Showing Teens the Human Side of Art

By Laura Angelich
June 19, 2018
Index Magazine

Showing Teens the Human Side of Art

Artwork © Joseph Kosuth/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York High school students from the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School discuss a print by Joseph Kosuth in the museums’ modern and contemporary art galleries. As part of the Graduate Student Teacher program, select students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education spend a year collaborating with teachers to bring high school classes to the Harvard Art Museums.

Think back for a moment to when you were a teenager. It might stir fond memories—best friends, first dates, driver’s ed—but also a few you’d rather forget: braces, moodiness, awkward growth spurts.

As a high school math teacher in North Carolina I regularly did this myself; I tried to put myself in the mindset of a 15 year old in order to guide students toward a deeper understanding of abstract concepts. I have come to believe that most of the negative ideas associated with teenagers are a result of the view that they are not fully “adult.” As a student in the Learning and Teaching program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) for the past year, I have discovered that this reputation follows teens into the specific context of an art museum as well. 

While I had previously suspected this discomfort, my fellow teachers and I came face-to-face with it—and attempted to dispel it—during the past year. Along with nine other HGSE graduate students, I worked as a graduate student teacher at the Harvard Art Museums. We collaborated with teachers at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS) to bring high school classes to the museums several times throughout the semester for visits tailored to their course curriculum. I worked with courses ranging from U.S. history to studio art to Greek mythology. Although I plan to continue to teach math in the future, the interdisciplinary approach embraced by the Graduate Student Teacher program has helped me reflect on the connections between seemingly discrete academic subjects. 

I now see both math and art as collective approaches humans have taken to understanding the world around us. One could argue the same for science, literature, and even religion. Each of these disciplines has something to teach the other about ways of searching for answers to the biggest questions in life. In my work as a math teacher, I have found that high school students are especially attuned to these questions and that they constantly crave connections between people and between disciplines. I set out to learn how other subjects are taught in order to inform my own practice as an educator, and that is how I found myself in the one-year Graduate Student Teacher program.

As museum educators, it is our job to highlight the intentional choices and happy coincidences that make the art world what it is.

To many high school students and even to adults, math can seem like a set of rules that magically descended upon us, a system that has always existed and will forever exist. Of course, this is not true; math has an incredibly human history. In my classes, I tell stories of mathematicians who met each other at parties, who were killed in duels, and who experienced sexism or racism, or both, in their careers. These people, and many others, worked together on the human project we refer to as mathematics, and it is important that students are able to see themselves as future contributors to this project.

Similarly, the works at the Harvard Art Museums have a distinctly human history—a history that is vivid to those of us who have studied the amazing stories of artists’ lives and work. However, the idea that artists, curators, donors, and architects make deliberate choices that help bring an art museum to life is oftentimes beyond high school students’ immediate comprehension. As museum educators, it is our job to highlight the intentional choices and happy coincidences that make the art world what it is. This challenge—creating an understanding of the distinctly human history of the art museum—made my work as a graduate student teacher marvelously similar to my work as a math teacher.

One day while teaching a group of CRLS students in one of the galleries at the Harvard Art Museums, I asked a question: “Why do you go to art museums?” Especially given that this particular group was from a studio art class, I expected enthusiastic responses.

What I heard instead was “Because I have to” and “Because my parents make me.” When questioned further, the students mentioned that they found the echoing halls and wide spaces intimidating. They were afraid that they might do something wrong, be too loud, or look too young to be trusted in these spaces. In short, they did not feel as if museums were for them.

To me, these reactions make our work as graduate student teachers all the more important. We know that the Harvard Art Museums are first and foremost a place for students to learn with and through art. Through initiatives like the Graduate Student Teacher program, we can teach high school students to bring their full humanity into an art museum with activities and lessons that are meaningful to their lives and to the content they are studying in school. They are, of course, the next generation of artists, curators, and museumgoers; their agency will have a role to play in the care and interpretation of the works in our museums for many years to come.

As for me, I’ll be taking into my future classrooms the lessons I have learned about collaboration across disciplines, among teachers, and between generations. Rather than straining to fathom what high school students might be thinking, I have learned it’s easier just to ask.

 

Laura Angelich earned her Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in May 2018.