The March Mailbag: Misophonia, Failing Students, and Spiraling Curriculum (Ep. 457)

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. The show is produced by The Art of Education and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz. Welcome to the month of March. Welcome to the March Mailbag. Amanda Heyn is joining me. Amanda, how are you?

I am good. Happy Youth Art Month, everybody.

It is. Happy Youth Art Month. How is the weather in Wisconsin by the way?

Oh my gosh, it is a balmy 42.

Very nice.

The amount of people that were outside walking around this morning was so funny to me. Because it’s not … I mean, it is warm. The kids are going to school in shorts if it’s 42.

Yeah, I was going to say, my kid wore shorts to school today, which is not the best and teenage boys don’t necessarily have the best judgment on when to wear shorts, but it was valid today. And we just had an entire week where they canceled school for literally the whole week because the wind chills were dangerously cold, and now a few days later, it’s in the 60s and it’s wild. So I’m-

Which is literally 80 degrees warmer than it was last week. It’s so crazy.

Yeah, so I don’t know, we’ll see what March brings, but yeah, I was just curious what it was like for you because it’s been a pretty wild swing for us. So before we dive into all of our housekeeping and our stories and our mailbag questions, we would love to introduce ourselves. I am Tim Bogatz. I’m the host of the Art Ed Radio podcast and I also put together The Art Ed NOW conference as the events director here at The Art of Ed and I was a short-time elementary school traveling art teacher and long-time high school art teacher. So, Amanda?

Yeah, I am Amanda Heyn. I’m the Director of Community Engagement, so I oversee all of our magazine and media offerings and the conference and The Art of Ed community and I taught elementary before joining AOEU.

So for all of you who are joining us for the first time, welcome. That is who we are and we’re thrilled to always do these mailbag podcasts at the beginning of the month. So, Amanda, before we start, do you have any housekeeping that we need to get through?

I do. First of all, like I just mentioned, part of my job is overseeing The Art of Ed community, and so if you haven’t joined yet, we would love to have you. We just crossed 4,500 members.

Awesome.

It’s just so exciting. So you can do that at community.theartofeducation.edu. There is also a tile in your AOEU account that you can click on and come on in. It is free to join. We just had a pop-up studio recently where we just all get together, hang out, make art. We have other events going on. It’s a great place to be. If you are in the community or you just joined the community, also please tell us if you’re coming to NAEA later this month. We have a post in the community that is featured right now and we are having a party at NAEA for our community and we would really love to see you there. We have rented out a very cool art museum and it is going to be a fun time. So look for that post and RSVP.

Also, quick plug, as the cohost of The NOW Conference with Tim, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that early bird pricing is going on right now. So you can use the code EARLY BIRD and you can get $20 off your registration, which is a great deal.

Yeah, we would love to have you join us there as well. Yeah, we love the conference. We’ll talk about it probably every time that we’re together. So yeah, you’ll hear that over the next few months, but we would love you to come to that in August. So all right now, I was told that, at Studio Art Club this week, my dog rating scale was brought up. It made an appearance. Is this true?

Yes, at pop-up studio we were … Oh, people bring their pets a lot and hold them up to the screen, and then yeah, our online community manager, Jen Leban was like, “Oh, Tim Bogatz has a dog rating scale.” And I tried to begin to explain it and I couldn’t, so I would love for you to please explain the dog rating scale that your family uses.

Yes. So, okay, first of all, I’m trying to envision me trying to hold up my 65-pound dog to the screen at a Zoom meeting, I don’t know how well that would go, but the dog rating scale started when my kids were very little. My kids are in high school now. So when they were young, we used to get excited about things when we were walking around the neighborhood. You always just point out the fun stuff, or when we’re driving around, you point out cool things to look at, and whenever we saw dogs I would say, “Oh, awesome, dog alert.” I don’t know where that came from and just like, “Oh, alert, alert, there’s an awesome dog there,” for them to see because I love dogs.

And then as the kids got older, they realized not every dog is awesome. And so we have an entire rubric now and so awesome dogs are at the top of the rubric and most dogs get an awesome dog alert because dogs are great, but you can also get an average dog alert. That’s one step below. Still cool, that’s fine. Maybe not quite as cute, maybe a little bit annoying, but still cool because it’s a dog, so that’s an average dog. And then below that is the acceptable dog alert where they’re still fine to have around because we love all dogs, but just like they’re ugly, they’re annoying, whatever. They’re acceptable, they’re fine. So we have the acceptable dog alert. And then I’ve only given two of these in my life-

Oh my gosh.

… you were there for one of them, but the very bottom scale is the atrocious dog alert. We do not want around, so they’re atrocious. We were in Chicago. I don’t know if you remember this. It was after the conference. We were walking around and I think we were with Sarah Krajewski and I was explaining it, and literally, not 20 minutes later, this lady comes by with this tiny little dog that’s barking at everything, every car, every bike, every person that goes by, somebody comes up to it and the dog tried to bite them. I’m like, “Nope, this isn’t happening. This is an atrocious dog.” So yeah, those don’t come often, but yeah, we do have the atrocious dog. So again, awesome, average, acceptable, atrocious if anybody wants to use that for themselves. So that is the dog alert scale if you get that into your everyday life.

Oh, I love it so much. Thank you for sharing that.

Happy to do that. So I don’t know, I know you don’t have any dog rating sales, do you have any good stories though that you would like to share for story time?

Yeah, I don’t have. I am severely allergic to dogs. I wouldn’t go so far as to say all dogs are atrocious to me. I can appreciate some dogs, but they’re probably all sitting around acceptable. There were two Husky puppies that came up on a Facebook Marketplace page and I had to make my husband remind me that I will have an asthma attack if we have a dog, because oh, it had one blue eye, one brown eye, one of them.

Yes.

Oh my gosh, it was an amazing dog. I know that’s not on the scale, but it was great. Okay, well, I thought maybe I would tell a story about an art show story because it’s Youth Art Month.

It’s Youth Art Month. That is perfect. Yes.

And there’s a lot of art shows going on and this is a word of warning. I may have told this on the podcast a hundred years ago, I don’t know, but just think about, as you are planning your art show for Youth Art Month, what is an acceptable level of work that you should be doing?

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Because my first all school art show, I was a second year art teacher. I actually didn’t do an art show the first year I was a teacher, which I would also highly recommend. You don’t need to be doing that, but it was my second year, I was feeling good. The school hadn’t had an all-school art show in a while and I was like, “I’m bringing it back. I’m bringing it back for Youth Art Month. This is going to be the best thing ever.” I had curated a playlist and gotten other people on board and whatever. And I decided that we needed cookies at the art show and instead of, I don’t know, ordering through district catering or asking for some money, I decided I was going to make 1,000 cookies. That is not hyperbole, 1,000 cookies-

… for … Maybe it wasn’t a thousand now that I’m thinking about it. It was hundreds. It was hundreds of cookies. I made dozens of batches of cookies and-

Wow.

… they were delicious. They were like soft sugar cookies.

You’re great at baking, but-

And then I rolled them in different sanding sugars, so there was a rainbow gradient of cookies.

It was amazing, but don’t do that. That is so, so silly. That is the silliest thing I’ve ever done as an art teacher, is spend nine straight days-

Just baking cookies.

… baking. Well, this is obviously before I had my own kids, right? I’m a sprightly 23-three-year-old human. It’s a different time and still you can have an art show and you do not need to take it to that degree. So this is me giving everybody permission like, “Look at your to-do list and maybe remove a couple things.”

Yeah, yeah. Your show will still be fine, yeah-

It’ll still be fine.

… without all of the bells and whistles.

Right. I probably even shouldn’t have had them. Do you know what I mean? It probably was some weird violation, I don’t know, whatever.

That was very against the rules where I can bring in homemade treats.

I know. Well, also different time again.

Yeah, it’s true.

Close to 20 years ago.

Okay, so let me ask you this before we get into it. Homemade treats that kids bring you, do you eat those or do they-

No.

… just go in the trash when they’re not looking?

Absolutely not eating that. Absolutely not. Because here’s the thing, even if it’s from a trustworthy source, you actually don’t know where it’s been when it gets to school.

Fair. Very fair.

My funniest homemade delivered treat, I got a lot of homemade delivered treats, not to brag, but they were bringing them to me, the worst though is this kid had a container full of Jell-O jigglers. Can you imagine? Cut-out shapes of Jell-O, which I don’t like anyway, but he used his hand to scrape underneath and then he put it on directly to a napkin.

Oh, God.

And then he hand it to me, he was so proud. And I was like, “Thank you so much, buddy. I’m going to save this for later. I’ll really enjoy this later.” But Jell-O jiggler on a napkin, that thing was hermetically sealed to the napkin even had I wanted to eat it, which I obviously didn’t, but-

I guess you’re eating half the napkin at that point.

That’s right, extra fiber. What about you?

Yeah, I usually always throw things in the trash, which is rare for me because I will eat anything, but there was one day a really good kid that I loved. She made me a plate of chocolate chip cookies for my birthday and brought them in before school, and oh my goodness, I ate those. They were some of the best cookies I’ve ever had. So-

But okay, also you taught high school and-

Right. Those kids do know how to wash their hands at least.

They do.

Whether they put it or not, not sure.

Yeah, that’s the difference-

It can be a little different, but yeah, most of those like just, “No. No, thank you. No.”

No, I mean like, “Thanks.” I’m never going to turn one down. I’m always going to-

Oh, we always appreciate it, but we don’t ever eat it.

It’s the thought that counts.

Yeah, like, “I’ll have those after school. Thank you.” Set it behind your desk until you remember to throw it away and [inaudible 00:13:04] like that’s the best strategy. So anyway, but we should probably get to some mailbag questions. Would you like to do our official introduction?

Yes. Let’s go ahead and open up the mailbag.

Our first question came in via Instagram and this teacher asks, “I am a fourth year middle school art teacher. This year, I have a student who has misophonia or selective sound sensitivity syndrome, which means he cannot stand using a pencil, hearing other students use pencils, watching a directed drawing of someone using a pencil or if I use a pencil. So he wears noise-cancelling headphones to combat the problem of other people using pencils, which is a plus, but he cannot use a pencil himself. What materials should I have him use to complete things like one-point perspective where there are a lot of guidelines that need to be erased?” Amanda, thoughts on this one?

Okay, the first time I read this, I really laughed hard because this is a problem for an art room, right?

Right, no pencils in the art room, that’s a tough one.

Right. However, that said, I don’t think it’s insurmountable. This question asker also posted this in The Art of Ed community and people there came up with a few of the same ideas that I had, so let us talk through those. First of all, I love that he has provided noise-canceling headphones. I think that’s great. That allows him to stay in the room, but it doesn’t solve the problem like was mentioned of he himself not being able to use a pencil. So our online community manager, full of good ideas, Jen Leban, suggested a whiteboard, which is where my mind first went for practicing.

Mm-hmm.

Someone else mentioned a digital option, which I think is perfectly valid. If the goal is to have him understand one-point perspective and create a one-point perspective artwork, that does not have to be done in pencil and I absolutely think you could have that be accomplished digitally. We had some suggestions for erasable pens or different weights or types of paper and pencils, but our question asker says it is all pencils and all paper, which makes me think erasable pens might be out, because to me, actually, I hate the texture of an erasable pen. I think it really does make my inside squirm because it’s like-

No, that’s fair. That’s fair. Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Yeah, maybe I haven’t used them in a long time because I don’t like them, so maybe the technology has changed, but generally not a fan and I think would present the same problems. Okay, I was also thinking maybe a super smooth marker paper and alcohol-based markers. Obviously, you can’t erase that, but you could start with a super, super, super light marker and build up from there. The other thing I thought about is, “Could you use a lightweight paper on top of darker guidelines against a window or a light box?”

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

You know what I mean? And then have them trace with the marker, I don’t know.

Makes sense.

Same thing for a grid portrait, is the grid underneath and there’s a light table or something, but I don’t know, that’s where I went with this one. What about [inaudible 00:16:26]?

No, I think those are good ideas and my first thought was just a whiteboard, a miniature whiteboard and let them draw on that. And then I was also thinking of thin and thick markers, like your idea with the paper underneath and lighter paper on top where you can see through. I was thinking of a similar concept, but just on one page. So let’s say you’re doing all of your vanishing points and your receding lines and all that with just a fine-point light gray marker. So we’re using a marker and drawing those out. And then once we have all of our lines in perspective and we know what the finishing pieces are going to be, get a sharpie or a bigger marker or a darker marker and then finish the rest of the drawing in that.

And I feel like that might be something that’s worth trying, but I think those are all good ideas. I think there are a lot of options. Like you said, you first hear that, you’re like, “What are we going to do?” But then when you think through it, there are some ideas there. We’re creative. We can solve these problems, right?

That’s right.

So I think there are some ideas out there. Okay, next question. We already talked a little bit about the weather, but we got an email from teacher named Connor who says, “I’m getting really sick of the cold weather and I’m pretty sure my students are too. So I’m starting to think about getting outside and things we can do outside when the weather is nice. I’m at a small school and I teach K-12, so any ideas for all levels are great. Thanks.” Amanda, first reactions to the weather and how we combat it.

First reaction is commiseration, but I feel like it’s turning. I feel like we got this question last week, so hopefully, Connor is feeling the hope that we are all feeling. Side note, it’s almost time for garden talk. So if you’ve been missing garden talk on this podcast, it’s coming.

All right, I don’t know if anybody’s clamoring for garden talk.

Let us know. Do you want us to bring back garden talk for season two or not? We’d love to know. Okay, that is not what Connor asked about. Connor asked about ideas for going outside and I have a lot. Should I just run through them?

Yes, please do. Let’s give him a list.

Okay, so I’m going to start with elementary. Chalk is the easiest, right? Whenever I think about going outside, I think about removing as much of the prep work and management as possible because you’re already in a new environment and so you have to be on a different level of alert. And so we don’t want to do anything too complicated outside, especially at the elementary level, at least in my opinion. So you can take sidewalk chalk outside. Crayola makes some really great vibrant colors. I always fulfill my childhood dream of getting the 96 pack of crayons, which I never got and I get the most chalk and they have, I think it’s close to a hundred pieces of all different colors.

Okay, nice.

There’s also glitter chalk, there’s tie-dye chalk, you can go nuts, but I like to do when the kids trace each other and then decorate their clothes or do fashion design or fill in a self-portrait. That’s fun. A positive message or teach them how to draw the school mascot, so they chalk the walkway up to the school, if you have a safe place to do that. Obviously, not in the parking lot. If there’s a sidewalk where it’s safe and you trust your kids, shadow tracing can be really fun. Just let them loose to trace the shadows. And then as it moves, those shapes are left behind, which is cool.

They could design an obstacle course or a game of some kind or an elaborate hopscotch and then they could spend the second half of the class playing those or going through those. Other things I’ve done, a coloring book. So have the kids draw the outline of something for the first little bit and then switch and color in somebody else’s. Okay, I know I said don’t get complicated. There are recipes you can look up online for chalk paint, which maybe if you had an afterschool club or something could be fun, but anyway [inaudible 00:20:36].

But worthwhile, right? Those are cool. Have you seen those? They’re fun.

Yeah, they’re cool. Okay, besides chalk, I think I used to literally just take my kids out with clipboards and paper and pencils and we would just practice observational drawing. And I would let them get creative like, “Find a cool spot to sit on the playground or under the play structure or with your back against a tree.” Let them get fun with their spot of sitting and then see what they can draw. I also think you can do a lot of arrangements with natural materials, so like make a symmetrical design or create an animal or create an alphabet collaboratively as a class with finding different sticks and leaves. And-

And Andy Goldsworthy is the artist that everybody-

That’s right.

… uses for that, which I get tired of Andy Goldsworthy to be honest, but guess what? Your kids haven’t seen them before, so worth introducing and it is cool stuff. So-

It is cool stuff.

… they will appreciate that.

My favorite is that one, have you seen, it’s like yellow leaves that go to really dark black leaves and it looks like a black hole?

Okay, as soon as you started talking, I was like, “I know that’s going to be your favorite.” Yeah, it’s a great piece. I love it.

Yeah, it’s good.

Sorry to interrupt you. I’m sure you have more ideas.

I’m on a roll. Okay, next would be if you are planning, if you want to go big, you could do some sort of art installation. Obviously, this is something you’re getting permission for ahead of time, but yarn bombing, fence weaving. There’s a new piece of public art by my house at a park where they crocheted into the fence and it’s-

Oh, nice.

… really nice.

Yeah.

I don’t know if you’ve seen those solo cup portraits where you shove them in.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Obviously, I don’t know how I feel about that. I feel actually maybe not great about putting that much plastic into the world, but anyway. And then my last idea is window decorating. So you can do Crayola and I’m sure other brands make window paint markers essentially. Again, that is fifth graders you trust if we’re talking elementary, but can be fun.

Okay, do you have any ideas for secondary, because I was going to jump in, but I thought that you probably have a few also, so [inaudible 00:23:01]?

I have a couple, but I would love your expertise here. My thought went to a lot of photography, either a photo scavenger hunt of like elements and principles, finding an example of contrast or whatever. And then taking source photos for future projects. I really like-

Great idea.

… their own source photos, so getting outside to do that. And then I mean, just take your sketchbook outside and we’re having a sketchbook day outdoors.

Yes.

Secondary kids can handle that. So what about you? Do you have additional ideas?

That’s always my default, is to just take sketchbooks outside. And like you said, keep it simple. You don’t need to put a ton on planning it and your kids, I don’t know, in high school, don’t need a ton of planning. You can say, “Hey, grab your sketchbooks. We’re going outdoors.”

Right.

You may have a weekly sketchbook assignment they’re working on. You may say, “Hey, draw something you. Find what’s interesting.” But the point of getting outdoors is getting outdoors. You’re not going to get any amazing finished works or things like that and you can do some prep stuff. I love the idea of reference photos or source photos and having kids go shoot stuff, give them a few parameters about what they might want or need. Just ask them to think about it before they go out and it’s a great opportunity for them. Actually, I’ve done two different podcasts on these, the topic of getting outside.

One’s really old with Andrea Slusarski, just talking about getting outdoors yourself to make art, whether you’re out there with your travel watercolor set or your sketchbook or whatever, but we also talk about getting students outside as well. And then I did one with Sarah Krajewski and this was post-pandemic when we were in school, but encouraged to get outside as much as possible. And so we did a whole episode on just ideas for getting outside, ideas for making art outdoors. So we will make sure that we link to both of those. And if you just need to hear us talk about these things for another 40 minutes or an hour, go tune into those, but there are a lot of ideas there.

And I know we have a handful of articles in the magazine with really good ideas, so we’ll link those as well. But I would say the big idea is you don’t have to do anything special. It’s okay to just grab the chalk with a basic idea. It’s okay to just grab your sketchbooks and go get outside. It’s good for everybody. So I would say, to answer your question, Connor, you don’t need any huge specific plans. Just get outside. It’s going to be good for everybody. So, Amanda, would you like to read the next question?

It says, “Here’s a mailbag question for you. What is your response to a parent who emails and literally only says, ‘Why is my kid failing your class?’ How do you handle that professionally and responsibly?”

All right, I’m getting the impression, the person who wrote this is feeling combative when they phrase it like that, but if we can take a step back from that feeling or that emotion, how do we handle it responsibly? Can you answer this first?

Yeah, sure. Nobody likes to get that email, right? Because it also is a little bit combative from the parent, right? There’s nothing that we can see that would explain a goodwill positioning of this question. However, it is a straightforward question and I’m hopeful that you can provide a straightforward answer. So ideally in this situation, you would have already communicated about your grading practices at the beginning of the course term. You would have those easily accessible for parents. Maybe you’ve sent a sheet home, maybe it’s your LMS and you would have rubric for each major project, right? These practices make it really, really easy to showcase whether or not a student is meeting expectations and why, right? And so-

Mm-hmm.

… if the question is, “Why is my student failing?” and you can say, “Well, they haven’t done any of the assignments or they are not meeting the expectations in these three ways,” that’s very clear.

Yeah.

So if you do have those things set up, I would follow this formula as a professional response, right? Thank them for reaching out. You do want to encourage parents to talk to you. Remind them where they can find the information about your grading practices. Align what the student is doing well and where they’re falling short using the evidence, right?

Yeah.

I would reiterate that you’re here to support the student and you’d love to continue to partner with the parent to see if you can help the student’s grade improve and then ask if they’d like to schedule a follow-up conversation. If you don’t have clear grading practices or rubrics, I would use this as an impetus to start those and work to develop them over the rest of the school year, so you can really hit the ground running in the fall. In that case, I would still thank them for reaching out and educate them on your grading practices. And again, describe where the student is not meeting expectations, and then again, just ask how you might work together to help the student. So that’s my take on it. I don’t know, Tim, what do you think?

Yeah, a very similar answer. I love the idea of just saying, “Hey, I’d love to talk to you about this more. Can we work together on this?” and that’s a lot of times how I’d respond to that to say, “I’d love to set up a phone call or have you come up to the school sometime.” And I think, over the course of 14 years, that happened three times that they took me up on that. They’re probably not going to, but I think it’s good to offer. I think your layout is an excellent example of how to handle that. And I would just say that, if a kid’s failing, a lot of times in secondary, it’s attendance. And if it’s not attendance, it’s probably effort. Like when they are there, they’re not doing as much.

And so I will generally start with one of those two ideas, but a lot of times, I will also like to just show like, “Hey, here’s what your kid has created. Here’s what another student has created.” Not necessarily your best student, just an average student like, “This is what a project that earned a B in grade look like. Here’s what your kids look like.” And that’s always a really good visual for parents. The lack of effort is a lot of times pretty obvious when they compare their kids relatively blank page next to a completed work. And if that is the case, then a visual can be really helpful for parents to see what’s going on. And I always just had the answer that your kid had the same opportunity, the same instruction for me, the same classroom environment, but they made some different choices on how they’re going to go about their artwork.

Oh, that’s so good.

And so that answer usually covers things right there. So that’s where I like to go with it, but yeah, I think just handling it professionally. Like you said, whatever evidence you can have, whether that is a rubric, whether that’s visual, and just explain what’s going on, I think that’s the best thing to do. However, there’s a lot of times where you’ll send a couple paragraphs back with some visuals and then the only response you get is, “What can they do for extra credit?”

Yeah.

At that point, I don’t even know what to tell you at that point. It’s like, “Hey, I don’t offer extra credit. They can redo their work if they want a better grade,” but yeah, I feel the frustration with that, is what I will say.

Well, and that’s another great thing to put in whatever policies you either have or are going to develop, is like, “Do you allow extra credit or not? Do you allow redoing of work or not? And why?” Again, so everything is super clear. I would also say, ideally, the parent isn’t finding out their student is failing when you get the report card.

You did mention that, but we should have started with a stronger caveat about that.

Yeah, it’s best practice if a kid is really struggling to reach out ahead of time at least, so there’s a paper trail to say that you tried.

No, I’m-

You can only do so much, right?

Right, right.

You can’t make a kid work.

But yeah, I would say that is part of your job as a professional, is to communicate with parents. So if you notice a kid’s struggling, you need to at least reach out first, so they’re not caught by surprise, so I think that’s an excellent point. Okay, next question is from our community. Good discussion there. We just posted in there like, “Hey, we’re doing the mailbag. Do you have any questions?” and a good discussion started. Let’s start it with Robin, who asked, “How can we make our curriculum sequential when we’re teaching sequential grades without being super redundant, without doing those things over and over or is redundancy a good thing for learning as long as the projects change?” which is an excellent question. I want to touch on that.

And then Donna responded and said, “Robin’s post is super interesting. I work with another art teacher in the middle school building and we do not coordinate on sequencing, materials, rubrics, etcetera. Not because we don’t enjoy working together on the contrary, but we just have our own passions and drive based upon projects. It would be great to have a skeleton of topics, materials we should touch upon, especially when we are teaching the same grade.” So I have a lot of thoughts here, Amanda. I assume you have a lot of thoughts as well. Can you start us off?

Yeah, I feel like this could be its own podcast, but we’re going to try-

Okay, I have that exact same response.

Okay. This is such a good set of complex questions, so thank you, community members. We’re going to give you some ideas and then I’m going to also share some resources from The Art of Ed if you want to dig deeper. Okay, so a few things about continuity first. I do think it’s important to have continuity among grade levels in a district because it ensures that students are getting a really equitable experience and makes it easier for the teachers at the next level to understand what the kids are coming with and it’s not really disparate, right? I’m not saying everybody has to do the same projects, but I do think that students should be learning the same skills and concepts and vocab and having some of the same key foundational experiences in each grade level.

So for example, when I was teaching, we decided as a team that, in kindergarten, everybody would make a pinch pot. It did not have to be the same pinch pot project, but the kids would learn that in kindergarten. Second graders would have some sort of experience with coils and fourth graders will create a [inaudible 00:33:46] project, right? So there was this continuity of foundational experiences and vocab and all of those things I talked about being taught, but not necessarily in the same way.

Right.

Do you have thoughts about that? Is that feasible?

Yeah. Yeah, it’s feasible for sure, but I think it takes some effort. You need to take time with the other teachers in your district and make the effort to align things if that’s something you want to do. If your district doesn’t make that alignment a priority, that can be tough because you don’t want to spend all of your extra time trying to do this. But when I first started teaching high school, it was interesting because my district was not yet aligned. And so I’d be like, “I would know that kids from this middle school were good at skills A, B and C because their teacher did a great job teaching that. But kids from this middle school were better at these things.”

And so you just adapt to your teaching to what you have at that point, but eventually, our district aligned all of our curriculum and it made things a lot smoother, which I really appreciated. But when you do that alignment, I would echo your idea, Amanda, of having those foundational experiences, but trying to leave it open-ended because I think teachers should have the autonomy, I guess, to teach in the way that works best for them and works best for their students. We’re all in different situations. We know what works best for our kids. And that comes back to Donna’s answer about passion and drive. Teachers have specific things that they’re good at or they like doing and so let’s let them do those things.

Mm-hmm.

And so I would say, as long as you have that framework for shared experiences, but you let teachers teach that or teach those concepts or those skills in the way that they know best, I feel like that’s going to be the best of both worlds for everybody.

Yeah.

The other part of the question was about spiraling curriculum and trying to make sure that things aren’t redundant. So what are your thoughts there?

Yeah, that is also a great question. I dug deep for us on this one and I unearthed a scholarly article from Cambridge, so you’re welcome.

Oh, look at you. Okay, I’m linking this in the show notes, yes?

Yes.

Okay.

Which I thought it was really good. Well, it’s six pages long, but it’s fairly succinct and it talks about the advantages and disadvantages of spiraling curriculum within different disciplines, which is really interesting. So if you’ll come with me to the 1960s to meet Jerome Brunner, he has developed a spiral curriculum as an educational theory for science and that has now been adapted, as we know, for things like the arts and humanities. I’m just going to do a quote from this because I think it really explains this well. So, “In a spiral curriculum, learning is visualized as a spiral upwards from basic to advanced concepts with topics being revisited at increasing levels of complexity as the spiral loops around. The process of reinforcement in learning is a key feature of the spiral curriculum,” okay?

So it goes on to say and where I think the question is answered, “Each return visit has additional objectives and presents fresh learning opportunities in a spiral curriculum. Attention is paid to both the scope and sequence of topics.” So if you’re spiraling curriculum and reinforcing concepts, you ideally are adding additional context and complexity as you go along. And so then you’re avoiding this redundancy thing, because ideally, it’s getting harder as you go along, right? And personally, I don’t know, I think it can be a helpful planning tool.

Yeah, I think so too. And I think, as a high school teacher, when you’re reflecting and when you’re planning, you think a lot about spiraled curriculum. I taught drawing one, drawing two, drawing three, then drawing four, just like you’re going to revisit those things over and over. And I think that that actually provides a lot of opportunity. And Robin asked the original question, if redundancy is good as long as the projects change, and I would answer that with a resounding yes, to be honest. You can keep revisiting whatever concept, whether that’s shading in value or some type of contour drawing, whatever you’re going to do, you can come back to it and build upon it each time. That’s the goal.

Scaffolding is a really good opportunity because kids can build upon the experience they already have. They can get more confident as they go. And not to go all kids these days, but kids these days really do have a fear of failure and so they don’t like to try new things. This could be its own podcast right here, but if you’re revisiting an idea and they have that little part of their brain says, “I know this. I can do this,” you’re building on those skills they already have and that’s going to give them more confidence. And if they have that confidence, if they have that strong foundation, if they have that prior knowledge, they’re more willing to take chances and more willing to try new things with their artwork, which is something that we’re all trying to do.

And if things are spiraling correctly, it gives them those great opportunities because they’re saying to themselves, “I’ve done this, I know this,” but then they’re like, “What else is out there? What else can I do? What chances can I take?” and it leads to a lot of creative breakthroughs, to be honest. And so I think it’s a really good idea to revisit things, but try not to get too redundant when you do that. So I don’t know. Other thoughts, Amanda?

Yeah, I think the advantages are everything we just talked about, right? Encourages retention through reinforcement. It allows kids to build upon things they already know and bring background knowledge into a learning experience. The sequencing is logical and you are controlling and then building upon their call to push them to new skills, right?

Mm-hmm.

I think a few things to watch out for if you’re planning this way, make sure that you’re not just teaching everything, right? Sometimes it can lead to this superficial treatment of topics where you’re going too wide or just hitting on the basics each time you do it without layering that complexity. Another thing is kids who have mastered a subject may be then further subjected to unnecessary repetition. So just making sure that you treat those high-flyers as you would any other student who needs differentiation and work to push them even further. And then another thing that I thought was interesting in my research was sometimes the topics are introduced at a steady rate and really they shouldn’t be. You should allow more time for foundational drawing skills or whatever it is, right?

Mm-hmm.

And so just really being thoughtful when you are spiraling curriculum to think about, “How much time does this really need to treat it appropriately before we move on?”

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, but no, those are really good things to think about when you’re reflecting. But I would say the short answer for the question for Robin is that, reinforcing and spiraling, these are good things. You don’t want it to be redundant, but you as the expert here can teach and reinforce those concepts as you spiral back, as you revisit those things. But you just need to do what you can to keep it interesting. Think about how you can build, think about how you can layer, think about how you can have kids try new things and you can avoid that redundancy.

Yeah. Okay. That was a lot. If you are looking to learn more about curriculum design, I have a few places to point you. Do we have a limit for how many show notes we can do?

Oh, wow, I don’t know. I feel like these mailbag episodes always push the limit. So just give me what you got and I will put in what I can.

Okay, perfect. So if you are a PRO Learning member and you have access to The Art of Ed’s Professional Development, there are some really good PRO packs that talk about curriculum design. So the first is called The Building Blocks of Effective Curriculum. Then we also have Designing Art Curriculum Units: Planning a Sequential Elementary Curriculum. If that’s not just a in-depth take on what we’re talking about, I don’t know what is. And we also have something for secondary called Designing: An Intro to Art Course. So I would look in PRO for curriculum resources if you’re wanting additional professional development there.

Also, if you are a district FLEX member, we have solved this problem for you recently. So if you get FLEX through your district, you now have access to a new feature within FLEX called Curricula and this organizes FLEX content into ready-to-teach units for the entire year for you.

Yes. It’s amazing. I love this.

Yes, it’s a curriculum roadmap that is already done for you. You can even pull it into my classes and make any adjustments you want, so that is great. If you are looking for something even more intense, I feel like an infomercial, “But wait, there’s more,” we have graduate level learning about this topic. One of our most popular classes, Designing Your Art Curriculum-

Oh, great course.

… it’s available.

Can I interrupt and say that I took this course?

Oh my gosh.

Well, I don’t know, a little over a year ago. I’m going to look for my curriculum map. There’s a visual for it and I’m going to send this to you, but you say what you want to say and then I’m going to send it to you then.

Okay. And if you really want to go nuts, we have a full Master’s Degree in Education in Curriculum and Instruction. So just like any level you want to dig in, you’re like, “This podcast is great, I need nothing else. Great, we’ve already completed that,” but if you want to go further, we have things for you.

I’m loving the idea of somebody listening to this podcast and going, “You know what? I do need an entire Master’s Degree in Curriculum Instruct … Hey, my wife has her Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction.

There you go.

Great. Okay, so do you see my curriculum map?

Yes. It’s so beautiful.

Thank you so much. Basically, I know nobody can see this, so it’s not a huge deal, but in the Designing Your Art Curriculum course, I just took an entire semester course and just broke it down into like, “What are my big goals? And then off of those big goals, what are the smaller goals and then how do we get there?” And so it’s like this really pretty mind map that talks about teaching kids about creativity and exploration and experimentation because those are my big goals. And the way we get there is through learning about visual literacy and doing journaling, creating assessments, creating artworks. And then under each of those categories, we have different ways to do that.

And so this was one of the assignments for the class and I spent God knows how many hours putting it together. I was so proud of it that I went back and did it for all of my courses after [inaudible 00:45:07].

Even though you’re not in the classroom.

I know, but I was like, “It’s so organized and it works so good.” And so anyway, just to say, that course was incredibly helpful for me and I got to create some really, really cool things. So I would highly recommend that course.

It’s really very beautiful. I like your color scheme.

Thank you. Thank you. It’s not Andy Goldsworthy-colored-leaves-spiral good, but it is not bad. And yeah, it really caused me to think about both the how and why of curriculum and it was all worthwhile.

Yeah.

Okay. Amanda, we’ve done a lot of topics, a lot of heavy stuff. Can we end with just a quick This or That Game before we go today?

Yes.

Okay. All right. We are going to play This or That random animal selection. Are you ready?

Yes.

Okay. I will list two animals. You tell me which one is better and why or just which one you prefer.

Okay, so it’s not who would win in a fight. It’s my-

It’s not who’s going to win in a fight. I feel like that could be fun, but no, just which do you like better? If you have reasons and want to explain, feel free. If you just want to name and move on, that’s fine too. This or That random animals. First one, flamingo or pelican?

Oh, I’m really scared of birds, but I think weirdly pelican. The legs are too long on a flamingo and I don’t like it and their neck is like a snake.

Okay. All fair. I assumed you were going flamingo because they’re non-threatening, but they’re weird.

I don’t know.

So you lose points there.

I appreciate the amount of fish that a pelican … I don’t understand how a pelican works and that-

Yeah, how it’s operating.

… is intriguing to me.

Okay, fair, fair. Okay. A hippo or a rhino?

A rhino. Something about the horn is pleasing to me. The hippo is a little bit scarier. Have you ever seen it crunch a watermelon?

Oh, I was just going to ask about the watermelon. It’s so frightening.

Every time it crunches a watermelon, I think that that could be my head.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that’s where my mind goes as well, so makes sense. Okay, I’m hoping you know what both of these look like, I’m assuming yes. Meerkat or a red panda?

Oh, a red panda. It’s cuter than a meerkat.

Okay. Meerkats are pretty cute though.

But the red panda is very fluffy.

True, true. Makes sense. A puma or a leopard?

A leopard. You have to go with the spots. My favorite animal is a jaguar and a leopard is … It’s close.

Pumas are so sleek though.

Is it puma just a leop … I get confused with the big cats and where they over cross because like mountain lion, puma, cougar. These are all confusing as to where they fit and what they are, which ones are the same.

I’m just going to tell you, you’re not getting any clarity from me, so I’m sorry.

Okay, fair.

A wombat or a platypus?

Ooh, a wombat. There’s a fun fact about a wombat in that it poops cube shapes and my kids really like that fact. And a platypus, it scares me. I’m watching Alone Australia right now and did you know a platypus is poisonous?

I did not.

It has a poisonous spike that it can get you with.

Oh, I had no idea.

And I don’t like that. And I don’t like that it lays eggs. It puts it in the bird category. Anyway, a wombat is cute and it has a cool fact.

Okay. A shark or a dolphin?

A dolphin.

Okay. And finally, immortal jellyfish or mantis shrimp?

Oh my gosh, this is such a good question.

That’s why I saved that one for last.

Do you know that my child just did a class project on immortal jellyfishes?

No, you did not tell me about this.

Jellyfish, I guess. Oh my gosh. I’ll have to show it to you. He had to make a 3D model and he used toothpicks to hold up all the tentacles and-

I love it.

… very cool. I think I’m going mantis shrimp though. I like that they have the strongest punch of all animals and that they can see a billion colors.

Right.

And the immortal jellyfish honestly scares me and makes me have an existential crisis.

Fair.

So mantis shrimp is the answer.

Immortal jellyfish equals philosophical questions that you can’t answer. Mantis shrimp equals-

100%.

You’re like, “Animal kills in pretty colors,” and so I feel like that works for you. It makes sense.

Yeah.

Well, all right, well, Amanda, thank you so much for joining me. A mailbag is always fun and we’ll do it again next month.

Yes, see you all next month. Bye.

Thank you to Amanda for the discussion, for the animal selections, for the contribution to all of the show notes. Make sure you check those out if you want to dive a little deeper into anything that we discuss today. We’ll go ahead and wrap it up there and we’ll have Amanda back at the beginning of April for the next mailbag. Thanks for joining us.

Art Ed Radio is produced by The Art of Education 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, Spotify or wherever you listen and give us a five-star rating and maybe even leave us a review.

We are always taking questions for the next mailbag. If you have any questions about teaching art or whatever else, maybe gardening because it’s springtime, we would love to hear from you. Email timothybogatz@theartofeducation.edu, or podcasts@theartofeducation.edu. We are looking forward to reading your questions and maybe answering them in the next mailbag.