Drawing and Writing

Practicing visual literacy skills throughout the year opens opportunities to explore new combinations of reading and writing. In this exercise I wanted to explore creative writing using a film, a painting, and drawing. As a whole class we had recently watched a film. I spent some time looking through the online collections at YCBA and I chose this image due to the film’s content concerning the inner workings of a court life.  The first part of the exercise was to draw the whole picture in their journals.

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The North Prospect of Hampton Court, Herefordshire by Leonard Knyff, 1650-1721, Dutch, active in Britain (by 1681)

The following day we used the painting as the setting for a scene between characters in A Midsummer’s Night Dream and the film we watched. They had to pick at least one character from each story. Inside the painting they had to choose a place for their scene to take place and draw a mini-scene.

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The story was opened ended, but had to be accurate to the characters in the stories. Each student chose their own characters, imagined what characters from two different stories would say to each other, and then chose the best visual location for the story to take place.

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The creative writing prompt gave them very specific tasks. Each student had to draw the whole, but then within that whole had to choose a specific location that would be meaningful for their story.  The writing had to construct a story with characters from two different stories (and mediums) and place these characters (in character) into a third space.  Within these requirements the students were free to imagine and explore.  Although some students chose similar characters, no one story was the same.

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–James Shivers

Using the Online Collections — Part Two

Students are accustomed to searching for materials online. Often the search comes from the browser they use. Using a curated collection like the one at YCBA is a different matter. All the materials exist, have been researched, catalogued, placed in the community for viewing and dialogue.  I regularly search the collections and encourage my students to do the same. I have even designed lessons around the searching through the collections.

When we were reading Speak, I wanted a tree the class could draw.  I found James Ward’s (1769-1859) ‘Mr. Howard’s Large Oak, August 5, 1820′ to be perfect for the assignment. As this was our last unit of the year, I was able to ask the students to draw in a different way.  I asked them to draw the image of the tree as they felt at the beginning of the year. In other words, I asked them not to just copy the tree, but to use the tree as a starting point for a visual interpretation of their own experience.  Their images were very personal and full of surprises.  One student drew the tree with very little leaves.  The only leaves he had, he wrote ‘a new hope’ for this year.  The students were able to look back at themselves at the beginning of their High School experience and reflect using their visual literacy skills.  The assignment also stretched their sense of drawing. Instead of drawing as ‘copying’ drawing was a way of seeing. They were free to modify, add, enhance, alter the image in order to communicate a particular experience.

As a general rule, I do the assignments with the students. I decided to draw the tree, but to fill the limbs from some comments written in my journal from quarter one.

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Since I do the assignments with the students and tell them if they want to see my work they can.  Occasionally, I will show them what I’ve done. But, I am careful here. I do not want them to fall into the mimetic role: only do what the teacher does, then copy it slavishly, and then you are finished.  More important that seeing my work is seeing me work along side them instead of answer emails, grading, working on something for another class.  Obviously, at times, I need to work the room and take care of paperwork.  However, I don’t ask the students to do something I haven’t done myself.

–James Shivers

 

Using the online collections – Part One

The Yale Center of British Art has a fantastic collection of materials online.  With each unit I teach I look for images that will enhance the course content and visual literacy practices.  Once I have established a regular classroom practice of drawing/looking and have linked this practice to creative and critical skills, I find students more engaged with any one task.

When we were reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I wanted the students to have a visual sense of the woods as imagined in the play.  I went to the Search All Collections page.  Once here, I clicked on the Prints and Drawings. in the first box, ‘All Fields’ typed in “Trees” and the “forest” to see what would I could discover. I found many wonderful prints.

The first drawing, Ancient Trees, Lullingstone Park (1828) by Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) I used with A Midsummer’s Night Dream.  Students drew the image of the forest and then for homework had to imagine the setting for the play.

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The delight of the assignment is that we all began with the same image, but we all imagined various points where this ancient wood fit into the play.  Although the drawing was realistic as you can see students still added their own reading of the image.  Students shared with each other their drawing and their setting, explaining why creating a forest of meaning.

If you search the collections for Samuel Palmer you will find full array of images in various mediums.  A follow up assignment would be to ask students to go through the collection a look for another image they would use for the assignment and explain why.

–James Shivers

Visual Summaries

Reading Shakespeare is a challenge.  Yet, with an annotated text, students find their way.  Along with the normal strategies of reading an old text, in an unusual language, I have also explored using visual literacy skills to enhance meaning and explore the progression of the story.

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Drawing and working with visual mediums as a regular practice affords many opportunities to work on critical and creative skills in order to develop insight, awareness, understanding, and enhance articulation.

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For this exercise, I asked students to make a visual design of the particular act. A design that communicates both the meanings of the play, but also their interpretations and understandings of the play’s story.

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I encourage students to pay attention to the page design, to incorporate place, subjects, people, even conversation that seems significant.  I also suggested that they create a visuals that will tell the story but also remind them of their reading experience. The page becomes a canvas of visual knowledge, open to any arrangement that is meaningful to them. The journal without lines gives us this freedom. A freedom they completely explore. The page in the journal becomes a composition and like all the images we view, discuss and draw, a visual medium awaiting discovery and dialogue.

–James Shivers

Seeing

Seeing

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Incorporating visual literacy practices into an English classroom is a standard practice in Australia. In their National curriculum, they begin investigating visual language in the very first years of schooling and continue this practice to the end.  A K-12 approach to visual language is an essential skill for our current times.  In our own attempts at a national curriculum we have neglected visual communication.

At the Yale Center for British Art, the K-12 program for teachers seeks to foreground visual literacy.  The museum becomes a source for experiencing and exploring how visual communicate works.  The applications are multifarious.

I regularly use drawing and looking in the classroom.  I use these activates to foster creative and critical growth. But I also bring students to the museum to see for themselves.   Screens, although the dominant frame in our lives are not the only way to view an image.  Seeing an image live, in space, is a form of knowing that has its own logic, emotion, and physicality.

At the Summer Institute we take time to look. And once stopped, we go even further: and take a closer look.  Simply, sitting (or standing) in front of an image and looking. What do I see? And waiting.  We so quickly want to say what the painting is about or want to look at the placard (both important details). By slowing down and experiencing the visual design, the visual effect, the act of seeing, we enter into an exchange with the artist, we share the same space.

Our visual culture has its roots in our visual history. In a museum, and only here, we are able to stand before an image whose grammar has become dominant.  The museum then is a source of seeing how all the made visual world has occurred.  In our age of mechanical reproduction we are freed from time and place. Yet, going back to the place and seeing the work in space and in time, provides an opportunity for creative and critical insight.  We see in and we are seen and the light in our space is the light in the canvas.

From here we can converse, draw, think, feel and move happily towards further seeing.

–James Shivers

The Visual Word

Having established a journal practice in class, I found multiple ways of using it for day to day assignments.  One advantage of the journal is archival.  Students begin with their work at the beginning of the year and keep adding to the pages as the year progresses.  They can look back, refer to their previous work, re-read and use as a source. Students have a record of their ongoing learning, an archive.

The assignment here was to place image work along side their word-work. I don’t do this with every set of vocabulary words.  As a visual literacy strategy, the word and the understanding spill into the experience of learning. Later, the student can look back and ‘see’ what they know. As is the case with drawing and designing, they often feel the urge to re-vise both.  I ask the students for context, part of speech, definition, an example, and a visual.

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Students learn words live in contexts with a narrative.  Students create a unique iconography and links outside the text. The word then has a visual component along side a link outside the reading.  Since the goal is practice and exploration, I can look at their work as a process of knowing and be flexible in my assessments. As their language use expands from ongoing practice in various modalities, students find more nuanced ways of communication. As their journal becomes an archive they see a residue of their growth or even see places where change is necessary. They continue to learn on their own.

–James Shivers

Seeing Perspective – Part Two

Perspective is an essential narrative feature. Each page of a book, each scene with a character provides another way of seeing the story. In many texts, the narrative has recursive features of time and knowing. We see the story different when we have finished and look back.  We see the story different when we are given another vantage point. We see the story from our perspective as we read.

Each perspective generates a narrative of seeing, feeling, and knowing.  If this is the case, then the exercise of drawing a sculpted figure  from different vantage points should generate unique insights (follow the link to see what the students drew).  As with reading a narrative, we see what we are given and what we look for.  So, I asked students to draw the image first and then describe the mood.  The act of description calls forth their own knowledge and experience: How is this person standing? When I stand this way how do I feel? How have I seen this stance before? What does this stance communicate?

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“[L]ost, lonely, depressed. It seems as if this man is outside and is alone and thinking to himself. He is in a situation (stuck) but doesn’t go for help. He is desiring something without reaching out”.

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“Nonchalant. He is on his phone but it’s cold out so he has one hand in his pocket and is wearing a sweater and pants. He must have heard something so his head is turned in a casual way. He is not in any rush. Maybe he is waiting for a bus”.

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“Confused, Pondering. Maybe he’s thinking. I watch this man, he’s thinking or looking for someone. He’s looking for me. He doesn’t know I’m right behind him”.

Each student brings their world to bear on their expression and interpretation.  Students can discuss what they see and why with each other.  Students can also look at the progression of their work. What did they think at first? How do the three perspectives construct a whole?  Some students wonder why I would show the “same” object three times, suggesting nothing is different.  This leads to further conversation and closer looking. What would we know if we only had one of these vantage points? A question like this brings the sense of perspective to the forefront.

But why do this exercise in an English class? Simply, it’s a story of reading.  As we go through a book, we are building a sense of the story. The longer we read, the more we ‘see’, and soon, we are living with a story with various narrative strands linked. Each link has value. Some students will see this quickly. Others, will need more time. If we choose not to ignore this multiplicity, we allow change and growth to occur.  Allowing room for the process of knowing and practicing this skill makes the classroom a rich environment of dialogue and discovery.

–James Shivers

Growing the Abstract – Part Two

If we think of abstraction as a practice, we open a way for students to build meaning with themselves in mind, negotiating moment by moment their inner and outer worlds. In an ongoing space of practice, they access and utitlize their own experience of story, viewing, memory and imagination. Their work then becomes a fusion of the old with the new embedded with creative and critical acts of knowing.

“The statue represents the balance between order and protection.”

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“As I lay thinking I wonder how to get to the top. There are so many obstacles. I don’t know if I’ll even be able to do it. Once I get to the top should I…what should I do? Life is an obstacle that is hard to get past.”

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“Life itself is very boring, but with a little twist and a little bit of personality, life can be something that is spectacular.”

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Each student response was unique.  The next day we had open sharing. Students read their work to the whole class or conversed one to one. Orderly chaos ensued: words and worlds, stillness and laughter filled the room.  As we debriefed on the exercise, discussing why we did the assignment and how we felt, everyone realized that ‘growing’ the abstract opens the door for a seeing and making of the “spectacular”.

The full period was nearly over and we began collecting our bags and journals.  Just before the bell rang– in that one quiet moment before we ended, one student asked with some interest, ‘What are we doing next?’

–James Shivers

Growing the Abstract

Integrating visual discourse into a classroom provides multiple opportunities to work on numerous critical skills.  For this assignment, I had the students sketch from a photograph Michael Lyons’  Lady Zhen’s Well: The Final Light (2001).

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I had them divide the page into sections, placing the sketch in the middle.  At this point I did not provide the title of the piece.

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After they drew for some time, I had them describe on the left as much detail what they saw.  On the right, I had them imagine what the piece could stand for, as an idea, emotion, or an experience.  Then, for homework they were assigned a one page written response explaining what the piece stood for using their observation work.

I used the time in class to discuss how abstraction works: we ‘abstract’ from our perception to understand what someone is saying or how someone is feeling. And we do this all day long.  Then, I asked them, what if we wanted to be creative about our daily abstractions?  We could say, our friend was having a bad day and they were ‘stormy’ or our friend was happily in love and ‘light as a butterfly’.  The assignment, I explained, was an opportunity to practice abstraction in another way.

Abstraction always dances with the concrete. By taking more of the concrete in through careful observation more material is available for abstraction.  By combining looking, drawing and writing, students practice the skill of abstraction. The one page assignment gives students an opportunity to create connections between what they can imagine, feel or remember and what they can see.  The process gives each student space to reveal their perspective, their values, and their insights. And literally, they grow the abstract. With the practice-work in place, we are then positioned to discussed the title, the work of Michael Lyons, and the function of abstract sculpture from a unique vantage point.

–James Shivers

The benefits of the YCBA Summer Teaching Institute and the journey

About four years ago this month I heard about the Summer Teacher Institute: Expanding Literacies, Extending Classrooms at the Yale Center for British Art. .  After reading about the workshop I said to a colleague, this sounds really interesting. At the same time I was in discussions with my supervisor about switching courses. I wanted teach our standard level 9th grade instead of teaching AP Literature for Seniors. I was curious about the smart phone cultural effect on students not in an honors tract.

After one day at the conference I realized the emphasis on visual literacy, the power of embodied visual experience, the role of seeing and knowing, and the mindfulness practices were all areas I had been slowly incorporating into my classes.  Yet, I had not thought of placing these various domains together, in a daily way, in the classroom. I left the conference with more questions and quite inspired.  I spoke to my then supervisor about a pilot program where I would take the students to the museum giving them an opportunity to practice what I had practiced myself.  I had no idea where this journey would take me.

After four days of sheer intense encouragement I knew that I had reasons for incorporating visual literacy practices, skills and theories into the classroom.  The following year each student had a journal (without lines) and we visited the museum several times.  Now, four years later, 33% of those students, now seniors are taking our most advanced courses in the department.  Regardless if these students changed tracts, the work they produced that first year still gives me pause. The skills they developed are remarkable. During the first quarter, I asked the students to draw a map of their reading experience.

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I am indebted to the YCBA Department of Education and all those who lead workshops and gave lectures for having the vision of the Summer Teacher Institute . I would encourage you to sign up and join us in June.  You can register here.

–James Shivers