This past year our school participated in Career Day. I had the opportunity to host a Toy Designer from Mattel and my students and I enjoyed a lively presentation on her job responsibilities, benefits and expectations. This toy designer lit up as she talked about her career choice and the joy she experiences everyday doing what she loves. As she shared her day-to-day responsibilities, one thing that stood out time after time was the word “collaboration”. She could not do her job without collaborating with her peers and fellow designers, without collaborating with the design team in Hong Kong, without collaborating with the motion picture movie teams that inspired their toy designs. Collaboration and communication seemed to be just as important (if not more so) as the designs and innovations themselves.

Today, If you were to google “21st century skills” in relation to the ever changing job market, the first 2 words that you will see come up are collaboration and communication. In that same list you will also find the desired skills creativity, social and critical thinking skills, productivity, innovation, and perseverance. What better academic is there to teach these 21st century skills, than Art class?!!!

As art educators, we are always having to defend our classes and argue it’s significance and relevance. I actually begin each new school year with a presentation on the importance of art, expelling any student’s prejudice or skepticism before they let them affect their performance or attitude in my class. I mean, how could anyone disdain art? Everything we enjoy in life has been created or inspired by an artist! The buildings we occupy and live in, the clothes we wear, the movies we watch and video games we play…. Everything is touched by an artist!

Besides, even if a student does not have great plans of  attending art school or carving out a career path in the arts, the skills taught and learned in art class are invaluable and will lead to the development of 21st century skills that can be applied to any career path they choose in the future.

We must assume that most kids who take our classes won’t become artists, and that’s ok. That fact does not mean that our classes are any less important. On the contrary, our classes provide exposure to skills and creative outlets that no other academic offers. So the job then, of the art educator, is to create opportunities for students to practice, hone and develop 21st century skills that can be applied to their futures, no matter what that may be.

Creating assignments and learning expectations for collaboration and communication in art seems daunting… Art is normally such a personal and independent practice, but the process work leading up to the final project can offer opportunities for this.

Below you will find two examples of Collaborative assignments  we offer our students in our various units of study.

If you are looking for a fun, active learning assignment, check out this awesome COLLABORATIVE GRID ASSIGNMENT! There’s a bit of teacher Prep involved, but once done, students have the opportunity to fully understand the importance of drawing 1 square at a time ACCURATELY to achieve a successful WHOLE image. Each student is responsible for their one square, but they learn quickly how to communicate and find other students who have pieces next to theirs. Students collaborate by placing their drawings side by side, and work together to fix and alter their pieces so that the drawing flows accurately. I choose not to tell them what the image will be in advance, so they get excited trying to guess what it is as each new piece is placed. It’s so fun to see it all come together. Here are the steps: