Evening for Educators Workshop

Approaching Diversity in Lifestyle

Objective:

The goal of this workshop is to help students and teachers create an open mindset to diversity in regards to lifestyle.

Opening Activity:

Divide people into groups of about 6. Have images from "Fourth Grade Stories" printed out and divided so that all groups have at least one child from different countries. Have groups take a few minutes and review the photos. Allow them time to discuss.

Video:

Watch a portion/or all 11 min of the Ted Talk: "What Fourth Graders can Teach Us" by Judy Gelles, the photographer of "Fourth Grade Stories."

Lesson:

Define the word diverse - showing a great deal of variety; very different. Traditional definition of portraiture - a painting, drawing, photograph, or engraving of a person, especially one depicting only the face or head and shoulders. Another definition - a representation or impression of someone or something. Briefly talk about portraiture in art and how it is used to help us clue in on another person.

Art Making:

Have everyone repeat this art project in a similar fashion. If possible, as everyone comes into the workshop, have someone (maybe even a few people) photographing everyone's back (preferably in front of a white/light colored wall or foamboard). After reviewing Gelle's work and video, have workshop members recreate this type of experience. Everyone will get their own printed photo back of their backside. Have them answer the questions:  "Who do you live with? What do you wish for? What do you worry about?" They will write the answers to these questions directly onto the photograph.

Now here's the fun part, everyone gets to exchange their photographs with another person. Each person is required to trade photographs at least 5 times with people they do not know. Each time they should take a moment to read the photograph before they trade again.

Discussion:

Ask the workshop members how this exercise impacted them. Ask them what they think results might be like had this workshop had more diverse members from different circumstances around the world. How would children respond? How do we connect with people and learn about others from around the world? How does art help that? How does our manner of interpretation change when we see the back side of someone vs. a selfie?

Olivia Gude Articles Response

I loved reading about Gude's thoughts on diversity in the classroom. She mentioned a lot of things that we cover in my Multicultural Education class. It was intriguing to me that in the 70's, she permed her hair and wanted to be able to paint her skin. After thinking this more thoroughly, she realized that being black - even in the U.S. - is much more than the color of your skin. It includes the experience of being black and having even the ancestry and history of a black person. She doesn't really talk about developing curriculum around diversity so much, but I love her approach to this subject as an educator. She recognizes how strange it is to be white - a part of the oppressive majority - while trying to be immersed in other cultures. Her judgment of the situation seems fair and mostly unbiased. She reads books by authors from other cultures and does her best to analyze the classroom setting in regards to diversity. I would like to implement similar strategies, maybe even sharing the kinds of picture books she looked into with my classroom.

I thought her comments about curriculum were important, especially in viewing standards less as rules and more as goals.

Chapter 5 Questions

1. How do we know what our students know about the topics we plan to address?

First, we need to be aware of current culture and what students are commonly informed on. We can think about what might be the topics spoken about in the home, or even news feeds. Second, understanding what is being taught in the other subjects students are learning about in classes that would be relevant to an enduring idea.

2. How would you go about teaching for “deep understanding”?

It's important to make connections between the process of creating art and its relationship to what students already know/are building knowledge upon. I really liked what Stewart and Walker had to say about discussion groups in chapter 5. I definitely see how students will take pride in sharing their knowledge and with experience - be able to express what knowledge they have gained.

3. How would you teach for student relevance?

Like the book says, we want students to learn how to learn. Through activities and experiencing art processes, students can begin to see how to relate artwork to themselves or view a relationship with art. While limitations should be geared towards an enduring idea, I also think the student needs enough room to consider how art making is relevant to them.

4. How might teaching for student relevance be a ridiculously bad thing?

Ridiculous seems like a very opinionated word, but "teaching for student relevance," might not be as successful as it can be imagined to be. Although I feel like this can be a strategy to help fuel students' interest in creating artwork, it also might distract from trying to understand art outside of the current class's artwork. Sometimes reading artwork is less about trying to see how it resonates with you and it's more about being aware of the culture it came from and the thoughts about the artist who created it.

5. For the unit you are envisioning, what will be your “entrance strategy”?

An enduring idea I'm interested in has to do with humanity - mainly on a culture aspect. To engage my classrooms, I want our discussions to begin with activities. Some of it might seem like a social experiment, but I want interaction in the classroom. The topics/questions I want to address in a given lesson plan will play more of an active role in the students mind before it is analyzed more on a cognitive scale through classroom discussion/instruction.

6. In an inquiry based, constructivist approach, a key question is “What does that mean?"  What are some other ways that you can ask that question?

To get more specific, we need to know what the specific topic is. The questions should guide the classroom towards more definite answers, yet allow room for discussion and growth for understanding. For example, if one painting is making a reference to themes that appear in art history, both images can be shown and brief explanation given. The teacher can ask the classroom: How does the artist reference the other artwork? Why would this benefit them? What value do these ideas hold for viewers of each time period?

7. As art teachers, we often pose artistic problems for our students, defining the constraints that we hope will cultivate divergent, creative solutions.  How do you plan to have students become researchers and pose their own creative problems?

I feel like there is a lot of value in taking a student relevance approach in order to build interest in how they engage art cognitively. I feel like maybe the curriculum could give room on personal exploration on inquiry based projects. Some assignments would allow students to have more freedom to determine how to use media to depict/approach their inquiry.

8. At this early stage in your unit, how do you envision the sequential organization of learning experiences or activities? Make a list of what you plan to do in sequence.

1. Classroom Engagement Activity
2. Discussion
3. Introduction of art subject
4. Important figures in both history and contemporary
5. Connections to what students already know/want to learn
6. Make Art

9. How will you determine if what you are doing is working? What counts as evidence of learning for you?

I feel like the execution of this learning plan will appear in the art students create. If the students can talk about their artwork, and if it can be read according to what knowledge they have acquired, then I think It's successful. If there's a lack of understanding in the topic, or it's not seeming to carry over very clearly, it will appear in the art itself and how confident the student may be.

10. What are the learning goals for your unit?  What kinds of understandings are you reaching for in these goals?

I want the learning goals to include not only making art, being comfortable with it, and have an idea of how to approach it, but also how students connect with one another and the rest of society (again, humanity and culture.) Art can be used as a tool to allow students to think through inquiries as well as knowing how to research other artists students may be interested in.

Chapter 4 Lesson Plan: Art History, Criticism, and Aesthetics

Chapter 4 Lesson Plan: Art History, Criticism, and Aesthetics

Enduring Idea:

Humanity (What does it mean to be human? What is our relationship with each other, culture, nature, etc?)

Art History:

1. Homework to Prepare: 
1. Watch the 3 Picasso at Work videos (without sound is fine) 
2. Write a 2 paragraph response answering the questions:
1. Describe what you see in the videos. What forms does the artist paint? How does the lines look?
2. How does this art style make you feel? Why would an artist choose to draw or paint this way?
2. Engaging Activity: Start class by selecting 1-5 students (who are comfortable having photos taken of them. Have them pose in an interesting arrangement. Allow students (maybe a limited number) to pull out their phones and take a photo from where they are standing. Have everyone upload the pictures to a shared google doc then present it in front of the class. Ask students about what they see and what they feel that they are learning from the different perspectives. What would be the difference between just one image, and seeing them all together?
3. Introduce Pablo Picasso

Art Criticism:

1. Discuss themes like war in paintings and Surrealism. How does fragmentation play a role in those themes? History, like Picasso's art and like the opening activity, is complicated and has many different perspectives.
2. Put Picasso into context of Spanish History and Civil War.

Aesthetics:

1. Define Cubism and show examples of Picasso's work. Talk about perspective and how art becomes more "realistic," when you can recognize multiple perspectives.
2. Engaging activity/Picasso Assignment: Have the students either draw each other, or the classroom, in a Cubist style. Use only geometric forms - identifiable shapes. Trace drawing with a thick sharpie and fill shapes with rich watercolors. Have fun!
3.  Introduce Collage Influence.

Chapter 4 Reflective Response

The more I study about art education curriculum the more I see it as it's own work of art, or maybe even a series. It has multiple components that should flow together and be able to unite with an enduring idea - an idea that is relevant for today's students. I see the advantage of having an enduring idea met through the study of not only art making, but also art criticism and art history. I want to be able to clearly do this, and help students understand making purposeful art. I love the examples in the book about helping students see the depth of the artwork they create, such as that with the study of social reality. The students studied the bizarre artwork of Sandy Skoglund, but were able to see the relevancy of her artwork- especially by making their own strange artworks of fantasy meeting reality through photography and Adobe Photoshop. As I help students making similar connections, I recognize the need to continually practice this in my own artwork and becoming better at referencing other artists.

Teaching Metaphor

"Create a metaphor for teaching or teaching/learning? Post your description and a visual response on the blog."

Teaching is growing a garden in your front yard. 

You plant a seed, nourish it, and try your best to help it bloom. You might occasionally see how your efforts made a difference, but its impossible to recognize its full impact. You are not always in the garden to see who passes by and is impacted by your efforts on those individual flowers.

Here's a video I found on flowers blooming.

Week #2 - The Suggestion of Memory

Kimberly Escalante

ArtEd 478

Dr. Graham

1/22/17

Week #2 – The Suggestion of Memory

Image:

Readymade

Rebecca Campbell

2014, oil on canvas, 108" x 69 1/2"

Encounter explanation:

            I ran into several paintings of different sizes similar to this one at BYU’s Museum of Art. Many of these paintings use photographs for references. They all include a level of specific details, yet all have an unfinished/blurry look to them. Some of them have a little bit of color underneath the image. They look slightly ghostly because of this style, but it’s clear that the artist is interacting with the notion of recreating memories – whether they belong to her or someone else.

Objective(s):

·      Recreate a memory through painting

·      Be familiar with acrylic paint/wet media

Lesson:

·      Vocabulary: Representational, Memory, Nostalgia, Monochromatic

·      Explore possibilities of recreating memories through painting

·      Introduce Rebecca Campbell and her artwork pertaining to memory and recreating photographs

·      Discuss sentiment and its role in art – how can it be successful?

·      Discussion: Why would Campbell leave these paintings with an “unfinished” look? How does it benefit her concept? What other strategies does she use? What role might size have play in her art?

·      Demo on acrylic paint and monochromatic value scales.

Activities:

·      Before this lesson, the students will find photographs that resonate with them in some way. They don’t have to know the people in the photograph, but they must use photographs from within their family. Bring paper copies of the photo, not the actual image – just to be safe.

·      Pre-Assignment activity: Develop a monochromatic value scale

·      Assignment: Paint out one (or a combination of the photos) in such a way that depicts memory rather than an actual representation. Use acrylic on an art board about 8”x10.” Spend at least 6 hours on this assignment. Paint using a monochromatic value scale.

Formative Assessment:

·      How much time was put into the assignment?

·      How did the student engage the photo?

·      Is there clarity in the painting while maintaining a sort of vagueness?

Enduring Notion:

·      Art can be connected to psychology by portraying how something is remembered.

Sources:

http://www.rebeccacampbell.net/#/2013-2014/

Verb List

Kimberly Escalante

ArtEd 478

Dr. Graham

1/18/17

Verb List

1.     Explore/Discover

a.     The art classroom transforms into an environment where the student will be encouraged to try new forms of art and consider how to add their unique voice to art.

b.     Exploring allows the student to feel free in trying something new as well as pushes them to keep developing as an artist. This promotes the student to connect in new and interesting ways who they are with their work.

2.     Perceive

a.     The student learns how to read art (analyzing it formally and contextually) and have a general sense of how to classify the art.

b.     Students can better understand how to interact with the art world if they know how it works outside the classroom. They can also learn how to apply what they become interested in.

3.     Relate/Engage

a.     Artwork becomes a more intimate experience for the student. He/she learns how to make a connection to other artists’ work as well as learning to apply themselves to the work they make.

b.     Being able to relate to a work of art completely changes the classroom experience for the student. It makes the experience personal and much more relevant.