AUSSIE

Blog entry posted May 6th, 2010 by Dale Worsley

I’ve been rattling on about “seeing” quite a bit in my blog posts of late. This is all well and good. But can seeing be taught?

My colleagues Avram J. Kline, Rebecca Krucoff, Loel Lowy, Jody Madell and Alison Ritz at The New York City Museum School certainly thought so a few years back when they designed their Global Studies World Religions module. In this unit, students were coached to take family and friends on guided tours of museums and religious sites, to share their newfound expertise and enthusiasm. In the process, they learned how to observe objects closely, feel deeply, make thoughtful connections, and develop their curiosity. Determined that their students become amazed at the world, their teachers built the “wow” factor right into the lesson plans. Here’s how it played out in a prompt sheet:

Judging by the success of the students’ guided tours, it’s safe to say the students truly learned how to see under the tutelage of their visionary teachers.

Another educator who didn’t hesitate to teach the art of seeing was MOMA museum educator, artist and author Susanna Harwood Rubin. We crossed paths at the Clinton School for Writers and Artists in Chelsea a decade or so ago. She was conducting visual literacy exercises in a general education sixth grade classroom. I attended the exercises along with a group of self-contained special education students who were normally…how do I put this?...let’s say rambunctious. For three periods over three days we all stayed riveted to the slide projection of one painting, Henri Matisse’s “Red Studio.” Susanna never led us to see anything, but guided us always by simply asking, “What else do you see? What else do you notice? We haven’t explored this area of the painting yet. Does anyone see anything here?” The special education students paid attention the whole time, and frequently noticed features no-one else saw.

Toward the end of the third day of looking at the painting, I couldn’t restrain my inner writer any more, so I pleaded with Susanna to let us record some of the brilliant vocabulary the students were using to describe what they saw. We used the vocabulary to write poems. Having recently practiced the haiku form, one student wrote a variation:

This red bowl
full of exotic bones
is time’s experiment with nature.

On the spot, I committed the poem to heart. I recite it whenever I tell this story of seeing. I don’t know what it signified to its young author, but I marvel at the “red bowl” of our bodies, and the wondrous way time has sculpted them from the materials of nature, scaffolding them with “exotic bones.”

I have used Susanna’s technique ever since, with elementary kids looking at the Seal of New York, with Earth Science students looking at reference tables, with all level of students looking at the punctuation of poems. You get the idea. A few weeks ago, a self-contained classroom of emotionally disabled high school students who were as rambunctious as the Clinton middle students – but with more body mass – took delight in a wall map of the Age of Exploration for a solid half hour. Nary an elbow jab, thrown wad of paper, or slammed door the entire time. Unheard of with this group. Given permission to see, to say what they saw, to see some more, and say some more, their more focused natures emerged.

At the New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies, teachers across the curriculum also believe they can teach seeing. They all use the “OAI” strategy: Observation, Analysis, Interpretation. The students practice their seeing skills on texts, mathematical equations, images, charts, and graphs. Looking closely before they leap into thinking pays off with deeper thoughts. (Incidentally, we know from research that for teachers to share instructional strategies like OAI across the curriculum leads to higher achievement for students.)

One of my favorite spots on the planet, San Francisco’s Exploratorium, has also embraced this practice of seeing, encoded in its motto: “Dedicated to Awareness.” (The Exploratorium is the prototype for science museum around the world.) Its founder, the physicist and educator Frank Oppenheimer, down-to-earth brother of the mercurial Manhattan Project physicist Robert Oppenheimer, insisted there be as few guards or barriers as possible, so kids can run around as they please. If exhibits break, so what? They can be sent to the open shop and kids can watch them be repaired – and improved.

In a recent book about Frank Oppenheimer by K.C. Cole, called Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up, Oppenheimer is quoted as saying, “The whole point of the Exploratorium is to make it possible for people to feel they can understand the world around them. I think a lot of people have given up with that understanding – and if they give it up with the physical world, they give it up with social and political world as well.”

If people become aware, perhaps by being taught to see, they will certainly not give up. Au contraire…shoot! Gina’s waving her red flag. I’m zooming past my word limit on the race track of this blog. I’ll have to wait until my next posting to bring my point home with the help of physicist Leo Kadanoff. In the meantime, stop and look at the roses. Enjoy what there is to see out there. It will feel good. I promise.