This past Saturday, September 14th a small group of highly dedicated art educators met at the Pewaukee High School art room from 8-10:00 a.m. to discuss data collection in art. This topic is especially challenging for art teachers because generally we don't really take tests in art. We knew if we put our heads together we could come up with some creative ways to write Student Learning Objects that are meaningful for our students, while still maintaining the integrity of a hands-on classroom.
The discussions were boisterous at times, but led to some enthusiastic ideas of how to creatively collect data in curriculum that doesn't appear on standardized tests. We realized that we are already ahead of the curve in many respects as art educators. The arts encourage students to think at higher levels as they problem solve and design their own interpretations of the assignments given. We just needed to find a way to document this problem solving and show data that what we do really works.
It was a great opportunity to begin a discussion and to meet other art educators.
We are already planning to meet again and continue our collaboration. So going to work on a Saturday isn't always the best thing, but when stimulating conversation and bagels are involved it's not so bad!