Texas Trends in Art Education, 2011 Page: 23

                                
I Can Make

My Journey into Choice-Based Art Education

B ROOK E   B R  E I

Time for a Change
I   even thought of wearing a special pin saying: 'I
am the artist,' to remind my teachers who seemed always to
have a deeper understanding of my work and a clearer vi-
sion of where it should be heading than I did" (Szekely,
2005, p.45).
I saw my first year of teaching art to K-2 students as a
huge success. At the annual art show, my students and I
created a huge collaborative sculpture and received recog-
nition for creating public service announcements with pup-
pets to benefit a local animal shelter. It was the culmination
of hours spent pouring over lesson plans trying to find the

best way to prove that art, in an age of accountability and
testing, was worthwhile. But when the praise died down
and I really looked at what we created, I began to realize
that we didn't create those things together. I created them
through lessons I designed, and my students simply fol-
lowed my instructions. As a K-12 student, my art educa-
tion experiences were centered on skill. As an adult, mean-
ingful art making is difficult, because of a lack of practice
and guidance. I want my students to understand art as a
means to express and understand ideas. When I began
teaching, I envisioned not only teaching my students to
create in this way, but also finding my own artistic voice.
Perhaps my own students were trying to tell me that they
didn't feel like artists in my classroom. Or perhaps they
were just used to being told what to do. Regardless, I had

Whatever

I Want?