Building your own Art Curriculum: A Kit for Teachers

Abstract

No matter how committed a teacher may be to spur-of-the-moment, self-evolving activity, sooner or later the need arises to offer some justification for what is happening, and to set down objectives and purposes in a formal manner. For the novice teacher, the need comes sooner than later. Newly appointed to a position, with term due to begin in a frighteningly short time, the teacher is forced to grapple with questions like What should I teach first? What do I teach to different age groups? How can I defend what I intend to teach? The answers to these questions, which had seemed comfortably on the tip of the tongue throughout teacher training, all at once demand specific phrasing.

The mature teacher's questions are of a different order, reflecting a degree of previous experience and a philosophy which is consequently more integrated: Will I continue to do what I did last year? To what extent should I modify things to suit Class X? Should the programme be expanded to include an entirely new focus?

Novice or veteran, each has to adjust to unforseen factors which are bound to affect the programme: an increase or a drop in the supplies budget; an overall reduction in staff, with a resulting call upon the art personnel to give more teaching time to other subject areas; the allocation of additional space to the art department. Often, the amount of notice received is alarmingly brief, yet the proper decision requires that the decision-maker be quite clear about the capability of the programme to accommodate these sudden changes.