Teacher Research as an Art Educator

I am taking my last required course for my Master's in Education this semester: "Teacher Research".
My one other course is an online elective about Critical Thinking. Spring and summer semesters this school year will be my last three courses and all electives!

I want to share my research questions with you, my cyberspace art teacher colleagues and friends, for your input, guidance and feedback. Over the course of this semester, I will be collecting data in my classroom and therefore implementing activities to facilitate collection. I have a few ideas about what I can do, but other thoughts and perspectives are always welcome. While I am going to class each week, there are no other art teachers and my professor's experience is in reading. She even said that she has never had an art teacher in her course before!

The BIG Question:

To what extent can incorporating visual thinking skills in the art classroom help students become more comfortable talking about art and improve their creativity?

The Smaller Questions:

• How can group discussions centered on a work of art become more rich and in-depth?
• What techniques have I discovered that help students work through the creative process?
• To what extent will students be able to affectionately analyze their own work?
  
  Thank you in advance for your input, ideas and expertise. It is greatly appreciated.

 

Reflections on the week and Works in Progress

I have looked forward to Saturday morning all week. More specifically I looked forward to sleeping in. But come 6:15/ 6:20 am, my brain started ticking and I found myself pouring a cup of coffee come 6:30. I slept in... by an hour. My school schedule has got a hold on me! Can't sleep in like I used to!

I have officially survived two full weeks of being a full time art teacher and part time graduate student. I even attended Open House for both schools. While I was more of a smiling face handing out student schedules at the middle school open house, I was pleasantly surprised by how many parents and families I got to meet at the high school. I wasn't really sure what was expected of me, so I put together a few slides of a power point. I briefly talked about techniques, concepts and ideas I hope to cover this year, my grading policy and expectations (come to class with a pencil and sketchbook!) At the end of my seven minute sh-peal I opened it up to questions, which there were few if any, and shook everyone's hand on the way out.

This week I reflected a lot on student behavior I've observed over the age span that I teach. Overall my 8th graders will be the biggest challenge with a wide range of abilities, effort/ work ethic and personalities. I have less than a handful of freshman who appear to think their elective is a joke. Unfortunately this handful is in the same section and they are starting to drag down a few friends who want to be in art. It is really interesting to see how the dynamic changes when someone is absent too. But as the instructor, I need to figure out how to engage these students. Reminding them that 70% of their grade is effort hasn't appeared to help. I'll have to work on that.

Works in Progress...
As far as what we are doing in the classroom, we really just started our first activities in the middle school and have been working on drawing exercises building up to a long term activity at the high school.

At the middle school I have been LOVING my wall mounted projector and document camera. I think I have used both almost everyday. The document camera has made demonstrations sooooo much easier. I can't believe how smoothly the process to create the Kaleidoscope Name Design, or Identity Mandala as I am calling it this year,  has gone. The picture above is a work in progress and I am so excited to see them complete. 

 

These two are from last year's group of eighth graders. I moved this lesson to seventh to correspond with their study of Ancient Civilizations. I'll be sure to post more when they are done. And I'd like to write about our drawing unit at the high school too. I just need to remember to bring my camera!

First Full Week (almost) Complete!

And I am exhausted.
My ankles are swollen. I have a blister on my left heel after the third time wearing my new sandals. My face has broken out from stress and sweat and I swear the bags under my eyes are darker.
But I LOVE my job!
I am so thrilled to be teaching high school. And in the afternoons when I return to the middle school, its like coming home. After a year in the building, I know the kids, I'm comfortable with my co- workers and I am focused on staying organized and getting awesome work done with my students. At the high school, the kids, for the most part, want to be there. I dove right in and challenged them with forty minute long still life drawings from observation and upside down drawing exercises. I am amazed at their abilities and can't wait to see where their freedom and creativity will take them this year. I will be introducing the first long term activities of the year starting tomorrow with seventh and eighth grade. And using my new projector and document camera!

New and Improved Art Room 201

 The teacher across the hall asked me yesterday if the room now felt more like my own, after a year in the building. I hadn't thought about that as I worked for ten days organizing, scrubbing and de-cluttering. I was more focused on getting the room functional, but the truth is, it does! 

For some reason I decided to empty the cabinets that contained "supplies" and organize what I found. What a mess! My goal was to stock the cabinets with everyday materials like markers, glue and colored pencils, so that I wouldn't have to go into the main supply closet (where you can't see the classroom) if we ran out of something. I think I've met my goal, but the real test will be when we really start creating. 

 

Since I was able to take some of the daily supplies out of the main supply closet, that needed to be reorganized too! Less clutter!

As inspired by Mrs. Impey at Art Room 104 I too spray painted some of the caddies the previous art teacher had purchased. They are way too big, and too few, to sit on the tables for supplies. So I color coded them to match two tables and my thought is that at the end of class, the tables can share the cleaning supplies that will be in the caddies.  

Excuse the blurriness, but this is a shot of the hood in the closet between my room and the room across the hall. When the building was first opened, our two rooms at the end of the building were science labs, complete with gas lines and this hood! I guess when they took out the gas, they forgot about it. My mentor, who taught in my room for five years, told me it was there and that its great for spray painting! It proved to be super convenient!

To also cut down on the clutter, I organized newspaper and magazines. I now have twelve drawers full of National Geographic, Smithsonian, Time, Newsweek, Home and Gardens, woman's interest magazines and Architecture Digest. I was also able to stash a lot of my recycled materials behind the newspaper and laundry basket of smocks.  The two boxes of National Geographic above are filled with editions from the sixties, seventies and eighties. I have removed those from classroom circulation!

 Watching Project Runway on the laptop and painting signs!

Inspired by an  image on Pinterest!

Unfortunately the original link is not working. I know a lot of visitors to my blog came to check out my old rules that spelled out ARTIST. I wanted to free up some bulletin board space and make the rules more prominent, so I created this banner. It spans the entire wall! 

 

I am also really proud of my Bloom's Taxonomy board inspired by Pinterest. The original link brings you to a literacy blog and has some other great ideas for elementary reading. I plan to refer to my board while going through the creative process, learning about art history, critiques and artist's statements. 

Even my desk, with my plant from home and my old red sweater in case I get cold, feels more like my space. I can't wait to get started!

Day 2 in Room 201

My classroom (and apartment) look as though I am moving. I'm not. Just organizing! 

 

Last week I went through file folders and binders of lessons and resources I have acquired over the last four years. (I can't imagine all the stuff I'll have by the time I retire, but hopefully by then I'll have a classroom to myself for more than a couple of years. hopefully.) I managed to get all of my first three years into a large binder, sectioned by grades. My stacks of paper from last year have been divided into files, ready to be moved back to school and into my one sticky file cabinet.

I am looking forward to having my own, functional work space this year, equipped with a new computer! I use a cable plugged into the headphone jack of the computer to the little stereo and play a shuffle of Pandora stations while the kids are working. It'll be so much easier now to use the player, not to mention use all the other applications.

I didn't do too much the first day other than move a bunch of furniture. Including this homemade flat file that was between the two sinks. It just didn't make sense to me to have paper storage where there was water, so I decided to try to move it.

You can see on the floor the marks left from where it was. I had to use a screw driver to loosen the years of wax build up. And once it budged, I used a broom handle as a lever and push it away from the wall. Now in front of my desk, I can use the file to store large paper and use the top to organize handouts.

Today I mainly cleaned up my sink area. I plan on putting wire shelving under the counters for cleaning caddies and some paint storage. My most favorite part of my room so far are the Keith Haring stickers I found at Ikea. They make me smile and I hope the kids like them as much as I do.

Personal Work

We're coming up to my ten year high school reunion. I know, I know, I am young. Thank you. 

Nothing is set in stone as far as what we are doing. So far there is an informal group set up on Facebook and our class president is planning based on posted conversations and a survey.

I am looking forward to seeing people. I am terrible at keeping in touch and while Facebook has been great to see who is married, has kids, etc., nothing beats catching up in real life. 

I also want to brag about how I am actually working in the field I studied in college!

The impetus for this post however is the fact that I still have artwork from over ten years ago! I mean ten years has flown by! I shoved work from high school in a couple of brown paper portfolios, stuck 'em under my bed (in all five apartments!) and forgot about it.

I just pulled them out, covered in dust, and went through what was there. (I think I have done this a handful of times over the years, but still had stacks of work with the addition of college work) I decided to keep things based on whether or not I would use them as class examples or if I had an emotional attachment to the work. I had pages and pages of figure drawings that were getting conte crayon dust on everything and there was no good reason to keep them. I hope tonight I don't wake up in a sweat thinking I made a mistake throwing out work. I don't even let students throw work out in front of me. It breaks my heart! I ask them to take their work home to show someone before recycling.

When I first graduated from college, I dreamed of owning a flat file to store my precious pieces. I suppose I still do, but the reality is they're wicked expensive, as we'd say up here in New England, and I don't have the space. Have you ever tried to move a flat file? I bought one second hand for my last school and I was very thankful that we splurged for a mover. That thing was heavy!

Anyway, do you have work that you store at home? If it's not on display, what do you do with it? How do you decide what to keep? Then, if you get to make your own work, what do you do with it? Do you sell it?

I should also give credit to the picture: this 18x24 watercolor was done by a junior I had while student teaching.

Scarecrows

When fall really starts to settle in, I realize how much I miss teaching elementary school. I don't think I ever even imagined myself teaching the little ones, let alone enjoying it! But there is something about experiencing their pure joy and uncensored imagination in the art room that is so rewarding. I hope to inspire my middle school kids to continue to enjoy art and use their imaginations. It can be a really turbulent time as a teenager, but art can be a great outlet.

Anyhow this fall lesson, again unearthed from my file transfer, is inspired by Not so scarey Scarecrows from Deep Space Sparkle. I did this my third year teaching, but had found Patty's website about a year before.

---side-note---
I am so thankful for the art teacher community created in the blogosphere! I did my student teaching at the high school level and there were five teachers in the building! It was also in a school that had been built within the last five years, had an amazing department head and equally awesome budget. Going from that to the only art teacher at a parochial school with not budget (that I knew of) two years later, was an adjustment to say the least! Finding people like Patty, Phyl and Mr. E. made me feel like I wasn't alone and encouraged me to provide the best art education I could. (And with the encouragement of Ms. Wilkinson (my college roommate), now at The Tale of a Traveling Teacher, I started my own blog during my third year)
------

This Scarecrow lesson was the first time I felt like I had taken an idea that I found online and really made it my own. And even more rewarding was how much fun these fourth graders had, class after class completing their assignment.

But now, two years later, I can't remember. What did we start with!?
I think we did a guided drawing the first week.
Yup, that's what we did.
We drew the face of the scarecrow, the arms/ shirt and legs however they would fit on the page. I drew different ideas on the board and had handouts at each table. I kept it simple, building on the letter 'U' and using horizontal and vertical lines. Students used black crayon.
Next we started with a plate of primary colors. We painted yellow things, then red then whatever was orange by mixing yellow and red. We followed the same idea with blue, green and brown. See More.

The next class, we used a bunch of the construction paper that had been sitting in the coat closet for years! It was faded and yellowed in spots but perfect for designing our "crops."

We again started with the primary colors and reviewed different types of line... zig- zag, curvy, diagonal etc etc. Students painted 3 (?) sheets. The next class, we tore the paper and "donated" half to the scrape bin, keeping the other half for the background.

Finally, we cut out our original scarecrows, glued them to the crop background and added some rafia for texture. I'm sure this lesson isn't original, even with the collage aspect I added. But it sure felt awesome for all of us to make something so fun! 

I think I took these photos pre rafia. Super cute none the less!