The Seeds of Creativity

As of July 2017 I’ve had the pleasure of taking on the position of Artist in Residence in Chula Vista at the Stephan Hawking Charter School. This position offers me the opportunity to encourage and inspire young students from kindergarten to 6th grade. The campus, teachers and staff are truly amazing. There is an active farm facilitated by Good Neighbor Gardens, along with a vibrant music and dance program. During the summer we had some professional teacher training sessions focusing on Project Based Learning. As teachers we were challenged to create and implement this methodology into our programs. Since my mural art career is project oriented the ideology was a seamless fit for my teaching style. I was glad to see this type of learning was being implemented in the school system and I understand how satisfying it feels to set goals and develop concepts and see them come to fruition. It’s also common for failed attempts and unforeseen occurrences to arise during these projects and this is when your intuition and improvisation can be utilized to create new ideas and solve problems. This Is where I feel art plays a significant role in the development of the individual and as the Artist in Residence this is what I want activate within my students. Personally I’ve learned to use unknowing as an instrument of inspiration instead of hesitation when creating art and I want to encourage my students to be fearless even when the outcome is unclear.

One of the coolest things about taking on this position is that the Principle herself is an artist, a dancer, so she truly understands the importance of art and how valuable it is in shaping the hearts and minds of students. Upon hiring me I was afforded the opportunity to create my own curriculum. My initial goal was to get to know the students, uncover what art supplies were available and allow them to simply enjoy making art. For at least the first three weeks from a teaching perspective It was all intuition and improvisation I had no plan. It was the learning curve for all of us. It was awesome, they explored pastels, painting, chalk, collage, building, destroying they were stoked and so was I. The enthusiasm on campus was bubbling there was art taking place.

I now had a sense of purpose and my goal as Art Educator is to first instill that every human is an artist! And that everything is art! With this as my objective I began to determine how and what was essential that every human should know and understand about art. I used math as a means of comparison. stating that if students can grasp concreate ideas about math like 1+1= 2, 2+2=4 then what fundamental concepts should students understand about art that they will never forget? Hence I began to see how I needed to formulate my curriculum. First I began by questioning the students. What is color? Where does it come from? What is art? Where is art? And during this process I allowed the students to answer the questions spontaneously without raising their hands. Wow this created a lot of animated excitement their answers were blurted out ideas of raw intelligence. I was inspired as the gleam in their eyes and panting breath showed me they were ready to create and I was now challenged to develop a curriculum to match their energy… wow, let’s get this party started.
Every classroom had a rainbow in it but when I asked how many colors are in the rainbow there was no consist answer. However, when I asked what 1+1 or what 2+2 equals there was. This happen in every class. Yeah I thought to myself I am in the right place at the right time. I’m going to make art a vibrant and potent part of these students lives but also applicable as applied science… Party On!
Maxx Moses