Marcia Thompson

It is somewhat challenging to think about assessment as a retired art educator...but I have some strong feelings about the topic, many of which I can trace back to my Project Zero experiences:

·        Assessment is part of instruction and informs it.

·        Learning is growth over time.

·        Assessment should be continuous and ongoing, not something that occurs at the end of an experience.

·        All of us need to learn to assess our own work.

·        There is no such thing as failure in art, only an opportunity to grow.

As a retired educator, I am currently working as an artist, in my own studio. How do I assess my own work? Is it any good? Where do I go from here? What should I leave behind? Well, those sentences above still resonate. They are the questions every artist, from kindergarten through old age, must ask him/herself. One thing I have been doing to help the self-assessment process is something I did for students when I taught--put everything, finished or unfinished, up on the wall, so I can SEE it. Another thing is a critique group the retired art educators in my area have recently formed. Each month, we meet at someone's house for a meal and then we look at the work that artist has been working on. We don't have a formal process, but our approach is much like the PQP (Praise, Question, Propose) process I used during my teaching years. My month was in December and the words of my friends and fellow artists still float through my mind as I work and then stand back to look at what I have done. Assessment...it is ongoing and it does inform the work!