Teaching at Lee

 

Personal Art History

I don't have many of my drawings from when I was very young because our house burned down when I was around 2 years old.

Drawings from the pre-schematic and schematic stages

I think playing the drums had an impact on my development when I was younger. I learned to play and my drawing seemed to have a different kind of energy.

Also, I devoted more time to music than to art for most of my middle and high school days.

 

 When I got to high school I became interested in representing the figure.

When I got to college I started experimenting with different kinds of media like paint and sculpture.

Class synthesis

Theme 1 Viewing and responding to art

I will definitely utilize the VTS technique that Mary showed us in my future classroom. Its a great way to get students interested in a specific work of art. I used it for part of a presentation in my Reading in Content Area class. All my classmates from different subject areas got really into it. They wanted to know if they were right and they came up with a lot of good ideas. Viewing and responding to art is such an important part of teaching art that I think gets left out sometimes. I know in my high school art class we rarely looked at pieces of artwork and responded to them even less. I learned so much in the first art history class I took at Mizzou and I think that students should be able to have that same kind of learning experience in a regular art class as well. Looking at art work and learning how to respond to it does so much for understanding the art-making process. Students can learn how artists make decisions about their work and how those aesthetic decisions effect the meaning of a piece.

Theme 2 Developing art curriculum

I never knew how much work went into this aspect of being an art teacher until now. Developing lessons and curriculum is serious business! The Tiger Artist experience was really an eye opener. Trying to plan everything out really made me aware of a lot of things that I hadn't thought of before. Having a group to do this with was really helpful, we were learning together and that made it easier. Developing my own unit plan was hard, but at the same time I enjoyed the challenge because it let me be creative while learning the 'do's and 'don't's of making art curriculum. I also really liked using big ideas. I have no idea how many times I've been talking to someone about what I'm doing in my classes and when I mention lesson plans they automatically go to what they know about elements and principles from their past art class experiences. When I tell them about how big ideas work with lesson plans and that with big ideas you are making meaningful artwork while also learning the basics they really seem to like that idea. Putting art in the context of your students' lives is an important thing to remember while making lessons, if you have a lesson that students can't relate to then there's no point in them doing it because it won't mean anything to them.

Theme 3 Teaching art

During my field experiences both at Rockbridge Elementary and during the Tiger Artists lesson I learned a lot about what it means to teach art. I learned that art teachers must be flexible and have the ability to adapt lessons if something unexpected happens, that being organized will save you a headache, and that caffeine is my best friend. All jokes aside, the experience I gained this semester has provided me with knowledge and tips about teaching that I will carry with me to my future classroom. During the Tiger Artists lesson I was very nervous that something would go wrong or that the students would have trouble with the big idea. But they really surprised me. If you give them the opportunity, students are capable of so much – you just have to let them show you. Teaching art is about more than teaching line and color, its teaching ideas and how to express them, its teaching how to think differently.

Through my field experience and the Tiger Artists lesson I'm proud to say that for the first time in my life I feel like I finally know what I'm doing with it.

Theme 4 Peer Units Review & Unit Self Evaluation

Writing my unit plan was a learning experience just like everything else in this class. It helped me understand the importance of exemplars and images. I'll be sure to have those things sorted out from now on in the future. I really enjoyed coming up with my own idea for a lesson and I liked getting feedback about it. I liked having the P3s because I got a lot of positive feedback along with a lot of things to think about. For my unit I need to improve a whole slew of things like how I'm going to assess the project,  having clearer goals in mind, and I also need to think about how I would obtain materials. This unit will take a lot of time so I think I need to come up with a way to integrate it through out a semester to make better use of the time I have with my students. At the beginning of the semester writing a unit plan seemed a pretty daunting task and now that I've done it I'm excited about making improvements and turning this into a lesson I can use in my future classroom.

Big Idea Book: Fantasy

 Front Cover

"Fantasy- Imagination bleeding into reality... Desires lingering in the grey area between the impossible and real life"

 Sara's Page- "Fantasy: An escape into the inner workings of ones imagination."

 Nina's Page- "Fantasy- whimsical dreams, desires, and wishes"

"Fantasy gives people the creative freedom to go where ever they want; they are free to play. Different materials can be utilized in many ways. Each mask in the book is unique so I think that fantasy is a broad enough big idea that you could encompass several lessons with it."

Back Cover

Assessment

My friends have told me before that come December, around finals time, they get a bit jealous of me. 'Why's that?' I ask them. And they tell me its because I never have as many finals as them. And its true I usually don't, at least not in the sense they're thinking of. Its because of the studio classes I take. Usually in a studio class like painting or drawing there is no written final test that you have to study intensely for. Instead we have final critiques, final projects, portfolios to turn in, or all three. My friends see this as unfair. But I still have to use everything that I have learned all semester to do well. And often times I spend more time in the studio than they do studying. I won't argue that I'm happy to not be sitting for two hours taking a pencil and paper 'memorize-every-fact-in-this-book' test. But I know I'm still being tested.

Assessment is as important in an art classroom as it is in any other subject. Assessment allows us to gather important information about students' progress and comprehension as well as information about how well our teaching strategies are (or aren't) working. I think alternative assessments are used most in art classrooms. This makes sense to me because alternative assessments, as opposed to a traditional pencil-and-paper item formatted test, allow students to demonstrate their knowledge by doing. And by doing they are more than showing their knowledge, they are still learning too.

During my field experience I've discovered that, when working with younger students, there really is a light bulb moment just like in cartoons. You can see their brains working and making ideas click together. That's what successful learning looks like. Its important to have different assessment strategies because just like each student's light switch is different for how they learn, they also each demonstrate their knowledge well in different ways. When students finally learn something, they are eager to show you.

One strategy for assessment that I've seen in my field and that Dr. Unrath talked to us about is the pre and post test method. I've seen my field teacher use this method informally by asking students questions about what they are about to do and then asking the same questions after the lesson. Dr. Unrath showed us students' before and after figure drawings. I really like this strategy because its clear for you and your students to see the differences between where they were and where they are now. I think I would like to use this strategy for assessment in my unit plan. I haven't made a lot of decisions about my unit plan yet but I think this strategy will work well with whatever I choose to do. I also like the idea of having a portfolio as an assessment for my unit plan. Having students create a portfolio will allow them to think about their work collectively. This could help them develop their own big ideas that they want to explore. And how exciting would that be? A whole class, each student with a portfolio with a different big idea...the possibilities are endless!

Journey to Art Education

I decided to use dominoes for my journey map. Every decision and event in my life created a chain reaction to lead me to where I am today so I chose a variety things- from my family and friends to school experiences to car mishaps and terrible jobs. I decorated the domino box with excerpts from one of my favorite poems by Neil Gaiman called Instructions.

"If any creature tells you that it hungers,
feed it.
If it tells you that is is dirty,
clean it.
If it tells you that it hurts,
if you can,
ease its pain."

"Trust ghosts. Trust those you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart and trust your story."

Why teach art? - Art Advocacy

In reading the first chapter of Creating Meaning Through Art this proverb shared by Cheryl Hamilton really stood out to me:

I hear and I forget

I see and I remember

I do and I understand

I think this stood out to me because not only is it the way I personally learn, but I think a lot of other people can relate to this as well.

When I was in school I never thought about being a teacher, actually it was quite the opposite. I thought about not being a teacher. My mother is teacher. She teaches 7th and 8th grade special education. And she does so much for them. I now aspire to be just like my mom because she is completely inspirational. But while I was in school I always thought I don't want to do that, I could never be that patient, I could never be that amazing. But as I got older I found my self saying 'How can I be like my mom, I want to help people, I want to show people what I see when I look at the world'. Art education became the answer. I always liked to make things and do things with my hands. But I only took one art class in high school because I was in band, and you could only do one. But when I got to college I decided to go for it and I took some intro art classes. I loved it and the next step was realizing that I wanted to bring this feeling to other people.

The article What Education Can Learn from the Arts by Elliot Eisner is striking. He is very clear about what he believes and I agree, visual arts provide so many opportunities to learners. In school I had a bad experience with an art class in fifth grade and I wasn't interested in taking anymore art classes for quite a while, and that was okay because I didn't have to. But it wasn't okay because I lost a lot of learning opportunities that way.

I believe that today more than ever a visual arts background is essential to students' education. We live in a culture surrounded and driven by images. In order to succeed students must know how to read these images. So many jobs today come from a visual arts background and to let students miss out on those chances is just as devastating as letting them slip through high school without knowing how to read a book or do math. Parents should be involved in every aspect of their children's education and that means art education too.
My program will be one that encourages students to bring knowledge from other areas into their art work and vice versa. Students will make connections to their world through the visual arts and become fluent in reading and responding to images.