The Gulf Stream (1899) by Winslow Homer.

Process vs outcome. Duality. Alan Watts talks a lot about the duality of actions. For instance, the big one, good vs evil – he talks about how foolish he believes it is for someone to want to defeat evil. How would you know what good was without it? The contrast provides clarity and without it good can’t exist because there would be nothing to compare it to. He then goes on to give a further example of how he is grateful for those who argue with him because it isn’t until someone argues with him that he knows where he stands on a particular subject. Instead of being angry he says, “thank you”.

Last night I was talking with someone about process versus outcome. Today I’m thinking of it again. With Watts’ in my head I keep thinking about how we can never ever be outside of the process. Process is a verb, an action. Life can only be lived inside of action, so we’d better learn to feel at home inside of the action because we’ll never ever be able to experience anything inside of a static noun – an outcome of a process. Yet, without that outcome how do we choose a process. You could be working to make gains in your career, you could be smoking pot to escape a feeling of dullness, or you could be drawing a comic page that is one in a series towards the goal of publishing a book – they are all processes that are guided by outcomes. It is with an intended outcome that we understand how to judge the success of our actions.

Anne Lamott once talked about how the vision for your journey guides you in the initial direction 0f that journey. That with each step towards your destination you should let go of the vision so you can properly experience the real journey as opposed to be locked into the imagined one that got you to start the trek. I think about that, too. But there isn’t ever a time where you completely let go. Life is and isn’t a dark room we’ve been thrust into that we are feeling around for familiarity within.

For each course I’ve designed for massive open audiences I revisit this series of graphics. I made this in 2014 so that when I would bring new collaborators onboard to design a course with they would be able to understand the basic building blocks of my approach to course design. Each time I finish a course I update this.

A Note: I do not think this applies only to what we’ve classically designated as “MOOC” (which to me has taken on a meaning related to the platforms that dominate the field – coursera, edx, udacity, etc.). This is my thinking on how my own pedagogy interacts with courses designed for massive access. Accessibility is important to me and in these slides I address the idea of accessibility in a multitude of ways.

This was written as a response to one of my students in the “How To Make A Comic MOOC”  within our new “MakingComics.com” Slack online community.

The Question:

I know that the challenge is to write within 16 panels for the course assignment. I also know its good for me to write within that constraint. But, I have a much longer comic in mind. Why is it so hard to write within a 16 panel constraint? (paraphrased question).

My Answer:

Concision is key! I’m also a person who likes longer form better as well. However, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is how to hone in on that feeling of “done-ness”. Without crafting a feeling of completion you can run into the bigger roadblock in the creation process – not knowing how to finish. Small projects are really key.

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Once, an eleventh grade student came to me during break in between classes. He looked excited. I was gathering my things and getting ready. This is a busy part of the school day, especially for the kind of teachers, like myself, who had 5 classes with 30 students each to teach within the day.

Needless to say, I was distracted.

He came up on me quick, “Patrick!”*

(*There were a few students who used my first name, even though I’d asked them all to.)

“Down the hall, there is a local police officer giving a presentation to one of our classes.”

“That’s nice. Why are you telling me this?” I didn’t look up at him because I was busy, though I did feel confused about why this student was so excited.

“Do you hate him? Don’t you want to tell him?”

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See the live form to download and use the protocol here.

The Greeting Protocol (aka the Daily Greeting) is a activity utilized across grade levels and ages used to start class. The greeting was designed to:

• Allow all students to speak in class at least once every day.
• Introduces students to the language needed to share emotions with others safely.
• Allows all students to be seen by the entire class every day.

Allows for teacher check-ins with each individual student on a daily basis.

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Ok, so I do not want this to come off as argumentative, and if it does it has more to do with my own pain around the subjects you are raising and less to do with you personally. (I don’t actually even know you Rob, so it can’t be personal). I know where you’re coming from when and I have respect for your perspective.

Fundamentally, however, I have always rejected this western-civ-dominated view of art. I can appreciate the language & rhetoric created by generations of fine art scholars, though I honestly find it boring and irrelevant.

As a child I would go to museums and always wonder, “Why is this painting of a guy in a fancy coat called art and the tree outside my window isn’t?” (The reason why they are different has more to do with the role of “meaningfulness” and its relationship to art, but I will wait to get into that in another post). This feeling of fine arts dysphoria followed me all through adulthood. In 2002, the choice between going into a BFA vs. going into a B.S. in Graphic Design was no contest. I went with technology. My earliest resonance with art was with comic books and the emerging tech scene had more mysteries to me than the stuffy world of fine arts. In my teens I connected to the southern California graffiti/street art scene heavily. In the fine arts world these things are deemed “low art”.

This is why I reject the definition of art hierarchy as imposed on by the world of fine arts. Furthermore I reject the terminology in my own teaching. Generally speaking, the world of fine arts is fundamentally dictated by the people who have money and power. As I have just spent the last eight years working in a Title 1 school district on the border of Mexico, to an 80% hispanic population, I find little about the fine arts world that is relevant to a general population ninth grade arts student body.

What am I supposed to tell them? “One day you can become a starving artist like Van Gogh!”

No – I wouldn’t tell them that, because, generally speaking, the fine arts world is secluded only to the rich and white.

I do actually use the elements and principles of art to discuss visual art, as well as concepts relating to visual arts. But only when they go in tandem with what we are trying to achieve within the work that the students are doing.

In general I find that the language around art is only helpful if it is used to progress the conversation around practicing life with creativity. Generally speaking, if my teaching is not facilitating joy, awe, and wonder in relation to the word “art” than I am not doing my job as an educator. At the high school level, for the majority of students, the art class they took with me will probably be the last time they do art for the rest of their lives.Art education and art language shouldn’t be a hierarchal system designed to keep people from practicing art, it should be a language designed to heighten our enjoyment of life.

I subscribe the Peter London school of thinking about art. I also believe that art is everything, and comes the moment we first perform an abstraction of a concept during our living existence. It is the wonder of interpretation. It isn’t Michelangelo’s “David” (or, rather, it isn’t JUST “David”).

If I seem a little huff and puff about this language it is because I have been on the other end of the fine arts world my entire life. I like, and practice, comic making and street/public art. I have degrees in technology and in education. I have never been put through a fine arts degree practicum, and honestly, from what I have seen – I wouldn’t want to be. I have been judged by other art educators for the entirety of the near-decade I have been teaching because I wasn’t a “real artist” (this was said to me).

I was raised by an elementary art educator who has been practicing for 33 years. She was a teacher who believed that even I could be an artist, and I always was, and always will be – no matter what a degree says about me. My mother’s art education philosophy is more of what we need in the world. One of acceptance, joy, and enthusiasm.

We need to let down the gates of this language that dictates what is and isn’t so that we can let people into our world of lifelong practice in the arts. We need to let the people in.

Hopefully I helped clarify some of the language I was using with this response. Heck, I may have introduced you to a couple of new concepts as well. If you’d ever like to discuss emerging art forms & curriculum approaches, feel free to reach out.

For the last year I’ve been working with the High Tech High Graduate School of Education, the Raikes Foundation, and Coursera to design a massive open online course around the subject of “Learning Mindsets & Skills” (aka Student Agency, aka Academic Mindsets). This is the fourth MOOC that I’ve worked on, and I am proud to say that this is the best one we have ever designed. The LMS MOOC employs the Coursera On-Demand platform which allows users the ability to start the course at any time that they want to, as well as collaborate with a cohort of peers that are synchronized with the users who start at the same, or similar times.

Here is some more information about the Learning Mindsets & Skills MOOC. Let me know what you think!

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Course: HTH 205 – Equity, Diversity, and Design

In the first half of this paper I will outline my own context, and give a specific history regarding my own interest in blended/online learning environments. This history will serve to outline the online learning projects that I have worked on and the pedagogical construction that was used to guide those endeavors. In the second half of this paper I will outline my own proposal for an equity driven blended learning school (combined online & face-to-face school). I will outline problems within the existing paradigms of blended/online education, specifically in regards to equitable outcomes. I will argue that a blended learning environment can only be successful if its pedagogical construction is centered on student voice, cultural relevancy, personalization, and equitable access to resources. Furthermore, I will argue that current face-to-face educational models fail to be adequately centered within these goals due to outdated design constraints that prevent the inclusion of 21st century cultural needs. Continue…

American public school currently lacks an understanding of its own purpose. This is most likely a result of a confusing design origin that embraced values such as racial, class, ability tracking, and cultural segregation as a necessity (Steinberg & Rosenstock, 2007) (Ladson-Billings, 2006). While these values may have, at one time, been arguably vital in order for the public school system to prosper, those same ideals are radically out of place with modern society. Due to the fact that school is constructed in a way to embrace these outdated values, the resulting design of public schooling is one that has radical implications on its own ability to be effective at actually educating students. Continue…

This is a personal learning plan for Patrick Yurick as a part of his High Tech High Graduate School of Education School Leadership residency requirements. 

What are your hopes and dreams for your learning through this program? How do you hope to grow as an educator and leader?

– Project Based Learning Blended School System Design
Since I began my career in education I’ve been interested in experimenting with ways of integrating technology into the teaching experience that serve to enhance the way students interact with the world around them. I’m motivated to do this because I’m a tech geek but also, more importantly, I’m interested in helping bring down the costs of high quality education (like HTH’s equity-based PBL) so that it can easily, and affordably, reach people who need it the most.

– Leadership Through The Lens Of Art Education
I’ve been an artist my entire life. Art is the most healing and centering part of who I am. I’m specifically interested in integrating art education into my practice so that I can help people practice the use art for healing and self-expression.

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