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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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
May 2020
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