My identity has definitely changed through the transition from high school student to soon to be college graduate. One of the biggest breakthroughs was finding out what I want to do with my life. In a scrapbook I made, there is a list I made the summer going into my senior year of high school of jobs I thought I might like: photographer, teacher, writer/journalism, realtor, wedding planner, psychiatrist, dietitian/nutritionist, personal trainer, and social worker. Clearly I was a confused kid. But by sophomore year of college I had narrowed it down to Spanish and Art Education! yahoo! My taste in music is another way my identity has changed. In high school I listened to a lot of punk/emo/alternative bands and I still do occasionally, but now my favorite genre is the complete opposite – country. I love country music’s Midwestern values, and learned how important they are to me this summer while studying abroad with students from all over the US. You know what they say – you can take the girl out of the Midwest, but you can’t take the Midwest out of the girl. Of course my relationships have changed from high school to college – I’m closer with my parents, I’ve made new friends and lost others, and I’ve found the perfect boyfriend. I believe the people a person surrounds themself with say a lot about their identity – a translation of one of my favorite Spanish proverbs is, “Tell me who you’re with, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
My artwork has changed some from high school to college. I’ve always loved photographing places and people and incorporating words into some of my pieces, but the majority of my recent word pieces are Spanish words instead of English words. Since most people only know basic Spanish if any at all, I can really say what I want to say and not have to worry about what anyone will think since they probably can’t read it anyway. For me a major difference between my high school and college art classes is that art history has such a bigger role. In high school photography the only artists I remember learning about were Andy Warhol and Walker Evans, and Frida Kahlo in my Spanish classes. But in Elements of Art I discovered Matisse and Degas; in Intermediate Photo I discovered Ansel Adams; and in Painting 1 I discovered Van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, and Grant Wood. While studying abroad in Spain I was inspired by Rubens, Pablo Picasso, Francisco de Goya, Salvador Dali, and Velazquez. So yes, my identity and artwork have both changed from that of a high school student to that of a college student.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
HW for Thursday, January 28th
Blog about our discussion, your experience at City High, and a short summary of the readings.
Even though I hope to eventually read all of In the Making, I like the "Jigsaw" method we used to learn about the In the Making artists from pages 34-110. (I just learned about Jigsaw in my Middle School Curriculum and Methods class last semester, for those of you who don't know, it's just where you divide up the reading between students, who become "experts" on their section and share what they discovered with the rest of the class so that everyone can become "experts.") This way, if we heard about an artist who sounded interesting, we could go back on our own and read about him/her, or look them up online. And it was nice to discuss the artists in class in addition to on our blogs because there is a good chance that not all of us read every single one of our classmates blogs.
My experience at ABCDEF High was a great one! I have done two semesters of practicums in high school Spanish classes, and have taught Elementary Spanish since October, so it is so nice to be in an art room again! Very refreshing and fun! My high school didn't have potter's wheels - so cool that this high school does! Another cool thing about ABCDEF High for me is the diversity since I went to a small rural school and only had about 150 kids in my graduating class. My group of four students decided to go with a black, white, silver, and red graduation themed cake complete with photos, a yearbook, scroll, and cap with tassels to complete their three tiers and pedestal platter, that is unless plans changed Wednesday when they met. The three girls in my group got into designing more than the boy did. I think he may have a bit of "senioritis" going on but we'll see if things are different tomorrow, maybe he was just tired or not having the best day?
Something I really liked from Chapter 2 of Fires in the Bathroom was on page 33 - a student shared that her teacher had the students write for homework one night about how they would teach a history class if they were teachers. And another student's teacher gave students a topic, and they had to research it, make a lesson plan, and teach it. I think both of these are great ideas that I want to do in my own classroom in the future. My 7th grade English teacher had us do this and I remember thinking it would be so easy - we'd just do some practice sentences from the textbook and give candy to whoever got the answers right. I don't know what grade my partner and I earned, but I remember we were finished way too fast, and no one understood the concept when we were done teaching it to our peers. And using sentences from a textbook was so unoriginal of us! I think a lesson our teacher was trying to get across with this assignment was that teaching isn't as easy as it looks. And I don't think it was until college that I realized that teachers aren't just robots, that they actually have lives outside of school just students do - families, friends, hobbies, pets, etc.
Many of the projects in Chapter 2 of From Ordinary to Extraordinary reminded me of projects I have done in the past. In Crafts in high school I once took little cappuccino cups and painted Chinese characters onto them and then elevated their saucers with bent spoons. The soda cans project reminded me of an scarecrow we made in elementary school out of litter we found around the school grounds - recycling at its finest! The soda can insect also reminded me of a ladybug garden stake I bought for a friend at the Holiday Thieves Market - did anyone else see those back in December? The Number 2 pencils project reminded me of a drawing I did in art as a middle schooler - we divided our papers into four sections and drew a tool or other random found object in the first box, and in the forth box we drew an animal that was shaped similarly to the object. In the 2nd and 3rd boxes we drew what the morphed object would have looked like during the in between stages. Mine was a wrench morphed into a tropical bird. The Creative Food project reminded me of winter dinner party invitations I made in Photography in high school. The table and chairs on my family's deck at home were covered in snow so I took a bunch of contrasting dishes, silverware, glasses, mugs, etc. outside and set up the table (no food) and took black and white photos for the front of the winter dinner party invitations I made. Still don't think my mom has used them haha. I wish I had pictures of some of these old assignments to post!
Even though I hope to eventually read all of In the Making, I like the "Jigsaw" method we used to learn about the In the Making artists from pages 34-110. (I just learned about Jigsaw in my Middle School Curriculum and Methods class last semester, for those of you who don't know, it's just where you divide up the reading between students, who become "experts" on their section and share what they discovered with the rest of the class so that everyone can become "experts.") This way, if we heard about an artist who sounded interesting, we could go back on our own and read about him/her, or look them up online. And it was nice to discuss the artists in class in addition to on our blogs because there is a good chance that not all of us read every single one of our classmates blogs.
My experience at ABCDEF High was a great one! I have done two semesters of practicums in high school Spanish classes, and have taught Elementary Spanish since October, so it is so nice to be in an art room again! Very refreshing and fun! My high school didn't have potter's wheels - so cool that this high school does! Another cool thing about ABCDEF High for me is the diversity since I went to a small rural school and only had about 150 kids in my graduating class. My group of four students decided to go with a black, white, silver, and red graduation themed cake complete with photos, a yearbook, scroll, and cap with tassels to complete their three tiers and pedestal platter, that is unless plans changed Wednesday when they met. The three girls in my group got into designing more than the boy did. I think he may have a bit of "senioritis" going on but we'll see if things are different tomorrow, maybe he was just tired or not having the best day?
Something I really liked from Chapter 2 of Fires in the Bathroom was on page 33 - a student shared that her teacher had the students write for homework one night about how they would teach a history class if they were teachers. And another student's teacher gave students a topic, and they had to research it, make a lesson plan, and teach it. I think both of these are great ideas that I want to do in my own classroom in the future. My 7th grade English teacher had us do this and I remember thinking it would be so easy - we'd just do some practice sentences from the textbook and give candy to whoever got the answers right. I don't know what grade my partner and I earned, but I remember we were finished way too fast, and no one understood the concept when we were done teaching it to our peers. And using sentences from a textbook was so unoriginal of us! I think a lesson our teacher was trying to get across with this assignment was that teaching isn't as easy as it looks. And I don't think it was until college that I realized that teachers aren't just robots, that they actually have lives outside of school just students do - families, friends, hobbies, pets, etc.
Many of the projects in Chapter 2 of From Ordinary to Extraordinary reminded me of projects I have done in the past. In Crafts in high school I once took little cappuccino cups and painted Chinese characters onto them and then elevated their saucers with bent spoons. The soda cans project reminded me of an scarecrow we made in elementary school out of litter we found around the school grounds - recycling at its finest! The soda can insect also reminded me of a ladybug garden stake I bought for a friend at the Holiday Thieves Market - did anyone else see those back in December? The Number 2 pencils project reminded me of a drawing I did in art as a middle schooler - we divided our papers into four sections and drew a tool or other random found object in the first box, and in the forth box we drew an animal that was shaped similarly to the object. In the 2nd and 3rd boxes we drew what the morphed object would have looked like during the in between stages. Mine was a wrench morphed into a tropical bird. The Creative Food project reminded me of winter dinner party invitations I made in Photography in high school. The table and chairs on my family's deck at home were covered in snow so I took a bunch of contrasting dishes, silverware, glasses, mugs, etc. outside and set up the table (no food) and took black and white photos for the front of the winter dinner party invitations I made. Still don't think my mom has used them haha. I wish I had pictures of some of these old assignments to post!
Monday, January 25, 2010
HW for Tuesday, January 26th
Scoping an Audience 6B: Laramee creates meticulously detailed renditions of the unreliable truths she conveys. Why do you think she expends this extraordinary effort?
In the interview on page 65 it says a gallery director told Laramee that she was a really good artist but that she was never going to make it in the art world because of the three strikes she had against her: she was young, pretty, and a woman. This is the reason I think Laramee makes such an extraordinary effort - to prove people like this man wrong. A second reason I think her art is so detailed is because she wants her viewers to believe her work is real, since the majority is "false." In a way, the details allow her to cover her tracks ahead of time. It's like when little kids lie to their parents - they usually get caught because they haven't planned all the details of the lie out. A third reason I think Laramee tampers with truth is because of her relationship with her family. She never really knew her father, and in attempting to think like another person (him) she seemed to believe she could be her father. She knows that being an artist is about investigating the unknown, and that part of our job is to use our imaginations. Through art Laramee was able to experience her father. Reading about Eve Andree Laramee reminded me of the Diane Arbus's quote "A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know."
I think my practices as an artist will help me to stay fresh as a classroom teacher. One of the professors I've had for three semesters now always tells us that it is time to stop teaching when you aren't learning anything anymore. As long as I'm creating art, I should be learning something! I think a skill/quality that artists develop that lends itself to the art of teaching is passion, which can be contagious and motivating for students. Passionate art teachers support students whose favorite medium is different from their own, just like passionate foreign language teachers promote other foreign languages to their students such as French, Arabic, German, etc., even if their own foreign language is Spanish. Patience is another another skill that I think many artists develop that lends itself to teaching. Most of us have taken an art class that was hard in the beginning (Ceramics 2 anyone?) but gets easier with patience. I might incorporate my work as an artist into my teaching by using a piece or two as examples of line, texture etc. But I would be sure to make a disclaimer that I don't want my students to copy exactly what I do just because they think it will earn them a good grade. Photography is a way I will continue to make art while I teach - I am constantly photographing. Art, like other things in life that are important such as friends and family, is just something you have to make time for each week. As a teacher summers will be nice for additional art time. This is important because as I stated at the top, creating helps you to grow and prevents you from becoming stale. Almost in a "if you don't use it you loose it" sense.
I characterize the relationship between teaching and art making as: art making teaches. I can't recall a project I did that resulted in me not getting something (however small it may have been) out of it. The question "How will you balance the need to teach technical skills with the need to help students make art that is personally meaningful and creative" reminds me of my last post where I was wondering how you grade the slacker who is a natural versus the hard worker who just can't master a concept. I guess weighting technical skills and personally meaningful/creative art equally on a rubric wouldn't work because there would be students who would be failing who shouldn't necessarily be. This question also reminds me of the debate in the foreign language world: competency versus proficiency. (Meaning the person speaks and they are understood, but has no written grammatical/spelling skills versus the person who knows all of the grammar/spelling rules but cannot speak the language.)
I know we are supposed to do page 62 part A for homework too, but what book?
In the interview on page 65 it says a gallery director told Laramee that she was a really good artist but that she was never going to make it in the art world because of the three strikes she had against her: she was young, pretty, and a woman. This is the reason I think Laramee makes such an extraordinary effort - to prove people like this man wrong. A second reason I think her art is so detailed is because she wants her viewers to believe her work is real, since the majority is "false." In a way, the details allow her to cover her tracks ahead of time. It's like when little kids lie to their parents - they usually get caught because they haven't planned all the details of the lie out. A third reason I think Laramee tampers with truth is because of her relationship with her family. She never really knew her father, and in attempting to think like another person (him) she seemed to believe she could be her father. She knows that being an artist is about investigating the unknown, and that part of our job is to use our imaginations. Through art Laramee was able to experience her father. Reading about Eve Andree Laramee reminded me of the Diane Arbus's quote "A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know."
I think my practices as an artist will help me to stay fresh as a classroom teacher. One of the professors I've had for three semesters now always tells us that it is time to stop teaching when you aren't learning anything anymore. As long as I'm creating art, I should be learning something! I think a skill/quality that artists develop that lends itself to the art of teaching is passion, which can be contagious and motivating for students. Passionate art teachers support students whose favorite medium is different from their own, just like passionate foreign language teachers promote other foreign languages to their students such as French, Arabic, German, etc., even if their own foreign language is Spanish. Patience is another another skill that I think many artists develop that lends itself to teaching. Most of us have taken an art class that was hard in the beginning (Ceramics 2 anyone?) but gets easier with patience. I might incorporate my work as an artist into my teaching by using a piece or two as examples of line, texture etc. But I would be sure to make a disclaimer that I don't want my students to copy exactly what I do just because they think it will earn them a good grade. Photography is a way I will continue to make art while I teach - I am constantly photographing. Art, like other things in life that are important such as friends and family, is just something you have to make time for each week. As a teacher summers will be nice for additional art time. This is important because as I stated at the top, creating helps you to grow and prevents you from becoming stale. Almost in a "if you don't use it you loose it" sense.
I characterize the relationship between teaching and art making as: art making teaches. I can't recall a project I did that resulted in me not getting something (however small it may have been) out of it. The question "How will you balance the need to teach technical skills with the need to help students make art that is personally meaningful and creative" reminds me of my last post where I was wondering how you grade the slacker who is a natural versus the hard worker who just can't master a concept. I guess weighting technical skills and personally meaningful/creative art equally on a rubric wouldn't work because there would be students who would be failing who shouldn't necessarily be. This question also reminds me of the debate in the foreign language world: competency versus proficiency. (Meaning the person speaks and they are understood, but has no written grammatical/spelling skills versus the person who knows all of the grammar/spelling rules but cannot speak the language.)
I know we are supposed to do page 62 part A for homework too, but what book?
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
High School Experiences
I had a great experience as a high school student, and I would like to assume that the majority of high school students will also love it. However, everyone is different, and my guess is that maybe only half (that's probably generous) of high school graduates would be willing to go back and enjoy it all over again.
What kind of high school student was I? The girl who did it all - I took Honors classes, was a State Finals athlete every year, worked, went to church, was a leader in other clubs/committees at school, and still made time for my friends and family members.
The fears I have about working with high school students are not associated with teaching art classes as much as Spanish classes. I will without a doubt have native speakers in my room. What if they think I am speaking too slowly or am pronouncing something wrong? I'm supposed to be the most knowledgeable person on the subject in the room!
Something I am hoping to learn in this class this semester is how to develop good art rubrics for assignments. Grading can be subjective, especially in art, whereas in math class there is usually a right or wrong answer. How do you grade the hard worker who lacks drawing/painting/etc. skills, versus the slacker student who is a natural? A second thing I think I will learn this semester is how much time students need for assignments. I want to push them but not have students afraid to sign up for my classes someday. In the AP Photography Portfolio class I took my senior year of high school, we cranked out at least twice as many assignments as we did in my University's Intermediate Photography class (partly because there was lecture on famous photographers during class in college, and in high school we researched artists on our own time).
The thing I am most excited about this semester is working with students at ABCDEF High School because I am very much a person who learns by seeing and doing. Classes with field experience components are great because we get a chance to apply what we've learned instead of just trying to remember it all for when we need to apply it in the future.
What kind of high school student was I? The girl who did it all - I took Honors classes, was a State Finals athlete every year, worked, went to church, was a leader in other clubs/committees at school, and still made time for my friends and family members.
The fears I have about working with high school students are not associated with teaching art classes as much as Spanish classes. I will without a doubt have native speakers in my room. What if they think I am speaking too slowly or am pronouncing something wrong? I'm supposed to be the most knowledgeable person on the subject in the room!
Something I am hoping to learn in this class this semester is how to develop good art rubrics for assignments. Grading can be subjective, especially in art, whereas in math class there is usually a right or wrong answer. How do you grade the hard worker who lacks drawing/painting/etc. skills, versus the slacker student who is a natural? A second thing I think I will learn this semester is how much time students need for assignments. I want to push them but not have students afraid to sign up for my classes someday. In the AP Photography Portfolio class I took my senior year of high school, we cranked out at least twice as many assignments as we did in my University's Intermediate Photography class (partly because there was lecture on famous photographers during class in college, and in high school we researched artists on our own time).
The thing I am most excited about this semester is working with students at ABCDEF High School because I am very much a person who learns by seeing and doing. Classes with field experience components are great because we get a chance to apply what we've learned instead of just trying to remember it all for when we need to apply it in the future.
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