mr201227 Specifying the Printmaking Teacher in A Box: On the advice of Mary Burns  

An educator named Mary Burns listed her recommendations for teachers to use as they plan for school starting in six months under COVID-19 restraints. As he read her list it seemed she was describing the specifications for the Printmaking Teacher in A Box.  

Mary Burns’ advice

Mary Burns wrote the specifications for the Printmaking Teacher in A Box, although she never heard of it. Her specifications were in an article she wrote for Edutopia, getting teachers ready for autumn quarter, 2020. He advice was to find balance between the old and the new.

As I read her recommendations, I could see her words apply to the specifications of the Printmaking Teacher in A Box, and I had a strong urge to copy-write over her advice and adapt them to my Printmaking Teacher in A Box. Now that ZOOM has been adopted as a platform-of-choice for many people, and with my escape game concept, it is time to take her cue.

Not only ZOOM, but another aspect impinges on the specifications: money. Though I may not be the only printmaking teacher who thinks about money beyond my personal needs, I may be the only one with a business plan and a product to sell.

Educators, and this may be especially true of art educators, raise their eyebrows at this. For the most part, money is not their immediate concern because they are paid. Their paycheck and the prospect of some security for the coming year allows them to shop for art supplies. It is not so for the students – especially now in America.

Not only the immediate costs (these should be taught to be investments), but he ripple effect of the art materials, tools, supplies and related industries effect the students’ ability to do the work the teachers expect.

Printmaking industry

Every art medium has associated manufacturing industries. Printmaking is not unique in this; however, it is the one field with a unique position in education. In my opinion, printmaking is as much a performing and social art as it is a visual art. This means printmaking invites the teacher and learner to break out of the bounds of the visual arts.

Because printmaking is the ancestor of all science, technology, literature, engineering, and mathematics education, teachers and students can break away from the art school and enter the other domains.

Etching, for example, involves chemistry. Press design involves engineering. Reading has become universal, thanks to printing technology. Mathematics is difficult for me to pin down – weak as I consider myself here.

We realize we are living in a time when science, technology, reading, engineering, art, and mathematics – STREAM – might be experiences in teaching and learning settings if printmaking is the “A is for Art” in the acronym.

It might be, too, that the concept is in itself a work of art, an abstract art of the dynamic kind one experiences in the performance, the act of maker, making and made.