Introduction: As an art teacher, I really enjoy doing demonstrations. When I demonstrate a process or a skill, I am on stage.  It is the closest thing I can imagine to being a super hero. Some of my best demos are lots of fun because they include funny mistakes and surprise endings. What I am about to explain, makes me both sad and happy. I am sad to move off center stage. I am happy to see my students become actors and moving on the stages of their own learning.

. Tell me and I forget.    Show me and I remember.              Have me do it and I understand.    --- A Chinese Proverb .

Hands-On Learning replaces Teacher Demos 
Many short demos can be converted into mini discovery activities during which every student does a programmed hands-on experiment without knowing the outcome. This is not skipping the demo.  HOL (hands-on learning) replaces the teacher demos with a qualitatively different mode of learning. HOL is doing their own demos. Unlike a teacher demonstration HOL does not abort imagined ideas before they are born. When I do a class demo, I never see what a student might have imagined had I not provided what the students watched me no as the "right" way to do it.

HOL examples: In doing hands on learning they are experiencing the joy of solving a problem with an unknown (unknown to them) answer (one definition of a discovery). Nearly any short demo can be converted into a HOL experience.

If I ask children to help me figure out what happens when some blue is added to some yellow I am helping the child not only learn the answer, I am helping the child learn how to learn and how much fun it is to make the discovery (rather than being told or shown the answer). This is why, as a teacher, I seldom show or tell anything unless I fail to think of an experiment that would work.

My job is to make known facts into questions and then design experiments for kids that answer these questions. Nearly everything in art and many things in life can be safely learned this way. The coach sets up experiments and the students look at the results and write down what they think was learned. In many instances we find that students soon learn how to invent experiments in order to invent answers. They become artists and scientists. My ultimate job as a teacher is to teach them to become self-learners that no longer need me.

Short and Simple
Often my HOL routine leads to a simple predetermined result, but it still feels like a discovery for the student.  For example: “What happens when you wet the paper, paint it yellow, and then use a clean brush to add a tiny bit of blue and watch it mix it on the paper?” In other cases, the student activity is a comparative experiment such as: “Draw a rectangle about 2 inches wide and 3 inches high. Draw one bold straight vertical lines down from the top edge to about a half inch from the bottom. Next, Draw two similar lines down from he top, but make them each a different length. Be sure they are all the same boldness. Look at your vertical lines and imagine that they are the trunks of trees growing in snowy field. Which looks closer? Which looks farther away? Why?”

This painting and the two below were painted after these students had practiced doing the experiments above No examples were shown and the teacher did not do any demos, drawings, or paintings for the students to see.

Flower paintings by Geogia O'Keefe were studied after these paintings by the children were finished.

There are countless such comparative experiments that we can invent by which to analyze visual effects in compositions. When students disagree about the results, it offers some excellent chances to analyze different experiments and different ways of seeing. I find that when I establish the culture of investigation, students soon learn to invent ways to experiment and make comparisons.

No two children make the same choices when given a chance to do their own experimentation. The divergent results allow each student to have ownership as well as for all to learn from the others in the studio. This first grader loved the way the colors blended on wet paper.

 HOLs are easier to remember: I find that learning by doing is remembered better than learning by watching. If I happen to get distracted or zone out while watching a demo, I am apt to miss a crucial step in the process. If I get distracted while I am working, it is up to me to return to where I left off.  If students miss an instruction during a demo, they are often too embarrassed to ask about it or they simply remain ignorant.

In learning, it is harder to forget a step in the process if you already did it once yourself.  For the hands-on learner, it is harder to be distracted (compared to watching a demo) because your own hands, eyes, and head are busy staying on task and wondering what will happen. The learners are looking forward to discovering results. Their minds are imagining diverse outcomes. They are being propelled by the need to know which prediction is correct. Students learn to anticipate the fun of making a discovery and analyzing how it revealed itself.

This second grader loves to incorporate a rainbow in every painting she creates. Her lily is framed by a rainbow over and around it. Only primary colors were used.

HOLs motivates creative ideas: Of course some may get different outcomes (if they miss an instruction). These mistakes are actually important ways to learn. If students make mistakes, misunderstand my instructions, or for various reasons they get unintended results that none of us could have anticipated in advance, the unintended outcomes can be very useful for launching new learning and new kinds of projects.  In art and life we learn that mistakes sometimes produce the most important discoveries. When this happens, students are learning a valid method by which artists and other creative individuals routinely get new ideas. If you look at "serendipity" in Wikipedia, it shows many beneficial discoveries that came from unintended outcomes. It is not even essential to remember the outcome of an experiment so long as students learn how to do the experiment. If they can repeat it, they will eventually remember the outcome.

HOLs help me learn to communicate better: Sometimes mistakes are merely the result of my poorly articulated instructions. I have often had to ask the class to repeat an introductory warm up because I failed to explain something clearly enough.  As I walk around the class to encourage students efforts, I often notice mistakes happening, but I do not stop them.  If some students get it wrong, I often have them all practice it again, but first I correct myself.  I am careful to take full responsibility for my unclear explanation (even when I suspect that some students just failed to pay attention).

About drawing instruction: In teaching drawing, I do not show them a drawing. I do not draw in front of them because they are not supposed to learn to draw my drawing. The goal is never to learn to copy my drawing. The goal is for them to learn to draw.

I explain to them how I am looking at something and we discuss what I notice. They then draw while using this way of looking. I explain to them how my mind is working when I imagine something that does not actually exist. They then draw something while their mind is thinking these ways. I explain how my memory works when I draw from memory. They then draw things while they are remembering in these ways. I may even discuss and have them practice alternative ways that an artist's body relates to the paper and various ways the hand holds the pencil or charcoal because these represent different attitudes toward the work and help produce nuances of expressiveness and gestural marks that produce certain feelings in the drawings.

Doing rather than watching produces different minds: School age children are forming thinking habits and brain strengths. As they learn how to learn, neurons form and areas of the brain become selected that help shape thinking habits. The biggest and most important difference between a hands-on activity and a demo are things that happen in the developing brain.  During both a demo and a the hands-on introduction activity, the mind is wondering what might happen.  As the mind wonders what might happen while in the act of doing, the brain is more apt to speculate and actively imagine many possible artwork ideas.  As spectators it is easier to simply wait and see what happens while continuing to think of other more pressing concerns. While trying hands-on experiments the ideas are more apt turn into genuine inspirations that emerge out of the student's own culture and life.  It is much more likely that a more imaginative and active thinking mind is being formed.

On the other hand, while watching a demo, the learner's mind tends to be in spectator mode. Students are watching rather than thinking. They passively wait for the teacher's outcome in order to see what the teacher wants. They are being conditioned to please the teacher rather than invent from their own experiences. The mind that is being formed is a mind that seeks to comply and please the teacher.

The hands-on activity is apt to encourage ownership of a new process or material. The student is learning a new way to do something and quite possibly practicing an idea generation process. This is basic. To be a participant problem solver is very different from being a spectator who can replicate or imitate another person's skill and solution.

A spectator-learner becomes a person who believes what is shown. If I learn by doing, I become a person that is less apt to be fooled and more apt to contribute new and useful ideas.  This is one of the most basic transformations in thinking modes that is needed to move students from being dependent to being independent creators by nature. 

As preschoolers and kindergarten children we are naturally open to experimentation. We want to try anything to see what works.  By second grade most of us have lost this wonderful openness and divergent ability. We need to find more ways to retain willingness to take risks and to learn by doing.

A studio art class, when student centered and experience centered, produces important and essential qualities of mind. While every school subject should use more hands-on experiential discoveries, questions, and comparisons as the their primary way of introducing new concepts and content; studio art classes offers unique chances for open ended discovery learning.  If all teachers converted facts and statements into open questions with solutions based on experience, experiments, and reflection; it would go a long way to improve the way minds learn to think for themselves and the common good.

Exceptions? I demonstrate when it may be unsafe for students to make mistakes. Cutting tools, such as those used in printmaking and mat cutting, can cut their hands. Of course a demonstration does not adequately assure safety. To avoid injury, students must be required to do hands-on safety-critical processes for the first time while being observed by the teacher or at least be an advanced peer who cares about their well being..

Some basic skills are very complex. They are very difficult to understand without seeing an expert execute and explain subtle actions and forming processes. I find that the best situation for teaching beginners to use a potter's wheel is to have each student at a wheel arranged in a circle so they can all see the instructor and the instructor can see each wheel.  Students each move through each stage of the process immediately after the that stage is shown and explained. In this situation the demonstration is limited to skill issues. The demonstration is broken into small stages and individuals who need additional help are tutored before the next step is demonstrated.

Is it faster to do a demo?  Yes, In the short run, it is certainly faster to get a nice student art product when you teach with a demo. However, if my students do the hands-on pre-practice themselves without a demo, I am beginning to set the stage for the time when they can learn without a teacher.

Those who argue that this takes too much time need to acknowledge that many of yesterday’s facts and statements are no longer totally true. Hence, it was a waste of time (or possibly tragic) to have learned and lived by yesterday's assumptions. Of course there are many who are sad to see their cherished assumptions fail. However, the alternative is too dangerous to consider in today's world. Those who spent time in school only to accumulating information without learning how to learn to evaluate evidence and make comparisons are destined to deceived throughout their lives.

If we can teach them how to learn, we no longer have to spend as much time on the teaching of fundamentally trivial content. Some of our efforts can be redirected toward more advanced concepts and questions. Our efforts can concentrate on qualitative learning. We can give more time and effort to the development of better self-critique skills, peer-critique skills, inspirational activities, personal interactions with students, refinement questions, and so on. If your experience is like mine, you will notice that after you teach with open questions, students will begin to imitate you.  They will begin to ask these questions of themselves as they work.  Their creativity and self-confidence will bloom like perennial lilies.

Our prescribed experiments are based on concepts that are commonly used by artists, but are often not known by students. These discoveries give students new approaches and new successes. As art teachers, we understand that these are approaches can only be invented by teachers who are also artists. When we teach this way we see that students are pleased to be learning new things that help them become stronger artists.

I also find that most students can eventually learn (with coaching and encouragement) that they can set up experiments to learn whatever and whenever they need to learn. When they do the pre-practice instead of watching a demo I am hoping they habitually do more pre-practice and experiments to see what works best. When they ask for help, I can avoid giving them suggestions. I can ask what they have already tried. I can ask them what else might be compared? A teacher's greatest success is for students to become independent of the teacher. - end of essay ^^^ back to top of page