It is not my job alone to teach, but a collective endeavor. A healthy environment is one in which students can comment on their understanding, knowledge, and creative process, therefore impacting change for themselves and others. I see the classroom as a cooperative complex of relationships and, if secure in its environment, provides the safety needed for students to operate at a “zone of proximal development”. As a teacher, I am empowered to teach according to sociocultural theory, and I position social, rather than individual, processes as primary in the development of higher mental functions.

Teaching is dependent on learning, and teaching the art of inquiry is paramount to my teaching practice. In the 2001 revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy, the pyramid for learning was effectively updated to include a more dynamic conception of classification. By then, the creative process and the ability of students to generate, assemble, design, and create had become the highest cognitive process and a true measure of one’s metacognitive knowledge. In my content area, visual arts, all forms of learning processes are important, but the creative process is always at the forefront. Not only do we practice creating, but we study it throughout our daily learning practice, and subjecting all learning to the rigors of creating in a social environment. It is this collaborative creative process that propels me through the classroom threshold every day, and it is that same synthesis of knowledge that emboldens student voice to own their learning, challenging their curiosity and enhancing their ability to critically think and problem solve.