How Artists-Teachers Create an Exceptional Learning Environment

Gerard Morris, a faculty member in the University of Puget Sound School of Music, discusses how the success of any teaching style or pedagogical process is directly linked to the artist-teacher in front of the room. Artist-teachers are in a constant state of sensitizing or desensitizing students, which has an impact on the learning environment - the reality - they are trying to create. Morris draws on the research, teaching, and writing of physicist Alan Lightman, neuroscientists David Eagleman and Jonah Lehrer, and psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to show how an increased awareness of how individuals perceive and create "reality" can foster success in the classroom.