Author: roemerra

Art Class

Volume 15 page 2

Art Department News
Mr.Beauchaine Mrs.Roemer

What is TAB?
TAB or Teaching for Artistic Behavior is a method of teaching that incorporates choice into the art classroom. Choice-based art education treats the students as the artists and provides them real choices for responding to their own ideas and interests through the making of art. This concept supports multiple methods of learning and teaching for the diverse needs of students. The learning environment provides resources and opportunities to build knowledge and meaning in the process of making art.
After learning about TAB from the National Art Education Convention and through research, we as your students art teachers felt a moral responsibility to open the door to a new way of learning in the art room. We will be presenting students with the ability to choose the content and materials used on their art projects. This is a new freedom for the students and may result in artwork that doesn’t fit the standard of “pretty” but it will be a project that was planned and created completely by your student, the artist.
In the past, most student projects would be mimicking a teacher example that covers a concept or standard. This has worked wonderfully for many years and still does in many art classrooms. There is no argument that students are learning about art in this way, but were they truly learning to be artists? This is the question we asked ourselves as art teachers and have decided that it was time to try something new. We want our students to become the artists and the problem-solvers. We will still be starting each lesson with a concept or standard but we won’t be requiring them to demonstrate that concept or standard in the same way as their classmates.
To enable our students to be successful in this new method of learning, we have a completely redone and rearranged art room to allow students better access to materials and stations for working. If you haven’t had a chance to see it yet, please stop by! If you would like to get regular updates and see what students are up to in the art room, connect with us through Facebook and like our art page: WalworthJ1Art.
Some images of students working in the new art environment: