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.