Essential Questions for an Arts Educator

Recently my school has channeled most of its professional development energy towards an institution-wide curriculum mapping project -- a detailed charting of skills, content, assessments, and “essential questions” throughout the academic year and across grade levels and curricular areas. Sound like fun?

I've never felt my curriculum fit neatly into the model of month-by-month units so often served up as an example, but I've been fascinated and challenged by one aspect of curriculum mapping: formulating essential questions. Usually described as open-ended, thought provoking, and encouraging of critical thinking, essential questions may or may not have definite answers, but pondering them can spark the imagination and help probe more deeply into a subject. The question "what is an essential question" is itself an essential question, and educators such as Pat Clifford and Sharon Friesen, Jamie McKenzie, and Ted Nellen provide some interesting answers.

I’ve considered some essential questions for music in previous posts:
• Is everybody a singer?
• What's music?
• Is music transformational?

Lately, though, I've been thinking not about musical questions, in particular, but essential questions for myself as a teacher. Richard Sennett’s recent, fascinating book “The Craftsman,” which probes craftsmanship’s history through time and across domains, in search of its essential elements, has been my inspiration. Reflecting on the book’s themes and on my own experience, I’ve created a working list of essential questions for myself as an arts educator. I'll be commenting on some of these in future posts.

Essential Questions for an Arts Educator

1. To what lineage(s) does my teaching and subject matter belong?
2. Who are my students?
3. What’s the relationship between authority and autonomy in my classroom?
4. How is value of expression determined within my discipline, in my program?
5. What is the role of modeling in my classroom?
6. Am I training artists or craftspeople?
7. What role, if any, do objective standards play in my classroom?
8. What role, if any, does “failure” play in my classroom?
9. Is there an ethical dimension to my discipline?
10. What is "practice?"
11. Is there a place for "obsessive" energy in the practice of my discipline?
12. Is artistic practice spiritual practice?