What Makes You Proud to be Canadian?

In my first year of teaching art, all I want to do is foster creativity. I want my students to leave that art room everyday saying, "wow, that was awesome, I had no idea that I could create something like that!" I want each one of them to know that whatever their style may be and however they create; it is amazing and it is theirs. I want each one of them to feel good about their creations. I want them to feel confident about their own individual expression. I want to drill this in now, before they get into the adolescent years, and begin to question themselves, as we all do at some point.

I struggle with this concept, because to do this, I need to create open-ended projects; projects that may be completed in any way they can imagine. The complications of these kinds of projects in an art room of 32 Grade 6 students, is that you end up with 32 different kinds of pieces, 32 different medias, 32 different styles, and accordingly, 1 million questions about techniques. Am I doing them a disservice by not teaching them all a particular technique? Are they missing some key outcomes by doing these open-ended projects?

I am not sure of the answer here, because when I get to see the finished creations of my open-ended projects, all unique, all different, my heart bursts. Below is the most recent example of this awesomeness.

I received an email about a Canada wide artistic contest called 'Here is Canada'. The prizes are awesome, and so I thought, what a great way to motivate the kids, on a theme extremely pertinent to them? The guiding question was, "what makes you proud to be Canadian"?

Take a look at just a handful of the amazing artwork that these students created...

Pencil drawing of a woodsman with snow frozen in his beard :)

Indian ink and watercolor paint :)

Mixed media collage :)

Mixed media puzzle pieces that are raised off the black paper :)

This kid is so cool... a walking stick carved with different images such as a peace sign, maple leaf, beaver, etc. :)

This girl is super talented... large acrylic painting with smaller attached canvases and leaves made from yarn :)

Watercolor painting :)

Another amazing piece... Acrylic paint on canvas

Can you believe that these pieces were created by Grade 6 students?! The talent and love for art in that room blows my mind every single day. I love it :)

So, I am not sure what the right answer is, but I know what I'm doing can't be completely wrong. How can it be when artwork like this is the result!? And so, my learning curve continues...