blog back to Emily and Ashely

Me to Emily: Videotaping is a great tool that can be used many ways for you, students and finding new ways of doing art. Teachers can notice what their students are doing or not doing and help change or re-work their programs. Emily just standing in front of the camera can be intimidating, but for me it’s a great tool for me to overcome what we do not like.
Adding the student’s survey into the curriculum maybe on a weekly or monthly basis could change the way we teach. I have been thinking of adding a survey at the end of the week to see what is on my student’s minds and pull from their thoughts to make me a better teacher.
What if you add the two group methods to the lesson plans as part of the lesson that the students do. They can chat about what is going on in the classroom. This way you and the student see the outcome. This could also be turned into a class art project that reflected back on through the progress that happens within a time frame. This way you have the data of their achievement within learning controlled group. This shows through their own artwork and what happened within that time frame. I might add something like this within my own lesson plans in the future.

Me to Ashely: Letting our past influence the way we see things can be great opportunities for teachers and students to see what the human mind can do. When we add each of these experiences to the curriculum or when we allow them to guide us through each different experience, these can be powerful ways for us to connect with our students. Ashley, I also try to identify with my students to help me understand them better.  In this way, I can make connects with them so that I can tweak the curriculum to help them become better students. You would not be a teacher if you were not passionate, caring and understanding.  Its being a real person that will help you connect with the students, they can smell blood in the water if you know what I mean. Having that interaction with students is a great form of relationship. You evaluating yourself and then finding the answer with the help of your students is something that I want to improve on. Having that one on one time works very well.

Blog Week 6:

Ken Robinson TED talks “How schools kill creativity”.

The gift of imitation, how true that we are trying to educate children for the future, because right now we don’t know what the future is. All children are born artists and they grow out of this. Wow oh wow. If we did not grow out of it, where would we be?  This can boggle the mind. The growth that could happen within just one person is great. We, as a whole, could be amazing THINKing so outside of the box all the time. We, as the human race, could do anything and we would value everyone.

http://www.ted.com/talks/emily_pilloton_teaching_design_for_change

Emily Pilloton “Teaching design for change”.

I do understand what its like to go to school in a small town, where only the best and richest students get out or go for higher education. Coming from rural Mississippi, we had firsthand knowledge of what its like to see this. Without education these students do not leave the area or have opportunities to change their lives. I love this list that helped redesign rural schools that offer ways to help students find success.

1. Design through action

2. Design with, not for

3. Design systems, not stuff

4. Document, share, and measure

5. Start locally, and scale globally

6. Build

Using design within the public education community goes right in and helps students have an atmosphere of learning. Redesigning education to fit what or where students are within their own community so they can learn. I do have a burning passion that goes right along with changing education in the rural education system. This is a great project that can work within the rural school systems, but also within all schools.

Blog accompanying the video reflect on:

How does your artistic process echo your what you imagine your teaching process to be?

The way that I work through new artwork is also the way that I would work through teaching a lesson to my students. First, what will be the connection that I want to use? Second, what will the materials be that help tell or talk about the connection. Then it’s off to do research that can inform or help me understand other artists that have worked through this connection or with what materials before. Then, at this time, I like to draw out what I see formulating in my mind. Then there will be a lot of reworking or tweaking until I see it coming together. This is a great time to have friend or classmate over to talk about the work, seeing what they might be seeing within the work. Having a notebook and pen to take notes is a great thing here. It’s a way to go back a re-read what was said then and to work and re-think the connection with the materials. Finally, understand that artwork can and most of the time has a mind of its own and sometimes with take you to new place within your own artistic growth.

I need to have other voices that help me think through what I am working on.  I need a sounding board to see the work outside of the box that I am working within my own mind. I would ask my students to do the same within the classroom, through one on one discussions and classroom critiques. Thinking and re-thinking about the what, why, and how about the work is also a great way to have the students and yourself re-think about what the work is saying.

Metaphor Video

Week 5 Blog: Reflective Teaching

Reflective Teaching and Educational Traditions:

Right out of the box, on page 50, a reflection on teaching: Remembering past lessons, watching a videotape of our own instructional practice, talking with colleagues about challenging teaching issues, and watching others teach material we have taught (or never taught) before – these are all routes to reflection.”  For me, I see all of these as great tools to put in my bag of education. As someone that is on the other side of teaching this year, I’m allowed to sit in three or four different classrooms a week with three to four different teachers. I have the opportunity to watch and see how each of these teachers comes across to their students. I do miss not being in front of the classroom, but I think that I’m learning more from this side after teaching for the past three years.

Teachers, traditions, and teaching: All labels that can be used for good if we, as educators, think outside the standard box. Tradition is a great place to start from. I feel that we need to go with the flow sometimes. If a student does not understand the way we are teaching, then educators need to rethink what would help that student. I do love the line on page 52, “we may value the child’s perspective and still insist that certain bodies of knowledge and skills need to be conveyed and mastered. In teaching we tend to mix some of the different traditions together.” This is talking about going from a traditional viewpoint and making adjustments along the way for each student. “Change over time”, educators are changing after each lesson they teach. Once they know the student’s reaction to that lesson is they can start the rethinking process.  Would the students benefit if the lesson were presented using a different technique? It could lead to a better understanding of the material, which would enhance the student’s effort and knowledge in the class.

Love, love this “ Learning is risky business; it requires one to absorb unfamiliar and often challenging ideas, and it frequently requires one to change one’s mind.”

Self, Student, and Context in Reflective Teaching:

Amy asked me a question from last week’s blog “I also enjoyed your comments about mentoring and wondered if you see a difference between "mentoring" and "teaching"?  It’s an interesting thought and one I contemplate often. Kathy and I are currently doing research around the topic. :)” My answer was, “I want to say they are the same thing, but come from different angles.” Teachers are mentors, with the purpose of teaching a subject and mentoring comes from helping someone move through the world with experienced insight. I might not be right, but it’s a way for my mind to see it. Reading on page 77 –“What is the role of the teacher in teaching? We further delineate distinct understandings of what it means to SERVE students.” If we are serving student’s needs, we have to come from our own experiences in life that makes us also mentors in the classroom. On page 78 “Teachers draw upon various resources to engage in the daily efforts of teaching.” In other words they are mentoring them through their job of teaching. So does that make us professional mentors? After reading chapters 5 and 6, I don’t have the answer for her question, but I do see myself reflecting on the way I see myself as the teacher. I’m there to provide each student with the best education that I can give them through the experiences that I have been through.

Chapter 5 Marzano

Reflecting back on my own classroom, I see many great ways that could help me in the teaching process. Having a daily journal or a weekly one would help me remember the way I thought through something and reflect on each student and they way each one learns and assess individual progress. Also, by adding a student survey/ feedback form, the teacher can evaluate what they liked and what we need to focus more on. This would be a great help as I teach more than one class a day. I cannot imagine teaching six classes a day and teaching them all the same thing?

During my VTS class with Mary last semester, we had to videotape our classroom with the students during the VTS lesson. Going back over those tapes was a great way to help change my teaching style. I used the videotapes as a classroom tool to help me find ways to developed different teaching styles.

As you view your own process of art making which you filmed, do you notice process’s emerging that align with any of the traditions discussed in the reading? Explain? I see my artwork changing all the time, see someone else’s work, talking it over with a group of peers, or walking through a gallery. My artwork and I are constantly changing, growing and is a major challenge to me personally. In the book it talks about where our viewpoint comes from, mine is always in a state of flux, trying to make it better than the last.

How do you think your own artist process inform will inform how you teach? Describe what you noticed about HOW you learn and process when creating artwork? Learning is a major think tank for me within the process of creating artwork. The more I talk about the work, the more I need help in changing what and how I see the artwork develop. We, as artists, have to understand what is going on within the artwork, but also we, as teachers, have to understand what we are doing.  It will transfer to our students. They see us working or having an art show.  They will process this as a way for them to find new meanings within their own work. For me, teaching is a way to try new things that I might not have tried. Within the classroom we get to experiment with things outside of our normal practices.

Week #4 Blog: Visual Metaphor

Visual Metaphor 

I'm the Heart and Soul in my classroom

I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;

Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;

Ever unreeling them — ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,

Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,— seeking the spheres, to connect them;

Till the bridge you will need, be form’d — till the ductile anchor hold;

Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

                             

                             

                                               

“So much of teaching is rooted in who we are and how we perceive the world.” I believe in this statement. I also believe that a classroom should be a home away from home for each and every student. If they do not feel that they are safe and welcomed within the classroom, they will not be able to do their very best work. Home is the place we get our beliefs and start to have conceptions and an understanding of the world around us.  So within our classroom practices we, as teachers, need to have a relationship with our students that provide a productive learning environment. We also need to remember that just like our students, we are learning the world around us too. These experiences, which they are going through, will show that the knowledge they have learned in the classroom was vital and they carried this knowledge on in their own methods of making art.

If we have values in what we are doing, our students will see this and transfer those practices into their work. On page 26 Handal and Lauvs talk about the framework to maintain three theories that help within the structure of teaching, “personal experiences, transmitted knowledge, and core values.” These are determined by an “individual’s central values, personal experiences, and received knowledge.” Each and every one of our students comes from different backgrounds as we do. With this in mind, we cannot take how we see the world, but we have to step back and ask ourselves is this normal for this group of students or is there something going on. This is where we, as teachers, find the value of knowledge in personal experiences and use our own concepts to help them through what they need. Now, I’m not saying that every student needs this every time there is a problem; this is why we have to get to know our students.  We have to get to know their families on a personal individual level.

We have all had experiences with teachers that helped us or harmed us. Coming from different location in the United States, I have had teachers that did not understand my interests or me and they did not want to understand my background.  I have had some amazing teachers.  Regardless of what was going on in my life, they were there for me and made sure I was successful on my chosen path in life. One teacher, that made a big impression on me, was Tom Nawrocki. He is an amazing international printmaker.  He took his own time and money to make sure that I, as a student, went beyond that place that I was at. To this day, I know that is why I am where I am today. He willingness to step outside of just being a teacher and becoming a mentor has had a positive mark on me.  Professor Nawrocki began to develop early signs of Alzheimer’s and retired after I graduated.  He gave me the tools to find my own way. Now, Proof Nawrocki did not always have students that were artistically talented.   Daily he would have students breaking out into emotional outbursts in his classes.  I had the opportunity to see him take a student aside and help them through a hard day.

Summing things up here, we, as educators, have to change with the times and within our own classrooms. We have to learn new ways to encourage our students. It’s our job to help them become better people and better artists.

Week #3 Blog: Open Mindedness Responsibility, Wholeheartedness

I want to start this blog about the question in chapter 1. What distinguishes reflective teaching from non-reflective teaching?

I see this as someone that questions his or her teaching style. They question the context of their work, the why (the meat of the meaning), they also ask what materials or framework will bring across the meaning to be considered in the examination of what they see as the basis or the genesis of the problem. They question themselves as teachers.  They bring values to the classroom and to their students. Is their curriculum the right one to help in the development of the student?

VS

Someone that just finds the fastest way to make the curriculum work. It’s not the right method for the situation for this class or these students. Someone that does not think over what needs to be changed and then makes those changes that with effete each student.

No one has the right answer without having a basis of research and thought. Children come in so many different development stages and social backgrounds that we as teachers need to find what will fit for each student or that class. Not just what has worked before? Teachers and students are on a learning path that changes from day to day. What to do with problems in the classroom is a big problem that as teachers we need to find new angles that will help and benefit the growth of our students.

Without a framework of knowledge how can we help the problems that affect the students within the classroom? Teachers need to help themselves by recognizing what change is needed through different developmental paths and reflect on which will be the best for that student on that day.

Analyze the traditional teaching role that some of us older students grew up in.  If you did not fit into the mold of the prefect student, then it was your fault that you did not learn and not the teaching style that was being used. These teachers get into the habit of explaining just one possibility as the solution. By doing so they lose one or more students and they become expendable.

We, as teachers, have a responsibility to the students.  If we use old approaches, we will loss students.  I feel, as a teacher, that we should never lose a student for not understanding what we are teaching. Yes, we are human and flawed. This does not excuse us from the responsibility to our students and that learning more is a reflection on the correct approach to teaching and facing the consequences that come along with not understanding our own students.

I do love where Dewey says, “He meant that open-mindedness and responsibility must be central components in the professional life of the reflective teacher”. That is a very powerful statement as a teacher and as a person. We must have an open mind to change, if it’s within you or within your student’s abilities.  We are all learning something new everyday. If we are not thinking inside and outside of the box at the same time, then we are not thinking. I want to add to my curriculum for my students the questions that are asked on page 13.  What ways might the structure of classrooms and schools contribute to and/or discourage teachers?  I would also add, do you want your teacher to be reflective about what they are teaching?

We need to be mindful of what we are teaching and does it fit our student’s needs.   We must change to fit the student and not the classroom or we will lose great minds in the process.