The end of the day brought extreme exhaustion and landed me in bed way before my normal time.
The time is growing near when I will be looking for my own classroom to invite learners to make art. I wonder what and where it will be.
Crystal Hinds |
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Today I was the substitute for my mentor teacher. I expected it to go just as other days had, I was supposed to have a parent helper and our visiting artist was coming just as she did every day for the last month. I was also starting a new part of a lesson with half of the classes. We introduced clay today for K through 2nd grade, and although the Kinders used model magic it was still very teacher involvement heavy. I feel like instruction went well, but the learners were very aware that things were a little different. I feel that they were more rowdy today. For this placement my mentor and I have decided on a co-teaching model, sometimes it is her supporting me, or me supporting her and other times we bounce back and forth, we have also taught simultaneously for groups. So all of this did not happen during today. It was only me and for the clay bit, an awesome parent helper. Today has made me realize why parent helpers are so very important, especially with certain materials. For most of the classes we have jobs set up for each numbered seat at the color coordinated tables, but distributing clay really does not fit well into that model. This usually makes material gathering go a lot smoother and invests the learners in the whole process. I really feel like the allotted time for electives is way too short for elementary. I do not know what would be the best way to solve this problem but I feel like there is a solution out there somewhere. This rotating schedule with each class of the grade level works for organization and space but is really limiting in learner engagement and work time. Some learners breeze right through the work and usually finish with the day's task before time is up, but there are many that usually take the entire class period and have a difficult time stopping where they are to continue another day (that may be next week).
The end of the day brought extreme exhaustion and landed me in bed way before my normal time. The time is growing near when I will be looking for my own classroom to invite learners to make art. I wonder what and where it will be.
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I am in my first week of Elementary, and things are going rather smoothly. Leaving my high school learners was difficult. Before I left I requested that learners fill out a survey to help me in my quest to become a great educator and facilitator of art. More participated that I had expected, and the feedback felt honest.
I feel that there is much to learn from this elementary placement, and perhaps I will reserve judgment until this placement ends. It is really different in that I feel there is more to do and less time to do it. On average I see 150 learners every day, and not the same learners every day. There are 500+ students in the elementary that I am placed for student teaching. As much as I would like to learn every kids' name I feel like it might be unrealistic in the amount of time that I have there. If I were in a elementary art position, it is reasonable to assume that you have a little bit of time to build that name recognition base throughout their years in your art room. That part of the elementary position is favorable, watching them and facilitating their learning throughout their beginning years. Noticing their mental and artistic growth sounds amazing. We will see. There is no time to think or plan. Little time to prep or change gears from one class to the next. The days do go fast though. For this week I am observing and trying to figure things out. Transitions are hard. Coming up on week 6 of my first placement, my second observation and recording myself teaching for personal reflection. So much to do yet, and so little time to accomplish.
Ed Camp- EdCamp Reflection I attended an Edcamp in St Vrain District on Saturday. It was my first event like this, so going in I did not really have any concrete expectations. So, what is EdCamp? It is a gathering of teachers and educators who come to network, discuss and problem solve. At the beginning, there is a blank google doc with a public link, people within the group fill in the spots. There are five columns and 10 or so rows, the rows represent rooms within the school and the columns time slots. If you have a topic you would like to discuss with your peers, problem solve or get new ideas, you enter it in the slot. Then people of like interests go to that room and discuss the topic for an hour or so. My role was to be a fly on the wall. I was there to listen and absorb, but was not without comment toward the end of the conference. I feel rather lucky that I was able to sit in on some very important art ed conversations. We talked about Modified Choice, Assessment in Art, Process over product and what that really looks like, Motivation, Modeling, and talking to learners about their work. There were many side conversations that happened as well. Truly an informative day. For me, the portion of the day with the most impact was seeing these productive conversations happen. How engaged my peers were at problem solving, teaching one another, making suggestions for further understanding. I will definitely be attending more EdCamps in the future. Seminars- Throughout my semester of student teaching I am required to attend quite a few seminars. First by Colorado State University and by the district I am teaching in. They are separate and cover different topics. Both have been informative and helpful to round out the experience. The CSU seminars are a great resource for peer reflection, seeing and hearing how my peers are doing in their placements. The problems or celebrations that they are experiencing, how they are managing them, and getting suggestions for my own. It is really valuable. The district seminars are specific information about district topics. Such as hiring process, policies, tech specific, and also support. In this respect I feel that I have landed in a very supportive district. There are some things that I have been made aware of that questions that theory but none that I am concerned about. Both experiences have been really helpful and informative so far. Planning- This has been the heaviest portion of student teaching. I understand how important it is to plan out your lessons, it has proven to be a very valuable skill and I am appreciative of the time spent learning how. I have felt however that the unknown variable keeps popping up. There really needs to be a lot of flexibility in your planning and how you execute the plan. These variables could be anything from time to threats, fired drills and pep rallies. Thus far, I have had to rewrite my plans, reschedule lessons or just not deliver them in favor of some other concept or preparatory technique. You have to be fluid, rigidity has little place in this profession. The most difficult thing I am facing currently is time. My time is almost finished at the high school level and I am just starting to feel comfortable there. I know all of my learner's names, in two weeks I will be back at not knowing any. It is a really difficult way to go about it, but it will be fine. Word of focus for the next few months: FLEXIBILITY This post has been waiting for sometime now.
In August I will begin the final semester at CSU, but not at CSU. I will be student teaching. I am excited and terrified at the same time. I know it will be the best part of my education thus far, but the anticipation of the unknown is tangible. I have prepared for my high school placement with some skeleton plans. It is really difficult to see what needs to happen until I have seen the room and met the students. Luckily, my mentor teacher has a comprehensive website that has given me a little insight as to order of operations in her classes. I have based my planning on that. I will be taking, from the start, all four of her beginning sections. My thoughts on that are that I will need to know what multiple preps feels like and there is no reason to not take the opportunity when I have it. I have met with both of my placement mentors a couple of times and will be meeting with my elementary mentor in just a short while to discuss our plan for the second half of the semester. I would love to utilize some learning from the Africa trip, and share some experiences. We will see how it plays out. On May 20, 2017 I embarked on a journey to South Africa, accompanied by 13 other fellow classmates and professors from Colorado State University. We arrived late on the 21st to our new home. The mission: to learn about Sotho speaking peoples and their art, the education system in South Africa from an arts perspective and experience the country's natural environment and contemporary artists of South Africa. Our visit was located centrally around Qwa Qwa in the Free state, located just outside of Lesotho. Over the four weeks that we stayed we worked in 10 schools including one school specifically for differently abled learners, and an after-school program. While we were there we also participated in several community service events. We helped with building a church, cleaned up a heritage monument, and engaged in neighborhood events. In all of the schools and programs that we worked with the learners, they were so excited. Our lesson was based on stories, connecting and getting to know one another. We introduced ourselves through a story about our life, where we come from, how we learn, why and what art we make and what inspires us. We asked our learners to create a visual story about themselves. Through the art making process they learned that communication can happen visually, that stories are not just words, and some studio habits along the way. Most of the classes were about an hour long, some were longer. The longer classes allowed the students to more fully explore their ideas, where as the shorter classes maintained an air of material exploration. Most of the learners that we worked with had created art previously, but it was not part of their regular curriculum. Some of the students regularly worked in pencil, and it was difficult for them to "go with the flow" of painting. Even though it was different and sometimes difficult for them they persevered and created their work. There were 12 educators, we split into 6 groups of 2. During the first few schools there were not enough classes for all 6 groups so we re-organized into 3 groups of 2. This worked out well for the educators that had less experience or were nervous about this style of teaching. Speaking of, we as educators had to be very flexible and ready for changes to the plan. Sometimes it was a challenge, but for the most part I feel like everyone did very well. There was so much art created in the short time that we were there, we could not possibly bring all of it home. In each of the schools we offered a choice to the learners, they could keep their work or donate one of their works to possibly be displayed in the exhibition at CSU. Most of the work the learners did was donated. This provided an interesting opportunity for the educators. We participating in curating the show that will be on display this fall at CSU. From 200+ paintings, prints, and scratch art we narrowed it down, as a group, to 40 works. As mentioned, another part of our mission was to learn about local artists of Sotho and contemporary artists of South Africa. We also participated in several community building activities. Below are some photos of the events we participated in as well as the artists that we visited.
A whole semester has passed, as evidenced I have been really busy with this final semester on campus at CSU. On top of my final phase edu course I also needed to finish up with two studios and a capstone in my chosen concentration. These last two months have been particularly involved and time consuming. Meeting my placements for next semester in my student teaching capacity, finalizing show requirements for capstone exhibition, meeting extra-curricular requirements for education courses and focusing on the kids and their learning. Now that has all come to a point of closing, a time to reflect on what happened.
In the beginning of my 450 EDU course I was very nervous about teaching high school age students. I was not sure what to expect from them in terms of engagement, attitude or work habits. Turns out that my recollection of high school and how teenagers are, especially about school work was a little skewed. Most of the students were less engaged with school overall then I remember being or seeing when I attended high school. Now knowing this I will need to consider more interesting engagement strategies in my placement next fall. I have two placements as is the norm with art education, the first one will be with Silver Creek high school (a little closer to home) and my second half of the semester will be with Niwot elementary. Both schools are very exciting places. I have met my mentor teachers both of which are pleasant people. I am excited to work with them. Now that my studio practice and course study is finished I am excited to shift my entire focus on working with students, and how best to engage them. I do hope to find time for my own work to continue, I believe it is important to make time for your own expressions. even if you only have time for contemplating the next piece. I am currently getting ready for my next big adventure. I will write more about that at first chance. I plan to be able to add some of my experiences to this page as it will be relevant. My philosophy of technology use in the classroom is: 21st century technology and tools can be key in differentiated instruction. Learning to research, explore and utilize the tools that are available through technology is also an important part of using new tech in the classroom. Keeping students aware of what tools are being used in the world for different tasks is preparing them for real world experiences. Holding students accountable for their learning, behavior and use of technology will encourage responsible practices. I do feel that if it does not serve a need pertinent to their learning, then it is a distraction and not a useful tool. As for my classroom there are a few Web 2.0 tools that we discussed over the course of the semester that I can see incorporating into my instruction and management. Programs such as Google classroom, Schoology and Edmodo for an online presence that students can access assignments at any time, ask questions and review requirements. I would research more possiblities for e-portfolios and in that vein I would incorporate wevideo into lessons as a way for students to reflect on their work. This and many other video editing tools could be used for clean and polished documentation of their processes, as well as creating their own videos as a form of expression. So many possibilities. I can also see myself using poplet or some of the SMARTboard plugins to review art learning habits. In the art room most of the tools I learned about this semester really do not apply, so there are limitations to the use and effectiveness of some tools, but there are just as many out there that really cater to the artist and expression. Such as 3D printing and design, video editing and animation to name a few. Incorporating assistive technology in an art room could really change the way the students create and interact with art. One really big possible limitation is funding availability. There are ways to raise money for technology purchases, of course. I have two more semesters of exploration and learning before I will be looking for a job, during that time I will continue to research what other 21st century learners are doing in their classroom to incorporate technology, as well as keep an eye on the industry and professional development sites for new resources. I will also begin to plan how to really incorporate, with meaning technology resources into my instruction and classroom environment. I really like the twitter feed for EDUC, ARTed and a few others. Some of them are really all about tech in the art room. I also keep an eye on Pinterest people are doing amazing things every day. I strive to be one of them.
Friday was the last official day of classes for this semester. It was also the last day of our Lab school experience with the Polaris students. I feel sad that I will not be seeing them next semester. It was a bit of a rocky road learning to just be the teacher, but I feel good about our experience and where it will take us. It was perhaps more valuable than some of my other educ classes in that the experience was authentic and the responsibility was on me and my peer/co teachers. Learning to work in a group/team was a lot of the challenge, we all have different ways of approaching teaching and interacting with children, as well as work ethics. I know it will be a challenge to be the only teacher and I will miss my team. It was really good to be able to bounce ideas back and forth and split the work load (most of the time). I hope to find a district to work in that really supports teacher collaboration and cross content learning. Not only the district I suppose but the teachers in the district. That is all for now, I will have more reflections soon. Oh yeah, there is also the finished metals project! I will post some photos of the finished army of spiders soon.
For my Tech ed class I created a flipped/infused classroom video. The concept is that the learning happens outside of the the classroom and classroom time is used for working/practicing the concepts. At the bottom of this post you will find a link to the flipped classroom video I made on the topic of Digital Drawing. It is designed to give the students time and information to familiarize themselves with a new program that we will used to create projects with. The lesson they will embark upon is the first of three lessons in digital drawing. The first is an exploration. They will discover how to use the tools in the program and experiment with some of the features. Such as incorporating photo elements, as well as working with layers. The second lesson explores similar yet different programs for digital media. Their second assignment is to utilize the program to design their personal logo. They will complete two versions, one with text and the other without. The third lesson will go deeper into the possibilities of digital drawing, the students will discover how they can use their programs to create animations.
To get started the students will view this introduction video: Digital Drawing Flipped lesson Happy Drawing! The beginning of this semester I created several wax figures for my independent metalsmithing study. The project deals with facing fears, it has evolved in several areas since its inception. Below you can see the wax models all sprued up for casting. This was actually the second round of casting, the first set failed. I was able to salvage some parts from the first casting, you will see them a little later. Just below you can see the casted parts of the wax models. I used the lost wax method for making the mold, then I used both centrifugal and vacuum casting methods. The metals I chose were sterling silver and bronze. I did not want to have all of the pieces out of silver due to the nature of the project. After a bit of clean up and soldering you can see that the parts are becoming whole objects. This is actually parts from the first casting, originally there was to be 11 legs but only 9 of those were usable after casting. There is yellow ochre on the leg joints in preparation for soldering the last two legs on. Over the course of my time in metals, I have wanted to play with the idea of beauty. In this study I am exploring how beauty or lack there of may affect how fear is attached to an object or being. In this case, spiders are elegant but also enigmatically creepy. I have boiled down that it is the legs that really unsettle me. So with this project I decided to accentuate that, giving the objects more legs, all legs and no body or no legs and just a body. I have also explored the idea of how nature works and demonstrated how it does not. Below are two of the many objects that I am making, 'elephant' and 'rack'. These two are perhaps the smallest of all the objects that I am making. Both will be set with gem cut stones. Rack will be set with an emerald and Elephant will hold a smoky quartz. The stones are both teardrop cut, emeralds represent beginnings for me and the smoky quartz are lens to tone down all that is viewed through it. Today I felt a little accomplished. I have finished one of the many objects that I have planned for this project. Below you can see the progression of finishes that I put on this piece. Going from no patina to a full liver of sulfur patina and brushed details. The Jade is hammer set in cast sterling silver. The holes in the front of the body represent the absence of legs. I hope to be able to post more completion photos in the next week. Till then keep arting!
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AuthorI am an artist, full of love for natural and unnatural beauty. I hope to encourage young minds to utilize their creativity in a productive and healthy manner. Archives
June 2021
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