Example: Mr. Harsh
Mr. Harsh commands his classroom with a wonderful ability to pull aesthetic descriptions out of artwork and experiences, and his performances do an effective job at pulling aesthetically minded descriptions out of his students. His approach to aesthetic concepts seems to tackle both the academic, clinical definitions and breakdowns as well as the subjective experiences that aesthetic attention can provide. He introduces aesthetics as a branch of philosophy, and seems to have provided several examples such as formalism and expressionism. Alternatively, he uses ink diffusing in water to create an impromptu aesthetic experience right before the students eyes. This provides a logical framework to understand how aesthetics fits into other areas of thought, as well as the personal experience that makes aesthetics unique to each person.
You can visually see how students are engaged in their facial responses to his anecdotes and examples, as well as in their meaningful feedback to the discussion. He speaks to the students with respect, calls them out by name, and provides instruction in multiple languages to the best of his ability. He shows a large amount of effort and passion which would seem to encourage the students to give his lessons a chance. Having tied lessons to a diverse array of historical and cultural contexts, he allows students to look at art criticism and appreciation through lenses that exist outside of their immediate culture. In addition, Harsh pulls in concepts from language courses to allow those that are talented in writing to make use of their strengths in learning about art.
While he's clearly inspiring his students, I think I may do things a little differently in some regards. It seems like he goes into a variety of philosophies outside of aesthetics to a great degree judging on his prepared visual material, which isn't necessarily needed when trying to breakdown a subject like aesthetics which is already quite broad. While he speaks quite well, I think I would create more opportunities to allow students to speak and discuss with each-other. Naturally, one would also be able to make use of technology to provide visuals during a lecture as opposed to his physical material. All of that said, I think this instructor has a very empowering strategy.
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