Creative Process

As an Arts Education student, learning to become a music teacher for elementary school. I’m working on my own creative process and my own ways to become better at my music. I want to be able to teach kids to be okay with exploring different possibilities and different ideas within their music, and with their music skills. So many of us are taught when we’re younger that there are only one way to do things. That there is only one way to paint, one way to draw, and as teachers they are taught there was only one way to grade. On the finished product, I find that today that is our biggest problem; in my aesthetics education class we are learning to focus on the creative process instead of the finished product. I have found that this has helped me also, as an artist. I focus so much on getting things done, and what they will look and or sound like when I have finished, that I don’t have fun with it anymore. I have lost my imagination. I’ve decided as a new teacher that my philosophy will be to let children explore their imagination within a safe space, which I hope will be my classroom.  That way I will be able to--instead of giving them a grade on if their flower looks like the other students flowers—grade them on the process they took to get to why their flower looks the way it does. What things they used to create this flower, and why they decided to make it look like it does. So what if their flower doesn’t look like a rose, or a lily; did the student have fun making it, and indeed present me a finished product? If yes, then why isn’t that good enough for us as teachers? Why do we find the need to grade our students on making sure what they made looks like we imagined it to look like, if all flowers looked the same, where would the beauty be? I take a ceramics class every Wednesday from 7:00-9:00. Three hours, I took it last semester as well. My problem? Starting too many pieces at once, rushing to get them all done, and not doing my best on them. I would be so excited to take them home, and display them that I wasn’t working to the best of my ability. I wasn’t so much focusing on the time it took to make them look how I imagined them too, as much as if I got them done, I could start something else. Last semester there was a young girl in my class, age 9 or 10. She had the same problem I did, she painted so many pieces that she didn’t do as good as she could of, if she slowed herself down. I recently saw a piece of work from this semester of hers, that she took her time on, it was unbelievable. So I thought to myself, if I slow down, only do a few pieces I could really be good, I mean I’ve been painting since I was 8. Currently I’m working on a vase, with glazes, if you’ve done ceramics you know that with glazes you have to do three coats of every colour. It is a very drawn out process and people often do other pieces while waiting. It’s taking all my patients but I have a feeling the end product will be exactly what I’m thinking it will be. I’ll post a picture, of my end product, just to prove how focusing more on the process then the end product can really come through.