{"id":52692,"date":"2003-06-03T17:53:37","date_gmt":"2003-06-03T23:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=52692"},"modified":"2020-03-19T17:56:52","modified_gmt":"2020-03-19T23:56:52","slug":"lois-stevens-teaching-art-reggio-emilia-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/lois-stevens-teaching-art-reggio-emilia-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Lois Stevens: Teaching Art Reggio Emilia Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We all live for the moments when we realize that what we work so hard toward is actually paying off and that all the faith and effort we put into a project is resulting in what we initially set out to do. As an art teacher, Lois Stevens has these moments all the time.<\/p>\n

Stevens teaches art classes to young children out of her home in Holladay, Utah, but her approach is somewhat of an anomaly. She bases her methods on the Reggio Emilia approach, which is designed to apply to all areas of early childhood education. It is a philosophy of listening to children, seeing what ideas or concepts interest them and following them in that direction.<\/p>\n

The teacher comes to class with an objective and a basic plan, but if the children\u2019s interest departs from the plan, the Reggio Emilia approach requires the teacher to be flexible and go right along with them. Teachers using this method value the role of the environment-as-teacher and think of themselves mostly as facilitators who need to discover and nurture children\u2019s symbolic languages. They strongly believe creativity is a characteristic way of thinking and responding to the world.<\/p>\n

The Reggio Emilia philosophy of teaching originated soon after World War II. Reggio Emilia, one of several small wealthy cities in northern Italy, was ravaged and devastated by the war. The city has a history of collaboration and political activism, and at the end of the war the citizens felt a widespread cultural value and shared responsibility for young children. They wanted to invest as much as possible in their children\u2019s education. They wanted them to acquire skills of creative and critical thinking essential to rebuilding and ensuring a democratic society. Thus a new teaching philosophy was born.<\/p>\n

Although the Reggio Emilia approach utilizes artistic activities in its general curriculum, it was not intended specifically for art classes. The progressive philosophy attracted Stevens and she thought, \u201cWhat better way to apply this method than to use art as a focus and simply teach art classes?\u201d The idea is the same: listen and value what children say and do because they have many more capabilities than adults give them credit for.<\/p>\n

Many art teachers demonstrate, and their students copy their style and technique. It\u2019s easy to show a child something and have them imitate you. After all, kids naturally imitate adults and are quite good at it. It\u2019s even easier to do something for them when they don\u2019t do it \u201cright.\u201d But to get children to create what they see in their minds introduces a new challenge.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Lois explains, \u201cI try never to draw on their artwork. I try never to do a lot of demonstrations because I\u2019ve found the younger children will tend to copy what I demonstrate or do. They still ask how do you draw this, how do you draw a flower, how do you draw the nose. When they ask those questions I just have them go back and do an observation drawing and look harder at the shapes.”<\/p>\n

As a facilitator of her students\u2019 creativity, Lois keeps an open mind and focuses on what sparks the child\u2019s imagination. \u201cChildren are capable and creative. They can problem solve. We as adults should be facilitators and nurturers; they know what they want to learn.”<\/p>\n

“When I start teaching I don\u2019t necessarily know where we\u2019re going to go. And so I think you don\u2019t teach children how to draw, but teach them how to look. Their artwork is just an expression of what they know and understand. They have their own way of seeing things and many times we as adults have an idea of what we want the end product to be and it\u2019s not necessarily what the child has in mind. I never tell them when they\u2019re wrong, I always try to guide them to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

This technique requires heightened sensitivity on the teacher\u2019s part and demands a special kind of patience. Some of Lois\u2019s students come fresh from art classes where the methods have been more conventional.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve noticed when these children come to class some ask what direction they should turn the paper and how big they should make things, etc. It\u2019s those kinds of questions that lead me to believe they\u2019ve been forced to do things a certain way \u2013 which I think is the antithesis of art.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is where the Reggio Emilia methods differ from methods used in most grade schools and other large art classes. \u201cI think in schools we want them on a certain track and we want them to be on the same track as all other children and the end product is most important, but the process is just as important as the end product.”<\/p>\n

“I think a lot of high school artwork is derivative. You can kind of tell there is something sterile about it. That\u2019s a natural thing because at that age they\u2019re very concerned about getting things to look right.”<\/p>\n

“Children perceive things in a certain way and you can\u2019t really make them see it differently. You can say, \u2018let\u2019s make the sky come all the way to the ground.\u2019 The children will do it for the teacher, but it doesn\u2019t make sense to them. It\u2019s not doing any good until the children understand the concept for themselves. You have to wait until they see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Children have certain perceptions of the world and how things appear to them \u2013 you can\u2019t push them. Lois likes to have all of her students draw self-portraits and then look in the mirror and draw themselves again. This exercise is meant to help them see something they maybe didn\u2019t see before.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cChildren will often draw their little figure that they\u2019ve established and they become familiar with that. Even if they learned an extra thing — like always put a neck on or there\u2019s a forehead on people — they still will go back and draw the person the way they\u2019ve always drawn them, so I like to slowly introduce new observations so it will help them when they want to draw things realistically. But that doesn\u2019t come developmentally until they\u2019re about nine or ten.”<\/p>\n

“With younger children you can show them what color it is or what shape it is and they will sometimes draw it the way it is, but sometimes they\u2019ll say, \u2018I don\u2019t want to draw it that way\u2019 or \u2018I want it this color\u2019 and I have to let them.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years ago Lois had a group of boys who would always talk about knights and castles so they made a big castle, coats of arms, flags and a big dragon out of paper m\u00e2ch\u00e9. Another class was coloring and one girl said they ought to paint sunsets. Questions arose about light and colors. \u201cWe talked about the sun and what side of the sky the sun sets on and then we went up to Wasatch Boulevard and painted the sunset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Down in Stevens’basement rests a life-sized Egyptian pharaoh created by her students. This project began when she took the class to the UMFA, where they saw the big Viola Frey statue, Ethnic Man. Lois asked her students if they wanted to make a big man and they said they wanted to. They argued for a while about what the man should be as they wrapped paper m\u00e2ch\u00e9 strips into a large figure. This activity led to a unanimous decision to make a mummy. Lois made the point that the mummy was once a person. The next week the kids brought stacks of Egyptian books from the library and decided they wanted to make a pharaoh. They ended up creating a sarcophagus for the pharaoh along with some Canopic jars and other possessions a pharaoh might take with him into the next life.<\/p>\n

Stevens believes her students will have an improved quality of life as they learn more about creating artwork. She enjoys watching them try to fix their mistakes and talk about different ways they could approach things. Because the Reggio Emilia approach to education is fairly new (especially in the U.S.) it would be premature to make claims on how it affects children\u2019s lives and their possible careers as artists.<\/p>\n

So far, the results seem to preserve the child\u2019s own creativity and style. The students build confidence and learn how to problem solve as they carry out other projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cA mother of one of my students said she noticed at school her child never hesitated as other children did when given a new assignment or project, and she just loved the confidence he showed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anticipating their possible future as artists Stevens said, \u201cI hope they will have a feeling of their own style and their own creativity especially when they get older and begin comparing their work. We\u2019ll talk about their work and how each is good but each has it\u2019s own style. What\u2019s interesting is that even 3 year-olds have their own style. They\u2019ll improve on it as they get older, but they come with a style that I really want them to keep.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all live for the moments when we realize that what we work so hard toward is actually paying off and that all the faith and effort we put into a project is resulting in what we initially set out to do. As an art teacher, Lois Stevens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art_professional_spotlight","category-visual_arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/LD-Mummy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-06 23:09:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52696,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52692\/revisions\/52696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}