 

I wish all of you the very best of holidays. I will "see" you back here on the blog early next week!

Happy Thanksgiving,

carolyn

Awakening Creativity: Dandelion School Blossoms by Lily Yeh, chapters 1-4 discussion topics & questions

Lily Yeh one of the world's leading art educators and human rights advocates. Awakening Creativity is a book with many illustrations, making it what some might call a "quick read." We only have a few weeks left in the semester so this book should be perfect. At the same time we must resist temptation to speed through the pages. To do so would be a terrible betrayal of Yeh and her students at the Dandelion School!

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 First some background on Yeh: She came to the attention of TTU Visual Studies faculty when the editors of "Works of Heart: Building Village Through the Arts" put her on the cover and included a lusciously illustrated chapter on her extraordinary community arts work in North Philadelphia. We were so impressed with this artist-educator that I began requiring students in my ART 3372: Rethinking Art Education (a basic art ed course for non-art undergrads) to watch a video of Yeh's speech at a Bioneer's Conference - http://youtu.be/aFJkbwFllWY. This speech, if nothing else, will rock your world!

Lily Yeh is not a trained art educator, and to my knowledge she never taught in the U.S. public school system. She is an artist who has a tremendous gift for connecting with people unlike herself and motivating them to do the most amazingly creative things. Because she is so uniquely gifted, I think that we can learn a lot from her. 

Because she is so unusually gifted, it's important to pay close attention to her process. Read carefully as she describes her first interactions with the teachers and students at the Dandelion School, a school for children of migrant workers on the outskirts of Beijing. Pay close attention to the decisions she makes early on in her process. It is quite fascinating- not only to study her, but to learn about the schooling process in a culture with a very different history, political structure and social system than that found in the U.S.  

Through it all, remember that Yeh was born in China, but she is not "home" in contemporary Beijing any more than she was at home in Philadelphia when she first arrived there as a college student. If you read the blurb on the back cover of the book, you'll see that she has worked extensively in Ghana, Kenya, Syria, Ecuador and Haiti. Yeh is a teacher-travellor, a woman who speaks a universal language through art, who somehow finds a way to communicate meaningfully to people whose languages she does not know and whose backgrounds she does not share. How does she do it???

This book provides a glimpse into her process. I will try to draw your attention to this with my questions.

There are 5 questions below. Please respond to at least 2 of the 5. Some of the questions lead into each other, so if you can catch two or more birds with one stone, go for it!

Question #1

Notice that very early in the book, Yeh pays her respects to a mentor who shaped her as an artist, a teacher and as a person of Chinese/Taiwanese ancestry. Why does she mention him? Who was he?

Ed, Future and I have noticed that MAE students often do not mention their teachers or the authors they read in their classes at their thesis presentations. We decided to make more of an effort to point out the importance of naming the authors, artists, and/or artist-educators who influenced you. Remember those names, just as Lily Yeh remembers the name of her mentor at the start of her book. If not for her mentors, she would not be the person she is today.   So - once again - who is the mentor she mentions in Chapter One? Why was he important to her development?

Question #2

In Chapter Two, Yeh carefully constructs a picture of the social world she has just entered. She pays close attention to recent events in China's history, especially the social impact of the great migration from the rural provinces to the cities. The United States also went through a population shift of this magnitude. Before WWII, the U.S. population was mostly rural; after WWII it became predominantly sub/urban. In China, this migration began in the recent past and is still going on today.

Can you think of a social group in the United States today whose economic conditions resemble that of the rural migrants in China? As in China, it is the children of this social/ethnic group who are most at risk of dropping out of school because their family's economic and social situation. As in China, the members of this group have very little in the way of rights, land or legal protection.

Question #3

Lily Yeh describes, in detail, a couple of "home visits." Do you think home visits would improve teacher-student-parent relations in this country? What effect did they have on teacher-student-parent relations at the Dandelion School? What did she learn?

Question #4

Yeh realizes that to be effective in a school, you have to establish good relations with other teachers. She knows that as an outsider (coming from the U.S.) this isn't going to be easy. How does she "size up" the teachers at Dandelion School? How does this differ from her "sizing up" process with students?

Question #5

Notice her keen observation of the teachers, students, parents and other people she encounters in the early stages of her work at this location. What does this tell you about the role of listening, observing, and reflecting in adapting to a new work environment?

Again, respond to at least two of the five questions, and please be sure to read them all. Thank you and enjoy the reading!!!

Carolyn         

"The Line Between Us," Bigelow, pp. 83-122 Questions, Activities & Topics

In this week's reading, I'd like to focus on techniques of helping students "step into the picture" of the lived realities of people with whom they may seem to have little in common. As Bob Peterson and Linda Christensen point out in their chapters, building empathy with the Other (the person unlike oneself) is necessary to see beyond stereotypes, assumptions and other shortcuts to reading the complex "bigger picture." Both Peterson and Christensen use visuals in their teaching to nurture deeper understanding and cultivate ethical values.

Art educators are especially well positioned to promote visual literacy for purposes that include, and exceed, aesthetic experience/creative expression. Visual literacy is an important part of what Paulo Freire called "reading the word and the world." How can we, as art educators, harness the power of images to help our students develop a stronger ethical imagination? 

For this week, I'd like you to view two interesting photo essays. The first is a set of 6 images comparing the U.S.-Mexican border at Nogales and images of the Berlin Wall (before it was torn down). An interesting article accompanies the work.

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/The-border-fence-is-a-wall-by-any-other-name-2334567.php#photo-1845027

The second is a set of 85 photographs taken along the U.S.-Mexico border by photographer Todd Bigelow (any relation to Bill?).

 http://toddbigelow.photoshelter.com/gallery/G0000SA.p6lh3Ock

Lastly, I want to direct your attention to John Craig Freeman, an artist who creates public memorials on mobile devices. Like the set of 6 photos comparing two walls from different locations and moments in time, Freeman's work looks at/works with the U.S.-Mexican border, Tiananman Square in Beijing, North Korea's Bridge of No Return and other sites of concern in regards to human rights. 

http://johncraigfreeman.wordpress.com/vera-list-center/

Freeman's work suggests a correlation between Tiananman Square, the Bridge of No Return and current events on the U.S.-Mexican border. Since your students (or you yourself) may not know very much about Tiananman Square or N. Korea's Bridge of No Return, this would be an opportunity to explore the history of each place. You might then ask what each symbolizes, and what they may/may not have in common. Freeman's work puts the U.S.-Mexico border in a strikingly different context that may shock, surprise or possibly even upset some students. The first litmus test should be your own reaction, so pay attention. Are you shocked, surprised, upset, angered, irritated, inspired, saddened, etc.? Be sure that you know how you feel before bringing it into the classroom!

Like last week, I'd like you to select a group of images from the resources above and design an art project around them. Your objectives are to 1) promote visual literacy, critical thinking and ethical values, 2) create awareness of contemporary and/or historic events, and 3) design an art project that helps students view their own lives from the perspective of an inside and as an outside observer. 

For example, you could ask students to consider how they, themselves, might be (or already are) stereotyped by people who know nothing about them. You might challenge them to reduce themselves, their lives and their community to a single stereotyped image. This image could then be challenged by a scene or set scenes expressing the students humanity.

I know you'll come up with ingenious ideas of your own, so please don't worry about doing it "right" or "wrong." We're here to share ideas, learn from each other and gain from each other's perspectives.  

Best of luck with this week's reading and let me know if you have any questions! Thank you!