Hello! My name is Ms. Makol, and it is my privilege to be teaching visual art at Goudy. I believe that every student is an artist, and that through play and experimentation, true learning takes place in the art room.
Rather than teaching students to make specific things, I want my students to learn to think like artists! A useful tool to organize the way artists think is the 8 Studio Habits of Mind, which was developed by Project Zero from Harvard's School of Education. Students develop these habits through mini-challenges and long-term art projects that they create in the art room.
8 Studio Habits of Mind
1. Develop Craft: Learning to use tools, materials, artistic conventions; and learning to care for tools, materials, and space.
2. Engage & Persist: Learning to embrace problems of relevance within the art world and/or of personal importance, to develop focus conducive to working and persevering at tasks.
3. Envision: Learning to picture mentally what cannot be directly observed, and imagine possible next steps in making a piece.
4. Express: Learning to create works that convey an idea, a feeling, or a personal meaning.
5. Observe: Learning to attend to visual contexts more closely than ordinary “looking” requires, and thereby to see things that otherwise might not be seen.
6. Reflect: Learning to think and talk with others about an aspect of one’s work or working process, and learning to judge one’s own work and working process and the work of others.
7. Stretch & Explore: Learning to reach beyond one’s capacities, to explore playfully without a preconceived plan, and to embrace the opportunity to learn from mistakes.
8. Understand (Arts) Community: Learning to interact as an artist with other artists (i.e., in classrooms, in local arts organizations, and across the art field) and within the broader society. Arts is in parenthesis here as it can easily be switched with other disciplines, like science or history.
Rather than teaching students to make specific things, I want my students to learn to think like artists! A useful tool to organize the way artists think is the 8 Studio Habits of Mind, which was developed by Project Zero from Harvard's School of Education. Students develop these habits through mini-challenges and long-term art projects that they create in the art room.
8 Studio Habits of Mind
1. Develop Craft: Learning to use tools, materials, artistic conventions; and learning to care for tools, materials, and space.
2. Engage & Persist: Learning to embrace problems of relevance within the art world and/or of personal importance, to develop focus conducive to working and persevering at tasks.
3. Envision: Learning to picture mentally what cannot be directly observed, and imagine possible next steps in making a piece.
4. Express: Learning to create works that convey an idea, a feeling, or a personal meaning.
5. Observe: Learning to attend to visual contexts more closely than ordinary “looking” requires, and thereby to see things that otherwise might not be seen.
6. Reflect: Learning to think and talk with others about an aspect of one’s work or working process, and learning to judge one’s own work and working process and the work of others.
7. Stretch & Explore: Learning to reach beyond one’s capacities, to explore playfully without a preconceived plan, and to embrace the opportunity to learn from mistakes.
8. Understand (Arts) Community: Learning to interact as an artist with other artists (i.e., in classrooms, in local arts organizations, and across the art field) and within the broader society. Arts is in parenthesis here as it can easily be switched with other disciplines, like science or history.
A little about myself:
I grew up in Chicago (in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood), and starting spending a lot of time making art when I was in 6th grade. The after-school programs at Marwen were a big part of my art journey, and I would recommend it to any Goudy student (they provide free after-school art classes to 6th-12th grade students in Chicago). I then went on to receive my bachelor of fine arts in photography, and in 2015 finished my master of education in art education. Some of my favorite art mediums are photography and printmaking, and I always enjoy learning something new by making art with my students! Feel free to contact me via email. -Ms. Makol |