by Michael Covello
Autobiography and Inquiry
A recent CEL journal post from Dottoressa Leslie Sotomayor discussed “testimonios” and how they support UDL pedagogy. The idea is simple, yet profound - everyone holds unique experiences or knowledge that are inherently valuable, whether or not they square up against “authority” (keep in mind this is my take on it, and not representative of Dra Sotomayor's words specifically). Autobiography in this way augments self-confidence as well as provides a deeper sense of belonging. Learning can take place without being submitted to the punishing rigors of absolute instructional control. This comes naturally to the advanced artist, but I have come to believe is also important to the beginning artist, who too often is forced through a punishing gauntlet of monotonous skill assessments.
My teaching strategies have always relied on being open, flexible, and inquiry-based. The learning process in my classes is dictated by the students’ voices, ideas, and interests, and though the requirement to be flexible and agile as an instructor can at times be exhausting, molding my own experiences around those of my students’ provides fulfilling connections and catalytic growth in their studio work.
Rigor and Punishment
As mentioned, I am suited for UDL strategies in how I already structure my classroom. Even so, I can understand how at the introductory level the execution of this type of pedagogy might require some creative reconsiderations. In some art programs foundation studio teaching methods trend toward “old-school” art education techniques. The classroom is modeled to be a pressure cooker, with learning achieved through strictness, rigidity, and a rigor-as-punishment mindset. I can understand how UDL’s emphasis on flexibility and simple, intuitive learning might feel opposed to these approaches, but what it offers is too important to overlook.
Can rigor exist without punishment? Can we foster an exhilarating and stimulating classroom experience that allows students to activate and empower their voices, visualize their ideas and memories, and create a community centered around joy and support instead of communal suffering against rigid methods and assessments?
I don’t deny that it is important for foundation drawing students to gain specific skill sets and meet certain learning objectives. These students move onward into a half-dozen highly specific programs and majors, and so foundation teaching must be expertly balanced to ensure each student builds the sturdiest armature to rivet their subsequent coursework onto. As part of this curriculum, though (and perhaps most importantly beyond all other metrics) we must ask ourselves: am I able to reach all of my students where they are with equity in mind? And in reaching them, have I sparked a love for their studio work that will carry them through the remainder of their schooling and subsequent professional career?
Movement
I often reflect on my experiences as an undergrad at Cornell University’s notoriously rigorous School of Architecture and Art. Some of the most impactful class sessions were the ones I experienced in my freshman art classes where we as a community of makers had to develop idiosyncratic approaches to common problems. For instance, take the problem presented to us: How can you represent movement? To find this solution, students were wading in the campus gorge while drawing with reticulating ink washes, or arranging eraser dust to render dandelions bursting in the wind, or visualizing a recent family death by pressing paper into the voids of radiators and collecting texture rubbings. We and our intentions became galvanized at the end of this lesson regardless of whether or not our perspective lines were perfect or our facial renderings were slightly out of proportion.
This, at least to some degree, is “testimonios” and it is UDL. A community is built where we can talk, share, express, and find value there. We become engaged with the material, with the process, with the act of thinking and making. Our own stories help demonstrate the learning objectives and reinforce the means and methods of achieving them. And the professor becomes part of that participation, not just an all-knowing authority. In my experience, though this ideal can sometimes feel difficult or confusing at times, it ultimately results in something more impactful for everyone.
Spiderwebs
Every summer morning without fail I walk into a massive spiderweb suspended between two arborvitae trees. It is my routine, I guess, to chaotically stumble through the gate on my way to the driveway, five minutes late and somehow already disheveled, spilling coffee on my shirt as my hell-cat children stampede between my own footfalls. And then SPLOING - the wet threads stick to my face as they stretch and eventually snap free.
Every morning this is my ritual and the devastated arachnids, neither of us learning, neither of us changing our ways. Over time, one hundred imagined spiders have scuttled in my hair, down my shirt collar, or into my mouth. I have performed the same jaunty post-web jig to the same chorus of teasing childhood laughter. And after a few days of this, the spider more than likely dies exhausted and hungry and is replaced by the next.
Every morning, though, as I am picking web-gook from my eyebrow I am reminded of the following well-known quote from Clifford Geertz about a man suspended in not a spider’s web but culture’s web:
“...man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun...I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.”
My love of this quotation is matched by my concern over the implications it has for humanity. To be trapped in our web is to hang solipsistically, a tiny moth-person tangled in an isolated world. I don’t want this for myself. I don't want this for my students.
As we draw and paint in my classroom, I am trying to find strategies to allow us not to get trapped in the web, and not to destroy it. Instead, my goal is to enable my students to press themselves through the web. As it molds around each of our faces we get to fill up the gaps and spaces in between the gossamer threads, becoming an interconnected everything moving immensely through the world.
Michael Covello is an Associate Professor of art and Foundations Coordinator at Kutztown University and an internationally exhibiting interdisciplinary contemporary artist. His animations have been screened internationally at many venues, including the London Independent Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Buffalo International Film Festival, the Sydney Underground Film Festival, the New York Independent Cinema Awards (awarded Best Animation in 2021), the Amsterdam International Short Film Festival (awarded Best Animation in 2021), and the Los Angeles International Film Festival’s IndieShortFest, (nominated for Best Audio Mixing in 2019).