edutopia quote

"Arts integration allows us to build chefs who make choices - not cooks who merely follow the recipe."

Music in the classroom

As a musician I have been thinking about how to incorporate music into the art classroom besides just having it play in the background. The candy lesson plan was a great idea to use lyrics from a song to create a piece of artwork. Every student knows the lyrics to at least one song, and almost all have a favorite that they probably have on their ipod or have at least heard on youtube or the radio.

Allowing students to use their own favorite music is a great way to incorporate something relevant and important to them in a lesson plan. Not only could students create meaning from the lyrics of the songs, but they could also look into using sound waves from a song or even someone's voice within their artwork.

Music videos are something I consider an art form (when they're appropriate.) Here are a few of my favorites. Perhaps students could create lip sync versions of stop motion or just regular music videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wigqKfLWjvM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9U2N4i20Rs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

candy in the classroom

At first when we had the lesson plan that incorporated candy I was very excited. It was a medium which was fun and not commonly used! I had never used candy in any of my art class experiences. However, when we got further into the lesson I realized that candy may have been a fun choice but definitely not practical. It made a huge mess all over the classroom as well as on our finished pieces, and by the end of class I felt sick to my stomach from eating so much.
It is wonderful to pick a medium that is uncommon that gets students excited, but it is important for the medium to always be relevant. In the past when writing lesson plans I would sometimes decide the medium last, and not really consider a lot of the pros and cons to the medium I chose. The medium can be a wonderful tool to further the learning in an art lesson and create greater understanding.

Dad

I just had a pretty hilarious conversation with my dad that I thought I would share. A little background first, my dad is a high school math teacher who is very close to retiring, but he really loves teaching so doesn't want to leave just yet.
I was telling him how I'm writing lesson plans and he was very supportive and also picked on me a little saying I should stop complaining because he's been doing it for 30 years. He talked about how important lesson plans are and how once you've written enough you get the hang of it and how he doesn't even need to look at his lesson plans anymore because he has done them so many times he is "perfect."(he's so humble...) So then when I brought up SLO's and my frustration with them it opened a huge can of worms. Apparently my dad and "everyone" hates them. As a teacher in New York he feels that SLO's are trying to push old teachers out of the classroom. He doesn't even see the point in writing them because "New York is going to change their mind about them in a year or two anyway."
He also talked about his extreme frustration with the fact that teachers are taking at least a few minutes at the end of each class to work on their SLO's and being a math teacher he added up all the time wasted doing this and all the course material that could be covered in that wasted time.
In his words exactly "I'm paid to teach, and to facilitate learning, not to fill out bs paperwork that wont matter in a few years anyway."
My father ladies and gentlemen...

art blogs

I have never blogged outside of art education department purposes so I decided today to look into some art blogs and was pleasantly surprised! (yet another way to avoid doing homework!) I actually found some blogs with artists that I will probably be using in lesson plans either for my Unit or in my student teaching, and teaching in the future.

One blog in particular that I loved was DRAWN! It's an art and illustration blog

http://blog.drawn.ca/

One of my lesson plans focuses on bedtime stories and illustration so I found the illustrations particularly helpful on this blog. An artist I really enjoyed was a logo designer named Chris Gardner. He did the logo for a game called Letter By Letter which is a great combination of scrabble, boggle, and risk! The logo is so eye catching that before I even looked into the artist I found the game and played it (it's great). 

http://www.rowshambow.com/blog/creating-the-letter-by-letter-logo/

The game is awesome if you happen to like word games! It's fun and a mental work out.

I am really excited to have discovered so many art blogs. I will definitely keep perusing for future use in life and lesson planning.

Abe Morell

After Mikayla and Jackie's lesson on sculptural books I couldn't stop thinking about an artist who came to the art seminar class several semesters ago when I took the course. His name is Abe Morell.

He is a photographer who was born and raised in Cuba in 1962. His family was exiled to New York City, where they ended up staying. Abe bought his first camera at the age of fifteen, and went to Bowden College for photography. A lot of his early works are focused on quick portraits or action shots in the streets of New York. After getting married Abe’s photography, and life settled down. He began doing longer exposure photographs. He explored water optics, creating dramatic landscapes with household items.

            The works that I found most enticing were Abe’s work with books, especially Alice in Wonderland. These are the pieces that I couldn't stop thinking about during the lesson with books in class. He actually used the books as a landscape for his photos. He cut out the actual characters from the books to tell the story. In his lecture he said he would also be doing Alice in Wonderland Through the Looking Glass soon, which I am looking forward to. It was spectacular how he created so much depth, emotion, and a true story line using only the books from Alice in Wonderland. It was a very interesting way of taking a common art forms – art, and photography, and created a whole new way to express a story.

http://www.edelmangallery.com/morell.htm            

I am for art...

I am for art that makes me care

I am for art that helps me see

I am for at the educates, and inspires

I am for art the appreciates the daily, and the monotonous

I am for art that makes me laugh

I am for art that makes the 6 year old and the 60 year old stand side by side

I am for art the makes me cringe

I am for art that causes confusion

I am for art that is uncomfortable

I am for art that hangs on mothers’ refrigerators

I am for art hidden under the bed

I am for art that requires two showers once it’s complete

I am for art every day

I am for art that is warm

I am for art that is cold

I am for art that everyone loves, but doesn’t know why

I am for art that everyone hates, and which goes unnoticed

I am for art

Drawing Memories today

Todays lesson had several positives and negatives in my mind. I personally really enjoyed that I got to know my partner better. Megan's memory was rescuing her cat from a shelter when she was younger. I learned her cats name, where she got him, what she likes about him, and her feelings on rescue shelters. The communication used in this lesson was really wonderful, not just getting to know the person, but learning to verbally portray and image so that another person can accurately draw a picture.
Some of the downfalls of this lesson were definitely the medium used. Oil pastel was too much for sketches, and made me somewhat stressed about making a final product in one class period. They are also a little difficult to use in such a short time period with the amount of paper space we were given to use up.
Beyond the medium I think that the worksheet could have been explained in much more detail. Neither Megan or I really understood at first what we were supposed to be doing with the worksheet. The teachers got right into the lesson plan very quickly and it took everyone in the class a little while to catch up and figure out exactly what we were doing.

Puppetry

Puppetry is a form of theater, art, and performance that has been around for thousands of years. However, it is not something we first think of when we list art media. Perhaps we don't think of Sesame Street as artwork because the puppets are so real we consider then like real characters in any television show.
Jenn and I decided to use shadow puppetry in our Nightmare lesson plan. I think by using something that you don't typically see in art classrooms it really helped engage students right from the start. Because most students had never created moving puppets they were really excited to try and see how theirs would work. Though I was thrilled with how the shadow puppets came out I also would have like to create three dimensional working puppets similar in structure (but simplified) to the Muppets or the puppets used in the movie the labyrinth.
I recently watched a fantastic documentary on Elmo on Netflix where it shows the room where each puppet is constructed and designed. The documentary is called "Being Elmo"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1787660/
This documentary shows construction of puppets for beginners as well as the advanced Jim Henson puppets, and also goes into great detail of the very famous puppeteer Kevin Clash also known as the man behind Elmo.

Labyrinth Clips with some awesome puppetry...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8ZmiqLiZbk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiUt5HuW3xc
One of the puppets in this final link was actually controlled by Kevin Clash before he was Elmo.

Observation presentation

I have been compiling all the photos I took at Highland Middle School for our presentation this Wednesday. Looking back at all the artwork students made I am very happy with the lesson that I created and taught, but I do feel it was too much for one class period. Observations have been so enjoyable and helpful, but going only once a week is really challenging. Only being there every Wednesday didn't give me a chance to really get to know the kids as well as I would have liked, and always threw off my lesson. I made clay masks with the students based on family tradition and their personality. Having a two day lesson would have helped to give the students more time to create something that showcased their best work.

What we notice around campus

Because we have been learning so much about effective teaching strategies I have been noticing the teaching styles of all my other professors across campus. It has made me much more thorough in my time spent filling out the SEI's this semester.
One class I have been learning a lot from is one of my studio classes. I will not name anyone but I have been disappointed with an experience in one of my classes, but ironically have been learning a lot from the class from an education standpoint. The professors assigned us all way more than we could handle, and is now trying to back pedal. She is taking back some of the assignments but not really communicating thoroughly about what she wants from us. Some students are still killing themselves trying to fulfill the original assignment while others are coming into class with hardly anything done. The teacher keeps making comments about the last project (which has nearly been forgotten and completely pushed aside) like "just do your best with it and it'll be a surprise at the final critique."
Everyone in the class is frustrated with her lack of caring, and we are even getting frustrated with each other because it seems like the people who have been working tirelessly are going to do just as well as the people who have stopped caring.
I have been trying to put myself in my professors shoes and figure out what I would do if I felt that I had given my students more than they can handle. It is an unfortunate situation but ultimately I think it is most important for students to always be informed of what they will be evaluated on and stay consistent, even if requirements need to change.

Lesson on 12/7/12 "Optional"

I loved the use of comics in the lesson this past Friday. Comics are definitely a medium very relevant to students today. Though comics may not be as popular as they once were every student encounters them regularly when they see the funnies in a newspaper. The lesson was lacking some organization in certain areas but using comics was a great choice.
I would have liked to see the lesson require props. I've been noticing that whenever teachers do not require something students rarely do it. Our faux classroom experience is a bit unrealistic in that way because we are all willing to go the extra mile as college art students. Many students in a high school art room are just looking to get a good grade or even a passing grade with the least amount of effort possible. Having set guidelines with very specific requirements is most effective. If there are elements of a lesson plan that aren't required I think it should only be suggestions for what students can add if they finish early.

Teaching

On Friday Jenn and I did out lesson! I was very pleased with how it went. We both had an incredibly stressful week preparing for the lesson, but from the whole process I learned a lot. I learned the vast amount of work that goes into each individual lesson. However, I'm really glad I'll now have this lesson prepared to use any time I want to for a class. This is definitely why they say the first year of teaching is the hardest because you have to develop all of your lessons.
Through the process of revamping and developing this lesson plan I have come up with many other ideas for lessons that can relate to the sleep unit. I have already started some other lesson plans and am very excited to wrap those use and put them to use some day. Each night as I'm falling asleep I think a lot about sleep and why it's important, and I've recently been drawn to the physical feelings relating to sleep. I am thinking about doing a lesson incorporating comfort, and touch like knitting or blankets or quilting perhaps. I have a lot more to think about but I'm very excited about it.