Side-effects

There have been a few side-effects from my research so far, one is that I have been drawing a lot more, but the main one is a change in my attitudes towards teaching and the way I teach. Although I have always stressed the process over the finished piece, I used to give a lot more design guidance than is needed for the students to gain a creative boost for themselves.
This year I decided to use what I've been reading and let the students drive the lessons more. I devised a project inspired by the Tim Burton exhibition I visited during the summer. It featured many pages from childhood sketchbooks that later developed into his film characters. Drawing was Tim Burton's way of dealing with the isolation he felt growing up in suburban America. Using this idea I asked my students to use their lives as inspiration for an art project with the final product being a fantasy creature / building etc. I set tasks along the way to emphasise the research element, including visual brainstorming about themselves, researching mythological creatures and reflecting on the process as they go along. You can see some examples of the work on my art room blog (stmelsart.blogspot.com).
They were all very enthusiastic at the start, but anxious to get on to the final task. Since then I've encountered a lot of problems. I think there are many reasons for this including the way they have been taught up to now, their reliance on computer games etc. for entertainment and a belief that the way to research is to type a word into Google search and print out the results. Thinking for themselves is not something they are used to doing.
I had one disastrous class a few weeks ago where I spent most of the time shouting or waiting for silence and nobody got any work done. I had given out pages explaining the task and steps involved, but no one seemed to know what to do. After that I took time to figure out what went so wrong. I felt like abandoning the project, but decided to reflect on it instead. I realised that it was so different from the usual way of working that the students were panicking. I would have panicked too if I had to do it at their age. They are so used to being told exactly what to do, or learn, that when faced with too much choice they had no idea where to start. Several times I was asked 'when do we get to the good bit?' or 'what are we doing today?' I've figured out that there has to be a balance between the students' freedom of choice and the guidance I give them.
I went in the next week and rearranged the furniture, starting with a circle of stools at the top of the room and easels as well as tables in the rest of it. We started with a group discussion of what had gone wrong and then some directions for where to go next before they each found a space to work that suited them. The room has been a lot calmer since and, although there still is a long way to go, I now feel there is some hope that my art room will become a place where students learn to think creatively for themselves as well developing the art skills they need to do well in the state exams.