The task of this entry was to create a composition (I think a visual one?) based on the Saturday Morning Art program we’ve participated in this semester at MSU.   Since I’ve commented previously on the program I’d like to offer some thoughts about the semester ending show of the student work from the program.

It was difficult for our group to get their work done on time.  Since this is a high-school group we had issues with students showing up to every one of the 7 meetings we had.  This kept us out of touch with student progress some of the time.  The show deadline came around and we still didn’t have some of the work from our students.  In the final class day we had 4 out of 8 students.   So, that was rather disappointing especially since in the following days before the exhibit, I spent considerable hours getting the student work ready and hung.   However, in the end, at the exhibit I think all the students except one came and were impressed that their work looked good.  It was nice to meet the parents of the students who were inquisitive about the direction their child took in a class where so much was left up to them.  And of course they touted just how talented their child was and how impressed they were of them which is what all of us who are parents do.  We think our kid is the smartest and brightest of them all which is the way it should be after all right?

10 things OK, 10 things not so OK in SMART teaching.

 

OK:

 

1. I feel a good repore with my students
2. Students are interesting
3. Students typically work well on their own
4. Students are polite when listening to instruction
5. Some students are not happy with their work and know that they can improve it even if they are not sure how
6. Students respond well to art historical reference as it pertains to their work
7. Students like artists that I show them for inspiration
8. My partner compliments me by acknowledging the practical needs of the students while I work with them on conceptual ideas
9. Some of the student work is interesting and the students who feel their work is not interesting seem to be learning more
10. Students were able to explain their work using visual learning strategies, discussing it on formal and personal meaning levels.

 

 

Not so OK:

 

1. Format of class is not what I intended
2. Student work seems un-improvable
3. Not enough time for projects
4. Projects throughout the class don’t seem to relate contextually (Hispanic art primer)
5. Some students seem bored with their projects
6. I don’t find a clear avenue to instruct students on formal ideas in their work
7. Lack of ‘assigned’ projects keeps me out of the loop
8. Cultural premise for sessions difficult to implement on a personal scale since the intent for the students in my class was to come up with their own personal project
9. Because each student is creating something completely different, there’s not a consensus on what makes for visual quality since all project have a different visual emphasis.
10. I am teaching in a way that is not doable in a large class.

I felt enthused after a couple of sessions with my high-schoolers. I was a bit surprised about their apathy at first, but once they got into their individual projects, they really started to go. I like feeling the challenge of breaking up the ‘coolness’ factor of some of my students and getting them excited about things they don’t know that turn out to be cool. Even though it’s been some time since I was in high school (20 years), I can still remember thinking that I was not like anyone else there and thus that fact excluded me from participating in dorky or lame student activities (like most of my non-art classes, student organizations like Key Club and parties). I feel a little regret about my anti-social attitude because now I of course am not so idealistic. I wish I had made more friends and regret that I didn’t participate in sports because I didn’t like the ‘jocks’ even though I really do like sports. So, I’m doing a little reminiscing and reflecting on my own past in art when interpreting this question. I feel for the kids and I want them to overcome their individualism (even though this is important in the creative process) just enough so they can see the world around them better.

This entry is supposed to be a discussion on discipline problems.  Since we’re an older classroom and the students are working on their own projects, we don’t come across this very much at all.  I am reading a textbook on Secondary Classroom Management strategies and so far, our ability to keep our students working has helped us with discipline issues, which is what the book recommends.  We actually have mostly freshmen and some actual junior-high students but these kids are really dedicated to their work and their interests, so we don’t have much to say on this front.  I’m surprised actually that they’re as easy as they are.  They work well together and compliment one another.  Although it is a small group (about 12-15) so if they were to try something out of the ordinary in terms of behavior, it would get noticed pretty quickly and addressed.

My idea of an art room I’d like to have.

My other half complements me well in terms of covering all the needs of the 11 or 12 students we have every Saturday. She really attends to their practical needs – how much and what kinds of materials they need, are they working and do they have any questions, what do they like about what they’re doing, etc. This leaves me time to do what I like best and that is to talk with each student about what is happening in their projects on a formal and conceptual level. It also gives me time to talk to them about artists I think they should look at in terms of how it could inspire or help them when coming up against an issue in completing something in their work. I think we both understand what the other’s strengths are and what they have to offer, so in that sense we’re a good team. That said, I think that if my partner wants to teach art on a secondary level (which is the age group we have) she’ll need to take more art history classes. I’m not sure she has a way to talk about student’s work on a historical or formal level. It’s unfair of me to state this since I am much older and have studied art for a much longer period – including an intense master’s level experience in studio art. I actually don’t think she’s that interested in teaching art but these are the things she’ll have to address in order to do so. I’ve also found it difficult to observe her since I really get into talking to my students one-on-one. This may be a drawback to commenting in this particular entry with any sort of precision.

The questions for the 13th entry are:  how we feel our performance is so far, what grade we’d give ourselves, are we giving 100% effort,  what are our distractions, how our class is doing in general and if we’re happy with it.

It’s hard for me to judge my own performance.  It’s been some time since I taught (about seven years) so like I said in earlier posts, it feels good to be back in the saddle but I haven’t been teaching enough recently to be critical yet.  I’m still trying to cull my resources, get organized and figure out how to perform as a teacher.  I’m also rusty on uploading my art-history knowledge during class.  What’s exciting is that I find artists in the back of my memory that I hadn’t thought of in years and almost forgot but they come around and relate to a particular student work.  I feel like I’m expending a lot of energy for just a few students and that I won’t be able to teach this way in a class of 25 so I have some adjusting to do.  Yeah, I’m expending 100% but getting not a lot of milage out of it.  I’m happy with my class and I like my students.  Last week we had a working grad student discuss his work which was on exhibit in the gallery downstairs.  I thought the dialog was good and the students seemed interested.  I think its good for students to see a lot of different art (different formats and themes), and also in person rather than in a book, where it can make more of a physical (sensory) and emotional impact.  I asked them about the artist and the work later.  They pointed to specific elements in the pieces that they liked.  They referred to some things as weird which is just their way of saying they don’t understand something.  I’d like to get them to think around that a bit.  I’d like my students to develop an aesthetic and formal language they can use to understand visual art.  That might be a goal for a bigger class that meets over a longer time than the seven session SMART program.

Last Saturday we got the students corralled and into a student gallery right when they came in to talk about some art on show by an MSU undergraduate.  I think it was good for them to see some multi-media work.  This undergraduate had ceramics, some painted and photo -transfered tiles, straight-up paintings and sculpture.  I asked what the kids thought about the work.  Most of them gave me the ‘humf’ response or, ‘it’s ok’ or ‘kinda’ cool’  I didn’t have any of them take it further.  They are high-school students after all.  I think that’s the challenge I like – getting to these more apathetic kids.  We went upstairs and had a short demonstration on plaster casting since several of them expressed an interest last week on making molds of their hand or arm or face.  Then, we got right into their individual projects – handing out materials they’d requested last week.  I did a short powerpoint presentation for two kids who hadn’t shown up last week.  One of these students asked how long I was going to talk about Picasso.  I smiled and moved on to her favorite artist Frida Kahlo.  The student wasn’t quite sure why she liked Frida or why she was important.  I have to remember that at that age I had no clues about any artist or why they were important.  In high-school I was told I had a ‘talent’ for art and I was steered in that direction (or tracked as they refer to it in professional education) and guided away from stuff I could really use like foreign language, math and science.  I regret it still.  I think I was capable of it with help from the right teachers.  I don’t want my future art classes to be places where there are kids who are steered there who aren’t good at anything else.  I for sure don’t want kids to think art is in and of itself.  It’s a whole integrated life expression.  I want them to make connections to art from cosmology, physics, psychology and sociology.   I hope they see that artists aren’t simply crafty and artistically dexterous.   Famous artists are great thinkers of the time.  I want my art classes to be think tanks.  I didn’t feel that much of that was happening on Saturday.  They got started on their projects and nothing much happened that was exciting but it was  just the first or second hour of working time.  We’ll see how this Saturday turns out.  You know,  I’m more interested in the psychology of the individual students really than getting them to work.   I’m trying to get a window back into the high school attitude since it’s there that I want to eventually teach.  Usually it’s the ’strange’ kids who are the artistic kids but too cool to show it.  Being cool is fine – it’s the apathetic part I want them to grow out of quick.  I was apathetic too long and it cost me later.  Being an example to these kids is the challenge I’m looking forward to.

Not a whole lot went right this last Saturday in our first Saturday Morning Art class.  Our class list was wrong and we were forced to wait around for the rest of the students to show up.  This left the six students we did have waiting around.  My partner and I tag-teamed this problem and she tried getting the students to start drawing from the still-life we had set up earlier.  I worked on figuring out where the remainder of the students were (they were not coming because they were in another class).  As I stated in Journal 6 we’ve got the high-school age students.  The first day for them is establishing themselves in the class as individuals.  This is important since we’re focusing on getting them to produce individual projects.  This is tricky because we’ve got a theme to also introduce them to.  The other classes are building cultural-specific projects.  The students in our class had wide-ranging ideas about what to do, only a few of them attempting to incorporate Hispanic cultural ideas into their work.  Becky and I prepared a PowerPoint presentation on famous Hispanic artists (Dali, Picasso, Rivera, Kahlo, and my friend Santos).  I’m not sure it’s easy for the students to see how these artists are related or what they have to do with Hispanic culture.  We talked about the slides of these artist’s work as evolutions of early influences (which usually entail the artist copying someone else outside of their community) towards mature work (fully realizing their own heritage and country in their work).  Back in class we talked about how they could use the presentation and the books we brought to inspire a project of their own.  I talked about Cubism (the most important 2oth century innovation in art by a Hispanic artist or any artist for that matter) which I think is good for students to learn because they’ve all heard about Picasso and Cubism but very few of them can tell you what he did or what it means.  I also think if they understand how something like cubism can come about then they can start thinking about their own process in constructing an image and how they see the world around them.  Some of the students responded (the 2 or 3 I got to talk to) but in general we ran out of time.  The PowerPoint probably went too long but I did get some dialog started during it and several of them answered or asked questions – so it wasn’t one-way which is when they stop learning.  We’ll have to be more attentive to time management (two hours flies) for our next classes and also to what everyone is doing because they’re all doing something different from what we garnered from them the first day.  Over all it felt good to be back in the saddle, introducing kids to things they’ve never heard of and showing them formal ideas and artists and seeing the looks on their faces.  Lots of work ahead of us.