Professionalism
So in an attempt to make myself more marketable as a future educator, I realized that I need an email address that tells something about me as a person...not just my name. I was thinking of including my last name followed by photo or arts but it sounds like a company name not a personal yet also professional email address.
Secondly I started teaching high school art last week. I actually really like working with high school. Lesson planning is actually easier and it's so much nicer to be able to talk to the kids at almost the same level. I like going over information in small chunks rather than having to rush everything like I did at the elementary level.
Right now I have advanced drawing & painting working on realistic self portraiture. They were to bring in a photograph (or let me take one of them) in order to work from the grid method, focusing on just the contours of the face. At the end of last week, I also gave a demo on how to start adding value with colored pencil. We discussed the aspects of looking closely, how shadows aren't really black on your face, and how I used 20 different colored pencils for an hour or so and accomplished the coloring on half of my face. But in all honesty I have them working a bit smaller than my example so it shouldn't take them as long (they'll like that). They are working with a direct light source and mirror (quite different from their original photograph) but it still ends up looking very cool. I am having a couple of problems motivating the students who don't really care. My supervisor came in and was like, hey you should bring in some of your failed examples and then show how you corrected them as a motivation tactic. Up until this point I've been focusing on getting them involved with the project, but this week we're going to delve into personal meaning and how our realistic portraits are actually very expressive.
I also start teaching Sculpture this week. I have actually a couple of projects already planned (and I when I say planned I mean it looks perfect in my head) for them. The first thing my teacher wanted me to do was to make a mobile with them, Calder inspired. My coop teacher has a lot of great resources, she's just not using them to their full potential yet. For instance, she has this amazing book on sculpture that really breaks down why artists make sculptures, what expressive qualities are, etc. Wonderful book really. What she had been doing up until this point is making them read it and then answer questions in a CAPT style format for the entire period. She dreaded it, and in turn they dreaded it.
She gave me Chapter 2 to break it down into questions for them, but after I read it, I thought it would be a great way to introduce subject matter and expressive qualities with students. So that's what I'm doing first! I'm going to have them read it in groups at their tables, hand out a short worksheet with a couple of questions about comparing sculptures in the article, and then I'm handing each table 2 different sculptures to look at that and interpret the expressive qualities for. This is all a lead in to the fact that at least with all of my sculpture projects, they have to have a reason for making them, thinking about the choices they make and why or how those choices affect the subject of it. Then we're going to start planning our Calder inspired sculptures. It should take at least a week to make them, considering it took me about 4-5 hours after planning, cutting out the pieces, painting the pieces, and then figuring out how to assemble them. I actually finished my exemplar the first week I was there and it's been hanging in the classroom ever since. I keep pointing out to the students that they're going to make something like it so they get all psyched up for the project. :)
Also I started mentoring in Saturday school. I'm in munchkinland (aka KG and 1st grade). That's so funny because those were my hardest grades in elementary. I mean they aren't hard to please and they love you regardless if you let them talk about their personal lives and share their work, but bringing lessons down to their level and creating appropriate questioning methods was a challenge for me. But this time I get to relax and observe other people teaching. I actually knew 2 of the 3 people we are working with already. They did pretty well with the kids so far, esp for last minute planning (not so much on their part...the professor that teaches the course is notoriously disorganized).
Secondly I started teaching high school art last week. I actually really like working with high school. Lesson planning is actually easier and it's so much nicer to be able to talk to the kids at almost the same level. I like going over information in small chunks rather than having to rush everything like I did at the elementary level.
Right now I have advanced drawing & painting working on realistic self portraiture. They were to bring in a photograph (or let me take one of them) in order to work from the grid method, focusing on just the contours of the face. At the end of last week, I also gave a demo on how to start adding value with colored pencil. We discussed the aspects of looking closely, how shadows aren't really black on your face, and how I used 20 different colored pencils for an hour or so and accomplished the coloring on half of my face. But in all honesty I have them working a bit smaller than my example so it shouldn't take them as long (they'll like that). They are working with a direct light source and mirror (quite different from their original photograph) but it still ends up looking very cool. I am having a couple of problems motivating the students who don't really care. My supervisor came in and was like, hey you should bring in some of your failed examples and then show how you corrected them as a motivation tactic. Up until this point I've been focusing on getting them involved with the project, but this week we're going to delve into personal meaning and how our realistic portraits are actually very expressive.
I also start teaching Sculpture this week. I have actually a couple of projects already planned (and I when I say planned I mean it looks perfect in my head) for them. The first thing my teacher wanted me to do was to make a mobile with them, Calder inspired. My coop teacher has a lot of great resources, she's just not using them to their full potential yet. For instance, she has this amazing book on sculpture that really breaks down why artists make sculptures, what expressive qualities are, etc. Wonderful book really. What she had been doing up until this point is making them read it and then answer questions in a CAPT style format for the entire period. She dreaded it, and in turn they dreaded it.
She gave me Chapter 2 to break it down into questions for them, but after I read it, I thought it would be a great way to introduce subject matter and expressive qualities with students. So that's what I'm doing first! I'm going to have them read it in groups at their tables, hand out a short worksheet with a couple of questions about comparing sculptures in the article, and then I'm handing each table 2 different sculptures to look at that and interpret the expressive qualities for. This is all a lead in to the fact that at least with all of my sculpture projects, they have to have a reason for making them, thinking about the choices they make and why or how those choices affect the subject of it. Then we're going to start planning our Calder inspired sculptures. It should take at least a week to make them, considering it took me about 4-5 hours after planning, cutting out the pieces, painting the pieces, and then figuring out how to assemble them. I actually finished my exemplar the first week I was there and it's been hanging in the classroom ever since. I keep pointing out to the students that they're going to make something like it so they get all psyched up for the project. :)
Also I started mentoring in Saturday school. I'm in munchkinland (aka KG and 1st grade). That's so funny because those were my hardest grades in elementary. I mean they aren't hard to please and they love you regardless if you let them talk about their personal lives and share their work, but bringing lessons down to their level and creating appropriate questioning methods was a challenge for me. But this time I get to relax and observe other people teaching. I actually knew 2 of the 3 people we are working with already. They did pretty well with the kids so far, esp for last minute planning (not so much on their part...the professor that teaches the course is notoriously disorganized).