WVSA

WVSA turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. Elana and I visited Jude's class and helped out for the day. Jude is a very laid back teacher who really knows his stuff and treats his students according to their age. This is something I have not seen in a while and it is very refreshing to see. I have a feeling that many in the education field might frown on some of his practices and mannerisms while teaching. He was a great example of how to teach art by my standards. His personality and teaching style was very successful in his context and is something that is usually not taken into account in the field of education. He gave demos and started students paintings and made very stern yet joking digs at students from time to time which were effective and acceptable due to the relationship he and his students have formed. Jude was not plagued with the level of fear or tenderness that can often be seen in many teachers or just education in general. He presented himself and interacted with his class in a comfortable and honest way. Because of this behavior he was able to build effective relationships with students that I have not seen much of in DC so far. His dry sense of humor and relaxed demeanor really allows him to interact with his students on a more productive level. He did not only focus on art and started educational discussions on other subjects such as history and culture. This really gave me hope since I hope to go beyond art in my classroom as well. Instead of getting caught up in many of the educational standards and rules he appeared to be having a good time and getting his students to have fun while pursuing the creation of quality art. The art was being produced for the real world (CVS) and was not catering to school system standards, curriculum, and grades. This reminded me of how my extremely successful underfunded high school art class was conducted. We all focused on getting projects done that were for shows, contests, public spaces, and commissions. There were no textbooks, DBAE, or VTS but just straight proactive creation of art with a purpose beyond ourselves. The fact that Jude had set something up with an outside source such as CVS caused me to remember such successful art education. The students came in and really practiced art instead of talking and doing little gimmick exercises like CR's at Wilson High. The students can clearly see CR's and other exercises for what they are and become offended and give up. However if there is someone who really knows their subject, practices it, pushes their students to create art without a lot of strings attached the students will respond. I see this in Jude just as I did in my high school teacher. Of course this is a lot of things to draw out of one visit but this class was very noticeably different form what I have been used to over the past two semesters. The students were amazingly well behaved and mature and this I feel is directly related to Jude's respect for them. While many of the students had disabilities he treated them with more respect and with more normalcy than many teachers observed so far with non disabled students. Overall the students and the teacher were exceptional and a breath of fresh air.