After four years of working with the NWP, I am extremely demanding about my professional development, so I came to the Clarice Smith American Art Education Initiative at the Smithsonian with some trepidation. I am pleased to say I have not been disappointed after the first day.

The morning started off a bit rocky since the caterer’s truck was lost, so the breakfast was not served on time. Given the propensity of the UIWP to eat and eat often, this initial set back could have been a deal breaker. The Art people obviously don’t eat as much — or as often — as the writing people, but I hardly starved to death. Apart from the food issue, though, the rest of the day was a suitable challenge.

On this first day, we learned about our cohort, got a good background to the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, heard a keynote address from a Harvard professor, and learned about Visual Thinking Strategies. Although that technique, as the name indicates, deals with visual arts, the possibilities for carryover into other types of learning seem obvious. The questions are simple but are amazingly adept at getting students to move beyond the easy and obvious. Then we moved out into the museum to practice the technique, which was much harder than it looked. One important point of the technique is for the teacher to keep quiet and simply move students to carry the discussion. Even though I advocate this technique in any class, I found it difficult to keep from jumping in and pointing my group to aspects of the painting I noticed.

The day came to a close at the Renwick Gallery, another building with a long history and beautiful architecture. This time allowed all of us in the cohort a chance to look at more Art and also eat again. The food was good, the wine was free, and the conversation was engaging. The rest of the week promises to be even more busy but also full of practical ways to expand my students.

The highlight of the day for me was the tour of the building where the American Art Museum is housed, the third oldest Federal building in Washington. It has survived fires and near-demolition at a time when the building was in great disrepair. What thrilled me the most, though, was the fact this building served as a hospital during the Civil War and was the place where Walt Whitman worked as a nurse. Not the type of Art the workshop aims at, but certainly the best fact I learned today!

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