art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

case study: xavier university of louisiana 53
opportunity to be educated [who] don’t give back to the people without
education. All of that stuff is the . . . the poetry that is [created using]
this language.
richard I focus on the commitment of the individual student. And then
my job, I feel, is to move them along to get them ready for the
university. Now, that would include getting them to understand how
to think critically, and to have a vocabulary of terms so they can talk
the language, so they can speak the language before they get there.
You know, they can speak it now. If they can speak it and if they
can demonstrate it in their work, then they can also teach it. So I
try to make teachers of them immediately. One of the things that
I got from Xavier was that you’re your own best teacher. It is so
important that that we gather as many resources available to us, and
those we don’t know about we seek out so that we become more
informed. That’s how I try to instruct my students.
Once they’re motivated towards that, then I don’t want them to
limit themselves in [thinking] they’ve already arrived because a lot
of times when they get to the university, they’ve got a head this big,
and they have no understanding that it’s still a journey, it’s about
growth, so I try to prepare them for that journey. So that when they
get to where they’re trying to go, they’ll know it, they’ll recognize
it and respect it.
We design our own curriculum. We design our own standards,
benchmarks. I know that a ninth grader who comes to me, I expect
him to know certain criteria, and to have been exposed to some things.
If they haven’t, then there’s a [process of ] breaking down . . . what
they think they know, so that they can digest what you want to give
them. Sometimes there’s resistance, but there are creative ways to
motivate them to want to know and to want to seek it out. There
are different formulas for each kid.
I spend a lot of time getting to know them so I’ll know exactly
what they need. And then, it’s also crossing the border of going into
the family and knowing the mother and the father in the present, and
so I get emotionally involved with them on some level. Not every
teacher does that.
john Now that’s the truth. I’ve known kids who have gotten highly pissed
off because I’ve called their parents. “What you mean calling my
folks?” I think that you have to ask the question, what is education? I
think education is nothing more than making people aware of their
tools for living and life. To me, [the only way of ] approaching the
whole deal is improvisation.