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Reflect on your own educational background to develop your own teaching methods
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PAST LEARNING EXPERIENCES
- Think about your own educational biography - educational autobiography - What have been high points? Low points in your educational history - Can you remember educational excellence or an inspirational teacher? - What parts of your educational didn't work? - What was the reason? - Do they have relevance to the course you are starting now.
: SINTA TANTRA
I was born in New York 1979. My parents are from Bali, Indonesia and I am the youngest of five. Our family travelled around the world lots because my father was a banker living in Indonesia, Singapore, New York and London. This is why all my brothers and sisters speak English as well as Indonesian with a different accent. Luckily for me I only had to change schools once when we moved from New York to London. My first school that I went to was PS 144. The PS stood for public school and the 144 stood for number 144 primary school in Queens, New York. My mother told me that 144 was quite a handy number as 12 multiplied 12 was 144. I remember having shouty teachers at PS 144, being regularly sick on the school bus and lining up by the door for the fire drills.
Infant school in London was great - learning, playing, playing and learning. Nothing really to do with the teachers, just the fact that everything was an adventure - from playing in the sand pit to learning the alphabet, learning and playing became one squishy bit of plasticine. But from the age of nine, primary school started to get a bit boring for me. School became about trawling through text book after text book, answering question after question, reading line after line, thing after thing. The worst part for me was that we had to do everything together - start together, finish together. Everything just went at a steady pace which was perhaps too steady for me. No glitz, no glamour, just a tick here and a cross there.
Extra curricular activities after school were more my thing - gymnastics, choir, piano, balinese dancing, french horn, drama, and Saturday orchestra. Within these places I was free to work at my own pace as well as working with others in a team. This was good for me as I started to recognise and value my own individual importance within a group. If I didn't turn up to the Christmas play, who would have played Elf number 3?
My Secondary School was a bit better but much the same as primary school. I did more extra curricular stuff to feed my boredom - chess club, netball, basketball, tennis, cross country running, french club, jazz band, opera singing, trumpet and more piano.
I went to a different school for Sixth form college and it was there where I met my favourite teacher Mr. Livesey. Mr. Livsey taught art at Camden School and funnily enough also taught Eliza Bonham Carter - who also taught me for my MA at The Royal Academy. Mr. Livesey not only believed in my talents but treated me as an adult. Art gave me lots of space to be creative, make mistakes and learn from them. The glitz and glamour of A' Level Art was not really in the grades or the showcasing of work but in the fact that art enabled me to think more abstract.
After A'Levels I went and did an art Foundation. Art foundation was like going to infant school again - lots of mess, learning and discovering. After foundation I went to the Slade and then after the Slade I went to the Royal Academy. Both places were really very good in lots and lots of ways but they were also harsh and competitive at times too. I don't really know why this was so but I guess its because students can be very ambitious and artists can be very neurotic. Tutors didn't really help with this as they often had favourites but of course you also didn't mind if that favourite was you.
Royal Academy seminars were particularly harsh. There were only 17 of us in the year and we would meet one day every week for three years. I hated these seminars but kept on telling myself that it was just like drinking medicine. It seemed we got told off for being too quiet, told off for being too nice - people got upset if other's were being too critical, people got upset that other people only stood up for their own mates - it really was quite ridiculous that after three years the balance and harmony of this year group was just never right. I think that the tutors wanted the atmosphere to be a bit like a debating society or the house of commons. Either way I felt there was something very unmodern about this way of learning and just concentrated on my personal tutorials and studio work. The good tutors kept me on my toes, challenged and questioned me. They praised me when they thought something worked and encouraged me when it didn't work.
Surprisingly I had no extra curricular activities in art school I did however though work as Playworker during the holidays (working with children aged 3 - 11). Eventually I ended up managing and then went on to do training for other playworkers. This is where I learnt about workshop and training techniques. I felt that as the person leading the workshop it was important to make your participants feel like they were contributing to their own learning and development. This can be done through collaborative learning groups (just like we are doing) - learning, sharing, feeding back. But even before this, its important to spend time getting to know your participants - giving them time to get to know each other, giving them time to get to know you. Having a good harmony in the group means that individuals can voice their opinions within some sort of common understanding. To get the group going I like playing ice breaker games to get them talking and relaxed.
So why am I on this course? I guess I'm on this course because I'm passionate about my art career and passionate about teaching. I'm passionate about the ways in which learning, sharing, teaching, making art, curating and exhibiting can be one squishy piece of plasticine - but unlike primary school this plasticine needs to have more professionalism, glitz and glamour I hope.
