Latest / K12ArtChat the Podcast / Episode 268 – Jen Ferrari & Jill Hogan – TAB in Practice: Choice, Creativity, and the Artist's Mindset

Transcript

Episode 268 – Jen Ferrari & Jill Hogan – TAB in Practice: Choice, Creativity, and the Artist's Mindset · K12ArtChat the Podcast

• 0:11
  SPEAKER_03: Hi everyone, I'm Matt Brentler.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Lauren Brentler.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: And today on K12 R Chat the podcast, we'll be chatting with Jen Ferrari and Jill Hogan about choice, mindset, materials, what artists really do.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: I always love the the pre-phone meetings because I know one, we've already had this person, and actually we've gotten to be on their podcast too, which is kind of crazy space.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: It's always a big circle.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um with us today, we have uh Jen Ferrari and Jill Hogan, and um they are two really amazing people that have done some fantastic things and um just really kind of want to jump into this.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: But okay.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well then let's just um Jill, uh if you wouldn't mind starting first and just introducing yourself to the audience and a little bit about your background and who you are and uh your journey in art education, we'd love to hear it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um so my my story is usually not the normal story for art education podcasts.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um my name's Jill Hogan, and um I started out uh after after college as a music teacher, actually.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um I taught K to 12 uh K to 8 um general music for six years.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then I got uh very tired, as I'm sure many of you can relate to, and I realized I really liked thinking about teaching and learning more than I liked the act of doing it.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um so that led me back to grad school.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: And at that time I was familiar with um a couple of art ed frameworks that I just really enjoyed because they were so much more progressive and child-centered than what we had in music education, especially at the time.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: And those were um the studio habits of mind, studio thinking, um, and Tab, um teaching for artistic behavior.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: So um I ended up um at Boston College working with Ellen Winner, one of the um authors of Studio Thinking.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: And there um I did work on habits of mind in music, and I also um wrote Studio Thinking from the Start, uh, which is studio thinking for elementary and middle school um teachers.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: And um that also let me uh led me to working with Diane Jakewith, who um is one of the co-founders of Tab and one of the authors of Engaging Learners, um Engaging Learners Through Art Making, uh, which is uh kind of the primary first tab Bible.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: And um yeah, so that's how I met Jen.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Eventually I met Jen.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um I honestly don't remember um how um I think she was writing something and then somehow we communicated.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, so that's me.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I my research interests are that are in tab and choice and in habits of mind um in the arts.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so um I have the privilege uh to have time to work on my research being a college professor now.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um I work at Sienna University.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my degree is in psychology, my PhD.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: So um I am a psychology professor at Sienna University, um, and my research takes me into tab classrooms, into art classrooms generally, um, and to working with teachers.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it is a little bit of a full circle moment.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I was actually interviewed for um from the start, um studio thinking from the start, and then I was an art administrator at the time, and we were just starting to dive into how to use some of the tab frameworks in our classrooms and in our curriculum.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then I had one teacher dive a little deeper, and she was further interviewed in that book.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a little bit of a wow moment there.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, that's crazy.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Jen, I would love you to share.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: I know you've been on the podcast before, but in case our listeners don't know you, of course.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: For you to share your story a little bit too, and then maybe dive a little deeper into yours and Jill's connection and research.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, absolutely.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm Jen Ferrari.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I am an art teacher and I've been teaching for over a span of about 16 years.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I started my career in the high school setting.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was at Northbridge High School.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I primarily taught foundational courses in art, and I was the ceramic studio director there.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I loved it.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was great.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was before I had discovered Tab.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's something I talk about a lot on our the other podcast tab storytellers, but I actually ended up leaving the classroom for a little while because um I actually had the birth of my first son and I wanted to be a stay-at-home parent.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I transitioned into that role and I was actually home for about five years.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: My second son came along, hashtag boym, and I cared for them for a while until uh COVID came along, and the circumstances around COVID kind of pushed me back into work.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I had looked for a job and I pursued an elementary position.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one thing I realized when I was at the high school level was that a lot of my students had either decided at that point that they were an artist or they were not an artist.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I really wanted to combat that early so that the students could feel empowered to continue along and feel successful in their journey.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's why I pursued elementary.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So now I'm the elementary um art teacher at Lane Elementary School in Bedford, Massachusetts.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been there happily since.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's much better now than it was on a carton COVID.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I do appreciate my space, my um administration, my students.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, so and then other than that, um currently I'm an advisory board member for Teaching for Artistic Behavior Incorporated, which is the educational nonprofit that helps to guide the mission and vision of the TAB pedagogy around the world.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I'm also a member of the Mass Art Educators Association, the National Art Education Association.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and my spare time when I have it, I like to uh contribute to you know the broader art ed conversation as a researcher and author um and professional development provider.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's a little bit about myself.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, I've been looking forward to this book for some time.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I would love you to just share both of you, either and you can choose rock, paper, scissors, who goes first, but just tell us a little bit about the book and how you collaborated on it.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, start with the title and where people can get it.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: Turn it to you, Jill.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we wrote uh What Artists Do, uh, which is published by Teachers College Press.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: It came out in June.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and What Artists Do is a book about teaching for artistic behavior, uh, or TAB, um, which I'm assuming most of your listeners know about, but it's choice-based um education uh used in pre-K to 12.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so I um, as I mentioned before, um have observed a lot of Tab classrooms.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um I modeled my own music classroom when I was teaching off of Tab.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so I am infected with the the Tab bug.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was part of a group, um, the first sort of advisory group um of Tab that Jem Jen mentioned.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that made me want to write another book about Tab.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: I just really love thinking about choice um in the classroom, what that looks like.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I was also getting really irritated by so many of the misconceptions that you see in different places about what tab looks like or what tab is or why it is like it is.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it was growing, is growing, continues to grow so quickly.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's really easy to kind of outpace um for the growth to outpace the knowledge, which can lead to a lot of a lot of things.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um so Jen and I originally, I don't remember I originally we were actually writing a children's book, which neither I don't think either one of us are qualified to do so, but but so then it turned into this.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: Jen, maybe you have a memory better memory onto how that happened.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: How did that happen?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it it all started for me back in January of 2023.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And there was an episode of Tab Storytellers that we had.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Abby and I had on a professor at the University of Quebec named Pedro, excuse me, Pedro Mendoza.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he was discussing with us the challenges that like researchers in higher education face when they have to like expand on research related to TAB practices because TAB is a very grassroots teacher-led movement.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so the way he solved that piece of the puzzle was to team up with one of the local educators who worked in a school.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Her name was Catherine DuPra.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um, together they were gathering like classroom-based evidence that they could write about to affect change at the higher education level.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I always thought I was always struck very strongly by that conversation that we were having because it never had occurred to me because I'm a teacher.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I am in the classroom, I'm there all the day, I'm doing the work.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: You would think that teachers would know the best way to approach certain things like teaching models and you know, assessment framework, whatever.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it really is top-down.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I had never really thought of that before, and that really made me think very deeply about what I could do to affect change being a teacher.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and part of that was writing a book.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So then I thought, well, you know, we really need to have like this research that's embedded in it.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I really want to work with someone who would be able to help with that part of it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, Jill, I have to get Jill.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like Jill would be amazing.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: So shortly after in the spring of 2023, I was like, hey, do you want to write a book?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And luckily she said yes.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: So um we got together and I really was hopeful that this book, because there are so I mean, engaging learners through art making is a fabulous resource.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so is um Studio Thank You from the Start.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: This, the, the um studio um the regular book.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: I can't now spacing on the name.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like if it's third or fourth, yeah, yeah.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, because then it's like third or four.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is like our book, yeah.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but these books existed, right?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so the one thing I really wanted to add to the conversation was not like um how to do it, but like why.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was what this book was bringing along.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a lot of misconceptions, I think, about Tab still, even though you know it's been explained in articles and research and journals.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one part of the question is like misconceptions among like administrators and educators, like both of them.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you know, so much of the learning that happens in schools is either like linear or it's standardized, and that is not the type of learning that happens in the art room.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a lot of misconceptions that are like confused by what learning looks like.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what can it look like?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't necessarily have to be um linear, it could be non-linear, it could be non-standardized.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I was thinking actually, when I was mulling over this question, I thought, well, student and studio, those are very they they sound almost the same.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I actually, again, question, I went to research it, and they come from the same like Latin word, and they both kind of mean that there's someone who dedicates themselves to learning or a place where you do that dedication.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I thought that was very interesting because we can think about the spaces that we're in as more of like a place to go learn that we're passionate about learning in.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that's something that I want this book to help everybody in the educational stakeholder community see, not just like art teachers, because like we see it, but it's it's a broad, a broader perspective that you need to try to like bring to people, I think.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's absolutely broader.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm just sitting here thinking of all the times that Matt and I are asked to come into school districts and support curriculum building.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And there might be a small group of folks that call themselves tab or choice, but don't have all the components or pieces or like they're missing the assessment, they're they're missing the growth, which is there's just there's just pieces that aren't there.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're talking about these frameworks, and then it's then being in the very much in the middle, where then you have a superintendent or administrator coming to us or fine arts administrator saying, Well, I I don't understand this, I don't understand what these teachers are doing.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Please explain it to me.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And having something that is really a larger understanding of the framework, and to hear Jill talk about using it in the music classroom, I've always wondered about that.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is you know, like today, our daughter was she's she she's a typical kid where she just dives in with something she's really interested in.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: But if she's not interested, that's not happening.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think about that for her in school all the time.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not just talking about her art classes, like, you know, today it was she really wanted to make a pillow, so she taught herself how to make this star-shaped pillow and she did it from beginning to end.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: What if her history class was like that, where something that she actually cared about was, you know, and then there was some kind of model for understanding how she grew.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: I often think about that.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really exciting to hear that this book really addresses all of those needs and more.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I used to think about tab school all the time.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: If every if every discipline was thought of like in a tab lens, like like truly, not just like, you know, we see things like, you know, we call them scholars or we say, oh, historic little historians or whatever.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but they're not actually like doing the thinking or making the decisions or caring about what they're doing.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: And um, yeah, I used to think about that all the time.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: I've sort of, and as I've gotten older, I'm much less grandiose in my thinking or or less of a dreamer.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think um, yeah, there's a lot of potential there.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I completely agree and think about this too.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it brings me back to like when I was in high school, there was a course that I took.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was English and history merged together, and they called it American thought.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And the point behind it was that there were topics and concepts that we were talking about, but then we could figure out how we were going to engage with them.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like I remember once we put on like a play about something and we interpreted like a part of history and like we just redid.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then there were other times where we would like write um like persuasion papers about things throughout history that we were studying at the time.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was very interesting because like it was an it was outside of that art studio space where you did usually kind of keep the creative thinking.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought it was a very interesting way to pursue that curriculum.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it was in junior year.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't like I was a freshman taking like an introductory course, it was advanced, and I thought it was it was probably one of the more meaningful courses that I remember.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like I remember it because it had meaning to me.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: I think, Jen, I think you just kind of hit on something, and I'm just gonna touch on it before we go to the next question.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: But um, you know, I'm starting to see that a little bit more and more over the last couple of years teaching middle school, where other subject areas are are trying to, or maybe perhaps starting to, but I don't necessarily know because they don't have that uh foundational instruction or or any of the, you know, from where that choice piece has come from that they really struggle with the purpose.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: So then it just kind of just seems like a mundane task rather than something that they can really pull from that the kids can really pull from as far as learning goes.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think one of the things I see, you know, when I think about like a project-based kind of curriculum or something like that, it it's it lack it oftentimes lacks purpose and it also and that you know what what is what is the meaning making and then what is the growth and how does a student explain what they learned?
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, those and just some of the scaffolding and things I think that you know, kind of thinking about what artists do, you know, the idea about the process is sometimes just completely missing in those project-based classrooms.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so um and allowing for you know iteration and and growth and failure.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: I just see like it's I mean, maybe it's a lacking of time or whatever, but there's so much that we could do.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's very you know it's funny to me because um like things have to be new and exciting both to the student and to the teacher.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: So with studio thinking, there are entire schools that use it as their framework.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: But when I got when I I it's a school in um Almeida, California, and I went there, and I'm like, oh yeah, oh my god, I'm gonna see studio thinking and math and like all these things.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I did, and it was cool.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: But to them, it was like it was just another of the lists of frameworks that their district or their school or their principal had sent out.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: So they're like, Yeah, this is another thing we do.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, whereas when people find studio thinking or when they find Tab, the the teachers themselves, and they're like, Oh, this is what I've been after, this is what I'm looking for.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: That energy and excitement of the teacher feeling agency, which is what we want from our kids in making the decision and finding the things um that work for them, that gets lost as soon as we try to mandate it, systematize it, um, put it through the bureaucracy thing um of schools.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's tricky.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's tricky to keep that excitement um because it has to happen both for the student and for the teacher.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I've met teachers who who their districts want them to become tab teachers and they do not want to, and then it just becomes a big miserable exercise for everybody.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: So you really need buy-in, um, and that feeling of reinventing yourself, you know.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I found the language and it's in studio thinking, or oh, like now I, you know, we do tab and it has changed my the way my approach, and I'm not, you know, so exhausted or weary or whatever.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: That has to come like you almost have to, it's almost the part of administrators ideally to help the teachers like come up with their idea in the same way we do that with our students.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know, I think about that a lot.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think that's a oh, I just was gonna say that's like a perfect segue um into the into the question, and maybe Jen, you can add on from that thought too.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, when we were talking over the phone and kind of doing a little bit of the prep meeting, um you had really touched on something that I know Laura and I have have always had conversation about is the the educational telephone effect.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: And um just wanted to know if you know you could start to kind of clear up some some misunder some more misunderstanding about TAB.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, especially like you know, both you and Jill both had said that there are some major myths about what choice-based art education is, and I just was was wondering if you could kind of maybe point out some things from the book that that would help maybe put those to rest.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, I can get I can get started.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, we covered 22 of them in the book.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I counted them preparing for this, and I thought, wow, that's a lot, right?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm sure there's more, but I think it was important because in the book what we did was we presented the misunderstandings as questions that people have.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think a lot of misunderstanding just comes from they have questions about.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Things that just need to be answered.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we provide answers for them.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think for me, most of the major misunderstandings revolve around teaching and learning.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like what does the teaching look like?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: What does it entail?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: What does the learning also look like and entail?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of times people think about choice as, you know, it's chaos, there's not a lot of meaning or structure.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a lack of rigor, whether it comes to the choice making on the kids' parts or the thinking that's going into things.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think the book as a whole helps to clear this up as well as the confusion of those things.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the bigger ones, I think, for me, is that there's really no one way to tab.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think when teachers are first going off on their journey, they're figuring out, and I like that Jill was just mentioning about how when teachers discover it for the first time, and it feels like, oh my God, this is what I've been missing from my practice, right?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: When you first discover something, you get really excited, there's like a magical moment where you just want to like do like get right into it.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like for me, actually, Abby and I talk about this on our podcast a lot.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, what that looked like was diving into the research, finding out like everything about it.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's that's who I am as a person.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: I had to have like a really strong foundation before I started getting into it.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Abby was totally different.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: She like was ripped off all the cabinet covers.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: She was like, let's do this thing.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how she approached Tab.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, neither one of them was right, but the thing is, is we were just starting and we had that magic.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then along the way, you kind of like realized, oh, this isn't gonna work, or oh my goodness, what was I thinking?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or wow, that worked well, but I could tweak it a little bit.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so one thing that I have always found very magical is that there is no one way to tab.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Tab is a philosophy that invites um collaboration and community.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so the way that you go about it will not be the same that someone else does, even though you're both working towards the same goal, right?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: To give your kids as much choice as possible in their environment so that they can really feel empowered to have agency.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I also want to make sure that people feel after they're reading this book, or even before, like just I want people to feel that they don't need to be scared of doing it wrong.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think that just being invested in yourself and your students and the philosophy is what you need to get yourself started, and then you can adjust and improve as you go along.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that was a long-winded answer, but I I hope that I answered it and I'll turn it over to Jill.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think um so uh anything that uh becomes a thing in education is susceptible to and not in education, everywhere, is susceptible to the game of telephone.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: And you've inserted your own values, beliefs, understandings, norms into the way you interpret any idea.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: So um, like a couple examples like were in my head when we wrote when we wrote that section um in the book.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: One was um flexible seating and the idea of flexible seating, and that if you just let kids sit flexibly, like where they wanted, that that would somehow inculcate creativity or better behavior.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what the claim was, to be honest.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I it's just we this was this is continues to be real.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: We've taken this one little piece of what it means to be like a teacher that's not like on top of kids 24-7, which is letting them sit how they want, and we've extracted this tiny little ingredient, and we're like, oh, that's gonna be the thing.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that happens, that can happen when you just look at a tab room, you're like, oh, okay, there's just like stuff everywhere, and there's kids in weird spots.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not right.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's not that that gets rid of um the why, which is what Jen said um was so important to the book, and it's just sort of the face value.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, well, this is what it looks like, so yeah.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh so I think like there was there continues, and there they're the more tab grows, um, the more growing pains go along with it, and that's more people having their values, norms, ideas, opinions shaping what is considered Tab.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: And for a grassroots movement, that makes sense because that's what grassroots means, but at the same time, um, without a clear understanding of why things look the way they do, then it just turns into this really um convoluted idea.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then that's when things fall apart.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think of like Angela Duckworth um had the concept of grit, and there were lots of criticisms, some fair, some unfair, I think, um, of grit.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just people had morphed it and changed it and turned it into these things, and then until we were all like, oh, okay, enough of that.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's not none of that.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Tab and any movement runs that risk of moving so far away from its original ideas.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, Jen and I are not the originators of Tab.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: We're not the ex we're not even the experts of Tab.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: We wrote a book because we felt um, because we wanted to, because we really love Tab, and because we wanted to find a way to help more people, or another way to help more people um use Tab in a way that works for them.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um so many people I think are in, many teachers are in situations where they're leaving opportunities on the table, and I don't say this with judgment, it's just for various reasons, for the students to think, feel, and behave as artists.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: And they're doing that because they're making the decisions, their feelings are the ones who matter, and they're the ones acting like an artist.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: And um, sometimes they don't realize, and sometimes they can't see an alternative because they come up with or they have valid reasons about their particular school populations or their mandates from their administrator or the norms of their culture or you know, wherever they are.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so for that whole swath of people who are not, which is a lot of people who are not able to show tab in the most pure idealized form, which is absolutely beautiful when you have the opportunity to do that in the right setting, um, it's not always gonna look quite as quite as nice, quite as perfect as some of the models that um we're able to see through through different avenues.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not bad, that's not good, that's just the way it is.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: So for those teachers to be able to take the principles of TAB, which are the child is the artist, the the studio, the classroom is the child studio, and what do artists do?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: That's what they should be doing.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: When you take those as the principles, um, and you center those as you navigate the my principal says I must do this, this curriculum thing is weird, but I have to do it.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I only see them, and a lot of time, a lot of the times the things, the questions you hear from people in like tab list or tab Facebook or or mining networks or whatever is like, how can I tab if and then they list this really preposterous thing.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I see like 2200 students a week or like some like ridiculous thing, and you're like, I don't know, that's not a tab problem.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like that has nothing to do with tab, like that's just a like teaching, like the structural education problem.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: So no matter what art education approach or you know, philosophy was behind you, you'd still be like, How do I?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that's it's not it's not a tab problem.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: So um that idea of inclusivity, um, I think was a big part of um what we were after.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: Inclusivity while maintaining um those three values and honoring what the co-founders, Kathy Douglas, Diane Jacquet, um, John Crow, Pauline Joseph, and then you know, all the people who came after, like Clyde and Julie and Clark and Nan and all those folks who um, you know, saw it from the beginning and now it's grown and changed and morphed because that's what time does.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's what time does to everything.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so um being able to include folks who don't make don't don't feel like they can do this, um, was important to us.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's that's she you said it much better than I did, but when I was talking about people being scared of doing it wrong, I think that I I also hope that this book, by clearing up misconceptions, also helps people feel empowered um to go for it and to learn as much as they can about it and to see how it's working with other people in their environments.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: We started this question started with um misconceptions, I think, right?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know, I think.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I think my I mean there's lots.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like Jen said, we've got a whole, the whole, an entire appendix um about them.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I I'm pretty proud of that appendix um because we cover a lot.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but one I think that sticks out, or one I hear the most, is this notion that tab classrooms um or tab studios don't um don't care about products, they don't value artistic products, um, like it's just an anything goes and what comes out looks like a mess, a hot mess.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's like I understand that reaction because the art that comes out of Tab Studios looks like a kid made it because a kid made it.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: And um we're so focused on looking at pretty products because that is that's what's right in front of us, you know.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's the superficial what's in front of our eyes.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: And um it's not that tab teachers don't care about products, it's that they also care about many other things.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you're only gonna care about the product, if that's gonna be your sole assess thing to assess, your your primary goal, if that's what you want is a beautiful bulletin board, then tab isn't for you.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's true.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you give all your attention, you know, if you go to the gym and you only do arm day, then your legs are not going to look very good, but if you or feel very good.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: But if you um are willing, you're like, oh, you know what?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: I care about my whole body or my all the ways of thinking, then your arms are not going to be as strong as they would have been.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not a bad thing, that's just valuing more than just your arms or more than just the finished, polished product.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think embedded in that also is an assumption when teachers say, like, oh, well, you know, they don't know anything.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: They had tab in elementary school and they come to me in middle school and they don't they don't know anything.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, they do.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: They know what they spent their time focused on.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: And for some of them, they got really into one little thing.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: And for others, they were dabblers and they and they went around.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: But there's an assumption there that were they not in a tab classroom, that they would have remembered, internalized, been able to transfer to middle school the stuff that was in the projects.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: And that is a very um skewed assumption, I would argue, um, that they're going to remember because they had art, they did that one day, or you know, they did that project one day or two days in the span of a week, in the span of a month, in the same school year.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's it's we value different things in different areas based on the time that we give it.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: And the time that we have for art, um, you know, we're not our art class, we we went into our people went into art education because they were good at art and because they like making art and they went to, you know, prof they went to secondary school in art where they or post-secondary school, where they learned how to make polished products, and that's well and good, but um, all the kids who aren't gonna do that, which is 99 probably percent of your students, need to get something out of that experience.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's why the habits, and that's why the process of tab of finding your own, um, coming up with your own ideas, figuring out how does a person come up with ideas, working with other people, gathering your materials, all these things that are just really basic project management skills, um, in a way, um, are things that you're that all your students will take away uh with them.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so yeah, so I think I started this answer by saying that Tab Tab does care about products, and that that is that is true.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think what Tab does for me as the administrator, as the person looking at the holisticness of a human being, is that Jill, you hit on this, you know.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was a middle school and high school art teacher before moving into administration, and I would hear AP teachers saying things like, My kids can't make decisions, you know, my students can't make decisions, my students, but you know, and they would harp on that, and then when our teachers started slowly having that aha moment, and it really started with um kind of the studio habits of mine, and then some of them doing, you know, and I was never a like we're all doing exactly this, like that's never how I did curriculum building, but giving them an avenue to do their own research and finding their own way through it, then we would see the opposite of those Jill called it out.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was interesting to see those middle school and high school teachers go, Well, they don't know how to shade, they don't know, you know, and it's like, well, which is it do you want?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, it was always I wanted kids to be thinkers first, and I wanted that critical thinking.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted them to be able to make decisions that were meaningful to their experience and their learning.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it it's it's tricky that you know, how do you find that balance?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't have a question in this, I'm just pontificating, but um, I just it was always an interesting thing.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess the other thing I wanted to bring forward, Jill, is you brought it.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was I had like this huge slap in the face memory of being an assistant principal with the Angela Duckworth work in like 2011 because it was like really big in 2011.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like that grit was like I remember trying to sell the whole middle school on grit.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I what I would hate to see is this educational telephone game happened where the tab was something that was gone, you know, because I think going back to the fundamental values are such like I I think I maybe it's just because it's my love and my passion that our education offers something so special that we have less of that top-down imposement on our curriculum and we get to make decisions as educators that I think sometimes other professional educators don't have the the choices to make, if that makes sense.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: We I think we get more agency in our classroom than other professionals sometimes.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I would I I hope that people really take the time to dig into understanding and learning and getting these frameworks and finding a way that works for them and a way that they can explain it to their community.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: So just thinking through this, you know, when I'm an administrator and I'm looking at a product because they tend to just come to product, what are the resources that you would suggest a teacher uses to explain to that administrator why the child is the artist, why the art classroom is a studio, you know, why Tab is your choice in your educational framework or curriculum in your classroom?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: What materials would you suggest in a in addition to your book?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I and I think just visiting with Matt beforehand about the conversation you all had.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think that in the book you're trying to point people in a direction to go do some digging themselves.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I really took away from the conversation, your pre-conversation.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, and how would you you support them in that?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's chapter three, I would say, um, of our book.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but but Jen, um, Jen, you why don't you?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like you can answer this well.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, yeah.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, well, this was again one of the reasons this was one of the things that I felt in what was available so far with research and publications and articles that wasn't it was there, but like I wanted like a place where it was all together that you could just like be like, this is why.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I ended up doing for myself, so I could advocate if I had a question about why I'm doing what I'm doing.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: I went out and I looked into what all of the best practices are right now in general education.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of times I think that our administration and our educational stakeholders, like parents and school boards, I think a lot of time there is just a misunderstanding about where things align because there's a lot of alignment, but like the language isn't the same, or like we talk about it differently, or it shows up differently in the classroom.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I really wanted to do was to find out where that alignment was.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: So in chapter three, as Jill was mentioning, we go through um, I think there's seven uh educational frameworks that are used in a general education classroom, and how all of those um the aspects of them show up in tab.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so I think that that took a long time for me to do and for us to do, and people don't have that time, but I think that there's enough resources out there, our book, the books that exist, the articles, the research, that you can find something to back up and advocate for why you're doing what you're doing.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think um there was a question too about thinking about like high-quality art ed material.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes that I would love to see more teacher-initiated and written work that is out there because I really think that the work that we are doing as educators in the classroom, we know what works and what doesn't, as I was saying before.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the way to do that is because everybody doesn't have the time or capacity to do that.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it brings me back to when I was talking about Pedro Mendoza and the collaboration that he had with that teacher, Catherine.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think that, you know, if you feel strongly about something and you need help advocating for it, you can always reach out to people in the community or pair so that you are like working with an institution that can help you get out the word about what you're doing.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you really wanted to add to the conversation, you could do something like that.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there's there is enough out there now that you could go go find things that are working for you.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the communities, um, like, you know, there's the the Facebook group, the Tab Institute.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are all these communities, and I mean, there are definitely things that are offered by NAEA too, that are choice uh based offerings.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that going to these and making them an active part of your reflective work as an educator because you constantly have to be reflecting about your it never stops ever.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um you constantly have to be reflecting about your practice.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the way to combat the pushback that you can receive.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that answered the question.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, it it absolutely does.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm sitting here thinking about well several things because I think I think Jen, aren't you doing a webinar or an open studio in for NAEA this spring?
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: You just reminded me I am yes and um I think those I think those forums where you know you can go to ask questions and get information about you know the things that are burning on your mind are very important because the community is there.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to say I think art educators in particular um well and Angel I know music educators are the same way.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean we really lift each other up and support each other and there are strong communities in different circles and you know social media has made that a little easier um but I think going back to the telephone game you always need to make sure you're you're doing your own research too and digging in and then asking questions based on that research.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: But you know I'm thinking too um Jill mentioned the idea of 2200 students and and that's I mean that's not a facetious thing to say because I've talked to teachers that literally have that many teach students like they're traveling in three elementary schools and they're supposed to see those three elementary schools within a 10 day period.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's kind of a ludicrous idea to think about like how they're going to make it work.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I know just having taught you know upwards of 190 students I if I were in the classroom and this is a question I get asked um you know even in my role with NAEA and I I kind of just push it back to to the folks I know in the TA community because structure is a hard thing and in we're all in these varying structures.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know some elementary teachers see their students once a week for 50 minutes and there's 30 kids in a class.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: Some high school teachers have 190 students some high school teachers have 220 students you know and then there's the all these different ideas and um the question I'm asked a lot of times is I really want to do more choice.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: I really want to dive into tab but it feels very overwhelming especially in terms of assessment strategies.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: And how do I assess students if they're all doing different things.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: And to Jill's point about you know leaving opportunities on the table you know I really this is what I've heard from teachers I really want to give them time to be really doing that deep artistic thinking.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to flatten their individuality or their expressiveness but it feels impossible.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: What words of advice would both or either of you give to those students or those not students well I mean the kind of the students the teachers that are diving into this new um way of being as an as an educator so I actually think this connects back to what Jill was talking about a little bit earlier when we were talking about the product like the end product um when I had mentioned that I was a high school teacher before I was elementary.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was I was not a TAB teacher I actually had no idea the tab existed um it was not something that was brought to me in my um pre-service education and so when I taught my rubrics were based on you know projects that had one outcome although there could have been choice infused in it they all you know semi looked the same when they came out um and I would assess for the most part on technique or actually it was mostly technique and then good good lord the worst that I ever did was I included like engagement or participation and that measures nothing compared to like related to artistic thinking or or anything like that.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the aha moment for me was I would remember after kids finishing projects I would say oh you know you have some time now what what do you want to do?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because now you can and they would say I well I have no idea like what what should I do?
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like why don't you give me an idea and that and that was like okay well we have a problem there's a problem I don't know what the solution is right now but there's a problem.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then I realized what the problem was it was that I was never allowing them to have an idea for themselves.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't giving them the space to be able to practice.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I did find tab and I was able to learn everything about it um I learned about studio thinking and the framework studio habits of mind and the more I got to know them the more I realized this is what would be an amazing framework for what I'm doing.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: Lo and behold I had no idea that there was all this research at Project Zero and I had I had to discover it right but that is an amazing way to frame learning in an art room and there was a report that Ellen Winner wrote fairly recently on the impact of Project Zero.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in that report she covers the studio thinking framework and it was reported that over 80% of TAB educators use the studio thinking framework and studio habits of mine.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so while not all artists work the same way in the studio all are all artists practice studio habits.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you can use studio habits as your assessment framework and you can base the activities that you use in your room to gauge where students are in their learning and to kind of showcase that if you needed to for educational stakeholders.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: So in the book we have a whole chapter on assessment and we talk a lot of different kinds of assessment um some of like my favorites are pre and post tests where you get to kind of measure the growth of an individual over time because you're really the whole point is there you're not comparing them necessarily to other kids you're comparing them to the growth that they are making um so some of them are shorter term some are longer term.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: Actually in the book I've I outline the journey of two of my now they're in sixth grade but when they were in third grade um they had made a ski ball and they had done it we had these plastic cups and they had glued them onto the top of a cardboard so you could roll a ball but there's no way it would get in the hole because it's glued on top of the cardboard.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't say anything because I was I I just kind of asked them questions.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was like oh tell me about your game and so like that's one of the ways that you can kind of guide their thinking is by asking questions.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually in fourth grade they realized what the problem was by then and they wanted to make it again and it was for the art show.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: So in the for the art show project that they made the cups were glued underneath the cardboard and you could actually play skee ball with it.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was a moment that I realized that sometimes you have to be patient to see this the outcomes of the learning that happens.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: But people like especially in elementary school if you have the same kids year after year you're able to see that that ipsot of growth.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now other things you could do there's self-assessments guided responses where like teachers pose questions students can respond that are based on studio habits they could talk about how they've engaged and persisted throughout a project how they've developed their craft at the high school level they could talk about technique practiced or care of different materials or tools.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite types of assessments which is a little bit more of a summative are artist statements.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: I do a whole thing of artist state like how to like approach writing artist statements and like what you can include for like language, art language in there things like that where the kids can then kind of put into words their process which is the outcome of their learning like you want them to develop their artistic process I think are really powerful because when you present that to someone where you can't see that in the product but you can read about it in a statement.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's very powerful.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now they don't always have to write about it.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: I know some teachers who have less students or maybe at the high like middle and high school you could have them record about their process of how they made something um QR people do QR codes.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many ways that you can highlight the quality of artistic thinking that's happening in a tab classroom um and that goes back to one of those misconceptions about how there's no one way right like you don't have to do artist statements in this way or you don't have to do them at all like what would be what would be the way to get the artistic thinking visible?
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like how can you make that known to people because it's there and once the kids can do it themselves like once they can advocate for themselves and say why it's important that's really I think powerful because you can like shout on the root rooftops all you want about like this is really important and let the kids have choice like they need to practice this thinking but then like if they're doing it that's a whole nother ball game so I there's many ways to support high quality artistic thinking and framework but those are just some ideas that I was thinking about fantastic I have basically nothing to add but I will say that art teachers are lucky or art is special or unique in that the act of people sitting around and looking at another person's art is authentic to the nature of being an artist and living in the arts.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_02: So um you know a teacher can't be in 2200 places at once um but students talking to other students about their art and about their process and about what they're taking from the product is um it's not a blow off it's not a you know like a way to kill time or or pawn it off on someone else it's authentic to how art is that's what artists do.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: So um you know I don't know that that's true in math.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not a mathematician so I don't know but it seems like they don't sit around like art I don't know maybe they do sit around each other's art uh math problems.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know but um it is something I do know that we have in the arts which is kind of useful um and helpful given the situations that art educators are in.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_03: All right so I feel like we're uh kind of at that point that we start to wrap up our conversation and usually we end it with our our most difficult and most challenging question of all um you know you've shared with us so much and so many uh different things but I'm just curious what you'd like to uh leave our listeners with um maybe it's something we've talked about maybe it's not I'm just uh just kind of curious your your bits of wisdom your bits of advice I so one thing that I always think about is even so I've put myself out there for many years now because I feel really passionate about this um specifically and when I did it first like seven or whatever years ago when I really started getting involved because I had found TAB I did not feel very confident at all.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like I it was always imposter syndrome I was always feeling I wasn't good enough I was missing something um and I think maybe that's why I focused earlier on that misconception of being scared and I think what I want most for people is I want them to feel like they're what they're doing is good work and it doesn't have to be perfect.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that you're working on it and willing to put yourself out there and grow is is powerful.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I want them to feel like they can go find the resources that will help them in their work that they there are resources.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: So they're there you just have to kind of go out to get them and by resources I don't mean you have to read like scholarly journals I mean like people like connect with people because people are a great resource there's actually I'm not gonna go on a huge tangent I promise but there is something called the human library if anyone has not heard of it it's amazing and it started I think in Europe and like Denmark but it's a place where you can and it's international now you can go and you can take out a human being for a day and you can learn about them and talk to them in their perspective.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: Wait don't make creepy you you're making um no it's like so they have like conferences where there are people who are you know they're not educated they like have a a perspective an experience that they want to share with others.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: So they allow themselves to have conversations and by checking out I mean you can like say I would like to have a conversation about um gender fluidity I would like to have a conversation about people who are unhoused like it what it does is it allows you to see something from another human being's perspective.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a practice and empathy is what it is.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I meant by bringing this up thank you Jill is that I just want people to be able to first of all have conversations about um these important topics to learn and to be open to that and to have the the confidence to feel like you can you can do it.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah I I don't think that's terribly different from what I was going to answer which is that we set up our classrooms um to be places where students feel like someone's meeting them and like meeting them where they are and that there's a place for them and that it's an inclusive place.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I um hope the same thing for teachers no matter what their circumstances values restrictions whatever um are and so I hope that the book and the TAB Institute and the Facebook groups and all of the places are places where um teachers can feel safe asking questions and struggling because none of us came to TAB fully understanding the principals fully understanding what it was and to encourage teachers to not rest on your laurels of what this is what I see.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_02: So this must be what it is because every room looks different.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_02: Some rooms look like a tornado went through and that like that's not like that's not what they all look like.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's not what but they can look like that.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know it's it's not a formula it's not a curriculum script it's not anything like that.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_02: So that it really relies upon teachers coming to trust themselves and to be the experts that they are because they're trained in this and um I I hope that the book and by networking with other um tab folks and by observing other classrooms and all the things um that that's people that's something people can feel like they can approach that's a great way to end.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you both so much for sharing your expertise.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: Jen you and I are gonna have to talk offline because I've got an idea for our interest groups at AEA based on something you just said.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_01: So um every time I visit with you I have new ideas and Jill it's it's wonderful to connect with you and I'm super excited to spend a little bit more time with your resource and your book.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_02: Just one last plug before we leave can y'all just uh give us the title and where people can find it if they want to purchase it and have it in their own library for use uh it's called what's uh what is it called it's called what artists do um Jen actually what comes after that what artists do the the title I know the title so the title is what artists do tab pedagogy and practice for K through 12 choice based art classes that sounds right yes blah blah blah blah yes um and you can find it in the normal ways um through major booksellers um and is published by Teachers College Press uh there's a Kindle version available um and a print version um yeah terrific and um I know that through our resources on the podcast there'll be a link that people can get to to get to it.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_02: Perfect and and I'll my my um webpage is Jillhoganboston.com I'm available for curriculum work I don't have very much time for PD um but I'm I'm happy to to get in touch with anyone who um who's interested and and I can help help them can help connect them um if I'm not able to help.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_02: Jen, do you want to do the same?
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely so yeah uh I also have a website it's jferrari.art and um I'm I'm just I love conversations and I love having them about these things because I'm very passionate about them.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if you wanted to reach out to me you always could through my website um and I would love to have conversations about anything related to Tab and art ed because it's just my jam.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah there you go.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was very nice to meet you both thank you for having them.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah thanks for having us on that was a really good conversation I always enjoy talking with Jen.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well and it was great to meet Shell and hear all about their new book and really get into a little bit deeper conversation around you know what artists really do.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know studio habits and that translates into teaching artistic behavior and the myths and the the you know really the resources that are at the core of how to to dive into it for your own uh teaching practice.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well I mean and it and it was really interesting to hear kind of Jill's story about being a a a music teacher first and then and then kind of changing directions but still implementing all of that and the and the choice the use of choice for that.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I definitely think that as we move into how can we really improve education there's a lot to be pondered there and thought about and uh I really hope to see art teachers at the forefront of that exploration.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_03: Hey uh speaking of that if they want to dive deeper they want to take a look at you know some of the things that we maybe talked about where do they where do they go for that?
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well if they're looking for high quality resources for art educators I would definitely go to davisart.com uh and yes that's a little plug but of course um it's true it's true and you know in particular uh anything that Jen and Jill shared in this podcast is uh right alongside of uh the podcast where it's posted on davisart.com slash free resources if you go to that you can find every episode of K12 Art Chat the podcast and then all the resources for that podcast episode so that's definitely a great place for resources um and you know as Davis is just uh I mean the premier and the first really of high quality resources uh within the field of art education I always recommend um and just as a plug for my other life NAEA now offers uh school arts for free for any member of the National Art Education Association so that's another little partnership but uh Matt if people want to reach out to us how do they do that?
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_03: Well we would always enjoy the communication with uh somebody and getting a chance to meet somebody new uh you can send us an email first uh at the creativitydeep at gmail.com we would love to hear about suggestions thoughts um even some feedback on our episodes and just what that all entails um but if you have a suggestion or anything else we'd love to hear from you or you can reach out to us on our Instagram um at creativitypt and uh same thing share it share it to us um and uh we'd love to hear from you you know on that Instagram we're also looking for tips so if you're sharing with each other our teacher tips we'd love to see that through Instagram so make sure you're doing that and then um lastly we'd love it if you would subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to it rate and review it it helps us keep it going uh and most of all we just want to thank you for listening and being a part of the chat and wish you a career week ahead thank you