Teaching Resources and Reflections
Thinksheets and Handouts
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Powerpoints
Day One:
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Day two:
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Teacher Example
Teaching Reflection
Surprises
My student’s ability to creatively take ownership of the project in ways that I did not intend surprised me the most. For example, I didn’t anticipate students asking if they could make their contour cutout more than one color. When my students first asked me this I stood and thought for a second and I decided, why not? I asked the student if that was what he wanted to do, and he said yes. It was in that moment that I decided that I was not going to step in the way of my student making an artistic decision about his piece. This decision that I made was based on the fact that I want my students to feel free and able to make their own choices when creating. This goes to show the flexibility of teaching and how there may be choices that you must be prepared to make impromptu. This student inspired others to use more than one color for their color wash; therefore, students began to wonder what colors would work nicely together which introduced a color theory component to my lesson that I hadn’t really thought about too much before this instance. It was this situation that made me realize the importance of responsive teaching. What also surprised me was how my students truly appreciated and noticed the format and aesthetics of my visuals and classroom resources I shared with them. The interactive components of my visual board helped my students understand key concepts as well as engaged them in physically doing something directly related to what they would be working on individually later on in the class. My students learned the concepts better because of the extra thought I put into my visual board. I could tell that my students appreciated the work and time I spent making my visual board because they commented on how much they liked it and even wanted to keep their nametag! This made me feel good as a teacher as well as made me realize that students really do care about the time spent providing exciting presentations for them, the students. It also set an example of the effort that I would like to see from them in the classroom with their own projects. I can tell that they understood the concepts that they had the chance to interact with on my visual board because their finished work showed me that they understood the connections between interests and core values. I saw this in the sophisticated level of core value words they selected.
Best
Student Responses
The first time I taught my class on day one I received a positive vibration of energy from my class and I knew that I had to match this energy in order to effectively teach them. Students were repeatedly willing to share their ideas in classroom discussions which demonstrated that they felt at ease in my class and confident enough in the environment to share their own ideas. With every teaching day that went by I noticed that my students got more and more comfortable with me and had no problem asking me for help. I created an environment that was built on the foundation of acceptance and open dialogue which allowed for my students to be themselves and therefore trust me as their teacher. Through a constant willingness to be vulnerable in discussions and confidence to ask questions it dawned on me that my students trusted me enough to ask for my help and a healthy, beneficial student-teacher relationship had been formed. Since my students had trusted me, they were more willing to dig deeper into their soul and produce work that makes them vulnerable but expresses who they are and what they want to say to the world.
Questions/Dialogue
Throughout my teaching experience my students always engaged in classroom discussions. From discussing famous artists on day one to participating in questions that I posed in introduction and closure activities for review, my students never hesitated in contributing. The most meaningful conversations to me were the conversations that took place one-on-one with each student. My students were so willing to share who they are through the means of their project. This is also due to the comfortable environment and community of learning that I had created for them to be a part of. Hearing students share why they depicted certain interests/hobbies within their project really opened my eyes and deepened the meaning of these images. I have gained insight on who my students are as individuals. Learning about why they chose certain images and why they chose certain core values has been the most important part of this experience as a teacher. I could tell that I had earned their trust because of how I was so open with who I am to them. This allowed them to open up to me about who they are. Students have revealed personal aspects of their life to me and I have also disclosed information about myself to establish a wholesome bond and relationship creating an artistic community of learning.
Problem & Solving
On day one of teaching I could already pinpoint which students should not sit together as they are a distraction to each other. To solve this problem, I implemented a seating system as an organizational strategy. Students everyday would sit and work where their nametag was placed. Since this project was so large-scale, this system also helped because I could ensure all students had enough space to work by placing their project on the floor with their nametag because students need that space to be able to work without feeling uncomfortable or crowded. If students are any kind of uncomfortable, they cannot do their best work. This particular seating system also gave me the power to choose where students would be working as I knew who worked well by who and who should be separated. This helped the peer tutoring system run smoothly as there were no problems that occurred between students during the work time. This management strategy also helped me divide my class into two groups for critique day. Since critique day was the last day of class I knew exactly who I should put in each group so that the most beneficial conversations would take place and students would remain on task throughout the activity. Another problem that occurred was that students came across the issue of having an extra puzzle piece or two. I gave these students the option to come up with their own solution to this problem. I wanted these projects to be a visual representation of who they are, so they should be able to have a good amount of agency and make it as much of their own as they so desire. Student choice allows for beautiful ideas and work to be created while showing students that they are trusted. When students feel that they are trusted, they are more likely to take risks in their work which leads to endless possibilities of art breakthroughs or life changing decisions at large. However, with this mentality the more freedom I gave my students, the less control I had on the end product. I became okay with this because I felt the more liberty students had with creating their own project, the more likely it is that they would learn something for themselves and feel better about their project which is more important to me.
Organization
Throughout my lesson I had my students up and moving around a lot really which helped my students stay engaged. At the fifth-grade level, students need to be given activities and projects that allow for them to have the time and space to move around so that they are able remain focused on the task at hand. Students at this age have a lot of energy and most of their day is in the same classroom, most likely reading and writing in a seated position. My lesson allowed for my students to physically be involved with what they were creating from the first day of tracing their contours to the last day of putting together their puzzles. I used the management strategy “eyes and ears up hear” on the first day of class which established a routine for my students to be able to recognize and know when to be quiet and listen. Providing students with organized lists such as the list of core values and typography gave students a necessary foundation as thinking about core values is not something that they may have not done in the past and gave them the power to choose with core value words they would like to use. Students thought deeply about what core values to choose for their project. This also enabled them to learn new academic language.
Quality of Student’s Work
Because I knew that my students had so much space to cover as this project is life-size I constantly stressed the importance of filling up the space within their project. I challenged my students to think about what they want people to see on their project if they were standing fifteen feet away from it and I did some demonstrations on the whiteboard on how to effectively fill the unique shapes that they divided up their puzzle into. This lesson allowed for my students to strategize on how to fill space that they themselves created. This independence motivated and encouraged students to fill their own spaces as they made those spaces to work in to begin with. Most of my students painted their images and wrote their core values large which worked well with their overall project well as the project is large in scale anyway. The top benchmark piece selected exhibits neatly painted images in spaces that had been obviously thought out, core value words that made sense with their concept written in a typography that clearly identifies that core value’s meaning, a pose that is interesting and creates a silhouette projecting the energy and personality of the artist who made it, and an even color wash so that there are no white spaces present. The lowest benchmark selected does not show that thought was put into all aspects of the project resulting in a loss of communication of the student’s message overall.
Ideas for Improvement
Student Responses
A reoccurring problem that I faced was students finishing at different times which happened multiple times throughout the project. I had some students who still needed extra time at the end of the project which was solved by me coming in to work with these students individually. On the other hand, some of my students would finish early and then have nothing to work on, so they would just sit there or distract other students who were still working. In the future, I plan to set stricter deadlines so that the students who still need to get work done are motivated to finish and stay on schedule. I also plan to have activities specifically for my early finishers so that all of my students can remain focused and on task throughout the class session. All students work differently and at different paces, so this is a way of using differentiated learning as a way to include all students throughout the lesson.
Questions/Dialogue
While I had no problems getting students to participate in classroom discussions, I do need to work on acknowledging students who do not have their hands raised. It is wonderful that so many of my students wanted to share their ideas but and I want to hear from everyone because I want each of my students to know and feel that I care for every one of their thoughts. I also must realize that it is just not feasible to have every student share. In the future, I plan to make more of a conscientious effort to call on every student equally.
Problem & Solving
During critique day of the lesson I originally asked students to share what they were the proudest of regarding their project to the group that they were assigned to. This was problematic as I noticed students were freezing up when asked to share this information about their own work to the group. I improvised and solved this problem by asking other students in the group to share something that their classmate did on their puzzle that was successful. This helped the critique overall as students began to positively comment on each other’s work I observed one student mentioning how she enjoyed the detail that another student put into the fox image she had painted. In general, less pressure was put on the students to talk about their own work because all students were then conversing with each other openly about their work. There was no longer tension of one student “presenting” to their group members, an open dialogue between the students was the result of this responsive teaching. I do not believe that my students have not had much experience doing a more formal critique, so it was very new to them which caused apprehension when asked to discuss the positive attributes of their own work. The interactive nature of this critique allowed for my students to actually put together each other’s puzzles which was a nice way to engage my students and introduce a critique to a younger age group who may not have had much prior experience with an art critique.
Organization
The most challenging part of my project was working with projects that are so big. There were many days within the lesson that I had to transport my student’s work which was quite difficult. With all the travel, the projects at times became bent and a bit ragged. Finding proper drying and storage space can be logistically complicated but essential and comes with the territory of teaching art. There can always be a creative solution for problems like these. In this case, my student’s projects were placed outside when wet with the sun shining and wind not blowing.
Quality of Student Work
I learned that as an art teacher coming in, I should never assume students’ technical skills and abilities before actually knowing or finding out myself. My students were unsure of how to mix paint in order to achieve secondary, tertiary, and neutral colors. With more of a review on color theory and mixing of paint, my students could have been more successful. With this project, my students had many concepts to grasp that I feel as though I did not have enough time dedicated towards technical skills. If I were to do this project again, I am considering having students collage pictures into their puzzle instead of painting them and stressing composition and unity. This would also prevent and eliminate vine charcoal underdrawing smudges from occurring.
Differentiated Learning
What I determined worked best for my focus student Jorge is one-on-one individual attention. The individual attention proved to keep Jorge focused and encouraged because he does not dwell on the negative thoughts that he seems to so often have. It also pushes Jorge to the next level artistically and conceptually. He has proven to be a student that will stay at the same working level unless he is pushed by someone or something else. He is unable to do it for himself. This tells me that Jorge works the best when someone can help him work through his ideas and build his confidence in the process as he does not have the confidence in himself/for himself. Throughout the teaching experience I have tried to build Jorge’s confidence and help him realize his artistic potential by asking him what he believes he is doing successfully throughout the project. This has helped Jorge but there was not enough time for a complete transformation and change in self-perception.
Conclusion
Throughout this experience I have learned the true complexity of planning and teaching art to middle school students. As a teacher you must follow a schedule but be ready for surprises. You have to manage individuals bounding with energy but get them to focus hard enough to create work that has meaning and originality. A teacher wears many hats throughout the day. All hats must be specially selected to fit for each particular occasion. What I have learned to value the most about teaching is that I am learning just as much as I’m teaching. I learn from my students just as much as they are learning from me. This community of scholarship is inspiring and gives me the motivation to keep bettering myself and never stop growing as an educator. While giving students choice and providing them with engaging curriculum students will surprise you their capacity to challenge themselves and push themselves past the limits to create powerful work that expresses who they are and what messages they want to communicate with the world.
My student’s ability to creatively take ownership of the project in ways that I did not intend surprised me the most. For example, I didn’t anticipate students asking if they could make their contour cutout more than one color. When my students first asked me this I stood and thought for a second and I decided, why not? I asked the student if that was what he wanted to do, and he said yes. It was in that moment that I decided that I was not going to step in the way of my student making an artistic decision about his piece. This decision that I made was based on the fact that I want my students to feel free and able to make their own choices when creating. This goes to show the flexibility of teaching and how there may be choices that you must be prepared to make impromptu. This student inspired others to use more than one color for their color wash; therefore, students began to wonder what colors would work nicely together which introduced a color theory component to my lesson that I hadn’t really thought about too much before this instance. It was this situation that made me realize the importance of responsive teaching. What also surprised me was how my students truly appreciated and noticed the format and aesthetics of my visuals and classroom resources I shared with them. The interactive components of my visual board helped my students understand key concepts as well as engaged them in physically doing something directly related to what they would be working on individually later on in the class. My students learned the concepts better because of the extra thought I put into my visual board. I could tell that my students appreciated the work and time I spent making my visual board because they commented on how much they liked it and even wanted to keep their nametag! This made me feel good as a teacher as well as made me realize that students really do care about the time spent providing exciting presentations for them, the students. It also set an example of the effort that I would like to see from them in the classroom with their own projects. I can tell that they understood the concepts that they had the chance to interact with on my visual board because their finished work showed me that they understood the connections between interests and core values. I saw this in the sophisticated level of core value words they selected.
Best
Student Responses
The first time I taught my class on day one I received a positive vibration of energy from my class and I knew that I had to match this energy in order to effectively teach them. Students were repeatedly willing to share their ideas in classroom discussions which demonstrated that they felt at ease in my class and confident enough in the environment to share their own ideas. With every teaching day that went by I noticed that my students got more and more comfortable with me and had no problem asking me for help. I created an environment that was built on the foundation of acceptance and open dialogue which allowed for my students to be themselves and therefore trust me as their teacher. Through a constant willingness to be vulnerable in discussions and confidence to ask questions it dawned on me that my students trusted me enough to ask for my help and a healthy, beneficial student-teacher relationship had been formed. Since my students had trusted me, they were more willing to dig deeper into their soul and produce work that makes them vulnerable but expresses who they are and what they want to say to the world.
Questions/Dialogue
Throughout my teaching experience my students always engaged in classroom discussions. From discussing famous artists on day one to participating in questions that I posed in introduction and closure activities for review, my students never hesitated in contributing. The most meaningful conversations to me were the conversations that took place one-on-one with each student. My students were so willing to share who they are through the means of their project. This is also due to the comfortable environment and community of learning that I had created for them to be a part of. Hearing students share why they depicted certain interests/hobbies within their project really opened my eyes and deepened the meaning of these images. I have gained insight on who my students are as individuals. Learning about why they chose certain images and why they chose certain core values has been the most important part of this experience as a teacher. I could tell that I had earned their trust because of how I was so open with who I am to them. This allowed them to open up to me about who they are. Students have revealed personal aspects of their life to me and I have also disclosed information about myself to establish a wholesome bond and relationship creating an artistic community of learning.
Problem & Solving
On day one of teaching I could already pinpoint which students should not sit together as they are a distraction to each other. To solve this problem, I implemented a seating system as an organizational strategy. Students everyday would sit and work where their nametag was placed. Since this project was so large-scale, this system also helped because I could ensure all students had enough space to work by placing their project on the floor with their nametag because students need that space to be able to work without feeling uncomfortable or crowded. If students are any kind of uncomfortable, they cannot do their best work. This particular seating system also gave me the power to choose where students would be working as I knew who worked well by who and who should be separated. This helped the peer tutoring system run smoothly as there were no problems that occurred between students during the work time. This management strategy also helped me divide my class into two groups for critique day. Since critique day was the last day of class I knew exactly who I should put in each group so that the most beneficial conversations would take place and students would remain on task throughout the activity. Another problem that occurred was that students came across the issue of having an extra puzzle piece or two. I gave these students the option to come up with their own solution to this problem. I wanted these projects to be a visual representation of who they are, so they should be able to have a good amount of agency and make it as much of their own as they so desire. Student choice allows for beautiful ideas and work to be created while showing students that they are trusted. When students feel that they are trusted, they are more likely to take risks in their work which leads to endless possibilities of art breakthroughs or life changing decisions at large. However, with this mentality the more freedom I gave my students, the less control I had on the end product. I became okay with this because I felt the more liberty students had with creating their own project, the more likely it is that they would learn something for themselves and feel better about their project which is more important to me.
Organization
Throughout my lesson I had my students up and moving around a lot really which helped my students stay engaged. At the fifth-grade level, students need to be given activities and projects that allow for them to have the time and space to move around so that they are able remain focused on the task at hand. Students at this age have a lot of energy and most of their day is in the same classroom, most likely reading and writing in a seated position. My lesson allowed for my students to physically be involved with what they were creating from the first day of tracing their contours to the last day of putting together their puzzles. I used the management strategy “eyes and ears up hear” on the first day of class which established a routine for my students to be able to recognize and know when to be quiet and listen. Providing students with organized lists such as the list of core values and typography gave students a necessary foundation as thinking about core values is not something that they may have not done in the past and gave them the power to choose with core value words they would like to use. Students thought deeply about what core values to choose for their project. This also enabled them to learn new academic language.
Quality of Student’s Work
Because I knew that my students had so much space to cover as this project is life-size I constantly stressed the importance of filling up the space within their project. I challenged my students to think about what they want people to see on their project if they were standing fifteen feet away from it and I did some demonstrations on the whiteboard on how to effectively fill the unique shapes that they divided up their puzzle into. This lesson allowed for my students to strategize on how to fill space that they themselves created. This independence motivated and encouraged students to fill their own spaces as they made those spaces to work in to begin with. Most of my students painted their images and wrote their core values large which worked well with their overall project well as the project is large in scale anyway. The top benchmark piece selected exhibits neatly painted images in spaces that had been obviously thought out, core value words that made sense with their concept written in a typography that clearly identifies that core value’s meaning, a pose that is interesting and creates a silhouette projecting the energy and personality of the artist who made it, and an even color wash so that there are no white spaces present. The lowest benchmark selected does not show that thought was put into all aspects of the project resulting in a loss of communication of the student’s message overall.
Ideas for Improvement
Student Responses
A reoccurring problem that I faced was students finishing at different times which happened multiple times throughout the project. I had some students who still needed extra time at the end of the project which was solved by me coming in to work with these students individually. On the other hand, some of my students would finish early and then have nothing to work on, so they would just sit there or distract other students who were still working. In the future, I plan to set stricter deadlines so that the students who still need to get work done are motivated to finish and stay on schedule. I also plan to have activities specifically for my early finishers so that all of my students can remain focused and on task throughout the class session. All students work differently and at different paces, so this is a way of using differentiated learning as a way to include all students throughout the lesson.
Questions/Dialogue
While I had no problems getting students to participate in classroom discussions, I do need to work on acknowledging students who do not have their hands raised. It is wonderful that so many of my students wanted to share their ideas but and I want to hear from everyone because I want each of my students to know and feel that I care for every one of their thoughts. I also must realize that it is just not feasible to have every student share. In the future, I plan to make more of a conscientious effort to call on every student equally.
Problem & Solving
During critique day of the lesson I originally asked students to share what they were the proudest of regarding their project to the group that they were assigned to. This was problematic as I noticed students were freezing up when asked to share this information about their own work to the group. I improvised and solved this problem by asking other students in the group to share something that their classmate did on their puzzle that was successful. This helped the critique overall as students began to positively comment on each other’s work I observed one student mentioning how she enjoyed the detail that another student put into the fox image she had painted. In general, less pressure was put on the students to talk about their own work because all students were then conversing with each other openly about their work. There was no longer tension of one student “presenting” to their group members, an open dialogue between the students was the result of this responsive teaching. I do not believe that my students have not had much experience doing a more formal critique, so it was very new to them which caused apprehension when asked to discuss the positive attributes of their own work. The interactive nature of this critique allowed for my students to actually put together each other’s puzzles which was a nice way to engage my students and introduce a critique to a younger age group who may not have had much prior experience with an art critique.
Organization
The most challenging part of my project was working with projects that are so big. There were many days within the lesson that I had to transport my student’s work which was quite difficult. With all the travel, the projects at times became bent and a bit ragged. Finding proper drying and storage space can be logistically complicated but essential and comes with the territory of teaching art. There can always be a creative solution for problems like these. In this case, my student’s projects were placed outside when wet with the sun shining and wind not blowing.
Quality of Student Work
I learned that as an art teacher coming in, I should never assume students’ technical skills and abilities before actually knowing or finding out myself. My students were unsure of how to mix paint in order to achieve secondary, tertiary, and neutral colors. With more of a review on color theory and mixing of paint, my students could have been more successful. With this project, my students had many concepts to grasp that I feel as though I did not have enough time dedicated towards technical skills. If I were to do this project again, I am considering having students collage pictures into their puzzle instead of painting them and stressing composition and unity. This would also prevent and eliminate vine charcoal underdrawing smudges from occurring.
Differentiated Learning
What I determined worked best for my focus student Jorge is one-on-one individual attention. The individual attention proved to keep Jorge focused and encouraged because he does not dwell on the negative thoughts that he seems to so often have. It also pushes Jorge to the next level artistically and conceptually. He has proven to be a student that will stay at the same working level unless he is pushed by someone or something else. He is unable to do it for himself. This tells me that Jorge works the best when someone can help him work through his ideas and build his confidence in the process as he does not have the confidence in himself/for himself. Throughout the teaching experience I have tried to build Jorge’s confidence and help him realize his artistic potential by asking him what he believes he is doing successfully throughout the project. This has helped Jorge but there was not enough time for a complete transformation and change in self-perception.
Conclusion
Throughout this experience I have learned the true complexity of planning and teaching art to middle school students. As a teacher you must follow a schedule but be ready for surprises. You have to manage individuals bounding with energy but get them to focus hard enough to create work that has meaning and originality. A teacher wears many hats throughout the day. All hats must be specially selected to fit for each particular occasion. What I have learned to value the most about teaching is that I am learning just as much as I’m teaching. I learn from my students just as much as they are learning from me. This community of scholarship is inspiring and gives me the motivation to keep bettering myself and never stop growing as an educator. While giving students choice and providing them with engaging curriculum students will surprise you their capacity to challenge themselves and push themselves past the limits to create powerful work that expresses who they are and what messages they want to communicate with the world.
In-depth Daily Reflections
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