"Bizarre" Student Interaction

Today is a half-day, so school will be dismissed at noon. I am currently in the computer lab, having different classes and students arrive in my classroom. So far today I had a student tell me I look tired. His discription had been rather poetic.

"Ms. Egolf, you normally look like a bonfire but today you are like the embers left over."

Lovely. Made me smile. This is one of the students I wish I had the chance to have in my class. Instead, I've made a deal with him where he can serve any detention time he has with me in room 219. He has been scanning in some of his oh so awesome manga-inspired sketchbook images, and editing these in Adobe Photoshop.

Last hour I had a student walk into the lab to talk with one of the students in an English class. When I was attempting to ask him where he was going, he acted like he didn't speak English and delivered some strange dialog. He eventually left. I looked at one of the girls who had been closest to the incident and described it to her as "bizarre". She found the word funny, and said she was going to start using it. Sooo.... I talk some "slang" today. Ha!

The New Job - An Introduction

The last eight weeks I have been working at a local high school in my area. Its not a full time gig, but a 20% teaching position as a graphic arts teacher and a 40% lab monitor position. I accepted this position because I wanted to get working in the area using my newly earned degree, and be in the school for longer than 50 minutes so that I may be building relationships with students and promoting my class for the following year.

This is for this semester only. I wish it were possible for the school to extend my contract for the following semester. I've met some really great seniors who I won't be able to have because they are graduating and my course won't be offered in the spring semester.

The class I am teaching is an introduction to graphic design. It is technically called "Graphic Communication Technology" and it is in the business department, not the art department. The advantage to being in the business department is that the department gets money from the state of Illinois for each student that is enrolled in the class. The disadvantage has been I had to apply for a second certification in Industrial Arts. It cause me $50 to apply for this certification. This has the potential to turn into something really good, as individuals certified in Industrial Arts have been on a downhill slope. If I look for positions in departments that seek this certification, compared to the fine arts department, I will always be able to find a job.

The head of my department, Diane, has spoken with me about next year. While it is still tentitive until the students register for the 2010-2011 school year, I should be able to teach more course and hopefully be full-time. I may be able to be have within the business department and take any overflow from the art department.

CFK - Final Day of Class

Thursday had been the last day of classes for my Parkland College for Kid's Claymation class. I had scheduled a movie premier of all the work that the students had completed during the last two week. I was blown away by the outcome, as I had been assuming about 2 people to come for every student. The room was packed with people! There were so many smiles and so much laugher marking the enjoyment of all that were watching the creations of my students. Below is a sample of the final work produced (with the addition of music by Aphex Twin, titles and credits).

CFK - A Night Out by Lauren

Above is one of my student's video. I added music and titles. Curious about others' thoughts on the music. Do tell.

Day off of CFK

I'm officially half-way finished with my first set of College For Kids classes. Monday I'll be finished exporting all the videos completed last week and put the credits at the end of each of the pieces (and title at the beginning). I also need to hunt down music to go with the short videos. In the meantime, check out the video below by Emily.

Turtle by Emily



In other news... Job hunting
Today I spoke with a principal at a local high school. They are hiring a graphics arts teacher to teach 1 class during 8th hour. Have you ever heard of a 5hr/week? I am really interested in beginning at a school, particularly high school teaching design, but this will either be a wedge between morning/evening work or stop me from getting full-time employment somewhere. I was thinking I'd see they would provide me with a planning period (to make it a 10hr/week) or make me a permanent substitute teacher for the semester. I know I don't want to do spend the whole day doing hall monitoring, as I would rather piecemeal a teaching schedule around town than do mundane things at one school (all for the sake of insurance).

Stop-Motion Project - Creatures in Action

I had my students sculpted creatures yesterday and tape them today. Below is a sample of the videos that came out of it.


Octopus by Lauren

Stop-Motion Project - Pattern, Rhythm, Movement

The following video is from an intro to Stop-Motion Animation. I'll post more after adding the credits.

Stop-Motion Project - Let the Credits Roll!

This is a video created by my student Andy, who is part of my first Claymation class at Parkland's College for Kids in Champaign, Illinois. This will be used at the end of any video he helped compose.



This is a video by TJ. He was super excited about his creation. It's brilliant.

A Sincere Action

Yesterday I received a note from my student Samantha. She is a student who has skipped the majority of one of the two classes I teach and is passing the other class by her shoe strings. Because it was "my last day" she came to both of the classes. At the end of the second one, she handed me a haphazardly folded piece of notebook paper addressed like an envelop with "Smile Sunshine" written in sloppy handwriting. Inside it held a neon-orange 1/4 sheet of cardstock paper with a note written from the top-left corn to the bottom-right. It stated the following message:

Carmen -
Its been real.
Even though you played
games. :( ha. if you decide
to join look me up... if not email
me. Im not a student after
Tuesday.

She signed using her email address. My initial read of this came to the following conclusion. Samantha had told me earlier that she found someone that told her my real name. She has been asking me frequently through my 8-weeks at UHS what my first name was so that she could find me on Facebook, and I've been eluding the questions using humor. Hence why she thinks I've been playing games. I believe that if I had told her my name (in order to not make a big deal about it) Samantha would have challenged my roll by addressing me as an equal. Instead, I got pulled in by the approach I had selected. I was thinking the reasoning for this note was to generate a mentor or a friend. The first seemed unlikely, as her level of interest in art was minimal, while the second was just as unlikely (if not more so) as I had no intension in being friends with an 18 year-old.
It dawned on me today to look at the other side of the neon-orange cardstock paper. What originally had registered in my mind was that it was only a piece of scrape paper found in the computer lab. Now I looked at the invitation on the, noticing for the first time that it is an invitation to Samantha's graduation party.
Yesterday I had a discussion with my corporating teaching, during which she explained "receiving a personal invitation from a student is a sincere gesture." This is the conversation that came to mind when I realized that Samantha was inviting me to her graduation party. I am left wondering if the invitation is indeed as sincere of a gesture as the Utopia-like generalization of student actions stated by my corporating teacher – as Samantha may be just hoping for graduation gifts or an impossible friendship – and I am left to wonder if I should follow-up on this invitation.

4th Graders complete Animal Posters

One of B.T.Washington's 4th grade teachers asked us to integrate a science study into our art curriculum. As part of their science curriculum, these students have been researching a particular species. They read books, listed to tapes, and wrote a paper on their animal/insect. In the art room these students have been working on a poster that highlighted their species with 3 other elements: the habitat, the food they ate, and the species name.
Today the 4th grade group completed this project. Below are some of the posters.
This student ran out of time in completing the final details. You may see an outline of a bug towards the right side of the poster (near the action marks). I love the small flowers he started at the bottom.
This one has cute written all over it. Sweet.
The cottontail rabbit! Awesome.
This student was needy throughout the project, requiring step-by-step instruction. In the end, she was very successful and hopefully felt proud of her final results.
What is most funny about this image is that it has a raccoon tail going off of the poster. "I'm going to eat you!"

Job Fair

Today I attended a job fair, which is a professional reason not to be student teaching. The break was definitely nice and needed, as I started coming down with a stuffy nose yesterday. Last evening I spent about 5 hours updating and reformatting my resume. When I finished my revisions I was most surprised by the amount of experiences I have had in teaching. I expanded my resume for the first time to two pages just to fit about the wonderful things I have done in the last three years. It looks fantastic! I interviewed with several schools today. Several of them stated that they liked some sort of visual detail about the resume. One of them stated right away that he wanted the principal to look at it and then wrote the guys name on top. While this particular job does not appeal to me 100%, it is only 45 minutes away and in my field. With this economy, something is better than nothing. Since I don't want to relocate this may be the direction I go. But we will see at a later date.

Emotional Face Collage, critique

I absolutely love the results of the second grader's Emotional Face Collage project and think they all should be really proud. So today I led a critique. I started by explaining what a critique was, using a reference to the food critique in the cartoon Ratatouille. I had each student take turns coming up to the display of face collages and stand under their favorite collage. They could not select an image that had already been talked about or their own. One sweet little boy said that they were all his favorite. So cute!

The critique was perhaps a little long winded. Shauna suggested for the last group that I try just having the students talk about 5 pieces from the other classes. I will ask them to identify the emotion and look for how the artist had expressed the emotion through color and hair. Below are some of the final pieces the students had completed.

2nd graders complete their Emotional Face Collage

Today I updated the display outside of the art room with some of the completed Emotional Face Collages that my 2nd graders have been working on. My group today were completing their collages, so they will be doing their critique next session. Once my two final groups do critique I will add more to this display. Before class I organized all the materials for each of the table groups. I had paper from them to cut from, any uncompleted collages, new materials so that everyone would do at least one collage today, and a place where all the completed work was hanging from. I even rearranged some of the students to eliminate some of the talking that was happening last time, particularly from two boys who are BFF. They still were out of their seats getting up to be next to one another, but this will need to get eliminated over the next couple classes. I took some pictures today of the 2nd graders working on their collage. Many of the students had all their collage pieces cut out and ready to glue. This student is working on her second collage and is gluing her pieces onto the blue paper. At the end of class I concluded with having the students complete a self-assessment worksheet. They had to define what emotion they had been working on, if they were creative, if they worked quietly and paid attention, and so forth. Next time this group will do their critique and probably start their next project in that time.

ISAT and the Art Room

Last Thursday it came to Mrs. Carey and my attention that our schedule will be changing today through Wednesday due to ISATs. It hasn't been a big mystery in the school that the ISATs would be happening, and we were doing our part in helping get the students ready through the art environment. We've set timers saying that they cannot talk or get help during the 10/15 minutes that the alarm was set. We did some Smartboard activities that included fill-in-the-dot questions that tested the students' knowledge on topics recently explored through the project they completed and video the students watched. With all this preparation why was it only two days before the tests did we learn of the change in our schedule?
If you've kept yourself updated on the past several months of postings, than you would know that the 3rd grade general classroom is nuts. Last week they had 1 substitute leave halfway through the day, and another one saying that her first stop after leaving the building was a liquor store (which she stated before this comment that this was not her regular behavior). Apparently last week one of these students had attempted to strangle another one of the students. The principal was meeting with several of the parents/guardian of these students. When one of them said that her own nephew needed to be suspended for his actions the principal said that "she had not decided yet". mhmm.... Personally, and I don't believe there is any room for argument on the issue, when physical violence e nters into the equation actions must be swift and powerful.
Since the third graders are under a bunch of stress with tests , and having to really be on their best behavior in order to concentrate for their ISATs, we are doing a 1-day pop-up project with them.

We showed them different types of pop-ups that they can do – from layer pop-ups to mouth pop-ups; the castle above is the example I made for them to see, plus the house was done by one of the students.

Gotcha Celebration

Today marks the end of my 6th week of student teaching. It is also the end of the month, thus all the good students that collected 70+ gotcha cards got to attend the Gotcha Celebration happening in the gymnasium all morning long. For this event I put together a new Fishing for Prizes banner. This banner is taped to a wall with a teacher hidden behind it. When the student puts their fishing pole over the wall the teacher attaches some small prize. Other events included Pin the Tail on the Wolf, bowling, pinata, basketball, and several other things. The photo below includes the 4th and 5th grade students waiting to begin the fun activities.

Student Teaching: Day 27

Getting accurate assessment of student knowledge. I had been brewing the night before over the results of the second grader's first critique day, and wondering how I may improve the results of the assessment and if it was possible that I was asking too much for the developmental level of my students. Or was I not providing an environment that limited the number of factors acting as distraction to my students. I visited the general and bilingual second grade classroom to check with the primary teachers of my students. I showed each of them the handouts I am using for assessing students' I was using and asking for their opinion of their experience with these students. One of these teachers provided a suggestion that in order to have the most accurate assessment of their knowledge I should provide folders to separate the space, read each of the questions and not allow the students to work ahead. As the general classroom teacher, she provided me with an idea that would provide consistency to our shared students and a solution for getting a more accurate assessment of my teaching through what my students have committed to memory. I told this to Mrs. Carey and she suggested that we borrow some folders from their classroom and try the assessment out on the next group of students.

Students perspective of performance. One of the interesting points that were made at my student teaching seminar I attended yesterday had been that our end goal is to provide students with independence and the ability to self-monitor. As a classroom that requires a lot of hand-on, students often illustrate an "I can't do it" attitude and lock up. These students will constantly request that you draw, cut or plainly do their art project for them. While I admire the student's ability to delegate tasks, the lessons I am trying to teach in my class are important for their frame of mind. For instance, students that are assisted too often with their art making will develop a bond with the participant teachers. These teachers allow the student to slip into a lazy pattern. They allow the voice of self-doubt within the student to grow. They come to you asking you to do something that you had asked them to do. They haven't even tried, and you know this because they haven't even attempted to place any marks on the paper. One student like that can be sad and tug at your heart because of their neediness. However, when a regular classroom has a couple to several students with the same attitude, than it will also drain you of a lot more energy. So by encouraging students to work independently and to apply themselves in their tasks without being worried of failure, than a teacher can save physical energy that could be better spent of providing students with more mental challenges through the fine arts.

1st Grade Drama. I heard today that two students had gotten suspended for their behavior on the playground the day before hand. The most surprising bit was that one of the students tried to strangle the other student. Its a little disheartening to hear such news. I am curious about what factors at home encourage such behaviors. In my classroom the remaining first graders were completing their second day on the pop-up houses. One of these students was adorable. He's a big kid and a couple weeks ago I had taken him to the office because of his voice level and behavior in the hallway. When he thought that he was in big trouble, he turned into a kitten -- totally the funniest transition I could ever have seen. Anyway, I motivated him to complete coloring his paper by telling him I'll have him take a picture with his artwork. So cute!

Black History Month Museum. The fifth grade class did an event for the school today. each was assigned researching an important black figure, writing a bio, dressing as the figure, and being in a "was museum". Tuan was really in character; being completely still until the token was in his box. Randy had his speech memorized. And Victor wrote his own rap to tell about his character.

Gotcha! Celebration preparation. I was asked today to do the water for the fishing game at the Gotcha! Celebration. It looks great! I used two different colors of blue paper - one for its sturdiness and the other to create waves. I also added many colored fish. I caught the attention of several of my students that stayed after school (I was working in the gym) and they helped cut out fish and put the marker details of them. Here is one of the fish.

Kindergarten and Pop-up Houses

Today the kindergarten class completed working on their Pop-up House project. They had spent one day learning about house types and parts of the house, one day drawing their home, and two days making/coloring their pop-up home.
Intergrating Spanish. Teaching in a bilingual school has provided me with an opportunity to consider how I might integrate Spanish into my art room. For my Pop-up house project, I had students learn vocabulary words for parts of a house in both English and Spanish. They learned that the Spanish word for roof is techo, window is ventana, and door is puerta. While it was not a vocabulary word I ended up also teaching the word "pomo", which means doorknob in Spanish. I like this particular word. It reminds me of some of the art theory I need to get reading/writing about for my thesis. In art, PoMo is short for post modernism. When I was an undergraduate in graphic design we used to talk about pomo and popomo (post-post modernism, the probable time period after post modernism) and jokingly label our time period as popopomo.
So Many Houses. During the process of this project I had read the student a book called "So Many Houses", which I scanned into the computer to put on the Smartboard. Its a little, short book. Scanning it allowed me to make it big and keep the students' interest. I showed the students different types of houses that they may live in. Like a house-house, an apartment, trailer, and duplex. Helping students to identify their home and be able to draw it allowed me to learn a little about my students too. While the kindergarteners primarily made the house-house regardless of what their home looks like, the sketch they made on the second day of the project provided me an accurate idea of what they went home to.

4th day solo

I saw Ciarra in the hall this morning and she asked me for some help on a poster she was working on for her class. I had her come back to the art room with me to help her. I also said hello to Vanessa, which she ignored. I'm curious what her mother had said to her. Also, I ran into Christian's morning teacher (1st grade). I had given him a lunch detention on Wednesday for his behavior on Tuesday. She told me that she had called his mother for something else and mentioned his behavior in art also.
Most every student was productive during the 5th grade studio time. I moved AJ because he was talking so much. Perhaps we should move the seats around so that he isn't right next to the two girls at the blue table that like to talk too??
My 2nd graders were awesome! They were working on their collages and the results are really showing up as being so totally fun! To the left is a sample of the student work. The face is showing the emotion of angry. It is emphasized by the warm colors and the flaming hair.

Today's 3rd grade group came into class mellow (polar opposite). The agenda for the lesson was to have the students watch a 30-minute video on Van Gogh, then use the remaining time to work on a crossword puzzle. They sat on the rug and were ready to watch a video. To reward this difference and the fact that it was Friday I allowed a group of students to sit in a row of chairs behind the rug. This freed up some space on the rug for the remaining students to sit and stretch out. I told them that they may sit however they would like as long as they were considerate of their neighbor and didn’t close their eyes or talked. Students followed this behavior, were attentive to the video and quiet. After the video, I provided the crossword puzzle on Van Gogh. I had one student ask if he could free draw, which I said was fine. This caused a handful of students to want to free draw also.

3rd day solo, part 2

Today's third grade class was very interesting and probably the prize winner experience of the week. This class came in with a very tense energy. Sitting on the rug illustrated a challenge and it didn’t help that I had to get at least two of them up to spit things out several times. Vanessa even insisted on watching as Jerrion spit out whatever was in his mouth to make sure he did (never, ever again going to allow this). The movie was having problems starting, as the output kept on changing over to the computer screen, which caused a couple of kids to complain more. Jerrion was the first to cause issues. He vocalized continuously that he didn’t want to watch the movie and that it was “for 2nd graders”. He soon moved to the discipline chair, but asked to sit back on the rug 5 minutes later. I don’t think he was liking being in the back closer to Mr. Holland. Lacyria and Vanessa were sitting next to each other with their backs against the wall with all the student work in it. Vanessa was watching me, not the movie, with caused me to watch her. Lacyria began to be very vocal as the movie progressed, which made it very hard for anyone to watch the movie. Vanessa was kind of egging on the situation, but Lacyria was definitely the ringleader. I wasn’t 100% sure on her name though, so I ended up allowing both of them to move to the tables. Lacyria lasted 30 seconds before Mr. Holland grabbed her and took her to Ms. Smith. For the next 5 minutes Vanessa asked maybe 3 times if she could go to the bathroom, which I wasn’t buying. After that, she walked out of the room. Jerrion ended up going back to the tables after this. He was still being vocal about the movie, and at the table he wasn’t like that Mr. Holland was telling him to be quiet. I ended up giving him a crossword and after a bit he left too. After these three students were gone the remainder of class was excellent.
I filled out three reports after school and talked to Ms. Smith. She said that Vanessa’s goal had been to get down to the office to be with Lacyria, which she had realized and made her sit in the hallway. I phoned Vanessa’s mother and explained what had happened.

3rd day solo, part 1

Today I am dividing the day's events into two separate posts. Something major had happened at the end of the school day and I want it to shine on its own.

The 5th graders are continuing to work on their Doodle for Google. Some students still needed to come up with 4 different ideas and others were ready to begin working on the Google logo. I was attempting to motivate all these students to move beyond the point they were at so that they may begin working on the logo. I must have been being pretty intense, as Ciarra had asked me if I was mad at her, which I told her I wasn’t. But at the end of class as students were lined up, Ciarra wouldn’t look at me as I was giving Gotcha’s to the students. I found that as Ciarra was leaving (she was last in line) that she had tears on her cheek. I may have been too hard on her, which I talked to her afterwards about. I provided her with extra Google logo worksheets to do at home.
The 4th grade class is sooo needy. Brandi attempted to = manipulate me into doing her work for her. Because I wasn’t she was getting angry. I walked her through the steps she was suppose to take, and would walk away – she would then have Mr. Holland do the same thing. I finally helped her do some drawing after she made a stencil, which earned me a brilliant smile (motives never more apparent at that point), but it got her to complete the next step; she was making the design on the wing. Before she could transfer it onto her poster, class was over.
The 1st grade class was beginning their pop-up houses. On the rug during my demonstration Isaiah was getting upset with Angel (and neither of them would quiet down). I sent them both back to their seats, which Isaiah didn’t like at all. I had them come back when they were to work on making their pop-up. Isaiah continued to get irritated and negative. I had Mr. Holland walk him to Ms. Smith. I talked to Ms. Smith later that day to see if I needed to write him up and we decided no, and that he just needed to decompress a bit.

Job Fair Orientation

Tonight I went to a required job fair orientation. Much of it made my eyes roll. "Blue suits are more successful than black suits, and brown is not a very successful color. Ladies, wear nude hosiery if you need to (but not black or anything with pattern). Don't wear anything trendy." Blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the rest of the women going through student teaching in the art education program are a little envious that my adviser is gone. It seems that many of them are having difficulty gaining any control of the classroom.

2nd day solo

This fifth grade class is still working on their previous project - a self-portrait based on a photograph where the primary objective is to achieve a realistic value system. I was having a difficult time motivating Sharon to work on hers. Ever stoke she made seemed to be half-hearted and at points counterproductive. About 10 minutes before the end of class she complained about a stomachache. Earlier in the hallway as students were going to their classroom, I had one student complain of a stomachache. I recommended going to the office, but Mr. Holland mentioned the Phantom Stomachache; meaning students suddenly have a “stomachache” as a method of getting out of doing something. I didn’t quite believe Sharon because of this occurrence earlier and am interested in learning of how other teachers handle such an occurrence. Is it a regular thing? How do you be sensitive to students, but still weed out the ones that really don’t have pains?
The fourth grade class was a bit of a challenge today. I had 5 students finishing up their self-portraits from the previous project and the remaining students beginning their sketches for their new project. First, none the painters waited for guidance on how to stamp their works, which caused extra clean-up and wasted paint. Darrion at one point threw away his portrait, to which I made him go sit on the rug for a bit. Brandi messed something up on her project and threated to rip it up. I told her that if she did I would give her lunch detentions for the rest of the week and send her to Ms. Smith. Andreanna became very helpful at this point in calming Brandi down. She was motivating by the school’s agreement to reward all classes that had no one removed from the class during the week, so she helped Brandi fix her portrait. Tim was being a brat. He would make a sketch, and if it were too small or traced or if he threw it away, I would make him do it again. This aggravated him. I know at least two of these students ended up relocated on the rug or in the discipline chair.
The second grade class was doing their second day of printing for the Emotional Face Collage. Diego was working really slow. Last time in class he only developed 1 print and crumbled up his printing plate after that. It made me wonder how well Diego was with his English. Today in class he required a lot of step by step instruction, and I used more visual examples to help him out. [The next day I went to speak with his homeroom teacher, who told me that several of his other classmates may help him out by telling him what he can do next. She also told me that he has an individual learn program because he’s behind/slow. She agreed to translate simple lines of instruction, so that when I introduce the next step to this class that I may be able to say it in Spanish too.]
The third graders were finishing their still lives. Deon was particularly needy today. He has a lot of pent up anger, so when I was noticing him clinging his fists, I would make him unclench and stretch his figures out, than repeat that 5 times. He was getting bugged by others in the class, like Joshua, taking anything done very personally. I was almost fearful that he would act out on one of any of these occurrences.
Kyesha decided to sit with Janiya during this class period. She usually decides to sit by herself at the Purple Table, and seeing this difference was amazing. Kyesha pulled out more supplies (bigger paint brushes and tooth brushes) without asking for permission. She and Janiya ended up with little cups of paint filled to the top, which caused a lot of waste. Kyesha also painted her hands, which (stupidly) I allowed her to talk out of the classroom with. However, I think it was safe to assume it was at least dry (though tempera is water soluble). In retrospect, I should have had her clean her hands in the classroom.

1st day solo

Today is my first day of student teaching where I am completely in charge of everything. Mrs. Carey is on holiday all week, so students will no longer be looking to her for authorization and will prefer me over the unfamiliar sub. Knowing this psychological adjustment is actually going to play in my favor I went about my normal routine with sub in tow.
First on the day's agenda is the fifth grade class. They are beginning the Doodle 4 Google logo contest, so I presented the information to the class. Some of the fifth graders were a little too talkative in the back of the rug, though most were great. Desmond, Braedon and AJ were crammed into an area in the very back of the rug and were more interested in talking than listening. Desmond appeared to cause a lot of ruckus, aided by AJ who was the ring leader when it came to talking (which continued into studio time); DeAndre was his usual sassy self, but he at least fulfilled the expectations; Shanella and Charlease had a difficult time coming up with ideas (doesn't help they do a lot of talking to one another). Masonda did an overall good job. He seems to work better when he is stationed by himself and that worked really well for him. Tomorrow I am planning on reading over all the 5th grade Google ideas to offer feedback on post-its.
My second graders were having their first day of collaging. They are working on their Emotional Face Collages. The last two days in class they did printing of a face with an emotion and now they are continuing that by collaging neck, shoulder, ears and hair onto a piece of paper with one of the printed faces. Jesse was having a hard time. He got angry and poutty towards the end and didn't want to work. I allowed him to come back during his lunch recess to work some more and he did a lot better.
The first graders were drawing their houses and family in preparation to the pop-up house they will create during their next visit. Christian was very very VERY needy today. From the time on the rug to the time in studio. It took me 5 minutes to move him to the detention chair. I congratulated him for losing the bonus recess for his class, to which he went on for about 5 minutes talking to himself about how he doesn't care about recess. I walked away, as it wasn't necessary to really devote any more attention to his behavior. He completed his house, and when he said he finished his people, I told him (just as I explained on the rug) that stick people were not expectable and that he needed to add more detail to them. By the time I came around again, he was sitting on the floor by the classroom door pouting. Ms. Smith (the school's disciplinarian) came in about this point, and just talked to him saying stuff like "how do you know if you don't even try" to him saying that he can't draw people. At the end of class when everyone was in line, one of the latino girls said that Christian hit her. I don't know what the intentions were or how hard or if it was just a girl overreacting, but Christian was being a total brat today. I'm planning on going to talk to his teach in the morning and taking it from there.
The third graders were to be completing their still life project. Romeceo and Ellesse (+ her buddy that she play fights with) were having issues with one another, as they liked to talk loud enough for the other table to hear a comment about the opposite person. Romeceo said something that got the girls attention and ended up getting one of the girls to tell me about how her mom no longer hangs out with her friend (the mom's friend) because she was selling her body and she didn't like... (the cash that was around? I don't know). Anyway, strangeness. Ellesse volunteered to wash brushes again. She ended up washing the little bowls that held the white paint. I had cleaned out the drying rack at the beginning of the day, and Ellesse neatly stacked the little bowls in there like a pro. Must be one of her chores at home. :)

Emotional Face Collage, demo collaging

Today I demonstrated what the 2nd graders were to do next with their project. I went over the book "The Way I Feel" and had the students look at the hair in the layouts. They hair can emphasize the emotion that is being displayed, and each has a different treatment. Some hair is sticking up, while other hair is limp and depressed. As part of my demonstration, I reminded them of the warm/cool paper they made a couple weeks ago. They will be using that to collage the shoulders, neck, ears and hair onto a paper with the face. I then showed them a completed version and a version that had not been glued yet. Today my expectations were that the students would cut out most/all of their collage pieces. I would not provide them glue, though I did go around to see if students were ready to glue the neck the the shoulders, or the ear pieces together. I was aiming to monitor the students' collages by making sure they had an interesting design before they glued. By doing this I was able to insure the students were doing planning and making design decisions.

The Joy of Teaching Art

During today's 1st grade class I had my students drawing pictures of their home and everyone that lives in it with them. They are doing this as preparation for their pop-up house, which they will begin on their next trip to the class.
This class has Jamari in it, which you may recall from a previous posting. When he finished drawing his home, a blue apartment building, I provided him with a new piece of paper to start the next step. Drawing people was frustrating him. He started over twice, and when I told him that what he was doing was great he accused me of "having to say that" because I am a teacher. This comment brought into perspective some of the wonders of being an art teacher. We do get to like everything that our students make because most of it is wonderful. Having so many students with such different styles is an amazing change of perspective. As a teacher of visual arts, I get to see the wide diversity of "right solutions" to so many different topics. For example, I had one student in my first grade class that drew his apartment with the ground level having a whole floor of doors, like the hallway of his apartment building. While visually his solution was not realistic, it should complex thought and perspective.

Emotional Face Collage, printing day 2

Today begins the second day of printing for the second graders. I began the lesson by showing examples for their last visit. I talked to them about their successful prints, and what had gone wrong with others. For example, if the paper ripped, why? If the colors look blurry, why? For today's class period the students were to make more prints. If they had time, they may clean their print and try a different color palette. These are two of my examples of the same print using different colors and already at the final stage (collaged). The cool colored face has the emotion of scared, while the warm colored face looks more embarrassed. Having students see these types of examples can show students that color can change the mood of an artwork. By making the same connection in their own examples can express to me (their teacher) that they understand that connection.

House Talk with 1st graders

Today I began my Pop-up House lesson with the first graders. I had started this project a couple days ago with the kindergarten class, and have been working hard to adjust the questions and style of the handout I created for this project. It is amazing the developmental difference between these two age groups, as they are only separated by a single year.
Today's lesson began with reading a digital version of "So Many Houses", then talking about different types of houses that the students may live in. They helped assemble different houses on the Smartboard, including: a 2-story house, a duplex, an apartment, and a trailer. The students then were provided with a worksheet that they were to complete on the rug, as I completed my version on the Smartboard. This was primarily done for the vocabulary, which I had them write in Spanish and English.
Only one student, Jamari, was causing me trouble during today's lesson. He was not doing the work that I was asking him and the rest of the class to do today. I told him that if he didn't complete the worksheet I would have him in here the following day during his lunchtime recess. By the end of the classtime he had not even started his worksheet. So I followed through, and at the end of the day I went to his class and talked to his classroom teacher. I believe that by having him come the next day to my classroom, it would show him that he cannot come to my classroom and not work because that is unacceptable behavior.

2nd graders begin making printing plate

I gave the printing demonstration to the 2nd graders today. This image shows one of my samples (I will be doing different ones for each of my three 2nd grade classes). While the students did not get as far as printing today, they were able to transfer their face design onto their printing plate (made from Styrofoam) and begin coloring the print with either warm or cool colors.

The steps I had them do include:

1. Outline their favorite face with black marker (some of the students I had marked a face with a star to encourage them to use that face. This was because they either used an example I gave for their face or if it was too complicated.).
2. Raise their hand when they finished, so that I could tape their printing plate on the back of their handout.
   
3. They were then to use a dull red pencil to go over the black marker lines. By doing this, they are pressing into the Styrofoam and leaving a faint image. The red pencil made it easy for them to see which lines they had drawn.
   
4. Remove the printing plate from the back of their handout. Then go over the impressions with the dull red pencil again.
5. Raise their hand and request either warm or cool colors.
6. Begin coloring the face, remembering to blend the colors and emphasize the emotion with lines and design.

Most students at least began to color their plates. Any students that finished were given a book to read on emotions.

Groundhog Day - 6 more weeks of winter

So it's Groundhog Day. Again. At B.T. Washington art classes are labeled as Specials in each grades' school schedule. Students are rotated between art, music and P.E. One third of each of the grades go to each of these three areas. Because B.T.Washington has a self-contained specials department and is a 2-strand school (general and bilingual classrooms), the Specials are the only time during the school day that students in the bilingual program, gifted program, and general classroom are integrated within the same classroom. I have mentioned in my 1st day of student teaching that the schedule is set up so that we see a third of each grade level each day, which means that when I plan a lesson I will teach it three times. This is why Mrs. Carey refers to the repeated days as Groundhog Day's, a direct reference to the 1993 film starring Bill Murray where he plays a weatherman living the same day over and over. So if I mention that it is groundhog day when its any day not February 2, this is what I am referring to.

On the topic of Groundhog Day, see the official site for Phil. He says we will have 6 more weeks of winter. Boo!

Rainbow Fish Pop-up

The Rainbow Fish Pop-up is the first project I completed with the kindergarten class. I did not get any pictures of their book, but I have my teacher sample here so you may see the final results.
Students completed this project over the course of 4 days. During the first day they were introduced to color mixing. They used primary and secondary colors to paint 1/4" stripes in a rainbow pattern (R.O.Y.G.B.P.). For this age group it is important to emphasize proper material treatment, particularly keeping the brush clean between color changes and handling the brush. Also, when you demo tell the students that they want to leave no white spots between the paper.
During the second day, the students made the water paper that the pop-up would be assembled on. Blue paper with blue paints, students were encouraged to use at least 3 different brush strokes, lines and colors.
On the third day the students were read Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. This is a book about sharing, and the students made their pop-up based on this book. They learned about making a pop-up. Then they cut out their rainbow fish from their rainbow paper and begin collaging other elements like seaweed, a starfish, an octopus, and other fish into their background. They will complete this on day 4. They will get a shiny gill and googly eyes too. :)

January Gotcha Celebration

Schools are a community, and teachers must work together to offer constancy to all students within the school environment. Students must be held accountable for their behavior anywhere on the school's property; not just their homeroom. At B.T.Washington, students only come to the art room 1-2 times per week. It is vital that students have the same expectations in the art room as they would have in any other place within the school. B.T.Washington has a system in place that they call the High Fives. Students are to "be respectful", "be responsible", "be there and be ready", "be safe", and "follow directions" in all locations of the school. There are rewards to following these five simple rules, and today marks one such occasion. At the end of each month, students that have earned themselves a set number of Gotchas get to attend a 45-minute trip to the Gotcha Celebration. Gotchas are paper tokens that student can earn daily be being recognized for their High Five behavior. This is part of B.T.Washington's positive reinforcement strategy.
I got to help set up the gym for the Gotcha Celebration. They were assembling new activities, and one of these was a Fishing for Prizes activity that needed a banner made of blue paper to represent water. The activity would consist of students using "fishing poles" to hang over the blue banner. Behind this banner would be a teacher and some prizes. When the fishing pole is hung over the banner, the teacher would put a prize on the end of the pool. I had about 10 minutes to put this together.
While the event was going on, I was in the art room. The students that had not collected enough Gotchas to be able to attend the event got to be in the art room watching different educational videos. While the videos proved to be entertaining, these students were not happy to be in here. Thankfully, Mrs. Smith was there monitoring the more naughty groups.
One thing that surprised me was that some of the students that had caused a lot of trouble over the last couple weeks were able to attend the Gotcha Celebration. Mrs. Carey and I discussed this can came to the conclusion that students that are sent out of the classroom to talk to Mrs. Smith, the school's discipline manager, should have the additional consequence of having to collect at least 5 more Gotchas than the medium the rest of the students have to achieve. For example, if the medium is 80 for the month of January and you were sent to Mrs. Smith twice, you would need to collect 90.

2nd graders recognizing emotions with warm & cool colors

Prior to today I had been team teaching, but today is different. Today I led my first lesson with the 2nd graders. I started by reading the book "The Way I Feel" by Janan Cain. I had the students look at the facial expressions and the use of color as I read, then talked with the students about some of the more expressive pages. I had them look at the eyebrows, eyes, and mouth on these faces. I didn't talk about the hair, though it is very expressive in this book. The most important thing from them to recognize is the faces, as they will be drawing faces today that have different emotions. The color is important too. Warm colors with an angry face emphasizes the emotion, as blood goes to your face if you get very mad. While cool colors with scares shows you are trying to stay under the radar... or that "you were so scared the color drained from your face" can be expressed with toning down colors with white. Before having the students go to their seats, I went over illustrating these emotions on the Smartboard. I had students put "angry eyebrows" on a face and so on. Once every student had a turn, I showed them their handout. I told them that I expected them to draw two different faces with two different emotions. They needed to write the emotion on the provided space, select if they thought warm or cool colors described the emotion best, and describe a time when they felt that emotion. While the last wasn't always successfully answered, the faces were very fun to see.

Reading Recovery Banner

The other day I completed the reading recover banner, and I emailed the file to the teacher. This morning she brought it in to show to me and Mrs. Carey. She also invited me to attend the event.

Still Life resource

National Gallery of Art has an amazing Still Life Composer resource that may be integrated into the classroom. I found it particularly useful with a Smartboard, as each student may add an item to a composition. The lesson I used this with was a starting point for the 3rd grade's still life project. The skills that they needed to recognize for the project was overlapping objects, foreground/middle ground/background, and that items in the background are usually going to be smaller. Below is an example of a composition made at the National Gallery of Art.

2nd graders recognizing warm and cool colors

Today the second graders were shown warm and cool color palettes. One of the classes had begun the last lesson looking at facial expressions, and we were attempting to get across an understanding that colors can express emotion too. While most of the faces were not as successful as we had hoped, it motivated a change in approach. So today's 2nd grade class were shown the color palettes and asked to paint a 12" x 18" sheet of paper using only cool colors. When they completed that, they were to paint one using only warm colors. They were to practice blending and making brush strokes, while also keeping the paint on the palette clean. I used these sheets for the display outside of the art room, with the anticipation of removing them once the project hey are intended for – the Emotional Face Collage – progresses into its later stage. The point being made with the display is that artists use colors to express emotion.

The 1st Conflict

So today the art room functioned as a detention center during the lunch hour. Apparently because the disciplinary office is attached to the cafeteria and Mrs. Smith (who is the person the kids go to when they get kicked out of their classroom) is busy monitoring the lunchroom, some of the surplus students are dispersed among classrooms like the art room. Today we had a student named Vanessa brought to the art room after she ate (her recess time) doe 3o minutes. As soon as Mrs. Carey left the room, Vanessa started pulling things from her pocket like lip gloss and a bouncy ball. Obviously, she wasn't suppose to be having any sort of fun and not playing with anything. I told her she needed to put that stuff back in her pocket. I had used her name too, which is kind of easy to remember when you are told you are having a specific student brought to the room to be punished. Teachers do this thing called talking to one another and student names are shared. I'm saying all this because Vanessa right away began saying that that wasn't her name. Whatever.

At 12:30, the next class came in and at 12:40 she was to go back to her classroom. I was asked to escort her. Right away this was showing complications as she was wanting to walk the speed of a turtle. When we finally passed the music room (one two doors down) one of the other girls that had gotten in trouble with Vanessa (it was a total of three girls that were bullying other kids on the playground) came out and thought she should go back with us too. This caused additional complications, as Vanessa attempted to follow this second girl into the music room to collect her things. But she was cutting off an oncoming group of 1st graders, so I reached out an tugged on her hoodie, causing her to freak out on me. I was not going to deal with this attitude to the opposite side of the school building, and the office was oh so close. So I instead said we were going to the office. This worked. I ran right away into Mrs. Smith, who said Vanessa needed to just return to the art room until she learned how to walk down the hall. She also earned herself 5 more lunch detentions in the art room and that she needed to see me (if only a little) as a figure of authority.

Not exactly the best moment in my teaching, but it is far better to learn it student teaching than afterwards.

Reading Recovery Banner

I had one of the teachers come to me asking me to make a banner for the new reading recovery program. She said she had something started in Word and that I am welcomed to sit down with her and help her fix it there. I opted to just spend a little time at home doing this. The dimensions will be 5' long by 18" tall. She wants the words "Read it up" and some balloons.

Building relationships

One of the ongoing themes I see emerging from the student teacher experience is the requirement of building relationships with students. The "problem children" require a lot of attention and normally will not recognize authoritative rolls if they do not know who you are. These children depend on consistency and do not react well to change. As a student teacher, my roll is temporary within the school but it is very important to develop bonds with the students within the school - most especially the students that then to cause problems within the class. As part of my first several weeks I will be learning my students' names (~280 total).

One such case includes a student named Vanessa. During the first several days of class Mrs. Carey and I would sit in the front of the class. I would introduce myself to the class, take attendance, and then Mrs. Carey would go on with her lesson. During the first lesson that Vanessa had been in class with me, she began asking me (during Mrs. Carey's presentation mind you) if I wanted to buy girl scout cookies. I'm all for entrepreneurship, but there is a right time and place for everything - during class time is definitely not the right time nor the right place.

My 1st day of Student Teaching

I began my first day of student teaching at B.T.Washington Elementary with the students returning from a 5 day weekend, which meant that the students would be additionally rambunctious. I had been nervous because I didn't know what to expect, but excited because it would be a "real" teaching experience with all sorts of real problems known of a public school. All I have experienced prior to this new experience has been idealized experiences under the control of the University, teaching at day camps to students interested in art, and Art a la Cart to classrooms with the primary teacher still in it. B.T.Washington Elementary is a bilingual Spanish school with a high percentage of free/reduced meal plans (~85%), meaning there are a lot of students from poor families. I had selected this school primarily because of the teacher. Mrs. Carey had received national recognition for her services within the school; plus, I had had a course with her when I first began graduate school. I respected how she thought about her students, and believe that working under her guidance would be a benefit to my future as an art teacher.
Through the course of this first day I learned of the routine we would be having. We get 1/3 of each grade level each day, so once you've taught one lesson the next two day's is Groundhog Day. This week will primarily be observation, plus some team teaching.