Eve & Mary are having coffee whilst critically ill
This read hit me especially hard, I’m halfway through reading this book:
And I’m halfway through reading this book, because my Dad has spent the last 3 months in a coma. He had a bleed on the brain that forced me to confront death and now as he is awake and re-learning to write and rewrite his life path I find myself forced to think about pain in a way I didn’t ever want to. To think about healing, communicating and saying no.
What strikes me in the piece, and in the book is this unwavering commitment to keep going, keep creating, keep making both art and a statement.
They call them sink subjects in some schools – art, design, photography, etc. They’re seen as two things – An easy option and/or pointless. 2 + 2 = 4 – thats the easy option as I see it. Being creative and of course studying in an environment like UAL is not about the correct answer to the sum (4) it’s putting your entire self up for scrutinisation. And there’s sort of no way of knowing what the right answer is in this context. That’s what lots of my students are going through and contending with every day!
It’s relative, pain. Emotion, too.
So how do we build a teaching environment that accounts for this, and holds students in this? Who is to say we get to assess their art (their pain, their emotions, their voice) like you would an equation.
My sister has ME, she sat her GCSE’s in our kitchen and my mum had to take the modem to work to make sure she couldn’t cheat. She had to bare her pain and her kitchen to a complete stranger to force herself to fit into a system that didn’t work for her. She slept 16 hours a day and missed her teens entirely. And she’s definitely not alone, my mum had to FIGHT for her to get what she did get in terms of support, because the school just labelled her lazy – because of course she looked fine, she looked beautiful! Eyelashes so long she looked like she’d spent ages putting on make up and hair so long and shiny she couldn’t possibly not be healthy. So many of the structures and ways of being, ways of moving (especially through education) don’t work for so many people. And yet we go on repeating the same old same old….
It makes me think of this concept of resilience – which we see a lot in the area I’m working in. Why are we teaching students that the industry is unfair and unkind and they need to be resilient. Instead of fixing the broken industry?!
Thank you for such a personal and honest post. And I’m sorry your father was in a coma and your mother had to fight for your sister to get the support she deserved. These are painful situations, both for the people involved and for those around them. How are you?
Interesting in reading this book…
Thanks! I actually just kind of spilled this one out not meaning for it to be a pity party at all. So I hope it doesn’t read that way!
Just got me thinking of all the ways systems and educators fail to see what is going on, or even if they see they fail to accomodate. And actually now that I type this I think something really interesting (also frustrating) happens when you do try to accommodate – and that’s that in trying to create an inclusive and conducive environment for a certain demographic or a certain kind of learner you often inexplicably alienate or make that space less inclusive for another!
Do you find this when you plan sessions? I think I need to write to a post on this! & do some more reading around it…
We’re doing okay over here – how about you?
Thank you Zoe, for sharing your experiences with such honesty and emotion. I really feel and understand your frustrations with these exclusive ‘system’.
I wonder how we, as educators within the creative fields, are able to give students feedback without this scrutiny you speak about. Before arriving at CSM nearly three years ago I was a scientific researcher, I hated others in my field scrutinising my data – my experimentation and the evidence I had collected. This felt like a personal attack. It wasn’t until arriving at CSM that I had an unfathomed respect for students in creative environments. They are brave, courageous and truly inspirational.
I would love to know what methods you use to give constructive feedback to you students whilst simultaneously empowering them.
oh my gosh I totally feel you!
I hated sharing at interim crits or letting people see my work in progress, I’m quite sensitive I suppose so I would easily let peoples comments derail me or lose momentum or confidence in what I was doing. I would have a very clear vision and be unable to understand why others didn’t see it (Hi Neurodiverse brain!) I would trust myself to be able to execute but would want to only show the end product. Self preservation I suppose which resulted in working in a silo a bit.
You’re right though – putting yourself out there in that way is so brave! and in a way continuing to work in a creative field is to continue to do that!
I don’t know that I have it figured it out at all to be honest. But I try to allow feedback to come from them, so create a dialogue that asks questions rather than arriving with a list of feedback points. This is much easier in face to face of course.
Feedback and indeed assessment is something I think deeply about a lot, and actually find quite troubling. I studied part of my degree in Sweden for example where there is no first class, 2:1 etc. You pass or you fail, you get your degree or you don’t. And honestly for me this created a much more healthy environment- I’m sure for some people this sounds like a terrible idea but definitely food for thought. Noone has ever asked or cared what specific degree I got! Just that I have one.
And of course I understand it’s linked to funding and data and many other complexities that unfortunately are not always student centred!
I also think there should be more options on ways to receive feedback, I’ve had written feedback myself where the use of language has been misinterpreted so that I feel like you say attacked- when in fact that was the opposite of the assessors intention. And moreover its about a relationship right? In any other relationship (a functioning one at least) there is dialogue, there is feedback in both directions. Maybe we need a model like that? or maybe I just resent the hierarchy of Teacher and Student?
There is also a nice method that KAospilot use for feedback, for group work.
They provide two prompts that everyone uses:
You served the group well when you……
I would like to see you do more of……
I think this is really helpful because in a way it removes the personal or kind of judgment call of it all. It keeps things structured and on point and makes it feel balanced. And as someone who doesn’t normally like too much structure I’m surprised I found this helpful!
Okay I should stop now because I’ve basically written an entire blog as a reply!
Zoë