From the Archives: Visual Journals and Classroom Communities

All right. Stephanie Zeiler is joining me now. Stephanie, how are you?

I’m doing wonderful. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

I teach at Queen Anne’s County High School. I’m in year 27. Same school, basically the same room the whole time. I am the department coordinator for us. I am also the county’s lead visual arts teacher. I have also been the National Art Honors Society sponsor of the year. I got awarded that last year by NAEA.

Oh, congratulations. That’s awesome.

Thank you. And I’m a scholastic gold key art educator as well.

Very cool. That is a long list of accomplishments. I need to ask you though. After almost three decades in the same room, I feel like my room would just be littered with all of the stuff that I’ve saved over that long. Has your room just built up just a plethora of supplies in that time?

It has definitely. And we don’t have the best storage space or wall space or anything in our rooms. They’re not the most adequate for art education, so there’s a lot more in here. And students joke around, and once I come back, they’re like, “Oh, it hasn’t changed. Nothing has changed. There’s so much in here.” And then I was like, “Well, would you want it to change?” And they’re like, “I don’t think so.”

Yeah, see, there you go. It’s a necessary evil. Yeah. I understand that. But we are not here to talk about art supplies. I did want to talk to you, like I said about a lot of things, but I’d love to just start the conversation with visual journals because I know that’s something that’s of interest to both of us, but for you, my biggest question, I think a lot of teachers’ biggest questions when it comes to sketchbooks or visual journals is just how do we get kids to really care about creating a visual journal? How do we get it to move beyond just a list of assignments or a list of prompts and turn that into something that they really care about and really want to do?

It’s been a process. We’re still learning it. My supervisor, Michael Bell, is like a champion of the visual journal.

He loves a visual journal for as long as I’ve known him. He loves the visual journal.

And I know some of us were trying to find our way with that. So it wasn’t just a sketchbook and it’s still a learning process, but I found a lot more success now with my advanced classes. I find intro classes are harder, especially in classes where there are students who are taking because they have to take it versus-

They’re getting their one art credit.

Yes. So the one thing that I love the way they work, we are actually a little plug. We are starting our first course next year, a visual journaling class.

Oh, nice, nice.

Andrea Schulte, who’s a wonderful art teacher down at my sister’s school, Kent Island High School, Michael Bell and I are working on the curriculum now, working on what does that look like? What does that sound like? What does that feel like? And then we don’t have a model to go after right now. So we’re kind of building it together, which I think is amazing and it’s going to be, I think, authentic. So we’re going to be putting time in this summer building the curriculum, talking about the things. Michael’s given us some books and some supplies and said, “Do this.” But in the very best way because we know as artists, you have to do. That’s the best way we learn and create and communicate is by the doing.

So we’re excited about that. Again, it’ll be a process. So maybe a year from now we’ll talk about how that went.

For sure.

With visual journaling, the first thing is you have to make it authentic, and some of that is you modeling it and finding the time to model it to the students. And I think it’s a place you have to build a safe space. So at least in my generation, when we came through art education, we learned that technique is truth and that product is king and the whole process, but we don’t balance the process with the product and the visual journaling gives you a wonderful place to teach process and a safe space.

And one thing I’m learning with my kids, I’m like, “Did you try it in your visual journal? Did you try it in your visual journal?” Before they do it on their project, which is the scary place to do it, or in their artwork, scary place. Where in a visual journal, you make it a safe space for them to try it. And if it doesn’t work, you either put another layer on top of it or you just say, “I didn’t like that and I’m not using it.” And that’s okay. Or they can make a mistakes and say, “Well, I’m not really sure this didn’t work this way.” So trying to build that safe space for them and allowing it to be like an everything book, not just a journal or a sketchbook, like all the things. For myself, I’m really working on now this year trying to figure out how to make it work better for my fundamentals classes.

But it’s definitely a place where you want them to experiment to put their truth on the paper, because I’ve learned too if a kid tries graphite and loves it and then tries charcoal and hates it, but they try in their visual journal so they get a little experience. They don’t like it, they do like it, but it’s safe. But then why would we have to make them do something in charcoal if they hate it? Again, why would we do that to them? Because we’re teaching them to not enjoy the art. So I am like, we’re going to try it in your journal, and if you don’t like it, you don’t like it and you don’t have to do it again. Because if we’re teaching value, we can teach value through graphite, through pen and ink, through paint. It doesn’t have to be a medium. And why do we have to make them be miserable for three weeks with something that they hate?

I know going through it, I hated it. Like some things and I’m like, I don’t really like that. That sucks my joy. So a visual journaling place is for them to be able to figure that out. It is the best place for them to find their voice, their artistic voice. Like Michael Bell would say, how do we paint our paintings? You learn to do that in your visual journal. What keeps showing up in your works? It’s a beautiful place to help teach mindfulness in art and ask questions like why do you think you did that? Did you like that? What are you taking away from that? And even if it’s, I hate it. It’s okay. It’s okay.

That’s an important takeaway.

Absolutely.

That’s still an important takeaway.

And I came from discipline-based art education that never set well with me. The visual journal is the place you build concepts, you learn how to do that, you learn how you process, and you also learn what keeps you from processing in certain directions by what you’re trying and doing. And you can start a conversation with students through their visual journaling. They might not speak to you very much at first, but then you start having a conversation with them about what’s happening in their journal, and then all of a sudden they start answering you and talking to you and showing you things, and you build trust and build a relationship through the journal. So I am still working on it, like I said, for my intro classes, but in my advanced classes, it’s been amazing to see what they’re doing in their journals and how it speaks to them.

Just a quick little story about it, I had a student last year, I had her as a junior. She didn’t talk too much to me, knew she liked art. Mom was a principal, wasn’t really sure how she felt about the art and was like, “Why are you taking another art class? You could be taking this or this.” But then Teagan wasn’t going to art school. So you can have a little more freedom and sometimes with things you do with them. And we started going down learning about, she learned realism, but then learned how to break the rules to do abstraction in a really awesome way and just kept taking classes. And then would do all this stuff in her journal. Just do it, do it, do it, and try, try. And then would put it in her pieces. And her mom wrote me a really nice email last year and said, “Thank you for giving our Teagan back to us. Thank you for giving her something excited to come to school for. She comes to school excited now and doesn’t hate it because she has your class and she gets to spend time in there doing those things.” And I’m like, “What a better testament to what the arts can do for people than that story right there.”

Yeah, absolutely. That is beautiful. And like you said, when you give kids that safe space to create, to explore, to experiment, there’s so much that comes from that. And I think like you said, that story illustrates exactly why. But yeah, we want to give that opportunity to every kid.

And it’s also a place for them to find their fun, what they love. And like I said, not only what they don’t like, but also what they love. And is that fun? Yes. Well, do you want to do it again on a bigger scale? Yes. And then that’s how that develops into bigger projects so you can take what’s happening, that visual conversation they’re having with themselves, and you then take it into what they’re trying to express on a bigger scale.

Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that I’ve found too, and I’d love to get your perspective on this, is that doing visual journal work really forces them to slow down and really go through all the steps of the art making process. Because if you’re not doing as much planning, they’ll just dive in and be like, “This is going to be my background.” They just don’t even bother with the back. They don’t really plan it all out. But when you are asking them to take notes and find artist inspirations and make sketches and figure out composition and try out color schemes, all of that really leads to I think a lot better work because they’re more patient, they’re more thoughtful, and they can come up with a better plan for what they’re doing. So do you see the same thing in your classroom when you’re asking them to do more in the visual journal? Like you mentioned the end product. Are you seeing that improve in quality when they are spending more time at the front end?

Yes. When they do. And visual journal is a great place to teach a creative process and to walk them through it. And again, like I said, anybody that teaches intro classes knows that that is a bigger struggle on the front end.

Oh, absolutely.

But what I want to say is don’t give up on it when it’s frustrating. It’s very easy when something doesn’t seem to be going well, to be like, “Well, that’s no good.” It’s a really good thing to do. And it’s a really good process. And then as you teach them then, and they take more classes, it becomes route. They start doing it automatically. It becomes part of the process. And I was talking to a couple kids about what’s the struggle with you doing something in your journal? Because you just sit there and they’re like, well, I have a hard time coming out with the ideas and making it perfect.

I’m like, it doesn’t have to be perfect in your journal, that’s where you go to explore and experiment and try things out. And then you can look back at your whole thing and like, “Well, those marks were awesome and I love them, and I want have them show up somewhere else.” So then it’s almost like it’s their diary with their visual process, and they can always go back and reflect on it and carry it with them. So it’s a great place for that to do. It’s just also a place where, especially, again, I keep saying in the intro classes where it’s really easy to just get frustrated as a teacher because they’re not doing it, but that’s when you have to find the balance between process and product. And sometimes, especially in the intro courses, I have very high expectations. Sometimes you have to occasionally back off of them to get them to feel a little bit more successful, give them fewer guidelines on what they need to do. But say, we are working on overlapping and layering today. I don’t care what your subject matter is, or we’re going to pick something. I usually give multiple prompts for them because I think student choices really important for them. [inaudible 00:13:08].

They have a better chance of connecting with something.

Absolutely.

And they have a better chance of making authentic work if you give them options.

So I give them options, and then I’m always like, “Well, if something in your head just goes off and you’re like, wham, I have this idea.” I said, “Pitch it to me.” Because even if it doesn’t hit one of the prompts and it’s this great thought process, this great thing you want to do or try or it’s something you’re feeling or something you just saw, yeah, you can do that. You can absolutely do that.

Yeah, it’s good. And yeah, I think that’s another challenge. Going back to that idea of creating a safe space for their creations, especially those kids who are first starting and they feel like everything has to be perfect. And so I’m always looking for lessons and ideas and experiments that they’re not going to look the best. And we emphasize the fact that that’s okay, and it’s a very difficult lesson for them to learn. And so yeah, I think any strategies that you can come up with to help them realize that not everything has to look realistic, not everything has to be perfect, I think can go a long way with them.

Yes.

So shifting gears a bit, I know another thing that you and I have talked about before is just the idea of building a community in your classroom. I think you and I talked about kids having lunch in your room and just how you make your art room a place that students want to be. And so I guess my question for you is what are some of the ways that you do that as a teacher? How do you create a welcoming environment for your students? How do you help them make connections with you or with other students or with their art? How do you help them connect once they’re in your classroom?

So I kind of keep an open studio policy as long as they have permission to be in my room. If they have things to do, they can. And I try and schedule my planning over the lunch periods so that kids can come in and work if they need to or just have a safe space. I’ve had kids in class who they didn’t go on to do art things, but they had art classes with me and they just needed a place that was okay that they felt safe and protected and connected and could be themselves. I try and definitely build that in general in my class by making sure everybody’s ideas are safe and validated that they’re not picking on each other. I always correct language that is bad towards other people or other things or against art. I always tell the kids, “You got to stop using the word can’t. You’re not allowed to use can’t in the room.” And they are like, “Why?” I’m like, “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. So we kind of take that out.” But I also try to build connections with the kids. So I always have discussions versus lecture style when we do things and I will do sometimes uncomfortable periods to get them to talk.

And that was the toughest thing for me as a teacher to do that, because I felt like we always had to be going. We always had to be learning. And once I realized, once I had my own light bulb moment about how effective that wait time is, oh man. So anyway, sorry to interrupt you, but you’re [inaudible 00:16:30].

No, it’s so true. And they just want you to spoon-feed them the answer sometimes. And I’m like, “You don’t learn. That’s not how you learn and you’re going to forget it as soon as you walk through the door. If I tell you the answer.” I said, “My job is to be the guide and the navigator through your journey to give you a little insight and little expertise as you’re going, but it’s your job to figure it out.” And another thing you need to do is be a cheerleader. Always be a cheerleader. Always celebrate the positive stuff. Be lighthearted. There are some times where the kids are like, “Oh, this is really stressful and this is this.” I’m like, “I get it.” But I don’t dwell on bad behaviors or bad things that happen. I address them, we move on.

I’m like, “Tomorrow’s a new day everyone. Tomorrow’s a new day.” And I said, “Sometimes life gets in the way of life for you. For me.” I understand that, but where are we going to go from there? I had a student a couple of weeks ago say, “Why do you keep saying you care if I fail?”

“Well, I do because I care about you. I care about you. And failing is saying, you’re better than this. You don’t have to fail and don’t settle there.” And nowadays there’s more and more trauma-based stuff that comes into the class and they’re so bombarded by so many things. So you have to break down the walls to find their story, which is also a good place to find their story in their visual journals, but also start having a conversation to know their stories. If they see that you’re authentic and willing to get to know them and willing to support them and willing to forgive them when they mess up, but also to have structure built beneath them to keep scaffolding them up and keep pushing them.

That’s a safe place for them to come into your room. I had a mom who I just talked to this week whose son never really liked art or really felt safe. I always thought he wasn’t good enough. And I’m like, she said, your support with him. I said, it took a couple of weeks to get him to be like, okay, I’m giving constructive feedback. I try and use feedback over the word criticism because people have decided that criticism is a bad thing even when it’s constructive. So I try to say feedback. I found that’s a shift that’s been nice, it’s been good in the classroom. But the mom said, “He comes home and talks about art now. He shows me pictures of what he’s doing. He’s proud of what he’s doing.” She’s like, “You build confidence in him.” It’s an intro course. So at all successes, you got to celebrate them. And focus on the positive, give them a safe place to land, that mistakes are okay, but with it, again, still giving them some guidance to how they build their skills. But it’s okay if things don’t work out.

But then being in a room where everyone is welcomed equally and where everyone is supported and cared for, and I throw love around a lot, because you got to love yourself and you got to love the art, you got to love the journey. You love what you’re doing. And it’s hard when the kids don’t love what they’re doing to keep that going. But I try to encourage them to at least come after school sometime with me because sometimes, and in a class of 27, 30 kids, you don’t always get those connections, but when they come after school, you can start to tell a story. And I’m a storyteller, so I always try to tell stories to connect to things. And I like to use a lot of analogies and a lot of like, “Oh, think of it like this.” To stuff that they can relate to. And to they’re afraid sometimes to be expressive because they’ve been told that’s not okay, or they’ve been told that their ideas aren’t good. So building that safe space, that trust, where we treat everyone as equals and then we give them support.

But it’s so important to be a support for them. And I tell them, tomorrow’s a new day. I don’t care if we are butting heads today. I have that family mentality kind of way of teaching that it could be off, but tomorrow I’m coming in and it’s new slate, I’m welcome you at the door. I’m going to come around and talk to you. If I make a mistake or if I do something, I apologize. And we talk about it because they have to see that they have to trust you and they have to make that connection because if you’re trying to build a community or a safe place, community starts with relationships, and then the relationships start with connections and then connections start with people’s stories, and then you build that safe place. You build that where ideas are welcome, where they’re welcome and working through their story and your story.

That’s where the bond happens. And being just like, sometimes you’re like, if you just need a place to decompress during lunch, come on in. This is the same place. We listen to music a lot in class. I do allow them when we’re in independent study to listen to their own music sometimes because that’s where they inhabit their stuff. I have them do class lists where they pick music to put on, as long as it’s school appropriate and we play it, we put on there and then we celebrate stories. I allow them to ask questions to be curious because that’s the only way you learn in the world is to be curious about things. But they’re all kind of some strategies I put in place to-

No, I think those are all good. I love the idea of encouraging curiosity, and the one thing that I kept coming back to as you were talking there is just the idea of starting fresh each day and then every day hyping your kids up. I think it’s important. I act so excited to see them every single day, whether I actually am or not, but I want to see that kid, make them feel welcome. Make them be excited about coming in for art.

Greet them at the door. Greet them at the door.

Who’s excited about printmaking today?

And if you haven’t see-

They’re not.

Yeah, I know, right?

I feel like if I am excited enough, it might rub off on them. But yeah, then like you said, cheerleading for them, encouraging their ideas, encouraging their explorations goes a really, really long way.

And not allowing them to give up on themselves. I will go to the 15th time of doing something trying to get students not to give up on themselves and to see that they can do it, that they can be successful, and we talk all the time about what art builds beyond just art skills and there’s so much of that out there.

Yeah, for sure. No, I think that’s a great point. And I want to ask you just, I guess one last question here, because I feel like with each one we just dive into all sorts of different things, but you’re talking about creating space that the kids like to be in, but as you’re creating that, it should be a space that you want to be in too. And so I’m thinking about, I guess one thing that we’ve talked a lot about on the podcast this year is finding joy in what we do and being joyful when it comes to teaching. So I would just love your perspective on that. What types of things are you doing to find joy in your teaching?

So I’ve been on a couple year quest, especially the last year about finding joy again. And I’ve been through multiple surgeries and I had stopped creating because my best friend and I had a studio and she passed away and I literally stopped creating for about nine years. I would start stuff and not finish stuff. So I went to this creative conference on a whim just with a bunch of other people who were looking to find creative people, not really knowing what it was going to look like, but it was all about your joy, finding your joy again. And some of that is like, what did you run to when you were a kid? What did you do for a kid? When you felt stress, where did you turn as a kid? Because that’s your money spot. That’s your joy. Because that’s before we were told who we have to be, what box we have to fit in.

We did that. That’s what we did. So it was a lot about rediscovering that and nature and trees. I climbed trees when I would be stressed, back then we would run out in the woods and be in the woods all day and you’d have creative play. And creative play was my joy. And climbing in trees and just laying in the tree branches was my joy. So I did the artist way book with a bunch of friends and we took myself on some artist dates and when my foot was enough that I could try hiking and climbing a tree, I climbed a tree and I sat in the tree for a while and watched the ducks on the water and I took hiking up again. And now when I go out in the woods, I have hundreds of pictures of inspiration of things to use.

And I started creating again. For me, to find joy again in creating was to create for no reason other than to give it away to somebody who was going to love it. And so I started with a couple custom mugs and a couple small things, and I was like, “How did I get so far away from this?” I put some music on and I just sometimes have a little dance party in between the creating and finding that joy and remembering what it was like to be as a child. And the other part of joy is just being grateful for all the things. So I’ve been practicing a little bit more meditation and grateful meditations, and when I get a little stressed, I’m like, there’s so much about my job that I love. So I already try to focus on those things versus the things that are weighing me down because it’s a pretty stressful place in public ed right now.

Oh, for sure.

And then that’s what I try and talk and explore, and that when I do that, I try to direct kids when they do something really fun or whatever. I try story tell and bring some of that into there and find connections with the kids. Keep it lighthearted. I find times where we can joke around with the kids or give them little surprises here or there and share my passions with them because you can make connections. We can find connections with the students when we share a little bit about ourselves.

Yes. Yes. Very much so.

We talk. I love horror movies and things like that, and I start talking about that and the kids are like, “What dude?” And if a kid asks me to listen to something or to watch something, I try my very best to at least do that.

Yeah. See, I always hit them up for recommendations like, “Hey, what should I listen to? What should I watch?” And then that’s a great conversation starter.

And that kind of joy. And sometimes giving them a little bit more freedom of some things they can do in the class is helpful. And they sometimes don’t even know what brings them joy. They’ve lost a lot of connectedness to themselves, I think especially now since post-COVID and post a lot of that, and making those connections and finding that fun stuff, that connectedness, and I tell them too, what brought you joy? What brings you joy? We do some intro work with I am kind of things and identity and stuff. And let them figure out what do they really like. And I try and teach them their surface joy. And then there’s deep soul, gratifying joy. What does that look like? Me, deep, gratifying joy is going out into nature and doing some things and then coming back and doing some artwork. And then getting them excited about things, which sometimes it’s hard to do for teenagers, but-

Right. But again, especially when you’re having a difficult time getting them to open up. But no, I think that’s a really important conversation to have and I think it’s good for them to think about those things.

Absolutely.

Well, all right. Well Stephanie, we’re going to need to wrap it up there, but I feel like I could just talk to you for hours about all of this, so I’d love to have you back again sometime.

No, absolutely.

But for now, thank you for the conversation. It’s been great and hopefully enlightening for a few people out there. So, thank you.

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Have a good one.

Tim:

Thank you to Stephanie for coming on! I appreciated her stories, her sharing so many different things, and the stories she has to tell. 

I hope that you can take some of that as advice, and I hope you found a few parts of the conversation that might be helpful to you. I hope to have Stephanie back sometime in the future and we will see what other ideas we can explore when she is back on. But until then, a big thank you to her for everything that she shared today.

Art Ed Radio is produced by the Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you as always for listening.