Teaching Reflection #1
Surprises
These first four days were such a great experience overall. The biggest surprise for me was how excited my students were to learn and discuss and create their projects. The first day they were intelligently asking questions and expressing interest in the ideas and images shown to them. We had excellent discussion about art works such as School of Athens, African Sonata, and roof-topping pictures by Tom Ryaboi. We especially had a lively discussion about the point of view of one of his photos. It was amazing how invested all of the students were in getting their opinion out and collaborating with the rest of their peers to form a consensus as a whole about what they were actually looking at. Considering how involved my project is, I was worried at first about whether I would be giving my students too much information all at one time with nothing really connecting all of my points. Needless to say I was very surprised and happy that not only did the class connect with all of the subject matter, but they also related it to their own lives very well. Through the very end, the entire class was excited to learn, retained information well, and could articulate how point of view was being used in their art. I was worried this would be unachievable since fourth graders seemed so young going into the first day of St. Mary’s teaching. Lastly, I am surprised that they finished their projects. When I was creating this lesson plan, I wanted to cover a lot since I knew that fourth graders would not only want a product they were proud of but they also wanted to acquire more art skills they were confident in. But, with this, I was also afraid of whether or not the project task was too overwhelming for them to complete. I am happy (and extremely proud) to say that their finished products look absolutely wonderful!
Best
Going into the first day of these teaching sessions, I was overwhelmingly nervous about every aspect of teaching this lesson. One of my strengths was that I was always very well organized with the materials I needed to have set up. Since I had so many components every day I wanted to make sure I had extras of everything so as few problems were encountered as possible. Being so organized helped me eliminate a few of my nerves that very first day.
I was especially nervous introducing challenging skills and concepts to such a young age of students. I shouldn’t have been nervous at all! The first day was the best for idea and concept generation as a whole. Every student had an idea or thought to contribute to all of the topics covered. They were not afraid to collaborate ideas or ask and answer questions. One of my favorite dialogues we shared was about Tom Ryaboi’s perspective looking down a ladder picture. Since the point of view was one that none of the children had experienced before, we had a huge debate about what type of point of view we were actually viewing in his photograph. They talked about directional lines, atmospheric perspective, foreground clarity, and vanishing points without even realizing they were discussing such challenging concepts. With this one picture they determined that the viewer was looking down at a rooftop from a ladder because of the haziness of objects in the background, clarity of the close-up lines, and the safety rungs leading into the composition. It was with this discussion that I realized I underestimated these fourth graders vastly.
One of the best questions I was asked was, “You know how we drew a cube the other day using all of those lines and rulers and erasing? How does that go with what we are doing now?”. Addyson, a student who is amazingly aware for her age, asked this. She caught me off guard at first because it was in the middle of work time. I really loved this question because it made me realize the disconnect I had in my lesson and that my students really did want to apply the skills they had learned to their projects if they did not know how to already.
Admiring their finished art after the last day of teaching, I am so in awe of the concepts these nine and ten year olds came up with to integrate into their art. Isabel produced one of the best art pieces. For the duration of our four days of teaching, she was one of the most enthusiastic yet well behaved students. She was always the first to raise her hand with answers or ideas to share with the rest of the class. The colors she used to create her specific point of view were great as well. Isabel chose the Arc de Triomphe as her piece of architecture to use. She used excellent use of classical perspective with a ruler to draw off of her photo while also maintaining the integrity of the surreal elements she added in like a giant quid and the White House. Isabel’s piece is the perfect example of a successful piece because she used and equal amount of perspective and surrealism while maintaining the integrity of both.
Ideas for Improvement
The largest issue I noticed in the introduction was not being able to get to everyone’s thoughts for time’s sake. It was hard to have to skip over students’ students’ hands so I could keep moving the lesson along. With the awesome discussion it was also difficult to stay on time because their thoughts were so great. Luckily their teacher was very nice and cooperative! I do not want to lose the quality of my discussion with my class for the next teaching session. Hopefully I can recreate the atmosphere and way of relating the lesson to their own lives. I think doing this last time was really beneficial to the success of this project. For the next session, I want to maintain a stricter time schedule for myself to help eliminate the use of a fourth day. Knowing how much information was covered and when, I will narrow my focus in my final extended lesson plan. Ill also write the actual times I want to use as checkpoints for myself in post-it notes in my binder for the period. It is important to me to cover all of the information with the class and also have discussion and idea generation. For the sake of time, I have been contemplating taking out the learning how to draw a cube exercise. Although this skill is something I think my fourth graders enjoyed learning, I would rather them not feel rushed about completing their art on the final day. I am also anticipating my next set of students, seventh graders, to be more meticulous with their end result. This probably means more work time – which is another reason I want to get rid of drawing cubes. Meticulousness in my students’ artwork is actually an area I want to improve on. My students’ drawings were so detailed and creative! But when paint was added, they lost a lot of those details and contrast. I believe this happened because I failed to articulate what I wanted them to accomplish with the paint and also the time management rushed them into finishing their large canvases. Next time I hope to better explain contrast and preservation of details in my demonstration of paint application.
I also hope to have better organization of supply handout and cleanup on every day of teaching. My lesson requires so much stuff that it was hard for students to pay attention with all of the intriguing supplies laid out in front of them. For next session I will not be afraid anymore to assign student helpers with the pass out and collection of supplies.
I need to pay attention to my use of “you guys” as an address to the entire class. I also need to work on getting my students unwavering attention when I need it. With paint it is difficult. I plan to use the “tools down, eyes on me” technique.
Conclusion
Over all, this first session was unbelievable – I loved every second of it. Even though there are many areas I still want to improve on, I still feel really good about how well these four days went. I hope the second session goes just as well if not better! These past four weeks have really solidified my passion for becoming a teacher. It is A LOT of work. But working in an actual classroom setting me makes me so excited to be able to do that one day for a living. I can think of nothing else as fulfilling as teaching for me. I adore learning about my students’ thoughts and opinions and lives. They are all so enthusiastic about engaging in the lesson because it is a treat to them. I hope to develop just as stimulating discussion with my seventh graders as I did with my fourth. I cannot wait to do this all again.
Teaching Reflection #2
Surprises
These last sessions were vastly different from the first. To start off, my students this time around were much more chatty and eager to share knowledge than my fourth graders. I think this comes along with the territory of growing up, but with a class of only seven I was surprised at how off topic and distracted they could become in such a short amount of time. This attributed to the biggest surprise I had in this teaching round – differences in productivity levels between fourth and seventh grades. After our last reflection, I made some changes to the lesson plan to try and make the experience more effective for both the students and myself. With these changes, I was most concerned about time – cutting the time allotted down from four sessions to three. I was extremely optimistic about this going into day one too. But by the end of the second day of teaching my seventh graders, I knew the new timeline was going to be ignored. Even though I cut some material out, the lesson was still going to take as long as the last session. Initially, I was frustrated by this. I wanted to improve! But after looking at the quality of the artwork they have produced and the special attention to detail all of the students have been keeping, my worries lessened. I am surprised the project has been taking them so long to complete but the quality and creativeness behind their pieces is so incredible that I will take this as a valid trade-off. A great example of this is the students’ collaboration on generating ideas for one another when they were stuck on what to do. A specific time, Jake was stumped and went to the middle of the classroom with his in-progress piece. He was creating the Golden Gate Bridge with a Spider-Man scene but didn’t know what else to include. Some peer suggestions included a police chase, an attack of gigantic donuts, and a S.W.A.T. team of pizza deliverymen. These suggestions had a wide variety and helped him come up with his own ideas to finish his composition. I was very surprised at their openness to share ideas with one another and be so open to taking others’ ideas into account for their own artwork. Seeing this was refreshing and helped make up for their seemingly slow progress.
Best
In both grades, the discussion was great. I really lucked out with a seventh grade class that liked to talk and express opinions. This especially helped on the first day when most of the discussion took place. They loved discussing all of the different aspects of the lesson and incorporating the terminology into their answers. This was great for edTPA! One student in particular, Grant, loved showing his extensive knowledge to the class by answering questions and adding in his own little personal anecdotes or facts about whatever we were discussing. It is incredible how comfortable they all are with sharing their individual points of view with their classmates. They seemed unafraid to be silly or incorrect when I asked them questions. This was a wonderful trait to have in students because then they were very open with the range of topics we could cover and discuss in class. Their favorite artist to talk about by far was Kurt Wenner. I think the students connected with his art the most because it was reachable and they had seen art like that in real-life or on the news. His sidewalk art definitely helped them understand what a specific perspective was too and how surrealism can transform how people see a scene/setting. I think this helped them visualize how different points of view can alter meaning, context, and accessibility. You can also see his influence in the seventh graders’ attention to detail in their artwork. They have been taking painstaking amounts of time to get areas just right because they know exactly how much detail they want to include in their pieces. It is awesome to see how their time pays off, especially in Jason’s version of Big Ben and Matt’s version of the Roman Aquaduct. Both pieces are visually interesting with a full composition and creative surrealism incorporation.
My favorite part about this round, though, was how great they all were about helping out their classmates with generating ideas. They were a very curious and encouraging group with their specific questions and suggestions during peer help. The atmosphere was relaxed as students would get up and ask for help deciding what to do next for their piece and how to solve specific questions about their composition. An example of this was when Jason was getting overwhelmed working on his Big Ben. He had no idea what to do with the extra space and didn’t know how to approach coming up with ideas. Instead of holding up his art, I asked the class if they would like to help come up with solutions for backgrounds since they were all having troubles. Jason then got up the courage to ask if any of his peers knew anything about London or Big Ben so he could finish his drawing. These types of interactions warm my heart because students are clearly learning from one another through experience and enriched discussion.
Ideas for Improvement
My largest area for improvement would have to be time management and keeping better control of talkativeness in the classroom. Although I loved how open and talkative they were initially, my students’ talkativeness might have been hindering their productivity levels. And by the end of session three, I still cannot figure out how to get them to keep working productively while they talk to one another. I am fine with students conversing during work time because, generally, more ideas for art are discussed if talking is happening. I would just like to find a balance between the talkativeness and work being completed. I would also lie to improve on time management. I think I am pretty good with organization and delegating clean up jobs now. So I would like to focus on getting through the necessary steps of the lesson plan in shorter amounts of time. I do not want to cut anything out; I just want to be more effective in how I approach this. One way to try and improve would be to write the specific times on the board that progress needs to be completed by. This would keep my students and me aware of what is being asked of them.
Conclusion
Overall, I think this second round went well. Somehow I think the first round went slightly better, but all in all it was still fantastic. I cannot wait to be a real teacher in just a couple of years. It is so fulfilling! No matter the copious amounts of work, I could not have chosen a better career path and St. Mary’s has only solidified these feelings of fulfillment. No matter my frustrations at times, the students were wonderful to work with.
Sarah Kedzior 