Sunday, February 7, 2010
One person's junk is another's treasure...
It was hard to narrow down the choices from In The Making for my lesson plan activity - there were so many great ideas! But I ended up liking the Sourcing Inspiration section more than the Scoping An Audience section, and decided to go with 2L - "Three fictitious opportunities are described below. Choose the one that seems most likely to inspire you and write a proposal for the work of art you plan to create. Your proposal can take the form of an oral report, diagrams, models, sketches, digital simulations, or a PowerPoint presentation." The second bullet point reads, "You have received an invitation to participate in a citywide arts event called D.I.R.T., an acronym for Delight in Refuse and Trash. You have no budget, but you do have ten college students who will be your assistants for an entire semester. The work will be exhibited in the Earth Day celebration at the municipal museum." I was originally drawn to this studio exercise because of a project I described in an older post that I did in Elementary school. We walked around the school grounds for a couple hours picking up trash, and made a scarecrow out of our findings as a class. It was so much fun! I like that the exercise requires a proposal. I'm thinking it will be kind of like a rough draft that will require my students to think their ideas through. And as an added bonus, if the school requires writing across the curriculum, I'm covered! A part I will probably remove is the having 10 college students as assistants. Instead, to foster a sense of community in the classroom, I will allow students to work individually, in pairs, or small groups. Choice will definitely be a motivator for this project, as students will be able to choose who they work with, the form of their proposal (has anyone else studied Eisner's Multiple Forms of Representation? - love it!), and what trash items they use - aluminum cans, cereal boxes, old clothing, etc. They can even find items at garage sales, and I will do a mini lesson on Dadaist Duchamp and his use of ready mades. The day I introduce the assignment we will clean up the school grounds to see if we can find anything inspiring to use as springboards. I like the idea of watching the Garbage documentary to get ideas flowing too. I will allow the projects to be 2D or 3D. Difficulties I imagine - students may not want to get dirty, but I'll warn them ahead of time to bring rubber gloves if I don't have gloves to hand out. I would definitely want to assign this project while the weather is pleasant. Wet garbage and cold students probably wouldn't be too much fun. Since the possibilities are endless, students may have a hard time coming up with ideas, but working with a partner and doing some research online can help with this problem. I imagine I'll need wood and metal glue available for student use since they'll be sticking all sorts of strange items together. And I'll definitely need soap, hand sanitizer, and febreeze! Timing could be another issue, but I'm thinking students will need at least two weeks since a proposal is required too. Students will present their proposals during the first week, and we will look at them again during our final critique to see how the project changed from the original idea. I'll definitely need to develop a good rubric for this assignment, and group members will have to participate equally. Students sure will learn that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that one person's junk is another person's treasure! :)
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I like the idea of creating events that are "fake". I also agree that removing the 10 assistants. The students working in teams is also a good idea. That can be very fruitful!
ReplyDeleteWhat a coincidence, last night I watched a show called Undercover Boss and the President of Waste Management went all around the country as an undercover WM employee at garbage dumps, amusement parks, recycling centers, as a garbage truck driver etc. and did all the gross jobs his workers do in order to improve his company. At the garbage dump he found out one 29 year old woman who had a hysterectomy at age 21 and 5 forms of cancer since then is doing the job of 5 people, so he promoted her, put her on salary, and had her hire people to help do all her jobs. As a result her family gets to keep their dream home. At the garbage dump he found a man who has done dialysis for 20 years but still manages to fill 3 trash bags in 10 minutes with blowing papers etc., so he gave him paid time off to work with other patients and promoted him to the business's health mentor. At the amusement park he met an employee who managed to be really enthusiastic even though he cleans port o potties every day, and asked him to do a motivational speech for other employees. At the recycling center he found out that for every minute late to work/clocking back in after lunch the employees are they are docked 2 minutes, so he did away with this rule. And when he rode with a garbage woman he found out she had to pee in a coffee can because driving to a public bathroom takes too much time off her route. He also found out there are white pick up trucks that park and watch the drivers do their job, which makes them feel like they are being spied upon. And this particular driver had home owners come out of their houses to say hello when she would pull up to their houses give her soda because they liked her so much. One of these people was mentally retarded which especially touched the undercover President since his own daughter has the same ailment. As a result he is going to try to make the job more female friendly and make sure that good drivers are rewarded, not pressured to be even more productive. It was really interesting. Maybe we would watch this episode in class too!
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