A student once told me that my excitement for teaching ceramics is infectious. Teaching, like life, is the active pursuit and sharing of knowledge. I am passionately excited to prepare my students for engagement with processes and thoughts that they may have never considered. I believe creativity is an essential human condition; I find endless joy and satisfaction in watching a student realize this quality within themselves. This is not always easy, as many students have a closed mindset about their “artistic abilities.” In my ten years of teaching at the university level and eleven years teaching at the community level, I have had many discussions about the similarities between art and lab experiments, art and math, art and sports, etc. I want to instill in my students that the arts are about practice, critical thinking, problem solving, and exploration, not talent. As an artist and educator, I believe in the idea of liberal studies, that art is a part of everything. Art enhances understanding of so many other studies and enriches our lives. My goal is to impart this idea when teaching.

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A tenet of my teaching philosophy is that failure IS an option; mistakes are an invaluable part of learning. Education often is not linear. It is through the process of recursive inquiry — observation, exploration, analysis, and evaluation — that meaningful learning takes place. I serve as a mentor to my students while helping them navigate the problem-solving process of art making.  I support them by simultaneously validating their decisions and reinforcing the value of constructive criticism.  Ultimately, I encourage them to consider their intentions and develop an honest relationship with their work.

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Whether in the making of a functional pot, sculpture, or installation, my method of teaching art rests on a balance of conceptual thinking and technical proficiency.  In each assignment, I provide students with both structure and the freedom to explore.  Students need the opportunity to take risks, to struggle through their ideas and possibly to fail.  In my experience, courageous “failures” are often more beneficial to one’s artistic growth than are safe successes. One of the most important aspects of teaching I have learned over the years is that each student is unique. Individual students are driven by different means and to different ends; therefore, there is not a “one size fits all” approach that will match all students’ needs. In light of this, I employ a range of different pedagogical methods and work to better understand the needs of individual students, and employ varying methods at different points in their development.

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Sometimes students need permission to ask questions and to challenge conventions. I also welcome challenges to my own way of thinking. Whenever I give an assignment, I set guidelines, but if the student’s concept takes them outside of those boundaries, I most often allow them to pursue it. I encourage my students to try new things, and to approach questions from different angles. I believe in an “any means necessary” approach. I rarely say no, but I do explain the potential hazards and discuss likely outcomes of any given path. I am very proud when my students achieve more than they thought they could, and even prouder when they prove me wrong. 

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A main goal in my work as a ceramics teacher is to provide my students with the necessary technical skills and knowledge of materials. Technical skill must always be the balancing factor to conceptual knowledge. Without technological knowledge, a student will face barriers to successfully executing their ideas. By embedding the instruction of skills needed within conceptual prompts for assignments, students get excited about the work first, which is then the driver to work through the challenges of learning a new skill. It is part of the student’s responsibility to employ the techniques that best suit their work, thereby promoting a self-reliance in making important decisions.

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My beginning ceramics classroom begins with extensive skill-building and exposure to the diversity of clay within ceramic history and contemporary art. As the course level progress to intermediate, so does the student’s independence of subject and construction. In the advanced ceramics course, my role as instructor shifts from expert and lecturer to facilitator and resource. Through each level, critique is a strong core to my student’s learning process. It is a time when students must learn to translate their artwork from a visual language into a written and auditory explanation. Critique also allows for reflective and reflexive growth. 

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Another goal in my teaching is to introduce my students to the idea of visual analysis, both with regards to their own work and that of others. Students are taught a number of aesthetic systems of analysis with which to judge their work in visual terms, for instance: the analysis of visual components; the analysis of composition; the analysis of color theory; the elements and principles of design.

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I nurture dialogue by conducting group critiques as well as several individual critiques each term.  Through the critique process, students learn how others receive their work and intentions, as well as how to articulate their opinions.  This discourse enables students to realize how effectively they have communicated their ideas, as well as how well they have understood their own intentions. In any class I teach, whether lecture or studio, I emphasize the three C’s: critique, concept, and context. Technical skill and regurgitation of facts is not enough; students must think, analyze, and understand on whose shoulders they stand. This is a process that takes a lifetime, but they have to start somewhere, so I push them out of their comfort zones little by little, sometimes in great leaps. By probing and asking questions, I help them to think about the why, not the just the how and what.

I recognize the important connection between active art-making and effective teaching.  I bring to my teaching the same commitment and passion that I have for my artwork, both inside and outside of class.  My approach to teaching is very hands-on; it is my goal to actively engage my students in the learning process as I work side-by-side with them in the studio.  Having a strong base of knowledge and experiences are a good starting point for my philosophy of teaching, however I feel that a willingness to be flexible and let my philosophy evolve is important. Collaborations with other professors and students coupled with an openness to new ideas and concepts fuels my excitement about the medium and inspires me to give these new ideas back to my students.