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Home > A Comprehensive Approach to Teaching AP Studio Art
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A Comprehensive Approach to Teaching AP Studio Art
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by John Fox
Consultant
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
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Introduction
Perhaps one of the most important decisions an art instructor can make in preparation for teaching an AP Studio Art class is to place on the back burner any personal biases regarding the making of art. This does not imply discarding -- but simply sublimating -- previous attitudes in order to allow for the more comprehensive possibilities students may bring into the class forum. Be less concerned about what you think all your students should be capable of, and instead concentrate on preparing them to get where they themselves want to go. For example, you may ask yourself: "Is it absolutely essential that all the students in a class must master a specific technique or medium before they can proceed with the execution of an idea or concept?"
Tap All Resources
Strongly consider bringing other resources such as visiting artists or other instructors into the classroom to share their experiences and ideas. This makes students aware that you are not the sole source of information or instruction they have. If you bring a visiting artist into your classroom, locate and put together visuals (slides of the artist's work or relevant art history, for example) so that students can relate to his or her work.
Also consider getting your students out of the classroom and into their community. Most communities have galleries, museums, and other exhibition opportunities, especially at or near colleges and universities, where you may be able to find works that deal with similar, if not exactly the same, conceptual approaches. The human mind is much like a computer: if you feed garbage in, you get garbage out. Paraphrase this for the benefit of your classes: good images in, good images out. Of course, you may need to make preliminary visits to exhibitions in order to discern which artworks and approaches will most effectively stimulate student interaction and thinking. If you can't arrange for students to attend an exhibit as a group, provide a "Treasure Hunt" kind of assignment, which requires students to go to an exhibit on their own. Ask them to relate what they see to the work that they have on hand in your class. Never fear oversaturating your students with visual reference data.
Read, Report, and Relate
Plan to have students do weekly reading from books and periodicals, as well as regular reports on their findings. These reports should not so much be standard art history or biographical research on an artist, but should instead be a direct analysis of what artists do and how they do it. It is usually best to ask students to relate their reading to very practical questions and to what they themselves are working on or planning. Encouraging students to seek out mentors or exemplars for what they are doing teaches them to emulate artists, past and present, as a regular practice and an element of their growth.
Open the Door
Be alert to students in your less advanced classes who might show promise in effectively dealing with the AP Studio Art process. Limiting AP classes to juniors and seniors may unfairly penalize younger students and may risk underestimating their abilities because of their age. Pablo Picasso's father, who was an artist, told his 12-year-old son, and I paraphrase, "You must find another teacher, as I have taught you all that I know." We should not overlook the real possibilities of precocity among our students. Some of the best portfolios, which also scored 5s, were from some of my sophomores, thus placing my good seniors on their proverbial ears when it came to work ethic, imagination, and perseverance. If all AP courses had such rigid requirements that only juniors and seniors were eligible to take them, there would be extremely few chances for students to prepare for a wide variety of AP opportunities during their secondary educational experience. Intelligence does not follow an age dictate, especially when personal will and motivation come into play. Above all, be open in your teaching to allow for such ever-present individual differences and strengths.
Focus on the Four "Cs"
Lastly, I would say that you might focus on having your students do good "C" work. My four Cs are: compelling (meaning eye-catching or intriguing), capable (when it comes to understanding the medium and its uses and application), confident (in terms of a sense of adventure and willingness to experiment and take risks), and complete (as in realizing that one has attained to the degree possible what one set out to accomplish).
John Fox began his teaching career in 1960 and has taught language arts programs for French and English; North Carolina, United States, and European history; and visual arts, as well as serving as part of a four-teacher team for humanities. In 1976, he taught the first Advanced Placement Studio Art course in the state of North Carolina, at the Career Center of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System. He first served as an AP reader in 1979 and has conducted Advanced Placement Studio Art Institutes in Florida, Kentucky, and North Carolina.
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