About – A Closer Look

Seeing

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 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 9^th 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.

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

Table of Contents, Lists, Re-reading

“…those who fail to re-read, are obliged to read the same story everywhere” (Barthes, S/Z 16)

As we end the year I give students an opportunity to revise, add, re-work, any aspect of their journal work from the semester. And I give credit for any additional authentic work they add. All I ask is they explain what they added, where, and why. This practice gives us both an opportunity for reflection and re-reading.

When we start journals at the beginning of the year I tell the students to save the first few pages for a table of contents, to save a couple of pages at the end for lists, and to number the pages. Like the rest of us, they become busy and forget or I forget to remind them. So a few weeks before the end of the semester I ask them to work on their table of contents. This task at first seems too difficult for some, but as we talk they find ways to work. I suggest that a title for a page is like naming a poem or a movie or a chapter in a book. As they go through their journals, they are also reviewing for their Final exam. I ask questions on the exam about their journal work, so the task is a way from them to study while also creating their own view of the material we covered.

Each table of content tells a story. They find words to represent and signify. Sometimes the titles are pragmatic, sometimes poetic:

‘Making a Mark’

‘Literal/Abstract’

‘Art of Story Telling’

These tables give the students an opportunity of book-making where they are readers and writers, giving a re-reading of pages and pages of work.

In their last entry I ask the students to tell me what was their best, hardest, and most interesting work. Reading their responses gives me insight into their experience of the year. Sometimes I miss something that was valuable to them, so I can go back and have a look. Every year I catch something I missed in my first reading or the student reveals a discovery or the journal simply speaks for itself as something wonderfully made.

I had the students draw a painting and tell the story of the painting. This was a favorite for many and at the time I didn’t realize how many loved making up a story to go along with the image they had drawn.

We end the year re-reading and realizing stories abound: waiting, signifying, and inviting.

–James Shivers

Seeing Blue

Recently I spent time looking through the archives.* I was curious about the writer Henry Peacham – his work on rhetoric has had a large influence and in searching the collection, I discovered he also wrote on drawing and painting. In The Gentleman’s Exercise (1694) he covers a range of topics from exercise to illness, from drawing to recipes for creating color for painting.

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Reading his descriptions on how to mix materials to create array of colors I came to a simple realization: when we look at a painting we are often looking at the unique mixing of a particular color. The museum then is not only a place of visual meaning, but also a site of visual making by particular human agents located in a specific time and place. Color here is linked to a person and a composition, not a digital formula. A museum hums conversations of color. In the age of screens (even with retina), paintings –as acts of color making –are translated in a plane of sameness. Machine color is amazing. Human color authentic, located, aging, limited.

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When you have a chance, go to the museum. More than ever, we need to see the physical design of color. Composition and color are structural markers similar to narrative devices. What colors are used for somber, gleeful, mysterious, industrial moments?

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Color is not singular, but plural. When we say ‘blue’ we have a host of blues. Seeing these blues in a museum expands our visual terrain. A place where the constant play of context, space, light, and size of the canvas affects our seeing. A direct physicality emerges beyond the reach of mediated machines, like this one. The museum space fuses with our perception, our day and our space. We don’t just see once.

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We can see blue on our screens. Yet, do we ever think of making blue? With making comes choice, volition, effort, trial and error, quality of material products: the variables increase, and now as we look we can see that artists have a certain color design, a certain way of using the canvas, the brush, the elements. We realize that a color like blue is also a multifoliate human narrative.

*See Rare Books and Manuscripts and the Reference Library and Archives for more information.

All photos were taken on April 16th, 2014 on the fourth floor. For a wonderful history of the color blue, see Blue: The History of a Color by Michel Pastoureau (2001).

–James Shivers

Columns

Seeing Cores

by James Shivers

Summary/Goals

Views. Perspectives. Students. Teachers. Lessons. Classroom space, digital space, spaces to explore. The purpose of Seeing Cores is to provide practical, reflective resources for the 6-12 teacher. These practices are attempts from and in a current classroom. Seeing Cores is a space that seeks vibrant, challenging and engaging ways of bringing the Common Core into the classroom.

Outline & Direction of Posts

Explore the new content demands of fiction, non-fiction, and media can be facilitated by working directly with the visual arts
Provide ongoing snapshots into the day-to-day workings of visually integrated classroom
Discuss practical issues that arise –from supplies to technology—when embracing multimodal discourse
Discuss the pilot program framework and results of Expanding Literacies, Exploring Expression

Contributors

Patti Darragh is a reading specialist and the Reading/Language Arts coordinator, at the K-5 level in North Branford, CT. Patti began integrating visual literacy strategies as a first and second grade teacher and continues to use them to make literature and writing more meaningful to the remedial reading students she works with today. Patti has shared her beliefs and knowledge about visual literacy through various professional development workshops with the teachers in North Branford and an instructor at the University of New Haven MAT program, training new teachers. She is a liaison for the Museum/School Partnership with the YCBA and is an instructor at the YCBA Summer Teacher Institute. Additionally she had presented visual literacy workshops at Yale Center for British Art, New England Museum Association, and American Alliance of Museums, and Examining the Intersection of Arts Education and Special Education. She holds a B.S. in Elementary Education and Advanced Certification as a Reading Specialist from Southern Connecticut State University and an M.S. in Education from University of Connecticut.

Darcy Hicks was an elementary classroom teacher and art teacher in Massachusetts and in Connecticut for ten years. She has since worked as an educational consultant and teaching coach, with a focus on the integration of art and writing. Hicks uses art in the classroom to help children discover their own topics, and to develop skills in reading and writing. She developed a literacy approach called Doorways to Thinking, which integrates all the senses into the writing process. For the last three years she has been part of the Visual Literacy team at the New Haven Public Schools and the Yale Center for British Art. She conducts workshops for teachers, coaches one-on-one, and this year worked with a small group of children to explore the use of art as a way to develop their writing voices.

Publications:

Hicks, Darcy. Choice Matters. Teaching K-8, pub. NCTE October 2001

Hicks, Darcy; Levenson, Cyra. Opening the Door: Teaching Towards Creativity. Creativity in Art Education, pub. NEA 2013.

Presentations:

National Conference of Teachers of English,1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2003.

Cyra Levenson, Ed.M., is Associate Curator of Education at the Yale Center for British Art. Prior to Yale, Ms. Levenson held positions at the Seattle Art Museum and the Rubin Museum of Art focused on gallery interpretation. She has worked closely with schools and teachers throughout her career and has researched and published on the topic of visual literacy in museum practice. Ms. Levenson is a also the co-curator of the upcoming exhibition, Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Atlantic Britain and is author of the article, “Re-presenting Slavery: Underserved Questions in Museum Collections”. Ms. Levenson has a degree in Art Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and has been working in the field of museum education for 15 years.

James Shivers Image

James Shivers (Ph.D.) is a poet, visual artist, and literary critic. He teaches at William H Hall High School in West Hartford, CT. In 2012-13 he developed with YCBA a visual based pilot program called Expanding Literacies, Exploring Expression for students in lower level English Courses. At Hall, he also co-developed of a senior level media course, 21^st Century Studies: Media and the Critical Eye which receives college credit through University of Connecticut’s ECE program where he serves on the English advisory board. He also teaches courses at University of Hartford and University of Connecticut.

Hallie Cirino is engaged in a teaching career that has spanned over three decades and has included students from the ages of two to ninety-two. Currently, Hallie is working as a 5’s teacher at CHT Preschool in Westport, CT. While working on her masters in teaching, curriculum, and learning environments at Harvard, Hallie conducted and published research about young children learning to write for the first time. This led to her emphasizing the incorporation of visual arts into literacy learning with her classes, and the process of doing so with her current 5-year-old students has a very natural, organic quality. Hallie firmly believes that all students, regardless of age, can enhance their learning while improving their writing through the use of visual supports such as fine art.

Yinan “Eva” Song is a senior at Yale University. She majors in Art (with a focus on Graphic Design) and Political Science. She worked as a Nancy Horton Bartels intern at the Department of Education of Yale Center for British Art for the 2012-2013 school year, and continues to work as a student assistant at the Department.

Sara Torkelson is a junior at Yale University majoring in American Studies with a concentration on visual art and literature. She is a student assistant at the Yale Center for British Art in the Education Department. Sara will be posting on the YCBA Pinterest page; these posts will explore the British Art Center’s vast collection and focus on specific themes with each post.

Seeing Cores

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