Multimedia Digital Art and Sculpture Studio

Flick of the Switch

While my undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral studies centered around science education, my first love as a child was the arts. I began immersing myself in the arts through drawing, and at the age of nine, I began playing guitar. Ever since, my hands have never stopped discovering the beauty of notes and melodies subconsciously unleashed through seemingly tactile sensations of steel upon tonewoods. The strings of my heart were later reverberated by the unearthing and joys of reading and discovery released as thoughts with reference to biology, astronomy, our world’s cultures, and Shakespeare’s soliloquies and plays.

As a science teacher, I made a concerted effort to blend the arts into my science content to facilitate discovery learning over and over again. As an instructional leader, I was committed to STEAM education long before I ever heard the acronym. I incorporated the arts into my mission and vision for school improvement planning, and later, district strategic planning. I embraced and embedded discovery learning into secondary teaching and learning for all content areas beyond the acronym of STEAM itself to stir the spirit and the mind of each and every learner.

After becoming principal at Lane Tech, I was able to hire a new, dynamic art department chair to lead our vision for STEAM education. Marjorrie Custodio was not only extremely talented as an artist and an art teacher, but she fully, and intrinsically, embraced interdisciplinary learning for teaching and distributive leadership for leading as a chair. Through Marjorrie’s leadership, we were able to reevaluate our course offerings and how we could create and improve innovative curriculum in the areas of science, mathematics, tech, engineering, and interwoven in content areas beyond STEAM.  

Visual Graffiti

By the summer of 2013, we updated our computer labs across the building, began transitioning to an Apple school, and initiated a new art curriculum, including a new film studies course that was 100% tech- and research-based. The content our curricular course teams developed enabled students and teachers to not only study “film,” but to also learn the engineering and production side of the profession and apply that philosophical approach to sustain existing curricular programs and new curricular offerings. 

We also spent two years designing a new, Multimedia Digital Art and Sculpture Studio that was within proximity of Studio 2501 for guitar and recording, the Makers ISL for idea partnering and project design, Robotics for competition and engineering, and aquaponics for urban farming. Our goals for the Multimedia Digital Art and Sculpture Studio included creating a sustainable, multiuse space for meaningful hands-on, discovery-based arts curricula, embedding the arts in our new innovation courses and spaces (the proximity helped!), and reevaluating our existing course offerings in the arts to ensure relevant courses were supported and to design and implement new, exciting course offerings for students.

As a result of our development of new innovative learning spaces and course offerings (aquaponics, makers ICL, robotics, sound engineering, etc.), and a commitment to interweaving the arts in new, interdisciplinary curricular offerings, our art department began to increase in size. While programmatic growth was wonderful, and born from solutions for reimagining curricula, the planning required to shepherd blossoming programs necessitated forward planning to ensure sustainability.

Trampled Underfoot 

The programs we were developing were not designed to be momentary, but rather, they were created with a 10-year minimal vision and intended to be generational. All too often, principals and superintendents implement new programs, and within three or so years, they “fizzle” and then the next leader comes along to only repeat the same process. These experiences create jaded outlooks in staff and contribute to what eventually devolves into institutional inertia.

Our work, whether it was computer science, makerspace, aquaponics, design engineering, etc. included having to be able to answer “Yes” to the following question: “Is the course we are currently offering (or proposing) relevant and going to remain relevant to a current freshman through his or her senior year of high school, college, and two years post-secondary?” If the answer was, “No,” then it did not meet the ten-year minimum standard, and we should not be offering the course (perhaps “as is”) or proposing the course.  

At some point, every learning organization eventually owns anachronistic course offerings that have become antiquated for a variety of reasons. As educators and educational leaders, if we are intellectually honest with ourselves, we sometimes come to own (or inherit if you become a learning organization’s new leader) course offerings that exist simply because they “offer” and afford employment and are politically challenging to address. Every learning organization has wrestled with this realization at some point, the defining factor is for how long and why.

Institutional, cultural inertia foments environments that allow course offerings to  exist without a plan to assess and improve courses being taught with no intent to update curricula. Likewise, and more often than is acceptable, principals lead as managers in these types of environments rather than instructional leaders and do things “the right way” rather than doing “the right thing,” and maintain the status quo in an effort to maintain job security. Administrators are taught and learn via reinforcement through workshops that change upsets teachers because it makes them uncomfortable. Therefore, deductive reasoning infers that change upsets the status quo and leadership job security. However, this is not the case, but a path more easily followed rather than led. The only time change upsets anyone is when they are not part of the process or they are going to lose something (such as maintaining an antiquated course that has not evolved). Change creates loss, whereas progress creates gains and involves and invites stakeholders in transformational processes. Most teachers want to teach cutting edge, exciting courses and are open to change if they are part of the process and provided resources and supports.   

My mission as a leader was, and remains, to empower, inspire, and create systems and processes that are student-centered and fun to lead, teach, and learn, regardless of one’s role in the learning organization. My goal was to also excite staff to want to examine course offerings and move beyond neatly categorized course content areas, discover how to blur the lines between content areas, and appreciate what I termed “Discovery Aesthetics.” The arts were a wonderful vehicle for embedding and interweaving the aesthetics of discovery learning and ownership of facility and curricular development. 

Discovery Aesthetics also facilitated an understanding and appreciation for coming to terms with the realization that if you close your eyes and envision your own child or someone you love in the learning environments you lead or teach, and your heart tells you the environment is not suitable for your own child or a child you love, then it is not good enough for another person’s child. That type of reflective practice creates a spiritual truth that cannot be denied. It should only be when the environment is good enough for your own child that is good enough for another’s. It is through reconciliation that we navigate progress  not change – and consider learner security before job security. It is through reconciliation that we do the right thing and lead with gains in mind and truth in spirit.

 

Beggars Banquet

Our growing art department performed a full review of courses offered, courses desired, and courses for partnering with our new and pre-existing innovative programmatic offerings. In addition, our new Multimedia Digital Art and Sculpture Studio was envisioned, designed, and constructed to include space for ceramics, digital art, AP studio, and 3D (wood, glass, metal, etc.) in a dynamic, 7,000 square foot-plus artists’ den. The new multimedia lab was housed in what was an abandoned auto shop classroom that had not seen use for over twenty years.  

A number of existing courses, new courses, and revised courses, such as digital imaging, studio sculpture, ceramics, photography, fashion design, and print-making were maintained to afford students a variety of meaningful, hands-on, interdisciplinary learning experiences. Digital imaging provided opportunities for students to learn about graphic design, digital photography, and filmmaking while also utilizing Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator, and Lightroom software for authentic, post-secondary explorations. I loved the storytelling aspect of the digital imaging course, as well as the approach to utilizing mixed media as a journey for learning and expression.

The approach and perspective the department employed for designing curricula was wonderful to witness and complemented the efforts being made with makerspace ICL, robotics, sound engineering, and aquaponics. I loved the illustrative journey of STEAM in motion, for it evolved before my eyes rather than reading about it in an article or third-party publication. It was vision coming to fruition via servant and distributive leadership, and it was as beautiful as much as it was satisfying to lead.  

Freewill

Just as there are many roads to follow to grow along the pathway of life, there are many ways to change – to progress – without a fear for loss, but rather, a confidence for gains. When we stop setting bricks along life’s trails, we stop growing. As instructional leaders, when we choose the single path of stopping  – of doing nothing – we create institutional inertia when countless paths that once existed subsist nevermore. 

The Discovery Aesthetics of learning, teaching, and leading enables the mind and spirit to wonder, and wander, countless pathways of discovery for all learners. For every student, teacher, leader, parent, and community member is a learner. Learning experiences are the materials of cognition and wings of the soul for every learner to be inspired to become and remain a lifelong learner. The dilapidated facility spaces that once occupied the campus for decades were never good enough for my own two children. After many, many years of hard work through collaboration, partnering, and empowering others to lead, I opened up my eyes, and by 2015 they were finally suitable for those whom I love – my Norah and my Erin. 

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