9-7-12

Today marks the end of my third week. Next Monday I will be officially 100% in control! However, before looking too far into this next week, I do want to consider one thing I learned about this week, and that is grading and critiquing student work. I did a lot of grading this week and became more involved in the production and improvement of student's work. Grading the student's Typographic Pendant designs this week was fun (because I really do think they did a good job), but it was also difficult and sometimes frustrating. It's hard to take a look at student's work and explain to them what needs to be changed. A lot of the things that I think I can say right away are too abstract for them. Even if I said "consider the composition" or even expand upon that by saying "Could the letters be spaced more, could there be more negative space on the left side?", they would still have misunderstandings and need further explanation in class. But maybe that is an OK thing? I did encounter that situation where I said some of those things about composition and after I handed back my comments the student said, "Could you explain? I don't know what you mean". So I did. I had her design in front of both of us and I pointed out the certain places that would change the composition and I explained what composition is. And this seemed to be a good thing, but then there's my other question. How does an art teacher help a student improve their work without offering suggestions that would make the work barely their own? In a project in Digital Media, the students designed name tags that described a personality aspect about them. The letters of their name had to be manipulated in a way that described something like "I'm busy" or "I'm hungry". It was very difficult to explain to students what this project was asking of them. They did a pretty good job developing ideas in the end, but for some of them I felt like I had to just say, "Ok, here's what I mean and I think you should do this" and then voila! They created a design that was not there's at all, but mine! Therefore, this is something I definitely want to work on, consider and talk to other art teachers about. I want to see the students coming up with these ideas themselves and having revelations about their own work. Sad to say, but I don't feel like I'm teaching in the way that I have imagined. I don't want to forget about all the classroom management and studio thinking content I studied and learned about in college. However, I believe that being in the classroom now, makes me even more energized about this kind of learning. I don't want to give up on students and how art is a joke in school. I don't want to make it an easy place to goof around. I do want to make it fun and I do want to make it a comfortable environment, but I think students need to be challenged and given the benefit of the doubt. I don't want to act like they can't figure things out on their own. I want to reveal to them that they CAN create and they CAN come up with good ideas and they they ARE creative and that they ARE smart!