Watch. Do. Teach
The best way to learn is to teach.
Here’s a novel idea: If you want to learn something teach it.
Okay, not that novel. It’s common in medicine. Watch one, do one, teach one. But we all know that that simple three-step process will not make you a master.
But what if you took the time to create a lesson plan? What if you turned the lens of whatever art form you’re engaged in and you taught a course on that thing.
What would you do first?
In education, we often look at goals and objectives. A goal is specific and an objective is the parts of the goal that can be measured.
Objectives often have outcomes. Outcomes can be assessed.
Abracadabra! We have a lesson plan.
What is your art form?
What do you want to teach?
What is the goal? How will you measure your students’ success?
Even making a lesson plan has its own goals, objectives, and measurable outcomes.
But here’s the thing.
The teacher can determine the ways to measure the outcomes. They create the rubric. They decide on the columns and the rows.
What’s a rubric, you ask?
Well, let’s take a look.
Usually, there are four or five columns. Each column has levels of achievement.
It might be things like: Absent, Just beginning, Proficient, Professional
Within the rubric, there will be other, more specific descriptions of the mastery.
And there are rows.
Each row usually represents a different task, or step.
We might introduce the various crafts of art forms. For writing fiction, for example, we often include the following crafts.
Character
Plot
Setting
These would be great ways to breakdown a work of fiction, nonfiction, even poetry, scripts. They could also be used to evaluate a painting.
In addition, we might include length of the work. Because if we say we’re writing a novel, but we only have 5,200 words, well, that’s not a novel by publishing industry standards.
Now it’s your turn.
Develop a lesson plan.
You’re a chef. You want to teach how to make ravioli. (I did this last night. It’s fun, but it’s not easy. Still, it worked, so…)
A lesson plan is much more than a recipe. A lesson plan includes a recipe, a list of ingredients, it also has objectives.
List three objectives for making ravioli.
1. Blend ingredients
2. Roll the dough
3. Make the filling
4. Assemble the pasta pillows
5. Cook
6. Serve
Levels of achievement.
All ingredients are blended into a seamless dough.
The dough is blended, but some bits still appear.
The dough is blended, but it is not consistent.
The ingredients are inconsistent, powdery.
The ingredients remain unmixed in the bowl.
One row — easy to assess. Specific. Even without a teacher present, the student can assess their own work.
Try this for yourself. Try this for your own art form. Try this and you will be amazed at how you can turn the lens on your own work.
Become a teacher.
Interested in learning more about Dr. Stockwell and her methods of inspiring creatives to create? Visit www.doyourart.org
