Portfolio

Forgot to post the link to my Issuu, sorry!
issuu.com/allysoncain

Blog Entry #5 Reflection on Learning

Viewing and responding to art

                        After being exposed to VTS briefly before this course, it was greatly beneficial to experience it first hand and on multiple occasions throughout the semester.  I think what really drove the idea of using VTS for viewing and responding art home for me was having a docent led tour and discussion of art right before the VTS session.  The difference between the two is remarkable and really goes well into the idea of making meaning in our own work as we create and find meaning in other artists’ work.  Instead of someone standing there and giving a spiel about a piece that they are an expert on, using guiding questions to push the conversation in the direction that will support their ideas, the actual viewers get to respond and have an educated discussion about what they see and believe to be true about a work of art, sans a biased opinion so there are not rights or wrongs.  Using this with future students will foster in them the idea of creating meaning and exploring art in an uninhibited way that provides a means for students to take a greater role in their own learning about art work as opposed to being spoon fed it.  It was also valuable to see a slightly less structured version of visual thinking strategies, a VTesque idea, both in this class and my reading in content area class as a means of reading “text” defined as a piece of art.  I think this is important as sometimes, especially with younger children who maybe don’t have as much background knowledge as high school students to pull information from, to be able to give them some historical references of the time the work was created or life experiences of the artist that will help them be able to better understand the work in their own way.  Changing up VTS in small ways but keeping most of the original format is a great way to achieve differentiation for our students and I look forward to using this strategy in many forms in my future classroom.

Developing art curriculum

            This course has taught me that developing original curriculum is a lot harder than it sounds.  Growing up, the lessons teachers taught always seemed so fluid, and well planned/worked out.  It has only occurred to me recently that these lessons had most likely been tried out on plenty of guinea pigs prior to me, and that they were worked on diligently to begin with as well.  While working on my unit, I had to stop many times and think if it was good or clear enough, if students would truly be engaged and love it as much as I did, and how everything would work together into a cohesive plan for a class.  Also, in doing this, I realized how little time my high school art teachers (at least some of them) had actually worked on their plans.  There was little to no content within my art classes and most teachers were using projects they did in high school or college over and over again because they “worked”.  And so in the back of my mind while developing my curriculum I just kept thinking that although my unit may not be perfect, I am still working hard to make the best, most meaningful unit for my students at this particular moment, and that is worth something.  Many years down the road when I am up late working hard on lessons and units for my class, at least I will know that my students are getting more out of their art class than I ever did just because of that little extra work I put in for them.

Teaching art

            In this course, I have realized the importance of treating each student as an individual artist as much as is humanly possible and being able to adapt to their needs.  I have learned what it takes to teach in a 21^st century world where students are constantly being bombarded with a myriad of visual stimulatory devices while at the same time they are social networking, communicating with people across continents, and somehow fitting in school work.  Our students live such as fast paced life filled with technology that advances every other day.  While I think technology is essential and should be used to enhance our students’ visual literacy so they can become proficient in decoding and interacting with the world around them, I believe that the art classroom can also be a place for slowing our students down a bit to contemplate their world as opposed to just taking it in at face value.  Teaching art and process in a way that allows for deep, critical thinking about essential, underlying ideas is important to me and I think should be incorporated as much as is possible for students to truly grow into artists.  For me, art can be such a tactile, very real thing that I know does not just exist in a digital world of ones and zeroes (even though much art can, and does exist in this way, which is also significant).   I think that a balance between the two is important as is understanding the various forms art can take.  We cannot simply assume that every student we have, although they may be a technologically savvy iKid, wants to have their work exist only in one form, however accessible it may be, and I think this goes back to the idea of really knowing the needs of your students and allowing them to work out how to best represent themselves through their art.  I think it will be interesting to see how technology keeps changing in the coming years and how this further affects the art world and teaching.

Peer Units Review & Revised Teaching Portfolio

            In viewing everyone’s unit plans and seeing their thoughts on a particular big idea, I was exposed to so many perspectives and great future lessons.  The time spent both presenting and reflecting on others’ presentations was very helpful to me as I was able to better understand what kind of lessons I would want to teach in the future, as well as how to make mine and others the best they could be through the PQPs.  When we enter a new school district that first year of teaching and subsequent years, there may be some lessons that are always done, for example in intro art classes, and those are the lessons they do every year.  Although you can’t come in and just change everything, being able to evaluate a lesson or unit and offer constructive criticism and ways to improve them will be essential as will cooperating with the current teacher(s) to best come up solutions and new lessons.  On the flip side, many times you will create your own curriculum sans help from others and must be able to edit and evaluate your own work to best benefit students.  For these reasons I was grateful for the chance to hear everyone’s presentations and reflect on theirs’ and mine as well.  Revising my teaching portfolio has helped me to see where I have come from in my views on art education as well as set my sights on where I will be going.  We often don’t take time to reflect on what we have learned and apply it to future endeavors and so I feel as though it has allowed me to really take everything in and continue working to improve the various aspects of myself as an artist teacher.

Unit Plan Prezi

Here is the link to my Prezi from my unit plan!
http://prezi.com/ivkzl2hyjax9/utopia-unit-plan/?kw=view-ivkzl2hyjax9&rc=ref-14493458

For unit plan, please see my Issuu

Classroom Management Observation and Reflection

The students generally come in quiet and sit in their assigned seats.  They sit through introduction activities with little to no disturbances but often engage in talk unrelated to their art while working.  In general observations of my classroom, I have noticed that often times my field teacher tries to not give students who are doing little things they shouldn’t attention in hopes that they will stop.  Unless they are being very disruptive, she will just wait for them to stop.  If the behavior persists, she will first make eye contact with the students; they get “the look” and usually listen and cease what they are doing.  If this approach doesn’t work, she will stop her talk and point out the student by name, requesting that they stop, sometimes asking a questions like, “is that how we treat our pencils?” or “what should you be doing now?” and letting the student know they really need to behave.  I have not seen her use incentives or punishments too much, at least in a way that would prevent the student from making art.  Occasionally, a student will go to a think spot, away from the others, however, upon starting a project, they are allowed back at their seat.  There are usually not many problems while the students are creating.  When the class as a whole does get out of hand, however, my teacher will stop what she is doing and as a school wide classroom management strategy says, “students give me five”, which entails them putting one hand in the air (five fingers), putting down all supplies, not talking, and eyes on the teacher.  At this point she uses a more assertive, “teacher” voice and sometimes a more power assertive role in which art making privileges are questioned and the possibility of them being taken away is presented.

Only once two boys were playing around, hitting each other and scooting  the other’s chair, and after repeated instructions to stop the behavior and actually work, my teacher had the two boys write up think sheets basically. These involves the students writing down what they did to deserve the sheet, what they had been asked to do, and what behavior they should have had to prevent this as well as their behavior from now on.  What I found most interesting about this is even after being told numerous times that they shouldn’t be touching one another, should be working, and that there were alternatives to their actions, they still wrote down that they did not know why they were in trouble or how to fix their problem.  They seemed completely unaware of the implications of their actions and were not taking the class seriously.

One incident that stands out clearly in my mind occurred one day when I was working on glazing a bowl for my teacher and I overhead a table that was about two tables away from me throwing around the phrase “the ‘F” word” and how one of them knew what that word was, etc. but I only caught snippets of the conversation so I wasn’t sure what provoked the actual saying of the word.  I think it came about as a challenge to the student that maybe they didn't really know the word, or didn't have to guts to say it, but they said it, and my teacher definitely heard it.  She was immediately at the table (I don’t even know where she came from) and singled out the student who had said it, using a stern but quiet voice only heard by the students at the table so as to not disturb the rest of the class, and told talked to the student about words we do and don’t say and how the student knew very well that the word was one that should not be said in any context, especially at school.  She then continued to walk around the class to help students working on their projects.  But the table continued to talk about it and so she came back and sat down with the students and gave the whole group a bit of a lecture about how those type of words and basically told them they had to stop talking about the situation entirely or they would be in serious trouble.

I think, overall, by host teacher handles her classroom management well as the students for the most part are very respectful to her and the time they have in class to work.  The classroom is well organized and I think I would have handled the situations very similarly.  I think some of my classroom management would depend on the philosophy of the school district and how they approach the subject.  But I would also base it on student input, letting them create rules beyond what I believed to be essential in the first place.  I think it is important for students to have a say in the rules that will govern their behavior and in this way they will be more likely to hold themselves and others accountable for actions.

Assessment in Art Education

When teaching art, just as you can’t have a successful art making/learning environment if everyone makes the same cookie cutter projects, you can’t have just one assessment that is used all of the time, and for every student.  I think all art media areas should have both formative and summative assessments, however, these can mean different things when applied to different areas.  In a ceramics class, especially beginning students, this is something they haven’t done much of their lives like drawing for example, and so as teachers we need to be aware of the skills students come in and how to best evaluate their work from there.  While a “wet” (or 75% done critique) may be necessary for a ceramics project to ensure students will meet deadlines and communicate what they want in a timely manner, a not as serious just couple of reflective questions may suffice for a drawing project.  I think the best way to evaluate student learning is to set up a standard for learning early on and from there, their art work, journaling, artist statement, participation in critiques, and overall effort should be based on the standard.  I think that it is important for assessments to be based on individual student growth and learning and not as compared to other students.  Our students come from an array of backgrounds with different experiences that affect their art making abilities and so should be evaluated on their own work and what they are actually able to accomplish and not what others, whether more or less advanced have done.  I think students need feedback throughout working on making art as this will help in their learning about their processes and how to best communicate their ideas before it is too late (only summative assessments).  I also think it is essential to allow students a means of redoing projects throughout the semester if they want to improve upon their work.  Many times although we may succeed in providing a variety of formative assessments as well as fair summative assessments where we perhaps have one final critique of the student work, we just move on to the next project without allowing students to take the critiques of their work and improve on their art making skills. For this reason, I think a way of improving the work for those who want to, say by the end of the semester, as a way to truly “finish” a piece is essential not just to a certain lesson plan but as a core to instruction in art.  In creating a unit plan focused on a ceramics class, I would use gallery walks both during making and after, journals, a “wet” or in process critique, a final critique, a thoughtful, well explained rubric for grading purposes, possibly a one page portfolio for a longer project, and if possible an exhibition or public display of the student work.

Blog Entry # 3 Why Teach Art?

The visual arts allow students to grow and develop in a way not supported by other areas.  Art connects to students at a personal level and allows them to reflect on their experiences throughout life and express them in a way that is meaningful.  A well developed art program can help students do this as well as provide a space that is conducive to learning about art in the form of looking at and responding to art through visual thinking strategies, working through different art processes, and then using these to improve students’ visual literacy that will allow them to succeed in a world that demands people create content, decode their world through visual cues, and communicate on a multitude of levels.  Studies have shown that students at all levels and backgrounds greatly benefit from an education that makes art a priority in some way.  Studies have also shown how much students suffer in terms of grades, attendance, and graduation when an arts education is lacking.  For many students, art can be the only thing they wake up and go to school for, while others just see it as another class, even though they are still gaining skills from it.  As an effective art educator, it is important to work to make sure every student is getting all that they can from an arts education and help them to be more visually literate and be able to really analyze the world around them to better understand it at a deeper level.  The visual arts penetrate all aspects of society and culture and often reflect the ideas and philosophies of the time, without the ability to understand these works of art, students are unable to see the deeper cultural ramifications of society’s current and past actions, as artists often deal with these topics.   As many schools deal with budget cuts and attempt to solve this by eliminating courses outside of the “core” subjects of English, Math, Science, and the Social Sciences, they neglect to recognize the fact that art is just as essential to students when it comes down to the world outside of academia.  I understand that not every one of my future students will go on to become an art loving adult like myself, however, it is my job to ensure that their arts education is meaningful, helpful to them, and that they are more well equipped to analyze and evaluate their world in new ways to improve their visual literacy and ability to succeed in the world today.

Big Idea Book Pages 3-8

Big Idea Book Pages 3-4 with journal of artist concept map

Katherine Harvey works with single use and cheap plastic materials to create large scale sculptures of fountains and waterfalls among other natural landscapes.  In working with her, I created a flower like piece that relates to my love of flowers and uses a variety of plastics that are layered like Harvey’s pieces.

 Pages 5 & 6 for Elexys' Big Idea Book

 Some secrets are best left untold

While others should be shared only with those whom you most trust

Elexys' pages for my book

 

Pages 7 & 8, playing with a new medium 

Blog Entry #2 View and Respond to Art

Laocoon and his Sons

1.What big ideas does your MUMAA artwork contain?

This work contains big ideas about story, perspective/ point of view, characterization, myth, defining/climatic moments, history, storytelling

2.How would you utilize the artwork in a “juicy” Tiger Artist lesson?

I would use this piece to talk about how different points of view can change how someone looks at a situation or work of art.  The story of Laocoon is essentially that he tried to warn the people of Troy that the Trojan horse should not be let inside the city walls and so Poseidon sent snakes to kill him and his two sons.  The people saw this as an omen and the horse must be good as the gods protected it so brought it inside, leading to their ultimate demise.  Students would be asked to look at this work from the characters in the pieces perspective and how those not depicted saw the situation.  Laocoon saw his actions as something good for the betterment of his people but because of Poseidon’s intervention, the people saw it only as a bad thing and did the opposite of what Laocoon had pleaded them to do.  Students would also look at how history, myths, and different stories about this piece throughout history could change the meaning of the piece and what their own knowledge about Greek mythology brings to the table.

3.Referencing your reading in the Walker text, develop essential questions that your students could investigate

·         How does the storyteller/artist's point of view impact the meaning of a story/image?

·         Who’s stories usually get told and why?

·         Why are various points of view important?

·         How does background knowledge affect the story?

·         What kinds of stories might be told if someone other than the main character tells them?

4. Develop key artistic concepts connected to the Big Idea contained in the work from which TA students could make meaning and build art-making knowledge.

Point of view is about

·         Purpose

o   Why is the story being told

·         Plasticity

o   The ability to change one's views, assumptions, or opinions in light of new information.

·         Empathy

o   Multiple points of view increase our understanding of people and situations

·         Characterization

o   Visual tools or symbols we use to convey traits