Riding the Struggle Bus (Ep. 447)

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz. We’ve been talking a lot about the Art of Ed community here. And just over the past few months here, and it’s been an amazing experience to be part of that Art of Ed community, and it’s one of my favorite places to hang out on the internet. And today’s conversation, which will be with Janet Taylor, will be about a great few posts and discussions that have been taking place in the community. I want to continue that conversation. A couple of weeks back and Janet had a series of posts about the challenges that we are all facing, and what we are struggling with. Or specifically what makes us feel like we’re riding the #strugglebus.

And teachers in the community were sharing so many of their own issues, whether it be with organization or assessment or art history or teaching Gen Alpha. But along with sharing our struggles, people are also sharing the ways they solve those problems, and they’re offering help and suggestions and some great stories. So this episode is going to be all about finding solutions and sharing practical advice, not just from us, but from the art teacher community. Art teachers across the country, we’re hearing from them and hoping that what they share can help you feel a little more confident and a little less alone. So we’ll highlight some of those conversations because we’re all dealing with a lot of similar issues. There are those times when we are riding the Struggle Bus. So whether you’re looking for some ways to solve your problems or you just want to commiserate a little bit, this is a discussion that might be worthwhile for you. Let me bring on Janet now. Janet Taylor is joining me now. Janet, welcome back. How are you?

Hey, Tim. I’m okay. How are you?

I’m doing well actually. So things are good. I am literally about to leave on an airplane to go interview Carrie Mae Weems for our Now Conference for the Keynote Presenter, so I could not be more excited about that. So in general, life is good. We’re going to record this podcast.

I was going to say, yeah.

I’m driving straight to the airport, so I’m looking forward to it.

Yes. It’s a great day for you,

And it really is. I’m looking forward to it very much. I need to ask you though, we are having the podcast here related to riding the Struggle Bus, and it is early December. You are teaching high school. Are you on the Struggle Bus right now?

I feel like I’m always on the struggle bus.

Okay, fair. Okay.

Okay. Not really. Not really. That’s not fair to say. That’s not fair. Okay. Yeah, you said it’s December. So here’s the thing. I don’t know how that happened, but it did. It was actually December. And Thanksgiving was late, so that break was late. And then all of a sudden, it was literally December when we came back. And then the way winter break lines up, I literally said to my kids yesterday, I was like, “Hey guys, we have a week and a half of solid work time left, and we still haven’t even done an entire unit. And we have the art show next week.” So yeah, we’re doing great. We’re doing great.

Okay, good. No, it’s wild to come back from Thanksgiving and then all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, finals week is two weeks away.”.

Yes. Oh my gosh. There’s so cleaning of the studio and prepping, you know what I mean, to close out this semester too.

Yeah. Yes.

We’ll get there.

It’s a lot. But yes, we always do. We always do. Okay, so I talked in the intro about how much I loved reading, just all of the conversations that came along with Struggle Bus Week on the community. And so I wanted to go through all of those with you. And I figured that you and I could talk a little bit about each of the topics and what we struggle with. And then I’d love to share some community ideas too. So if I can just start with the art history one. That may have been the first one posted. It was the one I was most excited about because I always love talking about art history. So let me ask you, Janet, to start, what do you struggle with when it comes to teaching art history?

Everything. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I love art history. I have always been super fascinated by it. I love how it’s like when we were in college, and funny enough, Tim, remember when we were in college together and took classes probably in the same, and Tim and I didn’t even know each other at that time, but we went to school at the same time.

We should tell everybody this. We were both at the University of Iowa at the same time, never knew each other.

Both making art.

But then what, 20 years later, we start working together at the Art of Education and find out that yeah, we actually went to school together. Still can’t place each other in any classes. We were theoretically there at the same time, taking the same classes.

And had same professors. Yeah, weird. But do you remember that intro class that was like, what was it? Western art history of the Western world or whatever that was? Yeah, that survey course where you had to memorize… They’re just like, here’s a slide, here’s a slide, here’s a slide.

Yes. Those slides that you had to memorize. Yeah.

Okay. That is my experience, and that I feel like was my experience in history growing up. Everything was just about names and dates and tying all those things together. Now I’m, as an adult, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, this is so cool.” And I still somehow my brain cannot retain that information. It’s like a sieve. It’s a sieve. So I struggle with it. I’m always on the struggle bus. But can I tell you my current issue actually with-

Yes, please do.

Okay. So my current issue that is ongoing for me is that I teach mostly jewelry metals, metalsmithing, and it is very difficult to find contemporary artists or metalsmiths, who do conceptual work. Because when you search in Google or Pinterest or whatever.

Is it all Etsy? Is it just people with Etsy shops come up?

It’s Etsy or it’s mass-produced horrible enamel pins.

Oh goodness.

So it’s very, very difficult for me to connect contemporary artists into my metalsmithing classes. So that’s a real struggle bus for me right now.

Yeah, for sure. I have not even thought about that. But yeah, that seems like just the biggest pain. It needs some alternative avenues. I would say that art history has never really been a struggle for me just because I love it so much, and that’s how my brain works. I can remember this. My brain does a pretty good job of retaining that information. But I would say my struggle is related to what you talked about is how to teach it and how to make it exciting. Yes, I get excited about it, but how do you present it to kids in a way that’s exciting? So they’re not feeling like they have to memorize slides and memorize dates. And you just need to put some thought into how are kids going to connect with this? How would you relate it to what you’re doing in class?

But I think if you put some thought into that, it comes pretty naturally to most of us. So I don’t think that’s too big of a struggle. And then when you get excited about, or there are always new artists that you want to find that you want to share with your students, but then you get into the struggle of if I’m going to put this artist into the rotation of who I teach about, who has to leave? So we’re not just overwhelming them with a giant list. So those can be tough decisions sometimes, but generally I just get excited about new artists and then just out of nowhere, like, “Hey, everybody, have you seen this artist?” And just show them out of nowhere, and that’s fine too.

So whatever works. But a few really good comments from the community I wanted to share and see if anything resonated with you or gave you any thoughts. So Dylan Trumbull said their struggle was which artist to spotlight. Michelle LaRocque said, “Choosing from the unlimited list.” So I feel that for sure. Ashley Hinton, along the same lines said the overwhelming amount of options. And then Jessica Stuver said, “I don’t know if it’s a struggle as much as a constant concern, but I always wanted to make sure I’m teaching art history that shares a lot of diversity.” And I applaud her for thinking about that. I think a lot of us take that perspective as well, just making sure that we show a diverse set of artists. I remember one of the first podcasts we ever did was called No More Dead White Guys, and just talking about getting away from those “Canons of art history.” Because it’s such a broad spectrum of artists that are out there. And there are so many more that you can share. So anyway, Janet, thoughts on any of those comments from the community?

Yeah, totally. And again, as somebody who struggles with retaining all that information, I often will toss out multiple artists per unit that connect with what media or the technique or whatever it is. And really just let the students analyze, compare, contrast, et cetera. But then pull what they want to connect with from that artist. And I think that helps me so that I don’t feel like I have to necessarily focus on an artist. I don’t want my kids copying an artist, but also I’m exposing them without feeling like I’m limiting or constraining that amount as well. So I don’t know, that’s one way that has helped me. And I’ll tell you nother person that has on your, I was going to say on your Struggle Bus, but not your Struggle Bus, your rocket ship or whatever to art history. It was Kyle Wood.

He’s great.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And he talked in the community a little bit about his arts madness, and I always love that, how he approaches that. Yeah.

Very cool way to introduce a lot of artists, but I love that idea of showing a lot of different people and just let the students drive that and let them figure out what they’re interested or what resonates with them. And so giving them those options. All right. Any other thoughts? Are you ready to move on to topic number two?

Well, can I give a quick little teaser about one of our presenters for the Now Conference?

Please do.

Okay. So we have Ruth Byrne coming back for the NOW conference, and I’m super excited. She’s just a brilliant teacher and a lovely person, but she’s actually going to provide us a way to help students connect with and analyze artwork. So if that’s something that you struggle with, with the conversations around the artists or around the artwork, she really makes it really accessible for young, all the way up through high school. I could see it definitely using it in mine too.

Yeah, she gives a great framework that you can work from, and I think it will be a very helpful presentation. So I’m excited for everybody to see that one. Okay. Moving on to conversation or topic number two on the Struggle Bus. And I think this is the one where you excel. Janet, what do you struggle with when it comes to assessment?

Nothing, obviously. No.

I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding.

No, you’re the go-to expert for this podcast when it comes to assessment. So I feel I’m asking [inaudible 00:13:05]. But no, what do you struggle with when it comes to assessment?

No, everything we do is always a challenge. Nothing is easy. But I would say time is always a concern for everybody. It’s a concern for me when everybody’s like, “It takes me so long. How do you do it?” And I was like, “Yeah, me too.: It just is. Things take a while to deal with. So time to grade, timely feedback to get that stuff back to students. I still have some grades I’m still working on. All of that. So I don’t know. Again, maybe, I don’t know if this is really an assessment issue or more of just a general lack of time in the day issue because I feel like everything is treading water. But like I said, I’m on the Struggle Bus. That’s how we started this podcast, so might as well continue on that.

No, for sure. It’s tough. And there’s pressure because we hear all the time about how important it is to give timely feedback. But on the same level with that, when do I have time to give that timely feedback?

Exactly.

Finding the hours in the day is really tough. And I would say that’s my biggest struggle too, is just staying on top of everything. When I taught elementary art, I luckily didn’t have to do much. I just had an overwhelming number of kiddos and people understood. And so we just have end of quarter grades and that’s all we had to do. And that was not bad. But when you’re in secondary and you’re still seeing hundreds of kids and all of these projects, finding the time is always an issue. And I think a lot of people talked about that in the discussion we had.

One thing that I really love doing with my advanced classes is just sitting down for one-on-one conferences with kids in the middle of projects at the end of projects. And just being able to do an assessment via conversation, just face-to-face talking about what’s going well, what’s not, just whatever the rubric may be. And those are incredibly helpful. But you need to have decent classes that allow you to do that. You need to have small enough classes that you have the time to do that. And so I realized that’s not going to work for everyone, but I would just say anytime you can make some time during class to give some feedback or give some assessment, that can be an incredibly helpful.

And I would say when we’re looking at this conversation from the perspective of the community, I think the theme that we saw along the time was the difficulty of dealing with rubrics, especially if you have hundreds of students. So Matt Weidman, Frank Montaz, they mentioned specifically having time to grade or finding time to grade. And I want to highlight a really good comment from Frank. He said, “One thing I learned after almost 10 years was that if I catch myself writing the same thing as part of my feedback, it should be part of my rubric. I rarely write anything anymore, but I highlight and underline a lot. It’s a sign of a well-written rubric if you can just circle where you are in there.” That’s good. And then Frank said, “Finally, I will say that my mid-process check-ins are more beneficial to students than final assessments.” Which is a great point. So a lot to digest there, but anything that you want to comment on?

Yeah, just that’s like a mic drop moment that he said all that. But another thing that I have learned too is that if I can’t give timely feedback back to my students, if I’m doing exit slips or bell ringers or any of that, and I am not getting the information back to them, or it’s not informing my instruction, because I can’t read it fast enough or whatever, then I don’t do it. What is the purpose of that? That’s not fulfilling the purpose that it’s meant to do. So stop putting more work on yourself and focus more on the, you said conferences, but I feel like we are doing individualized feedback and talking to students all the time.

Yeah. For counseling.

Yes. And so that is the feedback loop. That’s assessment right there. And so I think just shifting the focus off of the paperwork end of things and more on the interaction feedback I think is a big way to save time and focus that, like Frank said, your rubric. If you underline, circle, if you put that work up in the front that your rubric is solid, that takes a little bit of time. But in the end, you’re not sitting there writing a ton or having to give all that feedback to the students.

Yeah. No, I appreciate the idea of the mindset shift that you just mentioned, where we need to think about it less as the paperwork and more of this thing that we are consistently doing with our students. And another thing, I feel like we’re off to a whole different podcast here that we could be talking about with all of these topics, but one thing that I’ve learned from you, Janet, when it comes to assessment, is just the importance of those in process, midpoint critiques, midpoint feedback, not only for students like Frank said, but for us as teachers to modify or to supplement what we are teaching. And they are super important, and like I said, not only beneficial for students, but for us as teachers as well. Because they can inform our instruction in so many different ways. And so I think if we worry less about what we’re doing at the end and a little bit more about the consistent interactions, consistent feedback that we are giving and getting, that can really transform how we think about assessment, I think that can be really helpful.

So like you said, a lot of really, really good points there, and we could talk a lot more about that. But let me go ahead and move us on. Our next topic for the week was organization. So what do you struggle with the most when it comes to physical organization? I will give you a second to think about that, because I struggle with all of it. But I want to give a genuine shout-out, Michelle Parvin and Robin Murphy from the community. They’re like the extreme type A people. They have that all figured out. Michelle had a day in the life video with AOEU that shows off her classroom organization. Probably worth watching if you need some inspiration, you need some ideas, we’ll link to that. But yeah, I always admire those people who have all of the organization things figured out because that has been a lifelong struggle for me. So what about you, Jan? Where are you when it comes to organization?

Okay, this is where I am constantly on the struggle bus. Truly. Yeah. So I’m a piler, I pile things, I have sticky notes, I pile the sticky notes. It’s really, really bad. But I have to say, so I walked into my classroom last year. Brand new classroom, beautiful. It just was amazing. And you get in there and you realize even though it looks perfect, not everything always works for you and your students, right?

It’s not always functional for what you need in an art room. Yes.

So I do really actually enjoy coming up with systems and figuring out what’s going to work best for them, seeing what works, what doesn’t. I also really love getting feedback from my students about what is working and what is not. So I changed it up this whole way. I did tool delivery, set up whatever in my classroom, and something didn’t seem quite right. And then my students were like, “Oh, yeah, I didn’t like it this way. I liked it that way.” And I’m like, “Okay, then let’s figure out something in between that’s going to work for both of us.” Or whatever it is.

So I get it. It’s really, really hard and it’s a constant battle, and there’s always so much mess, and there’s always so many pieces of artwork laying all over the place. And oh my gosh, like I said, this is the time of my art show coming up next week. And it’s like I just walk in my classroom and it’s just piles and piles and piles of stuff everywhere. So I don’t know, Tim, are you? I’m a little bit of a hoarder when it comes to materials and things.

I would say at the beginning of my career, I was a hoarder. Just like you never know when these toilet paper rolls are going to come in handy, better keep all of them. Oh, this might be a great project someday. Then as I got into further into my career, like, “Hey, I’ve been here a decade and haven’t used [inaudible 00:22:17]. Probably don’t need to keep them around anymore.” So that helped once I realized that I could get rid of things. And I’ve talked about this ad nauseam on the podcast, but just labeling everything, pictures on everything, helping kids be self-sufficient when it comes to getting materials out, putting them away is probably the biggest game changer for me with organization. I would say just judging by community responses, storage space was a huge one. Jessica Stuber, Jennifer Jasper, Ruth Byrne, they all mentioned finding storage space for 3D projects.

Heather Hacker and Amber Maddock both mentioned supplies, especially when you’re out of space or if you have multiple classes working with different materials. And it’s tough though, because you can’t really give any blanket advice for that because everyone’s room is different. And I was lucky enough to have cabinets with space on top of them, and I could just store everything on top of the cabinets. And I’m tall, I can reach it, whatever. It’s not a problem. But then I realized, “Oh, that doesn’t work for everyone. And everyone has these different spaces, and it is really, really difficult to figure out how everyone can do that. So I would just say, if you’re listening to this and you have any great hacks on storing 3D projects or other in-progress works that you want to share, please head on over to the community and toss that into the chat. We would really appreciate hearing all of those. So Janet, any more thoughts on organization before we move on to our last topic?

No, because like I said, I’m on that Struggle Bus every day.

Can’t give any advice because I’m busy unpiling my sticky notes right now.

Seriously as I’m jotting it down. No, it feels nice that we’re not alone though, doesn’t it? That’s the thing about the struggle bus. It’s not all the time, but also we’re not the only ones. It’s an ongoing issue.

Yes. Absolutely. I said that at the beginning of the episode. Maybe you’re looking for advice in this episode, maybe you just want to commiserate and [inaudible 00:24:24]. This is tough for me too, so I can appreciate that. Our final topic of the week was Gen Alpha. And that is a fun one, so love for you to think about what you struggle with when it comes to teaching Gen Alpha. The first thing, which I think was probably my favorite comment from the community was from Jessica Stewart again, who said “Probably their continued obliteration of the English language.”

Okay, so can I tell you? I was driving with my daughter the other day and her friend. And I said something like, “What’s up with the Skibidi Toilet thing?” And they just started cracking up. And I was like, “I still don’t know where this came from, what it means.” And they just couldn’t answer either.

No, okay, this is my problem with Gen Alpha slang. I could rant about this, but I’m just going to leave it quick. I appreciate Gen Z slang because it makes sense and they can explain it quickly. Gen Alpha is the most nonsense stuff that you’ve ever heard.

It’s like surrealism.

It is.

Data.

Just a terrible use of slang. And then you ask them, where did that even come from? And they have no idea.

They don’t know what it means either. It’s like they don’t know where it came from or-

But it’s fun to say, so go with it.

Hopefully I pronounced that correctly.

I believe Skibidi Toilet was correct. But beyond the slang, what else are you struggling with when it comes to Gen Alpha?

Okay, this is a biggie for me. So these kids are digital natives. That’s all they do is digital. It’s an attachment. An additional appendage is their device. But they don’t know how to type on a keyboard or change the size of an image without it being distorted on a slide. It just blows my mind that they cannot do these very simple basic computer tasks.

Yes, okay. So, oh my goodness, the typing. It’s crazy to me. These kids are on devices all the time. And when it comes to typing, they have to hunt and pack with their two fingers. And it’s fascinating to watch. And I don’t know, my default thought on that is like, “Oh my God, how do they not know?” But at then the same time I realized that we as adults just assume they know because they are digital natives. And I think everyone in their life has just assumed, “Oh, they know how to do that. They’re on devices all the time, but nobody’s ever taught them.”

And so I think it is a weird disconnect between they’re on there all the time, so we assume they know how to do everything, but yet because we assume they have not been taught. And so it’s a weird setup. Again, I feel like that’s another discussion that we could have that could take a while. And I would say one comment that I saw in the community that kind of resonated with me, I don’t teach Gen Alpha, but with volunteering and coaching, the thing that I always see is the constant touching of each other. They always have to have their hands on each other.

Oh my gosh.

I do not get it. And so we’re always having conversations about, “Hey, without permission, you cannot touch people. And you have to give people space.” And you just talk about that constantly. And oh, it’s difficult.

I teach high school. It is a real problem. So I was thinking about this the other day because of course, I was like, “Stop touching, hands to self.” I’m like, “Gosh, what is the problem with? This is seniors.” But okay, so this is my little soapbox theory, whatever you want to call it. I wonder if it’s a pendulum swing from having social distance during COVID where they do not know how to socialize at all. And now they’re socializing, but it’s just, I don’t know. Sometimes I’m like, is this some weird developmental milestone that they missed out on? And so now it’s got to show up before they become adults. So we might have this for a little longer. I don’t know.

There are a lot of teaching moments there, and we probably need to take advantage of those teaching moments. That’s a good point. I do want to highlight, though, beyond the nonsense that we’re talking about, there are actually some really serious points, really good conversation in the community about that. And I would say just the ones that really stood out to me or the themes that stood out to me consistently. Just the of Gen Alpha’s apathy, their work avoidance, a lot of middle school and high school teachers commenting that students never read directions anymore, and they’re almost helpless if you’re not holding their hand every step of the way. And that seemed to be a huge source of frustration for a lot of teachers. Robin Murphy talked about how her resources that used to work so well, all these things that she spent all the time putting together, these teaching resources, basically don’t work at all anymore. Todd Liebman, he put this very succinctly when he said, “Students are spending more energy avoiding the work than it would take to actually complete the work.”

Oh my gosh, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

No, that was a very, very good point and very well said. Dawn Krueger said that Gen Alpha is struggling with self-regulation in general, volume control in particular. Lee Gorton also said volume and impulse, but then she also said, “I got to say I’m a huge fan of their weirding of the language. And I’m in love with the brain rot, and I’m here for it.” So I appreciate that.

Full circle.

I need to more to that mindset and kind of be entertained by the language rather than annoyed by it. So I appreciate that perspective. And then Deidre Forgione said, “My freshman boys cannot keep their hands off each other. It gets a bit inappropriate at times.” Like we said, with these teaching moments, she said lots of reminders about personal space and consent. So again, it’s annoying to have to remind them constantly about that, but it is something that we need to do. So any of those things that you want to chat about a little bit more, Janet?

I think the not following directions, the apathy, the work avoidance, I feel like yes, those things still kind of wrapping together. And I don’t know, I felt like things were finally getting better. But there’s still, I don’t know, what do you want to say? Snags groups. There’s always a few that is still really stuck in that place. And it’s just a really disheartening part of teaching them right now. You know what I mean? The other stuff, it’s annoying, it’s ridiculous. I can laugh about it and roll my eyes or pull my hair out a little bit, but sometimes I think that just the apathy or that lack of motivation is just the hardest to really manage. Because it’s like I’m doing a tap dance and you’re still not entertained. What else can I do to get you to do the work? And these kids are just not, and this is a generalization. This group of kids that I’m saying that are struggling with this specifically are not motivated by grades or not motivated by credits.

Not to be too flippant, but not motivated by anything. Yeah.

It used to be, okay, I can do these fun things, let’s do it. Whatever. But sometimes I feel like I am working really hard for you to pass my class. And I’m not sure why I’m working so hard for you to not work at all.

Yes. Well, I think that’s the difficulty we all face, because it’s fun to laugh at slang and worry about kids touching each other too much. But those are really on the periphery of what we do. But then when it comes down to why we’re really there, doing the learning, doing the work, putting in the effort, and no matter what we do, you’re not making a lot of headway there. That can get frustrating. That can be a struggle that’s really difficult. And again, we don’t have the answers. This is new to so many of us. And the things that we’ve learned and things we’ve done before are not necessarily working. And so that’s why I appreciate being able to have these conversations, being able to share these ideas and just seeing we obviously don’t have the solutions, but if we’re all putting our heads together, we’re all having conversations within this community, I think it’d be helpful for a lot of people.

Yeah, it’ll be really interesting. Because that kind of stuff is the things that we worry about really I feel like are the long-term implications of that lack of motivation or apathy. What is going to happen when the students are not students anymore? What is the next generation of our workers and people?

Yeah, for sure. And again, that’s another one that we could dive into a ton. But no, it’s something to think about and to reflect on, and I think that’s why a lot of us worry about these things. So I think it’s good to put it out there and to have those conversations, but we can leave it there for the day.

Thanks to Janet for coming on. I hope you enjoyed the conversation, and we hope you enjoyed hearing from the community. And if you are not there yet, we would love for you to join us. It is, like I said, an amazing online space. It’s filled with positivity and professionalism, great conversation, great ideas. I love the discussions are happening. I love the connection. So if you have some time, please come check it out. We’ll link to the community in the show notes, or you can find it at community.theartofeducation.edu. I hope we see you there.

Art Ed Radio was produced by the Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Please be sure to subscribe so we can join you again. And if you love the show, please jump over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen. Give us a five star rating, maybe even leave us a review. We are also taking questions now for the January mailbag. If you have any questions about what to do after break, how to start a new semester, how to reset your classes after break, or anything else that you want advice on, we would love to hear them. Email Timothy Bogatz at theartofeducation.edu or podcasts at theartofeducation.edu with any questions you may have. We are looking forward to reading them.