Reflection

Reflect on your experience in this course. What have you learned? How have you expanded your notions related to secondary education? What surprised you? What areas would you like to continue to explore?

I learned a lot by visiting the three high schools and middle school art rooms. Seeing how the rooms were arranged, listening to experienced teachers' stories, and interacting with students was very enlightening. It had been so long since I'd been in a secondary art room! Classroom visits were especially useful to me because I'm a very visual learner, and learn best by doing. It was nice to be able to go out into the actual school environment and practice some of what the College of Ed has taught me the past few years. The two Family Fine Arts Nights that I attended at elementary schools this semester were fun learning experiences too - at one of them I even got the idea to make Mexican suns with my elementary Spanish students!
Since the only art history courses I've taken are Western Art and Culture Before 1400 and Art of Africa, I learned a lot about contemporary art this semester. This is something I definitely want to explore more, hopefully by museum visits, since the only two contemporary art museums I've been to are Chicago's and Barcelona's. I also learned a lot about advocacy this semester, and plan to make foreign language/Spanish advocacy zines since this is another subject area that teachers have to convince people is worthwhile. I learned how to make puppets and glass projects too, and am excited that I have an alter-ego example to show my students! Lastly, I learned how to blog this semester. It has been so much better than writing papers, and makes sharing images so much easier!

The main way my notions about secondary education have been expanded this semester was by learning about the Iowa Core Curriculum, 21st Century Skills, and the National Art Standards. I've never learned about any of those before, but have learned about the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Standards in six of my classes, so it was really refreshing to learn about a different subject areas Standards. What a breath of air!


What surprised me about this course is how useful the books were/are/will be - especially In the Making, From Ordinary to Extraordinary, and the checklists in Fires in the Bathroom. In my other classes I can usually get away with making a couple photo copies before selling a text book back, but that won't be the case this semester, I'm definitely keeping them for my classroom library!


Overall, this class was so much fun! It was nice to meet new people, and I loved that a sense of community was ever-present - like at the Open House! :)