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  Home > Resources > Spotlight on Good Teaching > Claiming Your Education

Claiming Your Education

An Interview With Leon Johnson

Last spring Leon Johnson, assistant professor in Fine Arts, won the Ersted Award. This award acknowledges faculty members who have "taught comparatively short periods and have demonstrated exceptional abilities to induce students to reason and not merely memorize."

During the time when I had planned to interview Leon, I noticed that he was teaching a zero week course on Book Structures. I decided that one of the best ways to learn about award-winning teaching was to experience it as a student. It was my intention to enroll as an observer, but the first question Leon asked was--;"Are you going to participate?" I said,"yes," without much thought. Leon's class was intriguing, stimulating, challenging and replete with resources for whatever direction students might want to take the art of bookmaking. It was full of surprises. Bookmaking was so much more than I had imagined. I discovered that it could be performance art, sculpture, an innovative and interactive play experience for a child or a metaphor for a relationship between a mother and father.

While the centerpiece for the class was learning the fine art of creating soft and hard cover books using traditional methods, the purpose of the course was to introduce us to the of what a book could be. We had practical tasks to accomplish--;learning how to select paper and tools, making size, color and texture decisions and learning how to sew and glue our signatures together, put the cover on and work the spine until it was secured for a lifetime.We were also challenged to give visual form to a book concept, which we presented on the last day of the class. I met with Leon this summer and asked him to talk about what he was trying to accomplish in his classes.

How do you get your students to think critically in your courses?
The challenge comes relatively late in the term. It's a sort of set up job. In the first two weeks I attempt for us to collectively come to a realization of what's at stake. We're here for six hours a day for ten weeks. We have lives, issues, complexities, and pressures. This ten weeks can range from being a necessary prerequisite grade to what the class has become--;a very exciting laboratory where people end up empowered and arrogant in the best way and proud of the work. The first two weeks I spend working on a theme as a template. Through a variety of strategies, I attempt to identify what's at stake for people participating in their lives. I make this idea very clear and then do not insist at all that this goal might be something they want to achieve. I choose not to validate a work by a grade. I use the grades insofar as anyone shows extreme disrespect for the group, or the classroom, or me or the work. One of the things I help people to think about is the hierarchy of that which is important--;1) the object is an element, 2) a fabulously prepared fifteen minute one-on-one conversation in my office is an element, 3) a wonderfully witty, insightful e-mail is an element, 4) a coffee conversation in the hearth...

I make it clear that there are a lot of ways students can participate--; as a group in spirited debate, or one-on-one. By the end of the ten week session it's clear to everybody what they have accomplished and what they have missed in terms of potential by not participating more comprehensively. For those that have, it's the most gratifying part of the work I do. Students are truly walking around like English pop stars, empowered that they have produced something for which they can claim ownership.

How do you succeed in getting students to that place?
In the first three weeks of the term I have three comprehensive reading packets which are very carefully selected. Inevitably there's a page or two with excerpts from other writers and artists. These packets are expected to be annotated (questioned and analyzed) and brought to the following class. My job is to construct a packet which allows multiple avenues of access where someone can say--; " This pisses me off" or "This woman is saying just what I've always thought." The packets provide a lot of opportunities to kick against questions, subvert, celebrate. Students have to turn in annotated packets after group discussions. Then, based on those packets, I schedule one-on-one meetings and say--; "Look, I think these two questions you're asking are right on. What were you trying to ...."

There was one quote by a French theorist, which said "What have I done with all my unnamable others? I have exhorted them to silence." This was for a project I introduced called To the Surface--;bringing to the surface that which has been relegated or hidden or in the closet. How does it manifest? How might we design it around the body, this concept of naming these unnamable others?

The first three packets tend to be provocative hooks. Then there's also very specific material to that week's project. The third part is nutrition--;stuff we can consume--; articles about artistic license, responsibility, how work can elicit the most unexpected kind of responses. Within the packets I have an avalanche of visuals in the first three weeks--;lots of slides, videos. There are ways for people to identify how people talk about work, how they think about work. By the end of the three weeks students are clear on what I mean when I say creative graphics--; how inclusive that might be. I talk about establishing a contract with the class, with their colleagues and with their creative practice. What is it you aspire for&--;with me, with the class, with the ten weeks and ultimately with your own creative practice? And the final challenge is--; Does your vision of your creative practice have any overt sympathies with how you want to live your life? Is it everything? Is it the first thing you think about? That's not necessarily better than someone who says--; I want a much more manageable and efficient relationship with my creative practice. With those sorts of options I want them to be able to clarify with everybody so that we have a common language for what we're talking about. Then anywhere along the trajectory, in terms of the contract, in terms of the creative practice, I can define aspirations. Where do you want to posit yourself? And where you posit yourself for this class is not gospel. You can rethink it, you can rewrite it, you can reject the contract afterward. But we need a system for every minute of the time we're together that allows us to be aware of the degree to which we are participating or not participating, we're contributing or not, consciously or unconsciously. It's the lifeforce of the laboratory.

Students start presenting in the first week. They present their first project. There's an incredible amount of emphasis in my visual continuity class on presentation strategies. I expect people to be presenting from conviction--; honestly, truthfully. I expect them to find a way to have as much personalized power in their presentations (not give it away to anxiety) and to understand that the process is incremental. The story needs to be as interesting as the object. If there is some baggage about this, then they need to talk that through, not relegate it to a position below the object, the print, the photograph, the painting. I don't expect the story to be conversational and anecdotal. I expect it to be a prepared text with some criticality of language.

By the first presentation the anxiety is as palpable as cream cheese. People give it a shot and try to be present. And even if they only have a toehold on confidence and conviction, they begin to identify early on how possibly destructive anxiety is and that it's manifested for a particular reason. It is not balanced with enough preparation so that you can identify a place for yourself where you can say a few simple, honest things that are supported. If you start with an apology, you have instantly ruined any opportunities for the work to live and have any resonance. Nine out of ten people find a way to apologize for their work in the first weeks. I ask them to think about why they are apologizing. Where does the apology fit into a scheme of creative practice?

So within the first week or two we get good feedback about how the materials are being used and applied. I end every class at least a half an hour early to allow for one-on-one meetings after every session. Nobody's thrown in the deep end. There is always an opportunity to meet with me in a space that is purely about furthering clarity. I did eighteen years of theater in San Francisco and New York and it's been enormously useful to me in terms of helping students work through their anxieties about presenting. So often it starts with, "Who gives a damn what I say about this dinky little abomination of a project?" There are ways to identify the problems and to find ways for people to be present in class. I've had people present on videos they produced, for example. I think one of the reasons why I've had some effect in the classroom is I'm up to my ears in my own work--;failures galore and successes galore. I have an active studio practice that is physically in a studio and it's at Kinko's at eleven o'clock, it's in dialogues. In the space of one term I did a performance in Portland, an installation in Seattle, an exhibition of photographs in New York; I participated in a storytelling marathon at the WOW hall; I was engaged in printing two offset publications; I was preparing paintings; I was making handmade papers, I was binding books. I practice what I preach. I demand for myself a comprehensive set of avenues to make solutions and then ally solutions and synchronize solutions.

Without my own practice, it would be a sham. In terms of understanding the complexities of process, in terms of understanding the trajectory from concept to product issues of dissemination, distribution , interactivity, inclusivity--;all those things I am constantly seeking out, failing at miserably in my own practice. If there's one thing I've learned as an educator it is that I am thoroughly prepared for my classes. Thoroughly. There is never a doubt that I come prepared--;visuals, my own script for the class. Students have to rise to some level beyond mediocrity. I don't come to my class and find students sitting around reading the Emerald. They are ready to start. The preparation is nothing more than a template for ravenous inquiry that I'm equally after.

The ten weeks we have is in no way like the ten weeks they might have heard about last term. There is the template--; I'm prepared, I'm focused and ready to honor the ten weeks, but what we can manifest together is not yet written. We can't script the dialogues, we can't script the stories, we can't script the despair. It's coming, and I want a part of it. People have responded to my hunger for discovery. One of my curses and one of my strengths is that I am constantly scanning everybody in the class. I know the degree to which people are present. I know when somebody checks out. I refuse to lose a grip on orchestrating a place where people want to be present.

From Lizard 46 Fall 98

 

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