Classroom Talk- Kelly House

Today, Kelly House from the Montessori Charter School in Chippewa Valley came in to talk to our class about her experiences and teaching strategies. The Chippewa Valley Montessori Charter School is unique because there is not a designated grade in one classroom as multiple levels of students are mixed to help promote leadership, growth and relationships between the younger and older students.  Her classroom is set up in stations as the students get to choose what kind of material and station they will be completing an assignment or project in. This classroom management style is also called a TAB, teaching for artistic behaviors, classroom. This teaching style can also be called choice based learning, as the students can choose what ever medium they wish. She believes that when students are given more choice in their learning, they tend to “own” their work and take pride in their success. Quality over quantity is something she lives by in her classroom.

In the short two years of being at Chippewa Valley Montessori Charter School, Kelly has experimented with various teaching techniques within this classroom structure and had found that teaching step-by-step did not work as the students did much better w hen they learned on their own through the process of their artwork. In the beginning of the year she starts off with more skills-based projects so the students can become familiar with the materials and gradually works towards a unit in the middle of the year. She has developed “have to” projects that are required and meet the standards of what the students need to know. Recently Kelly has started to implement critiques into her lessons as she found out from previous students, they struggled and felt behind when discussing art and partaking in art criticism discussions.  Since a uniformed rubric is very hard to do in this type of classroom, she bases her grades off of behavioral aspects.
Overall hearing Kelly talk about choice based or TAB art education was very interesting, as this technique is not frequently implemented into schools.