MEDIA, TECHNIQUES, AND INQUIRY FOR ELEMENTARY AND MIDDLE SCHOOLS
ART 201
CLINICAL OBSERVATION WRITTEN REFLECTION
Description: For this class, I attended Oakland Elementary school for two weeks and got to observe and help out in an art classroom. I was able to spend time in the classroom and gain some in person experience rather than virtual. I was able to experience a few different 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade art classes while I was there. This was a very educational and helpful experience to learn what is it like in an actual classroom and the teacher I was with was great with sharing things with me that I will be able to use in my classroom in the future.
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Rational: Being in the classroom allowed me to see and experience a lot of different teaching techniques, projects, behavior control and strategies, and learn about resources I can use in the classroom. It also helped me to understand more of what goes on inside the classroom other than just teaching content and cirriculum.
ARTIST RESEARCH
Description: For this assignment, we had to find an artist that interested us and learn more about the artist and their work and present about it. For this project I chose to learn more about Yayoi Kusama and her work.
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Rational: This project really made me find some diverse artists and look outside the very mainstream artists. While doing research I really gained an understanding for why, as a teacher, you should give your students a wide variety of artists with different styles, races, mediums, genders, and cultures.
TEACH ANYTHING VIDEO
Description: For this class we were instructed to make a "teach anything video" where we had to create a video of ourselves teaching the audience to do something that was non art related. I chose to do my video on how to use an espresso machine.
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Rational: This video taught me how to describe and show in detail how to do something. It made me realize that doing something that may be a simple task to you, needs to be explained in detail for others to understand. I can bring this knowledge into the classroom when I am explaining projects or how to use materials.
ART INTERVIEW AND REFLECTION
For this interview, I chose to interview my roommate and one of my best friends from elementary school. Although she is not an artist now, I know that art played a big part of her life through high school. She had an amazing art teacher, Mrs. Wilson, in elementary and middle school who really helped her to be more open about her art and helped to open her eyes to see the world differently. Grace explained her as one of the most out of the box teachers she's ever had. The projects that she would create and the materials that she would use gave Grace a whole new perspective on how out of the box materials can create really cool artwork. This out of the box thinking really helped Graces creativity to grow. She recalls this one project in school where they were drawing a face and a girl in her class colored the girls lips purple instead of pink or red and this threw her off because she never really thought of straying too far from reality. After having Mrs. Wilson as a teacher for a few years, she found herself trying new things in her art and being more creative and expressive in her work. She always knew she wanted to continue art throughout her lifetime because it always brought her so much peace. Even thought she is not going into an art career, she still loves art and considers Mrs. Wilson to be an inspiration to her and the reason she loves art as much as she does.
I have a similar experience with my childhood art because I had the same teacher that Grace did. Mrs. Wilson is one of the reasons I wanted to become an art teacher. She opened my eyes as to all different kinds of art and mediums and made me realize there is so much more to art than just the thing that you create. I remember some of the art projects that she had us do and they were all so creative and not your basic elementary school art projects. She had us doing things at a young age that most other art teachers wouldn't even consider trying. One thing that really made her stood out is how much pride she took in her students work and how much she believed in us as students and artists. At the end of each school year we had a fine arts night that our teacher would put on for the whole school. She would put our artwork in the gym at our school and by the time the night came there wasn't an inch in the gym that didn't have a piece of artwork on it. She loved to show us off and we loved showing family and friends all that we did that year. She is the reason I have so much confidence in my art today.
ARTIST COLLECTION
We had to create our own artist collection or ritual for this class and had to share on our blog about it throughout the semester. For my artist ritual I decided to do a collection of things. It's something that I have been doing since I was in high school and I started it with my grandpa. We collect and share pictures of frogs. When I was a junior in high school I did a really realistic painting of a frog and my grandpa loved it so I started taking pictures of any frogs that I saw and would send them to him. It has kept up over the years and we both continue to send each other the frogs that we find and we have a pretty big collection at this point. Some are real, some are on signs or building, some are art, some I find in thrift/vintage stores, and some he finds online. It's something that has been really fun and has kind of showed me how many frogs I see all the time without really noticing.
PROFESSIONALISM, ADVOCACY & LEADERSHIP: PAL 1 (1 SUBMISSION)
Description: I attended an artist talk where Alánna Veitch presented her ceramic pieces titled "As Worlds Move Around Us." What really drew me to attending this talk was the title combined with the complexity of the pieces
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Rational: I really enjoy ceramics and have been more interested in it this semester and attending this class was a great way to get myself exposed to others peoples work and how they go about creating. She explained how there are so many layers to the pieces and how that relates to the concept of the work. It made me realize that if I can open my mind a little bit I can incorporate different aspects of myself into my pieces and create a level of complexity that I am always looking to create.
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CLASS WARM UP
During this class, we each had to pick a day to create a warm up for the class. My day was close to halloween so I chose for everyone to draw a pumpkin and give it a face or decorate it however you choose. It was a really fun warm up and is something that could be used in my future classroom to get the students ready and excited for the day and for halloween!