Art Room Rules that Support Student Inclusion

 

Whether you are just getting ready to become an art educator or you have been doing this a while you'll know that there are some things that just work well and others are trial and error. This is true with classroom management. In my last post I detailed the importance of good art room management and shared some of the things that have occurred when I didn't have good management. Like me, it may take you a while to figure out what works best. It's also very likely that each year you will need to adjust accordingly, depending upon your student population. 

In particular, one area of art room management that I have continued to adjust is art room rules. Above is the result of classroom rules that I used to have, back when I made new classroom rules every year... Yup, that's right when I first started teaching I made new classroom rules every year!

This was because my students helped me brainstorm different ideas for what they thought would be good rules. The concept and theory behind this was simple: 

• If students help make the rules, they will feel more invested to follow the rules.

This process came from my school's use of Responsive Classroom pedagogy. Now, if you are not familiar with Responsive Classroom (RC), then you should head over to their website and check out the resources they have to offer. Basically, RC is constructed around the idea that if you have consistent clear expectations students will be able to function and learn better. Part of this process to create clear expectations is having students be apart of the decision making process around group expectations... the rules! 

As you can see this lead to me having 5 different rules one year that were pretty wordy for young children. I then changed the rules each year, because my 300 students would decide on a better way to say the rules or they had different ideas. This was the step by step process I followed:

1. I asked each class: What should we do in the art room to be successful?
2. I took down the answers that every student gave me. 
3. I then sorted the answers and came up with common themes.
4. I presented these themes to students the next class.
5. Students worked on phrasing and voted which ideas they wanted to become rules. 
6. I edit and paired down all the rules to make 3-5 rules that could be followed. 
7. Presented the rules to my students and had all 300 students sign Art Room Rules. 

Above are some of the ideas I have written down during our brainstorming sessions, as you can see walking safely is a favorite!

While this process has been effective at getting students involved, having so many different rules and having them be so wordy... has not been helpful. Plus, if you have really long rules that are complicated and hard for students to understand not all students will get your rules. Like I mentioned in my previous post, ALL students benefit from clear expectations and this is most important when making your rules. I also realized that even I was having a hard time remembering the rules and reminding students about the rules they agreed too... this was defeating the whole purpose of getting students involved and making them accountable. 

But then I got lucky and my new administrator a few years ago decided to create three universal school rules that everyone could follow. This, was because each classroom teacher was doing a similar rule making process and so each class had different rules that they came up with. With so many different rules you can imagine how confusing it was for students and staff like myself who see every class.

Her three rules are as follows:

To be honest these three rules are really ingenious in that they encompass all the different ideas my students or I would have about what it should look like in the Art Room. For example when students say they should walk, they are being safe. Being safe takes care of each other and themselves. Below are some more examples of how well this works.

Even amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic, we have stuck by these rules. As my school has added mask wearing and social distancing to our list of expected behaviors, these new norms fall under our school rules. These rules are vague enough and clear enough that students can easily apply them to a multitude of situations. 

Moving forward instead of brainstorming new rules, my methodology has been to have students brainstorm what these three rules look like in the art room. Instead, I'm asking them how we can take care of our selves and each other in art. More importantly and specifically how can we take care of our space–– the Art Room! Art materials and art rooms are one of the factors that really differentiates us from other specialized programs and general education. Managing your art supplies and art room set up is also part of the puzzle that supports students inclusion. Next, post I'll give some tips on how to set up for student inclusion!

 Nevertheless, this new rule making procedure has students engaging in the process of thinking about what art class should look like so that everyone can learn and make!