Will i find a job when i graduate?

i am studying to be an art teacher, and i am currently employed at a pharmacy. go figure has nothing to do with what i am studying for, but it does help with my public speaking and meeting new people. it also helps me by being professional, and straight to the point. yet despite that i am scare out of my mind in actually finding a teaching job in the area in which i live. every day i hear of huge teacher layoffs, and huge budget cuts to art programs. today's economy is making it realistically impossible to find any career type job. i am one of the lucky few students that has a job, that could possibly turn into a career. my argument about it is is worst case scenario do i love it enough to stick with it? honestly i love my art more, i love teaching students. not only is it fun and exciting, but you also get to have some impact on a student and their work. you begin to watch your students grow physically and contextually. you get really attached you become their friends, their mentor. i don't get that type of experience at my job that I'm at now. i get angry people all the time because they were once employed and are struggling just as much as i am trying to keep their heads above water. so realistically what are my odds of finding a teaching job in which i love in the area that i live?

School closings

this semester during my field work i experience a lot of school closing due to our current hurricane sandy. this storm couldn't have come at a worst time. at this time period i was beginning to teach my students a new part of a continuing lesson. this not only for the teachers but for the students as well made it hard to teach, and reflect upon. after having such a gap between lessons (5 days) this made it difficult for the students to review and to hop back into to work mode. as a teacher we have to be prepared for this stuff to happen. this event has taught me to be flexible for the unknown, and to find ways of trying to recapture my students interest in the work that they have started, and to give them a means to finish it. yet i don't want them to just finish a piece of work i want them to also take what they have learned from it, and to use those tools of learning to help them in other endeavors.

most important time in the classroom

what do you think is the most important time in the classroom? what if i told you it was the first 5 minutes of class and the last 5 minutes of class would you believe me? well most of the learning in the classroom happens in those two time frames. why you may ask? its because the first 5 minutes is where you review what you did last time in class. you also begin the new lesson with things that you just reviewed with the students so that they can begin by seeing the connections. the last five minutes of class is the most important as well. here you are reiterating what you did in class that day, and portraying to the students on what is expected next class and to give a preview of what you might be doing next class. these two crucial points in time you need to use not for clean up or getting organized you need to use every single minute that is given to you for your students to learn.

the apocalypse

three people in my class did a lesson based off the idea of the apocalypse. here they had the class create several ideas of a certain section of a humanoid form that was not familiar in our world today. then they had us break into groups and collaborate our ideas together to make one humanoid apocalyptic creature. these final sketches would in the future help us make our actual sculptures of our creatures out of clay, but before we did we had to successfully plan out or creature. for example, we had to make it realistic enough that we would be able to plan out a way for our sculpture to stand on its own. we also had to plan out some helpful visual hints on where our apocalyptic creature came from in our final sculpture, almost like a visual narrative all wrapped up into one. in the final product we had to explain where we got certain aspects from our collaborative group members sketches and how we also used it in our own work.

Joe and Daves presentation

two of my classmates recently did a presentation based off of the idea of profiling convicts and such. how they went about it was to flip it that the students were working in groups where one was facing away from their fellow group mate describing a memory to the other person who happens to be trying to draw this memory using the descriptions that the fellow person is using. this lesson was fun at first, but then you hit some snags. for example, it was hard for fellow students to hear each other over everyone talking at once plus you happen to be facing away from them. the other issue was people started to automatically begin drawing instead of writing down the questions that they were asking their fellow partner. why was this last one an issue? well it became an issue when the other partner started to draw then realized they didn't plan their composition out so that when they asked another important detail about the others memory there wasn't any room to add that important detail. i felt that if Joe and Dave made that as a point in creating their artwork in the beginning of the lesson then they would have seen better results in the students work.

little things that are so important in a classroom

while i was observing one of my fellow classmates do their lesson last week, i noticed one very important thing. the set up of the classroom. the tables and chairs were all situated in such a way as if you were in a theater watching their puppet show that they were preforming in the beginning of the lesson. you could see while the students piled in that they were automatically excited about today's lesson because their classroom was set up completely different from what they were used too. i don't want you to think that the set up of the classroom is just important for this lesson its for every lesson in general. your classroom has to be set up in such a way that you can address all your students in the best way possible, and that there will be a free flowing classroom where people could walk freely between the tables instead of being cramped together. another important thing about the set up in the classroom is by doing demonstrations as well. just having your students get up and walk around you while you are in the center of the room so that they can take in what you are doing to the fullest.

Symmetry

two of my fellow classmates did a great lesson in class last week based off of the idea of symmetry. how they started their lesson was very interesting to say the least. they began by having all the students in the room get up, and form two lines then strike a pose. the other line had to mimic that pose. from there they used that action as an example throughout the lesson to explain the idea of symmetry. to me that was an excellent way of portraying symmetry. by using their body's they also created symmetrical charcoal, and white chalk drawings by using one hand strictly on one piece of paper and the other hand on the other piece of paper. by doing this they were forcing the students to learn how to use both sides of their body simultaneously. there artist of choice that uses this method happens to be Judith Braun. to me her work is amazing and how she is able to create her work by using both sides of her body simultaneously absolutely baffles me. trying to do it one had at a time is harder yet. yet i do give the group a pat on the back for tackling such a hard concept to portray as a student. this lesson not only taught me about symmetry, but it also taught me more of my own body, and my own abilities in using my own body.

 

Fear

me and my partner in our art ed group did a lesson on the theme of fear, but based off of phobias. here we wanted to teach the students about the idea of phobias, and in the process make a phobia that one would have comical. by doing so we created a lesson plan that used phobias as a basis in creating a photo comic book strip. what made our lesson difficult is that we left holes in our discussion about narrative, and incorporating it into the comic book scene. that was our down fall, but in the end our teacher samples did end up getting the students excited, and help aid them in what was expected of them as a final product. here is my own teacher example based off of this lesson:

How to approach sexual, racial, and economic content in an art class

after meeting with one of my professors about a past presentation i did, we began discussing difficult things to talk about in an art classroom. some of the topics that we were discussing was Sexual, racial, and economic content. the one highly influential artist that tackles all three is Kara Walker. despite how i love her work, and how i understand her concepts, the fact is that she is hard to show students in a classroom without having parents making complaints about showing their children something that is completely inappropriate. i still feel despite all that that she needs to be discussed as an artist in a high school classroom. why you might ask? because i feel that at that age they are all experimenting with sex, and are constantly subjected to it anyways with the media, and every day life that showing them a piece of art work that screams it wouldn't be too far from what they deal with on a daily basis. i feel that these students need to be subjected to the nude form of the human body not as a naked body, but as a piece of art work that could portray a story without it being pornography. here is a few images of her work:


 

Art education game plan

in the beginning of the semester in Theory and Practice Joe, Tanya, and i created a board game based off twister to help us create future lesson plans. this idea of creating a game out of a very complex task helps make a more what i think creative lesson plan for the students. we ended up calling it Inspiration Weaver, and it goes a little something like this:

•  Rules and Categories:

Inspiration Weaver

Created by Julia Osterhoudt, Tanya Hamm, and Joe Leisure

 Value  

Pre-determined Gender Roles

Empathy

Economic Equality

Identity

Peace

Multi-cultural

 Medium 

Painting

Photography

Printmaking

Drawing

Mixed medium

Ceramics

 Concept

Gaze

Appropriation

Layering

Hybridity

Juxtaposition

Recontextualization

 Manipulation

Tearing

Stacking

Carving

Melting

Puncturing

Stamping

Official Inspiration Weaver Rules

Are you an art teacher in need of some inspiration for a lesson? Do you have no idea where to even begin? Well here is game just for you.

Inspiration Weaver is a game to help aid art teachers in creating lesson plans for their students. It is divided into four categories: Concept, Values, Manipulation, and Medium. Each of these sections has corresponding elements that can help any art teacher create a fun, and inspirational lesson plan. Continue towards instructions to see where to begin.

Setting up the Game

1.    Begin by spreading the game mat face up on a flat surface; this can be either indoors or outdoors.

2.    All players must take off their shoes so that you don’t destroy the game mat.

3.    You should designate an extra person as the inspirational spinner. The extra person is not considered a player; during the game, this extra person will spin the spinner, call out the moves to the other players, and monitor the game play.

4.    Each player will begin by facing each other from opposite ends of the mat.

How to Play

            The designated inspirational spinner will spin the spinner, and then call out the body part and the color that the arrow points too.

●     Each player must try to place the body part that was called out on an empty circle of the color that the inspirational spinner announced. If one of your body parts is already on a circle of the color that was announced, you must then try to move that body part to another circle of the same color.

●     There can never be more than one body part on any one circle.

●     If all 6 circles of a color are already covered by other player’s body parts, then the inspirational spinner must then spin the spinner again until the spinner lands onto a different color.

How to Win

            Once you have four of your body parts on all four categories at once you can now begin to make an inspirational lesson plan that includes one of the elements from the four categories. Then everyone wins!!!

observing teachers #2

today i was in my ceramics class observing my ceramics teacher trying to do a demo on grouting your tiles to a plywood board. throughout the demo she was stumbling, had no idea what she was doing, had a student do the demo by reading the directions of how to mix the grout, her own phone kept ringing throughout the demo, and had other students teach how to create a proper grouting board. what bothers me is that at new paltz in the art ed program, we are being trained on how to give a proper demo, and how to teacher a proper lesson professionally. what i don't understand is why is someone who is supposed to be a professional teacher heavily relying on other students to teacher her own class? as a future fellow art teacher this example of a teacher has taught me by far on what NOT to do as a teacher, and what i could do that could definitely make part of her idea of a lesson better.

observing fellow teachers

while i am studying to be an art teacher, I've learned to watch my other art teachers that i have classes with to pick up pointers on how to do things. one of my biggest things I've learned is how to successfully construct group work in a lesson. for example, one of my teachers started out a lesson by having all the students create a concept and research that concept for a project. then she wanted us to do prototypes of that concept that we had been researching on for weeks. when you think your done your not because she springs on you the fact that you are now going to be working in groups, and now you have to collaborate your what you thought finalized ideas together and create one object. so now that you have done all that work individually you are put right back to square one because now you have several ideas from several people at once instead of your original idea. this method of group work causes friction between the students because they all want to see their input of ideas shown in the project. when realistically that might not happen since they originally didn't work with each other in the beginning of the project. do you agree with this method of group work? or do you prefer that the students work together from the start and progress with their own ideas together as a whole throughout the project?

Pre Assesment

for the beginning of every semester/year, each teacher, in a public school, has to incorporate by New York State a pre-assessment of each student on the material that the teacher will be teaching that semester/year. this pre-assessment tells the teachers what the students know, and throughout the semester/year the teacher needs to improve the scores of their students in the final assessment. did you know that districts use the data that they gain from these assessments to evaluate the teacher on whether they showed a significant amount of improvement towards their students throughout the course? did you also know that when it comes to budget cuts or layoffs that the districts also refer to these scores on whether they feel that the teacher is at a satisfactory level of teaching or that they should let them go? how do you feel as a teacher that your job relies on statistics, and not on your performance with the students in the classroom?

addressing the students

"Hey you Guys,..." i am sure everyone who has ever had a class in any school has heard their teacher address the entire class in this way. yet did you know that as a teacher we are not allowed to address our students in such a manner? it's technically not politically correct for starters, and by addressing other gendered students in such a manner might be considered offensive to most. so instead of addressing your students in this manner, we now have to try as hard as it might be to address our students now as "y'all", "folks", or "everyone" so that it remands gender neutral. others might think this absolutely ridiculous, others might feel that it's appropriate. how do you feel about it though?

the beginning of field work 3

in the beginning of my field work 3 experience i was placed in an underprivileged school where there was a lot of crime, and poverty that has stricken the area. for a new student observer, walking into a school with two huge metal detectors begins to make you uneasy about what you're really doing. it makes you question will the students even listen to me? what do i do when something goes wrong? should i get involved? the answer to all three is no. you will get students that will not listen to you no matter what you do in class, but don't think that it's because your not being clear. maybe it's because the area they are living in is effecting them more making school not such a high priority for them since they have bigger problems to deal with. if something does go wrong in your classroom we as teachers can't get truly in the middle of it. if a fight breaks out you need to call security, as a teacher as much as you want to split your students up from breaking each others necks you need to stand aside, and let security take over. But why you might ask? In today's world, we as teachers can't get involved because it would be to much of a liability for the district. i understand the issue, but why as a society does it have to come to us not getting involved with our students issues, and allowing "someone else" to deal with the problem?