Sabrina Klein

To Certify or Not to Certify: Is that the Question?

Posted by Sabrina Klein, Mar 16, 2016 0 comments


Sabrina Klein

Maybe “to certify or not to certify” was our original question, but when in September and October last fall we convened teaching artists around the state of California, it became clear that consensus is emerging that the real question is “how to certify with integrity, flexibility and proper support”.

Nearly 200 teaching artists participated in person and in written responses in regional conversations focused specifically on the issues surrounding questions of professionally strengthening our field. One of our core strengths is the depth and diversity of pathways artists take into teaching artistry, with a continuum from self-taught, informally or formally mentored, individualized training, and formal academic training all providing valid and challenging forms of professional development. With increasing calls for teaching artists to step up and step in as partners in education, social services, social justice and community settings, our collaborative network thought it was high time we grappled head on with the challenges of documenting competence and making mastery visible.

While responses (and local consensus) ran full spectrum from “Certification would be invaluable” to “This is a stupid idea”, the vast majority lean much more toward solving the problems inherent in providing a useful and respected training and certification process. As one Los Angeles participant noted, “This isn’t rocket science, it’s way more difficult than that. It’s messy. This is a big, big process.”  And the potential pay-offs seem to outweigh the potential drawbacks.

Some respondents expressed the fear of losing “fabulous” people who resist being certified, or worry that we would create mediocre processes could flatten our best work. Still others worry about master teaching artists with decades of experience being left out during a transition to more formal certification.

And yet, it’s clear from the input of these practitioners that the time has come for the Teaching Artist field to tackle this sticky problem. We have an opportunity to define our profession from the inside, attract and keep more qualified teaching artists, and create broader recognition for our work and how it differs from classroom teaching. It’s a potential step to creating better work environments for ourselves, and to promote our needs as professionals. 

Of course, the devil is in the details, and the details that trip us up from the outset are sometimes overtly troublesome, sometimes very nuanced, but always complicated with no obvious answers. As many of us reminded ourselves over the course of this conversation, if it were obvious how to do this, we’d already be doing it.  But since when do teaching artists shy away from something simply because the solution isn’t obvious?

In general, those representing organizations who hire (and train) teaching artists are supportive of basic training that can be relied upon to give foundational skills. As one person who hires a lot of teaching artists for their organization says, “Every time a teaching artist walks into a teaching environment who is not prepared, is not well-trained, we lose every single person they interact with.”  And another talks about their organization’s commitment to training teaching artists to be in educational settings, which results in about one-third of all their hires leaving before they find “real competence in the classroom with their artistic skill.”

San Diego participants remind us that we are creating a “bi-vocational” model: we are artists first, but demand excellent teaching of ourselves as well. In the Bay Area, the mantra emerged to “always keep artfulness front and center,” to keep the creative process at the center of any model we might pilot. A respondent to our online questionnaire said that “the best way I’ve learned is by learning from truly gifted teachers,” and indeed, mentoring and hands-on experience emerged as essential to any training program for teaching artists.

In a variety of ways, participants felt that overall we create more opportunities than threats by committing to tackle this messy issue. Most often, people felt that we can make the opportunity to:

  • To be inclusionary with all art forms and learning environments
  • Create a flexible, inclusive and deep model for larger education goals in 21st century
  • Feel connected to each other and build teaching artist community
  • Ensure diversity in the field
  • Draw attention to the rigor and expertise required of master teaching artists.

Consensus also emerged that in order to address some of the concerns most of us have, we need to:

  • Ensure that any certification process is peer-driven, with standards created by known masters in our field.
  • Provide multiple pathways to demonstrate mastery, through independent study (or years of successful experience), professional mentoring, or more formal courses, with a peer review process that considers competence in the learning environment; professional practice in the art form; understanding and refined use of methods and skills in teaching and learning practice; and the business of being a teaching artist.
  • Determine ways to connect “knowledge and understanding” to “practice and doing.”
  • Embrace teaching as an art form, and as an extension of artistic practice.
  • Promote the importance of being well-ground in your art form as a prerequisite to teaching artist mastery (e.g., being a practicing artist with a  body of work)
  • Balance process and product, ensure that practitioners understand the relationship between the two and be able to move between them as each situation demands

So we have it: our call to action here in California.  TASC will be convening follow up groups from volunteers interested in identifying models and looking for opportunities to document learning. It’s a steep hill to climb, but one that we believe can strengthen the field and contribute to our shared goal to be equally valued peers with all our community partners.

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