 Name: Jennifer Davis School(s) : Benjamin Logan Middle School Grade Levels: 5th - 8th Where do you fall on the choice spectrum? Just getting started. I am going one grade level and one lesson at a time. How many years have you been teaching TAB/Choice? 1 year Your why? I think that students can truly surprise us when we give them the freedom to make their own artistic decisions. It can be a challenge to let go. Prepping more materials for certain. Transition takes time. The trial and error is worth it. Allow your students to soar at new heights. Do you have your own room, share a room, or travel? I have my own art room. What advice would you give someone transitioning to TAB/Choice? I am taking it slow. One grade level at a time. One lesson at a time. I am taking time to transition. It is a new way to lesson plan, to prep materials, and to assess. Change can be a challenge. With challenges comes growth. As an art educator for 27 years, I am always looking for new challenges and ways to grow. TAB/Choice will do the same for my students. We will all be challenged and will grow together! Contact Information: [email protected]
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Podcasts Websites/Networks  “Adventure isn’t hanging off a rope on the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude we must apply to the day to day obstacles of life” – John Amat
Like many of you, I was thrown many obstacles during these past few months. One of the biggest ones is how I was going to provide meaningful instruction and choices to my students through distance learning. I did not have to figure this out on my own. There is an amazing community of educators out there that are willing to share ideas and resources. One way that I was able to connect with some of these educators and share ideas was through Zoom. Before this crisis, I had never participated in a zoom meeting and now I was hosting chats on them weekly. The Ohio/TAB Choice Facebook group met several times using Zoom to keep connected, share ideas and support each other. As I write this, we still have social distancing measures in place but hopefully these can be relaxed soon. My hope is that we can meet in person this summer but if we can not we will meet through ZOOM. Please check the OAEA website or Facebook page for updates. Please consider joining us in person or online this summer. What: Making Tab Connections! Where: Coffee Connections 4004 Main St , Hilliard 43026 Dates: June 2nd 10:00 am June 16th 1:00 pm July 7th 10:00 am July 21st 1:00 pm Aug 4th 10:00 am  Name: Becky Rehbeck
School(s): Britton Elementary Hilliard City Schools Grade Levels: K-5 Where do you fall on the choice spectrum? Modified to Free… it depends! How many years have you been teaching TAB/Choice? 10 years Your why? I didn’t want to see any more displays where all the childrens art looked the same. I am influenced by the Reggio Emilia schools in Italy where the child is the artist and helps create the curriculum through their interests as well as teacher prompts. Children’s art aesthetic should be seen and their skills build through exploration, demo examples and interests! Do you have your own room, share a room, or travel? I have my own room. What advice would you give someone transitioning to TAB/Choice? Join a TAB online or FB group, so much help and resources! Try it out in small ways, one or two centers or media choice within a project. Build in centers as you are comfortable. There is no one way, make it work for you! Reach out and go visit if you can, it really helps to see a studio in action! Name: Rachel A. Fout School(s): Licking Heights North Elementary Grade Levels: 5th grade (15 sections) Years taught: 15 years total in art education, 7 years high school and currently my 8th year in elementary Where do you fall on the choice spectrum? Currently teaching TAB/ full choice. My students keep a sketchbook where they explore different media, materials, and techniques with task sheets. I demonstrate new and old techniques when I open studios, see an interest or trend, or want to change things up. My students keep all of their 2-D works in a portfolio but my hope is to transition into a digital platform next year with Artsonia. 3-D works get sent home unless they want it in the district art show. I challenge students to work in different studios throughout the year but they are not required to do so. My students work with a planning sheet to develop their WOW projects. The planning sheets guide students through the Studio Habits of Mind. The studios I have available: drawing, painting, collage, sculpture, ceramics, digital art, fiber, and printmaking. In the past I’ve offered visiting studios like encaustic painting, origami, book binding, paper making and jewelry. How many years have you been teaching TAB/Choice? Two and a half years. I jumped right in after OAEA Toledo 2017. I remember spending winter break rearranging and organizing my classroom. Yes, mid year. Which by the way, I’ve changed every year since. Your why? I started to question my teaching methods when students started to challenge my DBAE ways. The project was sea turtles. Wet on wet watercolor technique of blues and greens for the background and a saran wrap technique to create texture for the sea turtle’s shell. A beautiful display of sea turtles right?! All unique in their own way. Why did I want her to follow my step by step project when she clearly had something better in mind. And even if it wasn’t better in my opinion, it was her art, and I was crushing that spark inside of her. It was then I decided to learn more about TAB and choice. I hit the internet and Facebook groups and boy was it overwhelming! I then registered for OAEA 2017 Toledo and I found the answers to my why. I was hooked! Do you have your own room, share a room, or travel? I am happy to share this year I have my own classroom and I did not have to travel. It has been an amazing year so far. In the past I have taught from a cart, traveled between two buildings, and have set an art room up in the hallway. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do! Our district is reconfiguring next year. So next year I will be teaching 2 sections of art at our 5-6 building and 17 sections of art at the Kindergarten building, so back to traveling and sharing rooms at the 5-6 building. Good news is I will have an amazing classroom at the kindergarten building. What advice would you give someone transitioning to TAB/Choice? Visit classrooms! Talk to other TAB/Choice teachers. Everyone TAB/choices a little bit different. Find where you fit best on the choice spectrum. Talk to your administration or curriculum director. Stop making excuses and just get started. Don’t be afraid to change it up if it doesn’t work for you the first time. Be an advocate for your program. Celebrate and share with colleagues, families and community. In the end what matters is that you are challenging students to develop their own ideas, explore media and materials, and celebrate/share the original works they’ve created. Oh, and above all take time to listen to their “why.” Why and how did they create their work of art? You will hear their stories, they will share their emotions, and you will feel it all! You can follow me on Instagram @AskTheArtTeacher Name: Mara Christine School(s): Indian Run Elementary, Dublin City Schools Grade Levels: 1st - 5th. I see 6 classes per day on a 4 day rotation. My students come from all over the world - we have something like 27 home languages other than English - and we have quite a few students that enroll throughout the year, as well as withdraw. I just have an experienced TAB student give the new student a tour, check in on them a few times, and they are off and running usually! Where do you fall on the choice spectrum? I am full TAB! How many years have you been teaching TAB/Choice? This is my 3rd year of full TAB, and my 10th year here at IRE. Your why? I realized that I was teaching art projects, and not creativity. It took me about 5 years from the time I started questioning my teaching approach to switch to TAB - and I think that’s okay! In the meantime, I thought and read and talked to other teachers. It’s a big shift to make, and a little scary! Would my administration support it? (Yes. They are awesome.) Would parents object to the lack of ‘art product’? (I haven’t heard any major complaints. But I also took the step of inviting the PTO Board in for a demo/mini-lesson of TAB!) Would students respond? (YES!) TAB reinvigorated my teaching practice and made it so much more joyful. There are still plenty of challenges - the biggest being getting students to STOP working when it’s time to clean up. There are so many more things I want to do: new challenges and improvements to make every day/week/month/year. I love it. Do you have your own room, share a room, or travel? I feel really lucky to have my own fabulous room with lots of storage and 3 sinks! There’s never really enough room for any art teacher though, so I spend a decent amount of time reorganizing and rethinking cabinets every year.. What advice would you give someone transitioning to TAB/Choice? LABEL EVERYTHING!! I’m pretty obsessive about color-coding, so each of my centers has a color, and every label with that center has that color border. I’d like to go back and start adding more pictures to my labels now - the studio is a constant work in progress. The other important thing is to be kind to yourself. I have a tendency to just see all the things I’m NOT doing as well as I want to, and not necessarily the things that are working smoothly. It takes time to transition the studio, the students, and yourself to a new way of working and thinking!  Name: Megan Newton
School: Miamisburg High School Grade Levels: 9-12 Where do you fall on the choice spectrum? Modified to full choice.Since coming to high school, I have found that modified choice works best for lower level classes and upper level students seem to excel with full choice. I really like the formula of either the teacher choosing the theme and the students get choice of media or vice versa where the students can choose their theme but the teacher chooses the material(s). How many years have you been teaching TAB/Choice? I was full TAB at the middle school level for 6 years. This is my second year being more modified choice at the high school level. Your why? I got tired of going to student art shows and seeing cookie cutter projects, where everyone creates the same thing. Hundreds of individual students with unique interests and passions were reduced down to the exact same sunflower - centered, blue background, with a thick black contour line. It made me sad that so many students had to conform to what the teacher wanted out of their art. What really blew me away is when teachers would talk about how they’re providing ample opportunity for students to be creative but yet they still did cookie cutter projects. I do credit OTES for pushing me to go full TAB and it all started because I struggled with the differentiation aspect of the rubric. How can I show differentiation if every student is creating the exact same art piece? It was then, I realized how much I used to limit the students’ artistic voices. Since I’ve switched my mindset to TAB, I will never go back. The positive feedback I get from students is what keeps me going. I love the fact that I get to know my students on a much more authentic level. I love that I can celebrate where students are individually, not compare their skill level to their peers. Do you have your own room, share a room, or travel? I have my own room What advice would you give someone transitioning to TAB/Choice? Do NOT go full TAB all at once. Make the most simple choices at first to get comfortable. Try giving them the choice of either pencil or colored pencil. Use the entire summer to switch your classroom over because you will have to rearrange your physical environment plus make mental shifts as well. Also, follow ALL the Facebook groups for Teaching Artistic Behavior! So much VALUABLE information on these pages!  Name: Abby Hanser
School(s): Berry Intermediate School, Lebanon City Schools, Lebanon, Ohio Grade Levels: 5th and 6th. I see my students once a week for 40 minutes all year. Where do you fall on the choice spectrum? My classroom consists of 7 studios: drawing, collage, painting, sculpture, fibers, digital art and ceramics. We spend the first quarter of the year doing skill practice (Around the Room activities) for drawing, collage, painting and sculpture as we open each studio. Ceramics is a temporary studio (until the clay runs out). Students can choose from any of these studios. 2nd, 3rd and 4th quarter, class starts out with a mini-lesson and the students have time to work in the studio of their choice. I give themed assignments each quarter and the students can choose the studio to complete the assignment. How many years have you been teaching TAB/Choice? I have been teaching over-all for 23 years and I have been using the TAB approach for the last three. Your why? When I learned about Choice/TAB I didn’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole! But the more I learned about it the more I started to feel that it was for my students and my students were ready to learn art in this way. They were already trying to do things in my classes that were more student-directed. So I learned as much as possible by reading, joining social media groups dedicated to Choice/TAB and observing other teachers. I began the year three years ago with a buffet style set-up to ease into more independence for my students and then after Thanksgiving I switched to studios. Do you have your own room, share a room, or travel? I am pretty lucky in that I have my own room and our building was recently remodeled. I call my classroom the “Limousine of Classrooms” because it has pretty much all I could ask for in an art room. However, if you were not granted with a “Limousine of Classrooms” this approach is definitely still very much achievable using various ways of storage and management. What advice would you give someone transitioning to TAB/Choice? For anyone interested in transitioning to TAB/Choice I would recommend to read all you can about this philosophy, observe other TAB/Choice teachers and design your program to fit you and your students. The level of choice and independence you allow your students is up to you! The important thing is doing what works for you and your students. |
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