78 Visual Arts Research  Volume 44, Number 2  Winter 2018

Pretending to Be an Art Teacher Bart Francis

Mountainview High School,
Orem, Utah
Mark A. Graham
Brigham Young University
Daniel T. Barney
Brigham Young University

If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an

explanation.
—Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
As teachers, we often experience fears of uncertainty and failure. These are moments of
not knowing, or moments of the as-yet-unknown. We often resist these moments by fill-
ing them with the known and patching them with standardized solutions, planning, and
explanations. Schools impose rules, curricular designs, and classroom management on
teachers. To resist these constraints, teaching can be a performance of un/doing, a place of
anguish, of chance and risk. When Bart writes “Pretender” on his apron, he disrupts the
ordinary relationship between teacher and students by sharing the unspoken vulnerabili-
ties of teaching, learning, and art making. As a symbol of the teacher’s vulnerability, it
also signals the possibility of failure as a generative stance for artistry and growth.

Mark: Losing Control

One of the recurring dreams of my teaching life takes place in my high school
classroom at the beginning of the year. The students arrive on motorcycles and
start riding on the desks. The class is out of control, and there is nothing I can do
about it. My art education students share these fears of losing control and being
powerless. Within the culture of schools and pre-service programs, failure as a
teacher is often framed in terms of classroom management and control.
In my own teaching, ideas about control are manifest in the tension be-

© 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

 Bart Francis et al. Pretending to Be an Art Teacher 79

tween presence and absence, between knowing and not knowing. I wonder: How
do my students benefit from my presence, and how do they benefit from my
absence? What does my knowledge afford them, and how might my clear explana-
tions limit their own artistic efforts? What are the benefits of confusing my stu-
dents? (Kolowich, 2014). I often think that I need to be working hard, to be per-
forming in front of the class, to be in control. I need to know the answers and to
be the master of art making, instruction, or learning. But I also wonder about the
utility of doing less and letting my students learn in my absence. I wonder about
the pedagogical usefulness of not knowing.
What does it mean to fail as a teacher or as a student? How might our
teaching defeat students? What does failure afford, and how does it limit us? How
do I learn to walk on the path of the untried and the unknown? As a high school
art teacher, I remember the weight of the first weeks of school. In the beginning, I
do not know my students at all, not even their names. But as we live in the class-
room together for a few weeks, like a large lumbering, overloaded airplane, we be-
gin to take off. And then we become something more than an art class; we become
a small experimental community. They let me try things, and if they do not turn
out, they forgive me. We gradually develop a culture that encourages experimenta-
tion and tolerates failure (Shirky, 2010).
Parker Palmer describes the teacher’s deep insecurities about not knowing,
manifest as feelings of inadequacy and failure. As a teacher, I am continually put
in situations of uncertainty and vulnerability. These fears lead us to fill the learn-
ing space with pretensions as we attempt to impress by affecting greater knowledge
than we actually have (Palmer, 1993, 1998). As teachers, we never know our subject
enough, we can never completely know our students, and we hardly know our-
selves. But into this realm of not knowing, we extend hospitality toward students.
This hospitality toward the stranger or the unusual idea creates a space for failure
and the yet-to-be known. The fear, vulnerability, and uncertainty of learning are
broached by hospitality. In this environment, teaching and learning become dy-
namic, evolving, and relational phenomena.

Bart: Teacher as Pretender

Art making and teaching can lead to feelings of uncertainty, doubt, and anxiety.
Yet not knowing is an important part of my teaching and art making. There are so
many times as an artist and teacher where I am uncertain about what is going to
happen. For example, I invited a former student into class to teach us how to make
felt finger-puppets. She had expertise in this genre through making and selling soft
sculptures over the Internet. After we started, I reflected: “This project disrupts the
80 Visual Arts Research Winter 2018

traditional relationship between teacher and student. I have never made one of these
before. In fact I have only sewed a few times in my life. So instead of instructing the
class on something I know, we as a class are discovering solutions together.” Plunging
into the depths of the unknown along with my students was frightening, but at the
same time exhilarating. But, how is it that not knowing made me a better teacher?
At first glance, it seems counterintuitive to regard not knowing as helpful
rather than debilitating. As I reflect on my own schooling, I was never rewarded
for not knowing. I was expected to know the answers. However, as soon as I was
out of school and had started my first year of teaching, there were countless situa-
tions where I did not know what to do. I taught six different courses ranging from
Ceramics to Painting to Advanced Placement Studio Art. But my personal studio
experience was based in sculpture and ceramics. How could I teach something I
did not even know myself? Not knowing forced me out of my comfort zone as
I attempted to teach myself how to paint. It was stressful and hard, but things
happened in that class I could never have expected as I learned along with my
students. Not knowing forced me to research and learn things beyond where I al-
ready felt comfortable.

Anxiety

One of the things I have noticed about art is that creative acts seem to include
some form of anxiety. As an artist, I experience moments of uncertainty through-
out the process of creation. This uncertainty brings with it anxiety. Olivia Gude
(2010) points out that “anxiety is a necessary component to a truly creative experi-
ence” (p. 36). This anxiety about making art was evident in my students’ process
journals. One student reflected that the hardest part was “thinking of how to por-
tray what I want to portray on the paper. In fact, my initial idea has altered again
and again. I am still not exactly sure how it’s going to turn out.” Students are often
overcome by fear of failure to the point where they do not do anything. Another
student put it this way in his process journal: “Today so far all I’ve done is think.
I want to start today but I am nervous. This project is hard. . . . I am second
guessing my idea. It’s not a bad idea; it just might not turn out well.” His anxiety
seemed to lead to doubt, which in turn led to inaction.

Artist and Teacher as Pretender

While talking to one of my students after school one day, she confided in me that
she just did not feel like an artist. She felt that many of her ideas were unoriginal,
and she was simply playing the part of a “fake” artist. Her feelings surprised me.
She is one of the most creative and inspired students I have taught. For the 3 years
 Scott R. McMaster Pretending to Be an Art Teacher 81

I have known her, she has been constantly filling sketchbooks and scouring the In-
ternet for anything related to art. The idea that she did not see herself as an artist
was curious. How many of my other students share similar thoughts and feelings
of being “fake” artists?
With this question on my mind, I reviewed my own reflective journal and
noticed that I experienced similar feelings about acting like something I am not.
I feel like I am pretending to be a researcher, a teacher, or an artist. At first, I con-
sidered these feelings of pretending as something to keep hidden and private. The
more I interacted with my students and caught glimpses of their process, the more
I realized that many of them were struggling with these same ideas of pretending.
Perhaps pretending is not something to be ashamed of or something that
signals that you are not an artist. Maybe pretending is part of what being an artist
is. As I have pondered this, I have realized that I pretend to be all sorts of things
throughout the course of my day. There are times when I pretend to be a teacher.
These occasions of pretending allow me to suspend disbelief in myself and over-
come the anxiety associated with not knowing so that I can continue to teach and
create. In these cases, pretending becomes a productive response to my feelings of
insufficiency or lack of knowledge.

Apron of Reflection

I was convinced that many of my students felt as anxious as I did about having
feelings of self-doubt and inauthenticity. I wanted to share with them my thoughts
and feelings in an effort to help them make sense of these complex emotions. Per-
haps confronting these negative feelings publicly would bring about new under-
standings by allowing us to be more patient with the process of artistic creation.
Even though I know that my students are also anxious and insecure about
their own artistry, it is intimidating to share my own feelings of insufficiency and
fear. Will sharing these personal insights with them make them look at me differ-
ently? Will it help or hurt them? In the end, I decided that it would be unfair for
me to not share my insecurities with them. How can I expect them to be honest
and sincere if I am not willing to be honest and sincere with them? My notions
of what it meant to be a teacher were challenged as I reflected on why I was so
nervous to share these vulnerabilities with my class. I realized that, unbeknownst
to me, I had adopted the notion of a teacher as infallible, as someone who always
knows. This definition is as constraining as it is flawed.
These thoughts led to the creation of an artwork called the Apron of Reflection
(Figure 1). I wanted to make my private insecurities as artist, researcher, and teacher
public. To this end, I created a list of all of my own fears and insecurities. This in
and of itself was therapeutic. We all have doubts and feelings of vulnerability, but we
82 Visual Arts Research Winter 2018

Figure 1. Bart Francis, 2012, Apron of Reflection [Screen-printed apron. 34 × 38 in.]

keep them carefully hidden. Yet, ironically, we feel like everyone can see them and
are aware of what is wrong with us. The list I compiled was used to create the design
that was screen-printed on an apron that I wore to class while I taught. The act of
wearing these fears and insecurities in front of my students was frightening. I won-
dered how my students might react.
But wearing the apron proved to be empowering. Pretending to be an artist
and teacher shifted from a being a weakness into a strength. The apron facilitates
conversations with students about the fears we share as artists and teachers. It
made me look at my role as teacher differently. Rather than being the all-knowing
sage, I am a teacher who is continually learning with my students as I reflect on
what it means to be a teacher and an artist.

Curriculum Considerations for Not Knowing

It is tempting as a teacher to try to remove feelings of not knowing and anxiety

from the classroom by supplying a prescribed list of instructions that are fail-
proof. There is comfort in knowing what students’ final artwork will look like and
knowing that you have a systematic plan. But, rather than eliminating anxiety
from the art curriculum, it seems more beneficial to give students opportunities
to experience anxiety, discomfort, and failure and to build resilience by working
through not knowing. It is uncomfortable to teach this way because the success of
 Bart Francis et al. Pretending to Be an Art Teacher 83

a project is uncertain and the results are unpredictable and divergent. Sometimes I
am told to be less impulsive and to have more structure and better plans. But not
knowing and anxiety may be necessary factors in artistic creation and pedagogy.
Pretending is a strategy that allows me to productively move through uncertainty,
ambiguity, and anxiety.

Dan: Improvisation Within a Scene of Constraints

It is important that I re-examine what is taken for granted within the teaching
and learning spaces I inhabit. I think it is all too easy to become entangled in a
machine that seeks averages and norms over individual critical responses and self-
organizing collaborations. I worry about choosing the traditional, conventional, or
commonsensical over yet-unimagined approaches, simply because it is easier to do
so. I often borrow a phrase from Judith Butler (2004) as I conceptualize teaching
as “an improvisation within a scene of constraint” (p. 1). In this view, constraints
can act as places of possibility, rather than determining outcomes (Barney, 2009).
Any improvisation within our daily constraints can reveal a teacher’s vulnerabili-
ties and create the potential for humiliation and failure. Yet acting as an improvi-
sational bricoler can be a generative, creative methodology.
Some choices in rejecting improvisation or constructing a bricolage as a
teaching/learning/making approach are to become static or immovable, or to de-
cide to do nothing. This is what sometimes happens when students do not know
how to improvise or to draw on their own experience and become discouraged
and defeated. To be able to improvise requires skill and technique—but which
particular skills and techniques are not always known in advance of a situation. I
believe teachers and students can work collaboratively and cobble together some-
thing useful. I call this an emergent curriculum. We all pretend when we need to,
not knowing everything all the time, not knowing all the skills, not knowing all
the outcomes, but trusting, hoping, and believing we can adapt and learn as we
work independently and collectively within a curricular context.
In making my own art, I go through a series of many iterative failures, but
I never really think of them as failures since I know such moments are part of my
artistic practice. While there may be artists who work in a highly systematic way,
with a clear plan in mind before beginning, I find myself most often responding to a
series of what can be described as small risks or mini mistakes in my art making. For
me, there is a creative interplay between chance and intention as I work, between ac-
cident and plan. Art as a methodology for inquiry interests me far more than teach-
ing specific technical skills for very specific and pre-determined outcomes. Art is an
amorphous discourse and practice, not simply an object to be studied, interpreted,
or created. Art is a process of knowing, understanding, and entertaining possibil-
84 Visual Arts Research Winter 2018

ity. It is a verb, a transformative methodology of coming to know and becoming.

I imagine art as a place of possibility and a moment of critical risk-taking that en-
courages one to re-imagine what is possible. How can one know what is possible in
advance? Art can invite imaginative moments through processes of not knowing.
Ambiguity and the fuzzy form of a curricular hunch are not seen as failures, but as
generative possibilities, where problem posing is as valued as problem solving.
What if we encouraged teachers to be ambiguous in their explanations,
rather than explaining everything clearly? What is the value of confusing stu-
dents? (Kolowich, 2014). What kinds of new educational experiences would this
approach provoke? The idea that a curriculum could be an improvisation within
a scene of constraint offers a way to interact discursively within boundaries and
institutions. Davis, Sumara, and Luce-Kapler (2015) describe this balance of co-
herence and randomness as a constraint that enables. They explain that such a
constraint does not mean everyone does their own thing, nor does it mean that
everyone is constrained to do the same thing. Rather, everyone is invited to par-
ticipate in a project, challenge, or idea together, working independently perhaps,
but always accountable to everyone else. The teacher occasions learning by offer-
ing an environment in which these interactions can happen. The hope is that be-
havior in such a system becomes self-organizing rather being mandated according
to a pre-existing script. In effect, the teacher gives up control of all minor details
concerning the individuals’ work in such a classroom system. Curriculum becomes
an emergent phenomenon as students and teacher improvisationally respond to
the constraints given, including those inherent in a school system. Space is created
for unpredictable novelty and divergent thinking and doing outside the current
knowledge frame in the realm of the unknown or the unknowable.
As teachers, we share the dilemma of uncertainty and failure; these are mo-
ments of not knowing, or moments of the as-yet-unknown. But we often resist
or ignore these moments by filling them with the known, patching them with
normalized or standardized solutions and mending them with explanations. Not
knowing is troubling, especially for the teacher identity. But perhaps not knowing
is a place of generative possibility for the teacher as well as for the students. It cer-
tainly can be a troubling place of perceived failure, which can produce unwanted
results. Maybe these are the results that need critical attention. The most signifi-
cant learning, for both teacher and student, might be in the most vulnerable of
moments of not knowing. It may be more important to try something new than
to try to figure out how not to fail (Shirky, 2010).
When Bart puts on the apron of pretending that describes his fears and in-
securities, he is in a form of drag. He is not dressing correctly, as a naturalized con-
straint might dictate. He is not dressing like a teacher, with the proper pedagogical
authority that represents certainty and the absence of failure. Drag, in this case,
 Bart Francis et al. Pretending to Be an Art Teacher 85

is not copying for pure imitation’s sake, but offers new understandings through a
dramatic and often playful doing. A popular classroom management text, in con-
trast, encourages beginning teachers to assume the infallible authority of marshal
of a Wild West town, to “feel your power. Project your power. Send the bad guys
packing. Don’t you dare take off that badge” (Eyster & Martin, 2010, p. 75). This
law enforcement pretending is another kind of drag altogether, with troubling im-
plications.

Mark: The End of Planning

Butler (2004) suggests that “the social constraints upon gender compliance and
deviation are so great that most people feel deeply wounded if they are told they
exercise their manhood or womanhood improperly. . . . To stray outside of estab-
lished gender is in some sense to put one’s very existence into question” (p. 27).
There are similar social constraints placed upon teachers. The restraining gram-
mar of the teacher includes rules, curricular designs, and classroom management
that characterize traditional schooling. Thus, Dan calls teaching a performance of
un/doing, a place of anguish, of chance and risk. He acknowledges teaching as a
chance to become claimed or bound by not knowing and the unfamiliar identity.
He encourages us to vacate the self-sufficient, invulnerable persona of the teacher
by acknowledging our own becoming and development within the learning collec-
tive of the classroom.
In Brené Brown’s studies of shame and vulnerability, she observes that men
“live under the pressure of the unrelenting message: [‘]Do not be perceived as
weak[,’] . . . and that women live under the pressure of being exposed as flawed
and imperfect” (2012, p. 92). Teachers find ways to protect themselves from these
vulnerabilities by learning to disappear behind a persona or a stage mask. Bart
takes the unusual step of unmasking his own vulnerabilities within the public
sphere of the classroom. Brown shares Bart’s sentiment that “the most valuable
and important things in my life came to me when I cultivated the courage to be
vulnerable, imperfect, and self-compassionate” (Brown, 2012, p. 128). Failure for
a teacher can be a lack of self-sufficiency, not enough knowledge, not enough
control, or not enough planning or charisma to motivate students. An antidote to
the crisis of not-knowing and inadequacy could be described as vibrant sufficiency
where “a knower’s knowing is subject to constant modification; yet at the same
time, one’s sense of the world is curiously adequate. In spite of the partiality of
knowing, one is typically unaware of the gaps in understanding and perception.
That is, knowing has a certain sort of vibrant sufficiency” (Davis et al., 2015, p.
16). Rather than being a stance of static authority, teaching and learning become
dynamic, evolving, and relational phenomena.
86 Visual Arts Research Winter 2018

Teachers are taught to plan. Explanations provide armor against our vulner-
ability as we try to hide our imperfection and inadequacy. We attempt to impress
by affecting greater control, knowledge, or importance than we actually posses. Yet
improvisation and vulnerability can also inform our pedagogy. Improvisation is er-
ratic, unpredictable, and uncertain. It leaves us vulnerable and open to failure. But
artists often deliberately make wrong decisions, subverting established rules and
creating work that seems, at the time, like a disaster or failure (Dadich, 2014). In
an educational climate obsessed with control, accountability, and comparisons, it
is good to recover our sense of curiosity, improvisation, and courage to say what is
in our hearts. Bart’s apron of pretending resonates with the deep but often unspo-
ken vulnerabilities of teaching, learning, and creating. As a symbol of the teacher’s
vulnerability, it also signals the possibility of failure as a generative stance for art-
istry and growth.

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