Journal entry #7 The elements for me in going about creating a positive learning environment and establishing a consistent model for my classroom has been years of observing different techniques and classroom management styles that I agree with utilizing and have seen work. As well, trying some of my own techniques during my time at the first placement seeing what I would want to continue during my future as an art educator. Things that create a positive learning environment in my own classroom is being open with your students on what they will be working on, why it's important, ways to express themselves beyond the requirements so they feel they don't have limitations on projects. For a predictable environment in a classroom I got along the lines of having a class routine at the beginning of every class so the students know what happens everyday in the classroom. Also by having rewards for the students when positive actions are set up in a routine. So for example at the elementary school having class leaders everyday during class, they can be responsible for calling tables to line at the beginning and end of class. Allowing students at the table to acquire rewards for cleaning up first at the K-8th grade levels, and rewarding older students 5-8th grade creative free time after the art room has been successfully cleaned up and approved by the teacher.
Thankfully for me growing up has always been around multiple diversities in my own community, and at my schools from K-12. As well, growing up in multiple locations that are very diverse in the community of people around the area. In my own family, I grew up mainly focused on my cuban and latino culture, and I am very grateful that I was able to grow up in the community that I did. So for me when creating lessons I am always looking at ways to incorporate a multitude of cultures respectfully in my own lesson that I bring to students. Strategies that I would like to communicate with students and families at home on what cultural lesson they can suggest participating in the art classroom, as I think it's very important for young kids to experience cultures at a young age. And if these can come from first person sources I think that would be awesome for students to see, as I know growing up I learned a lot by spending time with my friends that were also culturally diverse from my own. My own self-growth I believe was going well during the first part of student teaching at the middle school and before the COVID-19 pandemic. I believe that I was able to take multiple things I had learned in the past from my 2 and a half years in practice and reflect on those times, bringing in different aspects from all of that experience, and growing as a teacher actively in the classroom. As I would imagine and hope was that continued on into my elementary school placement doing the same thing of taking what I had written about, read about and seen, then putting it into action in my classroom. One thing about self-growth is that it is always happening and evolving, and especially now during this time at home I have been able to not only self grow in myself as a teacher, by teaching online, but also personally. It has really made me look at other avenues of teaching in a classroom, outside of a typical school environment or even looking at jobs outside of education due to the current uncertainty that school jobs pose. But it also has not eradicated my love for being in a classroom with kids and teens in an art teacher capacity either, it's just taken me down multiple routes then just teaching. In the past, reflection practices have solely been at the middle school level, as I was never able to fully do something related to reflecting at the elementary school level. The first time I did a reflexive activity with students was with the 7th graders relating to a project they just finished, it consisted of just a short response for each of the elements of art they choose to use in their art projects. This didn’t go as planned mainly because they didn’t want to write or answer questions relating to their projects. For the future I would like to make the activity more interactive for them before they write down the answers, so doing more reflections with the class, table groups or with a partner. Just to help they be able to have ideas for what exactly they could write in response to the questions. The second activity was with 8th grade for the social justice project. I wanted them to explore with multiple materials they had access to in bins at their tables, with the materials they needed to create a notecards size art piece that used three of the materials. The small art piece did not have any requirement but having the three materials, other then that they could draw or create whatever they wanted to on that notecard. This went well in the moment for the student to explore the materials on their own, but when we transitioned from the practice to the actual project they forgot what they wanted to use, didn't like what materials they practiced with, or didn't care about any of the materials let alone the project. I think for the future, adjustments I would make would be just letting the students decide if they wanted to use multimedia in the time of working on the final project, that and when giving the instruction to them making it part of the students grade that three materials are used in the end result of the project so they are more likely to use the mixed media. My art practice I chose to explore was going back to my originall idea of self image. Back in high school during my time doing AP art I created this idea that has always stuck with me and something that I have been thinking about alot during this time period in my life is self image, and your familys image. How we look and see ourselves through time from generations to generations. Now I created this art piece to refelct that of my time during this student teaching process of self reflection on my own self, how people see me, and how I view myself. I chose a furmiliar meduim as I had done in the past, utalizing only graphite and one choice colored pencil. This has a long standing significace to me personally, but the short version is that it has always been a safe comforting material for me since I was a little kid creating art. I think ultimutly this is a good way to end on reflection on not only my time as a student teaching. But also myself as a student, evolving into the artist and art teacher that I have become and I think this art piece reflects that transition of my life.
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Blog Post #6During the first placement at the middle school I learned very quickly how to adapt to teaching at a fast paced environment. But at the elementary school for the first week and a half of being at the school with K-5 it was even more fast paced! It required fast, quick thinking on what was going to be done for the next class after your one class already was in the room. One thing that really helped in both placements was to prepare the grades projects in the morning, or during planning periods allows for a quicker change from period to period.
As of right now during the first month of April, all schools have been doing online learning due to the COVID pandemic. This has been a great learning experience and has really put this question of, “have you made or adjusted to adapt in the second placement” really important. Since going to teaching online, I've had to rearrange what lessons I am going to teach to students, and how to teach different grade levels using technology. For example the older students in 4th and 5th grade can follow along with a powerpoint, that has visuals and step by step writing instructions with little voice narration, yet with the younger grades from Kindergarten to 3rd grade you need to always have reading instructions and narration for the students to follow along with and know what to do at home. And professionally having to adjust to doing all my learning, teaching, and art practices all at home. This has created some challenges regarding teaching with students being at home, we don't get those social interactions with our students, answering questions can become difficult as not all the students can spell, write sentences or even use the computer independently. As well, we don't know what materials our students all have and a range of art materials at each house. So for me as a teacher I need to be able to adapt for each lesson plan being able to be made with paper, pencil and maybe some type of coloring material. Professionally, as a teacher it has been hard to move from being at the school teaching and being around other staff members to being at home. Thankfully, I have been participating in meetings with my cooperating teachers, or in zoom meetings with the whole staff at the school! I've created this art piece to show the change from being in the classroom to solely for the rest of the 2020 school year being all online art classes. I made a small carving print that shows a computer in the foreground and in the background The Studio School where I am currently a student teaching at. This is a way to symbolize the physical and academic transition from being at the school to our new school online. Journal Entry 5Professional development is important in becoming an educator because it helps you as a teacher to always keep learning new skills and techniques that you can be using in your own teachings. During this period of time during the pandemic this has been more important for educators and prospective teachers to be doing themselves. Reading and following other teachers in art, seeing how they are utilizing technology or how they are changing lesson plans to fit online learning. I will be honest before this pandemic I did not really focus on professional development at all besides reading about different art styles of teaching that I had already learned about. During my student teaching I have attended multiple in school and one district art meeting regarding professional development in the art room. One thing that we focused on during the art district meeting at the middle school level was talking about incorporating more ELL techniques into the classroom to help these students during projects and activities. And during my future teachings after that I have found that writing sentence starters and having visuals has been very useful for myself when teaching and seeing it help multiple types of students, not only ELL but LEP students and all around everyone.
Another professional development that I did was through art, my cooperating teachers and I explored with pour paint to use with the 3rd, 4th and 5th graders to do on top of their Clifford Stil paintings they had the opportunity from the Denver art museum to do for our class. So on top of the paintings we explored with the pour paint with students to use on top of their paints. But before we did this, I did my own pour paintings with Flotrel. Journal entry 4Time management for me is being able to have enough time to complete the work that I have to do, in the right amount of time for the assignment to be done efficiently and correctly. Also being able to maintain a positive work ethic during the time when you are working on whatever needs to be done, also helps to maintain a good time management. For me this is more seen through the process of starting and finishing one thing at a time, not working on multiple things, starting two or more projects before the first one is completed. This helps me stay focused on what I am working on and what needs to be put on a higher priority then other things.
One efficient way that I went about time management was that I kept in mind what needed to be done first before I moved onto anything else that needed to be done. So if I have an 8th grade lesson that needs to be updated in the presentation then I worked on that first and did not worry about 6th grades as much because I was not seeing them till the end of the day. What came from this was having the lessons already thought about and having a rough outline the night or day before so that working on that days slides, learning objective and outline for how class was going to work was smoother and everything planned out. It also allowed for better time spent getting materials ready during the one planning period and maintaining a good balance during the day of working on lessons, preparing materials and if time allowed getting some grading done. This ultimately helped me as a teacher having things already planned or ready to go when class started and making the transition from introducing the days learning and language objectives to moving into class time smoother. So right now all parties in my life would consist of myself, my parents and being a student teacher. During the daytime my focus is on student teaching, along with all the components related to that teaching. After school, from the time that I get home, I find the best way to go about managing my time is reflecting on my day, while I am spending time for myself. I spend some time catching up with my parents, I then set aside a couple of hours before bedtime to go over assignments. I start doing more homework related work,and prepare myself for teaching the next day. My student teaching planning most always happens during the weekends, when I have more free time and am not on such a tight schedule of a busy work week. UPDATED: So for when I created this art poster, I was focusing on doing digital art. I’ve never done a lot of digital art before so I wasn’t really sure how to go about creating something digitally and this was the resource that I used. So for me stepping out of my comfort zone was creating something using a digital program on my laptop. In turn this is what I was able to create digitally, never before taking a photo or graphic design class. Hope this helps with clearing this up, please let me know if their is anything else you would like me to add. Journal entry 3How do you see your position from being a student to a student teacher? Sometimes it's difficult to not feel like a college student at times, mainly because of the added seminar classwork that always brings me back into my college student mode of being and creating. In the classroom It's always learning how I could have done something better, like instruction, a lesson, being the ruler of reprimanding bad behavior. Now granted, during the times between 8:00 and 4:15 I feel like a student teacher, solely because I’m there in the school with students teaching them. But during planning periods is when I feel most like a student again as my cooperating teacher and I discuss the lesson of the day, talk about class management or something relating to student teaching and learning. How do you shift between teaching and learning in your student teaching? I've tried to combine my time of teaching and learning with my own student, exploring with the idea of parallel creation and play with my students, so below is the pottery project that I've created during the time my students have been working on constructing their own projects. I’ve traveled from table to table during work times, building my own pot, showing students a first hand example that I am creating and they can ask me questions about their projects or my how I did something on my own. I found that it really helps the students that are struggling as they can watch first hand how to create and solve creatively. This also helps me to learn where my students are struggling first hand and downfalls I might have in instruction by me doing it like the students are. How do you make your teacher presence evidently in the classroom? My teaching presence is constantly made known as I either start the daily instruction on what they are doing, or I travel around sitting at each table every class period, discussion either the project with students, answering questions, or making chit chat about what's going on in their other classes, which helps them feel more comfortable either talking to me about projects and associating me as a teacher that does care about them. How different assessments can help you establish your expectations for students? I’ve tried to do different assessments so far with the student that I have, I've done an assessment with them in the form of a warm up, asking how they feel about the current project. An assessment that has been written on a worksheet, compared to another assessment that is done during group discussion and a quick writing activity that the students get engaged with. But for me in the future I would like to maintain the same idea for assessment and checking for understanding across all my grade levels, and from year to year. This will establish during the period of 3 years to ensure that all the students in each grade have a good understanding of what is expected of them during class time. Why the pottery piece: It goes back to the same idea that I stated in journal entry 1, where I was starting to explore with creating while my students are creating. This for me reflects in a way that I can still be a student and maintain the idea and perspective as a teacher to them and myself. Creating projects that the students are doing allows me to see areas they might struggle with, which is a way that teachers look at how well projects are going with their students but allows me to still be creating in that mode of a student college student. This allowed me to get involved with the students as a student teacher while maintaining a sense of being a teacher to them in a joint perspective. My steps and processes that I go through when starting to create utilizing the parallel play with students is thinking about how I will be breaking down the stages for the projects. How you go through as a teacher creating a brand new project you haven’t taught before to a 7th grade class, this in turn allows for better communication of expectations with your students on how it should be created, thought about, and the overall end result should look like. While you as the teacher can break down the project for your students in a way they will understand. My thought process for this breakdown is such; looking at the college level thinking of a student, how we create in studio classes. Then moving into how teachers create projects for students in your school, being able to recognize the types of students that are in the school. And lastly how the students are going to be responsive to the start and creation process of the project all the way to the end result. Journal Entry 2 ExperienceAs this is ongoing throughout my student teaching, I feel that with more experience the ideas of what to reinforce will always be around and ever changing. At every school there is something that could be reinforced and added to the way that you teach. So overall the idea from this journal post and the 4 weeks that I have been student teaching is that of experience. Mainly just with viewing how other teachers, learning where you draw the line on projects, behavior and just any aspect of teaching for me. You can never say you don’t have enough experience, and that was the first word that came to my mind when thinking about things to add to my teaching is that of more experience. AttitudeRelating to experience I think that for me now teaching and dealing with attitude from students and the behaviors that are commonly seeing in the school that I am in is on thing that I need to work on reinforcing in the classroom. I will be honest that sometimes I get angry with students that are being defiant, showing rude or disrespectful attitudes towards anyone in a teaching or authority position at the school. And when I come face to face with this I tend to leave the conversations, before I start to get into a battle with them, as thats what they want to do is argue. I feel that I will forever as a teacher have to deal with the attitude from students, its just about experience with these types of students that you learn how to discipline them, what you can and can’t do with individual students, and even if its worth it. Ive reached the point right now with this, thinking, “is this worth getting into an argument with the student about?” and “will it even change or effect the way this student behave later on in other classes?” Now I know this isn’t a common thing that happens at every school, but in schools similar to the one that I am at for student teaching, and as society changes for kids, I foresee this becoming a bigger issue and thing that gets discusses more in schools. OrganizingAnd lastly I think that I could add organizational skills or making things even more organized for me and the students in the long run, in my own classroom. Right now the classroom is organized but sometimes I notice that the students become disorganized or ruing the organization that is in place for the other classes and me as the co-teacher. So making things clearer on where things are to go, what happens during clean up and for me, making things easier for students to be responsible for their own organizing of the materials.
Journal Entry #1#Tessellations During my first two weeks of student teaching I have discovered and learned a lot, especially how to transition from a student to teacher, being in the middle school on a daily basis.
I chose the word Tessellations because of two reasons, firstly its because it's the first project that the 7th graders due as a stepping stone into this semester of art. It allows for freedom of exploration and trial and error, somewhat similar to how I looked at the first two weeks so far of student teaching, trial and error. And secondly this project is all about piecing the design together to create a repeating pattern, and I feel like in teaching it's a similar experience from class to class, repeating the last lesson to 8th grade to another 8th grade period, then the same with 7th grade. Its also a perfect example of how I can piece all my learning so far into my student teaching, either solo teaching the 6th graders, or co-teaching a project with my cooperating teacher. This project for 7th grade showed me a lot of challenges that students might have with creating a work of art that solely relays on the creativity and willingness of student to create art. As I was just helping out and co-teaching these last two weeks I decided to test out something I had learned about in a past art education class on parallel play. This idea is that while the student are working you are also working on the same project as them, allowing to show them what you're working on, getting stuck on and how the overall piece should look somewhat similar. Now this was very difficult and extremely impractical to do as so many student in the 7th grade class need help, or we have behavior that needs to be addressed so Its finished to the level that I could during the same class time as the students. I left it the way it was and added watercolor over to show the level of work teachers do during class and the amount of time we could possibly get to start and finish the same project as our students, Its very difficult and almost impossible in a 7th grade class, to do everything, and work on an art piece, its near impossible. |
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May 2020
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