Pedagogy of the Home...2 years later

This semester, I gave my online students a new assignment. A Hmm… Collection, which I adapted from Doren and Millington (2019). I asked my students to collect and document 10 objects from their work spaces and reflect on the objects as well as the process. Halfway through grading their responses, I decided that it was only fair to do the same assignment as a way for them to get to know me a little better. Two collections emerged. The first, I realized, was something I began years earlier in the pedagogy of the home post, documenting the mess of my overlapping spaces of work, homeschool, artmaking and play.

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We have since moved and set up new spaces in our home. I find myself deeply satisfied when I see “stations” set up and utilized around the house. I can deal with the clutter, as long as its intentional. At one point this week, the Duplos stayed out in the office, a puzzle table was set up, a train set was out in the living room, and the markers and pens were living on the dining room table, along with the schoolbooks. I noticed the kids, particularly the youngest, rotating from one area to the next after spending some time building or coloring.
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Teachers, especially early childhood educators, know all about stations. My art teacher students frequently use this as a way to encourage exploration of materials and center student learning and meaning making. I recently heard about a concept called chaos theory from another art educator. I haven’t dug into this concept too deeply, but basically, play (and learning) happens on the edge of chaos. How do we create spaces conducive to making unforeseen connections, critical thinking, creativity and play, but not careening into chaos that paralyzes?

We (and by we I mean I designed and my husband built) put in a large workspace in our front room. There are areas for reading, working, storing, and staging. At various times it is cluttered with multiple projects (right now, I have a pile of homeschool planning, a pile of course materials, a pile of follow up tasks, and a pile of stories that our oldest is midway through typing up. Plus other random gifts that my middle offers from time to time, and odds and ends from projects, plant starts, art supplies, and more. There are, however, areas of quiet that I keep fastidiously picked up. The guest room. The sitting area where my diplomas hang and my personal quiet time materials are housed along with important reminders of my work, family, friends, and faith. A place to sit and refocus. These spaces keep us just on the edge of chaos.

The second collection came about as I was thinking about an exhibition centered around grief. How does grief and workspaces intersect?

Sometimes we’re able to prepare for grief. My grandmother was the first person I lost. She went in for heart surgery in May 2008, and never came home. I don’t remember the specifics of the complications, but I do remember taking my violin to the lounge at the rehab facility to play Christmas carols that December, as my aunts and uncles and parents and grandpa all spent an afternoon together. A few days later, two days before Christmas, she passed away.

I was away at college that fall and made a point to write cards to her. I spent a lot of time going to the same handful of places to paint small watercolors, marking the time. I tacked each of these paintings up on my studio wall, unintentionally creating a grid. By the end of the year, I had made myself a calendar, perhaps not of days, but one marking out this time of change.
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There is structure defining the edge of chaos.

Repetition, habits, routines all seem to reappear in my work during seasons of impending change. In preparing to move in (also during the start of the pandemic in spring 2020) I began drawing in ink and watercolor again. After the move, I found I had created a series of still life drawings of our kitchen table, each marking a different season, day, time. The kitchen table has been the center of our time together as a family where we eat all our meals and play games. It is also the de facto school table and maker space.

The repetition of returning to the most familiar of things - a park, a table – is an act of comfort, but also allows for seeing details. Seasons change. Plants bloom and wither. Kids put toys on the table one day and leftover school supplies or projects another. For there is consistency throughout these differences. Structure.  This act of looking, observing helps me prepare for and process bigger changes caused by loss.

​There is structure defining the edge of chaos. A structure to play and learning.

References
Doren, M. & Millington, A. (2019). A pedagogy for reflective practice: Art and Design thinking made visible using an online learning portfolio. International Journal of ePortfolio, 9(2), 75-86. 

For more on play and artmaking, see Walker, S. (2022). Artmaking, Play and Meaning Making. Davis. 

This was an interesting blog post on chaos theory in art education, though not the same context of the conversation that introduced me to chaos theory: Hillis, N. (2020, May 20). Creativity, Chaos Theory and the Space Between the Notes.  The source for the "edge of chaos" idea was Arthur Battram via 
Shana Cinquemani, who has numerous publications on early childhood art education.