Blog Entry # 1 21st Century Art Philosophy

I found it interesting that although education of the arts is moving away (or should be moving

away) from the technical, textbook 7+7 idea, most people are still stuck in the past. I feel as though

college professors of art would be at the forefront of this change, yet most all of my first year of

foundations courses at MU in the art department, those elements and principles were pounded into us

(as had been done in high school too) and our tests focused on our ability to analyze works of art, both

old and contemporary, with these set parameters and seemingly "right and wrong" answers. This is so

far away from how we should be teaching art and encouraging others to look at art.

The change to a more conceptual approach is exciting as well as intimidating or perhaps challenging,

more so for those who have taught art for many years. This means taking the time to first think deeply

about the big ideas of what you are going to teach and then further develop your ideas and questions

concerning the idea. Art teachers can no longer just tell students, "Okay, today we are going to paint or

draw or make a pretty pot", and expect to have students who are successful in creating rich art and

expressing ideas that have meaning.

I believe that in teaching art, it is my responsibility to not only have the knowledge base to share with

others about art and all it encompasses, but to be able to back it up with real life experience and

practice in the arts. It is not enough to read to students from a book how to make a linocut or work in a

certain style of painting; art teachers need to be able to also say that I've been there, done that, and

know the ins and outs of what it is they are teaching. I know from personal experience that an art

teacher, who really does not know how to walk the walk, not only is unsuccessful in teaching, but also

ends up with students who feel lost and have little confidence in what they are doing. If this 'teacher',

who has a degree and 'knowledge' is unable to perform this task, how does that make the student feel?

In working in the modern age, I think part of being an effective teacher is also to continue your learning

and look to the world as it is now for inspiration and ideas. The most exciting art around is what is going

on now and constantly changing. I think students should learn from the past, however, what is current,

contemporary, and close to the students is what they can relate to and therefore more easily make

connections that will bring significance and meaning into their work. I think that in knowing

and working to learn as much as you can about art, continuing to practice in your area as well as playing

and experimenting with other mediums, and having a drive/yearning to share all of this with others, you

are well on your way to demonstrating your capacity to teach. However, you do have to be able to

communicate all of this knowledge and experience to the students in a way that helps them to

understand it and be able to successful in creating works of art, not just crafting a meaningless product.

Blog Entry # 2 Viewing and Responding 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

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.

Blog Entry # 4 Assessment

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/ Journal Classroom Management

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.

Blog Entry # 5 Reflection

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.

Theme 2 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.

Theme 3 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 21st 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.

Theme 4 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.