Full Steam Ahead!

Today I made my first google form! An individual reflection about painting, for each student to complete, and google will even organize all the data into a spreadsheet for me.

I was excited by the capability to organize each student’s responses in such a quick and easy format. This introduction activity was a pre-assessment, and ultimately a great way for me to understand where the students comprehension levels are at before I begin tailoring the lesson to fit their needs. I am excited to begin this particular lesson on design in nature, and create abstract paintings from photomicrographs. Taking a closer look at everyday objects more closely will help illustrate how art elements such as texture, color, shape, and line all relate to things we encounter in everyday life.

The students are able to type “microscopic organisms” into their Pintrest search bar and an endless number of images are readily available for them to explore. This is a quick way for students to visually explore what they are unable to see with their naked eye. Technology offers an opportunity to students to encounter more information than ever, in an organized, visual interface. Besides utilizing Pintrest, I encouraged the students to look at photographs from National Geographic’s nature and science selection, and photos from an exhibition called microscapes. Students collected images from these sources and they pinned onto their “Micro” Pintrest boards. The students will keep these images as a reference for the composition when they begin their paintings.

Teaching art is my way to share my experiences and education with my students. My content is not only justified but also reinforced when we can integrate different subject’s content to create cohesive lessons. Technology offers these opportunities for learning that help connect us with our world around us. I was awestruck by the research my students have accomplished this far, and I look forward to the inspiration it evokes in their final paintings.

Integrating Arts

      Life introduces us to instances every day where we must apply our knowledge. I strongly believe that in order to fully benefit from our education it is important that we practice merging and making connections between various subjects and disciplines. Integration is the practice of combining things to make a whole. By bridging the boundaries that some people believe exist between math, science, technology, and engineering students can make associations and relationships that build on their previous knowledge in order to develop concepts more thoroughly. However these boundaries seem to overlap from the beginning when you account for the similarities that link the fields. I know how powerful it is to reinforce content knowledge with practice and incorporating ideas, theories, and skills from other fields. Not only does this emphasize the importance of learning but also it enhances this experience. Hands-on learning is beneficial for twenty-first century learners because it encourages the students’ participation, and does not enable them to be idle learners.

            I am lucky to have the opportunity to work with Mrs. Migliore’s classes this fall because of Mrs. Migliore’s eagerness to integrate arts. I work hard to craft lesson plans that are able to incorporate other subjects and strive to adapt content knowledge so that it is relevant to my twenty first century learners.

           

            After working on portraits I wanted to students to feel accomplished and have tangible work to show. My goal was to cover the blank bulletin board with the photo booth style photo strips with portraits of the students. I felt that it would inspire a sense of pride and community in the classroom. In order to create unity, we all followed a specific format for matting.  Each portrait had to be cropped and re-sized to print as a five by five inch square. This process was accomplished on the computer in Photoshop and afterwards the students printed the image out. At first I was shocked that high school students struggled to use a ruler, when a group of students handed in a photo strip with crooked borders and an irregularly sized matte. I addressed my concern to the whole class and we brought up an image of a ruler on the board. After reviewing measurements and how to matte an image the students’ work improved. Without incorporating mathematics and measurement into this class period the lesson would not have been successful. This lesson helped to stress the importance of measurement to the students, and demonstrate why these concepts are important for them to learn and practice. The best integration is that which reinforces skills, ideas, and theories that can later be applied to the students’ lives to improve their livelihoods.

            This semester in the three digital photography classes and the digital communication class we are focusing on how to manually control our cameras to achieve a broader range of photographic techniques and effects. I wanted to break the material into bite-sized pieces for the students, so that we could build upon a strong foundation. First we focused on shutter speed, and I wanted the students to understand why their digital cameras should be used in modes besides automatic or point and shoot. We talked about manual cameras and how an exposure is created based on the amount of light the camera lens allows inside. The students and I discussed what effect the different shutter speeds will have on the exposure. After they had hypothesized and thought more deeply about shutter speeds, they were able to experiment with them hands-on. My students were in groups of two or three and used tables as tri-pods to capture images of two LED hula-hoops. With longer shutter speeds the students captured more light and longer light trails, a visual metaphor of the concept I wanted them to understand. While the students took photos I heard their excitement and could tell that they were engrossed.

            The most rewarding part of this lesson was the astonishing results.  My students were proud of their images, and with reason, these photos were spectacular and each one was unique despite the single subject matter. Most importantly, as I looked through the photographs with each group, the students were able to distinguish without being prompted the different shutter speeds. The science of photography seemed demystified by hands-on experimenting and problem solving. One student said, “This shutter speed was too slow.” As I glanced over her shoulder to see their work, I asked how she knew this, and she said, “There is not enough light.” I could not have said it better myself, or lectured for an hour to better explain what she had explored for herself. I am excited for the opportunities that integrating the arts introduces to the art classroom, and to further explore these possibilities with my students.

Community & Practice Makes Better

Community

A classroom, a hallway, a building these are all community spaces. These common areas contain a diverse population: students, teachers, administrators, and custodians all contribute to the atmosphere. As I walked through the hallways to Mrs. Migliore’s classroom, each teacher that I passed said good morning.  Smiling ear to ear as I entered the art room; I felt overwhelmed with this welcome, especially because I had not even met any of these teachers.

I want my future classroom to be a learning community. I hope to bridge the gap between art history and contemporary art by creating connections that my students can relate to. I want the content to be tailored to fit my students’ interests and to be valuable in our modern society. I’m look forward to encouraging my students to be a part of their learning experience by contributing to class. Students should be responsible for their education by being active learners. My classroom will be a place for students to express themselves and their thoughts. In order to create this kind of atmosphere my classroom should feel like a safe haven. My future classroom will be an oasis, where students can leave any problems and drama outside and enter feeling stress-free. My high school experience was made better by my art teachers who encouraged me to express myself through my artwork and made their classrooms into a home away from home. The art room is such a crucial place for expression, and true expression is hard to communicate unless you are in a comfortable environment.

Practice Makes Better

I’m so glad that my placement this semester has been a simple transition. My previous nervous jitters about teaching have all been put aside now that I feel more confident than ever in my abilities to instruct high school students. Each Thursday I have been instructing the class or what I like to call practicing. Each week I learn new ways to improve my lessons and methods of teaching to better fit the needs of twenty-first century learners.

This thrilling Thursday the students were finished experimenting with different lighting for their portraits and were making these portraits into photo strips. The assignment was to open the file in Photoshop and change the image shape and size. The improvements my teaching from the first class to the third class were amazing, and I appreciate the opportunities for reflection that Mrs. Migliore has enabled me through opening up the doors to her classroom. I was able to reflect after the first class and I realized that many of the students did not know or understand how to use a ruler to matte the portrait. In the later classes I used a diagram on the board, and had a similar diagram on the matte cutting table. After this adaptation, the student’s photo strips were all the right size and matte style. I was excited to see the students work flourishing and knew that when students are offered clear instructions or expectations they benefit and their work reflects this accomplishment.

Classroom Management

I am a growing educator

As you study this sculpture and think about the form you may wonder, what it is or what it represents. While sculpting this I found it to be a relaxing way to manipulate the clay, however it was afterwards that I found the sculpture to be a self-portrait. 

Fluid movement is illustrated with solid, rigid clay and creates an unusual dichotomy. Points pull from the body and seem stretched outwards as if to reach toward desired goals. I feel that if I want to create curriculum for my future students I need to have a strong structure, while maintaining a fluid ability to adjust to our evolving community. I want to create relevant and meaningful lessons that encourage my student’s participation. Embracing technology and understanding all of its benefits and disadvantages is part of being a modern educator. I believe that technology is a tool that should be used in ways that enhance our student’s learning, and put away when it can hinder their development.

Each day that I enter the Quakertown High School, I find myself reaching out to connect with my students. Whether I ask them how their Thursday is going or what their plans are for the evening, I want them to know that I’m here for them. I am not only their teacher, but I am a resource for them to benefit from. As I continue my studies, not only at Kutztown University, but also as a global citizen, I keep my future students in mind. I know that as our society changes my students will need different kinds of tools to be successful in our evolving society.

Motivation is the essence of dreams.

Lectures suck the life out of students and Power Point presentations put students to sleep. Students thrive when they can participate in their learning. Unfortunately, students do not take responsibility to actively learn, but instead it is our job, as educators, to encourage this behavior.

How do you motivate students? Maybe, the better question is how do you present your content so that students are interested? I found today during classes students would very quickly “zone out” because they were unengaged. I tried to pull them back in by asking questions, but I found some of my questions were lacking. In order to gain the student’s attention I feel like I needed to present them with questions that involve a higher thought process that requires them to be involved with their learning. Today’s lesson reinforced how important planning is. In order for a lesson to be successful every detail must be thought through, even when things do not go as planned. When I plan out lessons I lay out why the students need to or would want to learn the content, as well as multiple ways to present the material. When you problem solve like this you create options, and back up plans. Teachers should always have two or three back up plans, just in case students finish early or the original teaching method does not work out. I learned today that to plan ahead is to be prepared to succeed.

Attention Grabbers?

While instructing at Phoenix Village Art Center the past four summers, I worked with a variety of students ages 3- 13. Throughout instruction I never had a problem maintaining the student’s attention. It seems I have met my match at the high school level. I found it difficult to wait for their attention, as I did not want to waste the other student’s learning time. However, it was necessary to stop side chatter. Mrs. Migliore suggested that I stop and hold onto something, count down from 20, and brace myself because sometimes it can feel like a long time until the students quiet. I practiced this throughout the afternoon classes and found that it worked. However when this did not work I found it helpful to ask the students to stop their side chatter. Telling students what you expect of them and reinforcing these expectations consistently makes all the difference when it comes to classroom management.

Collaboration

Thursday was Google Sites day for all of Mrs. Migliore's classes, and we had a technology specialist come in for a workshop. Mr. Evans, taught social studies at Strayer Middle School, and now he helps classes stay connected by training students and teachers how to better use technology. Today he was showing the students how to create sites from their student google accounts. These websites will become e-portfolios and simultaneously teach the students how to manage their own website.

Google Sites is a simple site builder that has a fairly clear interface. Although I had fewer problems creating my  hula-hoop business site with weebly, I tried my hand at creating my own Google site. While I followed along with Mr. Evan’s demo, I also pushed to do more with my site to personalize it. I used the trial and error learning method to further explore the site.

After the first period I felt comfortable enough to help students at their seats. I walked around while Mr. Evans continued his demo to keep the students on task, and brought some students who were behind up to speed. This was team teaching at its prime. Throughout the day Mr. Evans and I spread ourselves around the room. It was common for more than one student to have a question at a time and having three teachers to cover the room was highly effective. It was not until I drove home that it hit me. Today had been so successful because of collaboration.

When you collaborate, you share knowledge between two or more people. This is so effective because each person has a different background and skill set that is unique. When I played rugby with the Kutztown University Women's Rugby Club I understood how powerful teamwork can be, and how success can be achieved when we all work together. A rugby team has fifteen players, and each player has an individual job to accomplish in order for the team to succeed. A winning team may not even recognize these separate moving parts of the machine, however these parts are what drive the whole. Support is an essential on the rugby pitch, the most common phrase you hear from the girls is “I'm with you, I’m with you”, because we never run without support. I think after teaching on this Thursday I felt particularly accomplished because I had the support of the other teachers. Team teaching benefits the students because it offers the students more than one way to understand the content or concept.

Mr. Evan’s strengths were typically technology based and he was able to explain the Google sites interface to the students. While my inner artist wanted to personalize my website and make it original. Because of my understanding of the site I was able to help the students personalize their sites backgrounds with their own images. At one point Mr. Evans called me over to help a student, while this was his workshop, I was still involved and helpful. This left me feeling like I was an important part of the team, rather than remaining an idle student during his workshop.

Thrilling Thursdays

         

   Thrilling Thursdays is the phrase my Co-op uses to describe my weekly visits, but this past Thursday was more than thrilling.  

            

 It was only day two of my early field experience and my Co-op invited me to teach. My mission was to explain how to control aperture and shutter speed to obtain the student’s desired exposure However, I wanted the lesson to be more than a presentation or lecture. I thought long and hard about how to present the material and especially how to reinforce what the students had learned after teaching. I was prepared with a slideshow about exposure that highlighted the two components, shutter speed and aperture. My Co-op and I discussed the material and decided to focus on just one aspect of exposure for that day. Creating small simple lessons or steps towards the main objective s one-way to set up the students for success. Students wont feel overwhelmed and you can better gage what material they comprehend if you break it up in to smaller chunks. This is one method of classroom management I hope to maintain in my future classroom.

           

This particular Thrilling Thursday we focused on shutter speed. There were only three slides to show; a diagram that visually illustrated the variety of shutter speeds and two images contrasting slow and fast shutter speeds. The presentation was only five minutes of class, but it was not lecture style.  Instead the class discussed why they would want to understand and be able to control these settings. The students then were asked to identify the shutter speed used for each of the example exposures. This was a great way to monitor that the students understood the concept. Before we started shooting Mrs. Migliore and I checked each groups camera to ensure it was set to shutter speed priority mode and that the shutter speed was set to 1 second. This was a formative assessment to make sure that each group was on task, and to check their understanding. The students were asked to compose a few photos using different shutter speeds. And then the fun began...

           

 The student's were able to capture the light trails from my LED hoops and this was a hands-on exercise to reinforce the concept of shutter speed. To hear the student’s remarks while they were experimenting with various shutter speeds was so rewarding. They were excited and amazed by their photo results. And at the end of class I was able to meet with each of the groups and look through their photos. While flipping though their results they were able to distinguish which exposures had long shutter speeds and which exposures were taken too quickly. 

Sunrise

The sunrises on new opportunities,

it sheds light on what we have not yet seen.

Take what the daylight has to offer, 

with it make something beautiful.

First Impressions

           As society moves forward and is ever evolving so are the arts. The arts have grown to encompass so many new media and methods of presenting ideas that it makes my head spin. Installations, light art, and digital art are only a few of the many exciting ways artist's express themselves. As I continue visiting Quakertown High School, I look forward to exploring the digital realm with Mrs. Migliore's classes that focus specifically on digital art.

            Yesterday was my first day in the field. I arrived over an hour early, anxious to be on time. As I watched the sunrise I thought to myself, I can get used to this. Something about the early morning air and the overwhelming beauty of the sunrise reassured me that today was going to be a good day. My co-op was so welcoming and cleared a desk for me right away. She insisted that I have a home and a place to call my own. The first period of the day Mrs. Migliore has prep and during this time I helped her organize her closet while we talked about what her classes were working on. After seven years at the freshman center Mrs. Migliore had just gotten acquainted with her dwellings when the administration asked her to move to the senior center. She was glad I could help her settle into her new space and organize the camera equipment. This year she has taken on the task of writing the curriculum for many of her classes. She teaches five classes total in the senior center: three sections are digital photography, one fine art, and one digital communication class, and she oversees the cyber art history class.

             While classes took place I wandered the room to check what students were working on. I was excited to connect with several of the students, and found one conversation especially meaningful. I am so glad that I am not a wallflower and I had the opportunity to talk with this student. He was looking at photos of motorcycles when I approached him and asked him what theme he chose for his collection of photos. He told me he wasn't sure yet, and I was thrilled to be able to help him brainstorm. I mentioned that one of my photography assignments was to transform an object by zooming in and looking at the subject out of context. I suggested he try this out during a photo shoot of his friends motorcycle. He seemed excited and he mentioned that the motorcycle had a light kit. I was shocked at how easy it was to relate complex photographic techniques to his interests. I told him to practice taking shots of the motorcycle while in motion and while still, and to try panning while the bike is in motion. I was so happy to be able to consult with this student and offer him some exciting new techniques to experiment with while shooting.


            During lunch I was able to talk with Mrs. Migliore and her husband, who is a Spanish teacher. I asked them if there were any conflicts that have occurred in their classrooms that were memorable or that have significantly affected them. They struggled to think of an instance and neither of them came up with a situation, however Mrs. Migliore had some advice. She suggested when a problem arises in the classroom to choose your words carefully when confronting a student. She mentioned that it is wisest to give the students options. Tell the student that they can stop the problematic behavior or continue and face the following consequences. She explained how it might be easier to connect with students when you tell them that you understand. Students want to be reassured and know that they are not the only ones who struggle if they are having a bad day and may not want to be in class. I found that Mrs. Migliore's advice is realistic, especially in high school where students have already learned what is expected of them. It is up to the teacher to offer the students to tools for success, but it is the student’s responsibility to utilize them to their benefits in order to succeed.

            I think this is one reason I enjoy the high school level. I feel there are so many opportunities for me to dive deeper into critical thinking with my students and push them to think outside the box. I know from my personal experience that art has opened my eyes and enabled me to see things in a different light than others. I cherish this, while I look forward to showing this to my future students.