My goal as a teacher is to be a good guide for my students. Many art teachers may be good artists with lots of skills and techniques, but not all of them are “good teachers/guides.” Also, many students, especially in high school or at the entrance level of college, debate whether or not they should major in art and take it as a serious career route even when they are talented or enjoy it. That is how myself was like as well, reflecting back to my own experience. I loved art and enjoyed it much since I was a young child, but I totally eliminated an option of studying art because no one around me was being supportive nor gave an ideal advises. I don’t see myself as a dreamer that thinks everything is possible, but I do want to encourage my students by giving them an ideal advises.
I believe the most ideal way of teaching the non-professional students is to encourage and guide them to discover their potential and step forward instead of bringing them down by cruelly criticizing their artworks. Whether or not their works are “professionally” done, all art students, especially at the level of elementary or secondary, should consider himself or herself as an “artist” and be confident of their piece of artwork that they have created. Students should be given an environment where they could confidently be creative and create new things as well as challenging themselves by trying tougher projects in order to grow more and become a better artist. A child development theorist Jean Piaget states, “The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things.” I think this quote best supports my idea of ideal teaching.
Although I have mentioned that quote in the above, this doesn’t mean that building up the knowledge of art is not important. I’m not an ideological person nor want to be a kind of theoretical teacher, I do believe that students should start learning from the very basic in order to grow well and strong. Some students may feel learning the basics are childish and boring, but their firm foundation will ultimately help them to be stable in the future.