Part I: How innovative approaches to assessment help to decolonize the arts classroom

CAA Conversations

Starting from a shared need to decolonize their curricula, ceramic educators Anne Drew Potter, Brendan Tang and Tasha Lewis discuss essential changes to the classroom which can help mitigate systemic concerns. They describe how acknowledging personal and historical bias can help jumpstart an ongoing conversation with students, centering student contributions to the class discourse and increasing student investment. Lewis also shares her experience employing rubric-based self-assessment in order to further these aims. Anne Drew Potter has coalesced a fascination with, adoration of, and abhorrence for the human condition into a unique sculptural language. Raised in Berkeley, California, potter has lived throughout the US and in Mexico, Germany, and Canada. She earned MFA degrees from the New York Academy of Art and Indiana University. Brendan Lee Satish Tang is a visual artist who is widely known for his ceramic work. He earned an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and he is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, both nationally and internationally. Tasha Lewis is a sculptor of many materials. She holds a Master of Fine Art from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Her academic study has consistently woven literature, theory and art history with her materially expansive visual art practice.