Cheer Leading for Creativity
After my college graduation, I was given the opportunity to
teach two classes, one for children and one for adults, at our local art guild.
It meant working with students at opposite ends of the spectrum, from a
chronological point of view that is. From a skills perspective, I may have made a few
assumptions. But four years of creating in art school had been exhilarating and I was
excited to share what I had learned.
It was a joy to design a class for children to introduce
them to concepts and drawing skills that would engage their creativity and help
them successfully translate their vision onto the paper. Working with them brought out my natural “creativity cheerleader”. It seemed easy to encourage
and nurture these little artists as they were being introduced to new ideas.
The adult class was on figure drawing, with which I had good
deal of experience and wonderful professors to emulate in teaching. I
anticipated that they would be easy to communicate with and they would be quick
learners, because they knew "how" to learn.
There was a nice camaraderie in this class, as everyone drew
the model and we took time to discuss how to draw a hand or knee, etc. For one
student this was the first drawing class she had taken. I felt her progress was
slow, but steady, and assumed she was doing fine with that. One evening when she came in she was pretty discouraged with her
work. I remember taking her aside and flipping through her sketch book with her
so we could put things in perspective and see how far she had come. She
had actually made a good deal of progress.
She was having none of it. With each positive comment, she
ridiculed her work and even made jokes about it. In my youthful ignorance, I
assumed that, since she was joking, perhaps she wasn’t so discouraged; she was
relaxing, and being less hard on herself... I finally stopped resisting her own
criticisms of her work and laughed along with her.
It was a judgement call at the time, but to this day I
regret it. At that moment she really needed someone to believe not only in her,
but in the creative process. So often we just need to be patient with ourselves
as we learn. It is never productive to acquiesce to negativity,
whether we are projecting it on ourselves, or seeing others do it to themselves.
The lesson learned: I would always prefer to be a cheerleader
to being a jeerer. I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at judging when to be a
cheerleader, and when to offer constructive criticism. It is a skill in itself;
accurately assessing when each is appropriate and anticipating how they will be
received. I guess that’s as much a process of learning as anything else in life.
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