What makes a good art teacher?
I had a couple of different art teaching styles at school myself – my first secondary art teacher was a fine artist who would insist on us doing continuous line drawings, pencil techniques, pen and ink exercises, perspective and dimension exercises etc. At the time, we hated it, as the other classes were learning screen printing, sculpture etc and getting to do big pieces in unusual materials. However, when it came to later on in art and I had teachers who were more into design/scultpure, I found his methods invaluable. I think a good art teacher should: 1) teach the technicalities of good drawing as a basis for the pupil’s own creative development of those techniques 2) encourage and nourish a pupil’s own artistic slant without enforcing the teacher’s own view and style on the pupil 3) teach the pupil the variety of materials and their wide uses so that the pupil can experiment in lots of different methods 4) allow the pupils to experiment in other aspects of art, e.g. design, textile
