On reflection my most valuable experiences at Stout have always been my practicum.  This experience at the elementary level is no different.  As a student I always have an idea of what I want my classroom to look, how I want it to operate and what I would do if certain difficult situations arise.  Actually being in a classroom and seeing how another teacher operates their classroom helps me to define these ideas. Even more importantly I get to see what happens when I try some of teaching techniques on a classroom full of students. It is often said that artists are visual learners I have to disagree while I learn by seeing I learn more by doing, by putting pencil to paper, hands to clay, and paint to canvas.  Learning to teach is no different for me.  I can talk and theorize about how to teach, but actually seeing how a child responds and making adjustments as I go is what really helps me to develop.  To actually be able to see what kind of projects are appropriate for different grade levels.  To know how students struggle to master skills and ways to make it easier for them to understand a concept.  These are things that can really only be learned by working with kids.

I also received a ton of valuable lesson plan ideas, inspiration for how to create a better anticipatory set and procedures to help me better manage my classroom.  Mrs. A often used artist to inspire her lessons such as Monet's water lilies, Klee's cat and bird or Klimt's the cradle.  She also was very animated when introducing a project during a lesson on the scream she actually did scream for the students.  I don't know that I will get that into my teaching, but the students were held in her spell as she told stories about the artist and art work that served as inspiration for the the students.  She also had procedures in place for clean up and for how the students were to line up as they left. I think that the students need to be reminded to take turns and to walk to their tables, but in general the students were well behaved.

The only thing that I wish I had seen included in the class a little more than it was is an introduction to aesthetics and art criticism.  I think that this would be pretty hard at the fist grade level, but at least the students could be asked to talk about what they had made.  the colors they chose or the people and animals they included in their work. I think by 5th and 6th grade the students could be expected to describe what they did and how they would change it if they could start over again.  In general I want my students to practice talking about art.

I wish I had more practicum experiences.  I wish I could try teaching my brown bear lesson again with a better plan in mind for clean up and more of a focus on helping the students to understand textures.  I'm excited to student teach and put all that I've learned in this experience into action.  I'm also excited to see what more teaching holds for me.

I think Tray was one of my favorite speakers this semester.  Mostly because I'm a little nervous for my student teaching experience.  I just wanted to know what someone else had experienced and how things worked for them.  I appreciated the fact that his experience maybe wasn't the best that's OK, because it showed me that even though your experience may not be ideal you can work through it. 

I also appreciated the lesson plans that he allowed us to borrow.  He had several very good ideas and I hope to try some of them out.  I especially would like to try the letter monsters those looked really cool and like they were a lot of fun to create.

I'm still not really sure what will be expected of me during student teaching, but I do understand that it will be a lot of work.  I had been planning on creating several lessons over the summer to help me prepare for student teaching.  After hearing him talk I will be creating even more lessons than I had originally planned. I will also be getting a few books to help inspire some projects.  Stout teaches you a lot of fine art techniques, but I know there are materials and techniques that aren't taught here that I would like to teach to my students such as calligraphy or weaving. 

Student teaching sounds like a lot of work, but a great learning experience.  I'm looking forward to it with excitement and trepidation.

This post is specifically to address some of the questions that I may have missed in some of my other blogs.  Mrs. A classes were generally well behaved, but there was one particularly that seemed to give her more trouble than others.  I'm not sure if it was the mix of students or if the teacher generally in charge of them was a little more laid back with classroom management.  Mrs. A general would ask the students to give her five and did a fair amount of waiting for the students to stop talking and start listening.  She did have an area of the room designated for a student to work by themselves if they were giving another student trouble.  If the situation warranted it she would send the student to the office for a set period of time.

Her rules were the same as the rest of the schools they were posted in the room.  The students were asked to be respectful, do the right thing, and solve the problem is they created one in the rules.  There were no rules posted about safety issues within the classroom.  Mrs. A addressed safety concerns primarily by making sure that her projects were designed to be safe for the student.  If there was any potential for a safety issue she would address that when giving a demonstration but that very rarely happened.


Students were allowed to go to the bathroom or get a drink one at a time after they requested the break from Mrs. A.  Mrs. A did not have a hall pass the students were simply allowed to leave after given permission.  This was an elementary school so the students were not allowed to borrow materials, none the students had ipods or phones that Mrs. A had ever seen in her classroom.  The radio remained off for the class Mrs. A allowed the students to talk while they worked and keeping the radio off helped her to hear the classroom discussions.

I asked Mrs. A if she had to turn in lesson plans to her principle.  The principle did ask for lesson plans from all of the teachers, but as Mrs. A spent more time at this school her lesson plans had become shorter and shorter.  She did show me what she turned in it was basically a chart with the time and grade of every class laid out and the name of the project that class was working on.  If Mrs. had to be gone for a class she had a sub station with detailed lesson plans for each grade that the sub would follow.  Then when Mrs. A came back she would pick back up on the project that she had been working on with the class and leave the sub project to be completed when their was a sub again.  I don't think that it would be necessary to do this though at the high school level

Hours 14 and 15

Mrs. A asked me to grade the Brown Bear Projects.  This was harder than I anticipated, partly because I didn't have the rubric I created for the project with me and partly because I didn't want to down grade the students for things that I felt I had made unclear to them.  Mrs. A generally grades her students work by giving the student a 1, 2 or 3.  3 is the highest grade that you can receive in a class her class.  She sorts all the art work into piles the represent the different grades and then considers if she should move anything.  I new I was partially grading the student on craftsmanship I wanted the shapes to be cut out in the forms that I had demonstrated to them and all of the edges of the shapes glued down.  I wanted them to have given their brown Bear's certain features.  The problem that several of the students had was that they had cut their brown bears bigger than what I asked for and some of the bears legs were hanging of the background page.  I debated about whether or not I wanted to down grade the students for this but I determined that the problem was one of my own making because I hadn't made it clear enough to the students that they shouldn't let any part of the brown bear hang off the page.  I'm looking forward to getting a little more experience at grading.

Mrs. A also started a new project with her 1st grade students.  They began weaving cups into baskets.  Mrs. A had cut seven slits into the cup and showed the students how to weave the yarn through the teeth that she cut.  The students then began working at their tables.  Some of the students had a really hard time figuring out how to weave the yarn around the cups.  The other problem students had was pulling their weaving tight.  Mrs. A said she usually tugs on their shirt to show them how tight they need to pull the yarn.  I had a hard time getting the students to really pull hard enough on their yarn.  I saw a few cups were the student had woven the cup pretty far, but failed to pull the yarn tight enough.  I wasn't really sure if I should pull out all the work they had done and ask them to work the yarn again.  Now that I've thought about it a little more I think that in the future I would take one strand of yarn out and have them weave it a little tighter leaving the loser stuff below. they could have on the last day the option of weaving a second better cup after they had mastered the skills on the first cup.

Hours 12 and 13

So I finished teaching my lesson plan to the students today.  I ran through my head a couple of times and sort of talked myself through it the night before.  I wanted to make sure that I organized how I wanted the students to work and what words I was going to use to guide them through the process of creating the brown bear.  I started out the class by asking them to tell me what artist we looked at before break.  I gave few hints and it all came back to them.  I also asked them to tell me what a texture was.  They had a little trouble defining the word.  I think if I really wanted them to understand texture I would have to do more than one project that centered around the idea.  Then they were dismissed to their tables and I asked them to write their names on the back of their papers.  I still had a few papers with names on the front.  I think next time I'll wait until were done with the project and then ask them to flip the paper over and hopefully all the names will be on the backs of the papers.  The students were really eager to get moving.  I had a few problems with students taking forever to get their supplies and then at the end they were fighting to get supplies put away.  At the end of the class when everyone was sitting down I let them know that I thought they did a great job when I asked them to come up and get their craypas, but that the struggle we had during clean up was unacceptable.  They sat quietly and lined up nicely for me after that.

I think clean up is kind of an issue for some of these classes.  I've seen students fighting and butting to get ahead of each other to get their items put away.  I think that Mrs. A doesn't notice it as much as I do because she is busy cleaning up herself.  It bothers me though.  I want clean up to be more orderly in my class and I want my students to me more considerate of each other.  I think that Mrs. A art bucks could be used to help address this issue.  At the beginning of class I would announce that art bucks would be awarded not only for drawings in sketchbooks but also for extra good behavior.  Such as helping a friend finish their project or if I spy them doing something I believe is particularly kind.

Below are a few pictures of some of the work the kids created and also a short clip of me giving a demonstration to the class.

I liked hearing Bob and Darrel talk.  It was apparent to me that they had an opinion, but were trying to be honest within there presentation.  I'm not sure that I really learned anything I wasn't aware of before, I've been thinking about the union issue for a while now.  My father is a teacher and when the Governor broke the teachers union he was of course upset.  We were upset because the union gives teachers the ability to negotiate things like their working conditions and pay even though they are not allowed to strike.  On the flip side there have been times where the unions power has been abused and I don't like some of the causes that the teachers union supports either.  It's apparent to me that there are two sides to the union coin.  I'm not really sure how to fix it so that the unions power will not be abused, but I also believe that unions can be good for more than just the teachers they represent they can also be good for the students too.

I liked the maps of the united states that showed the link between teachers unions and student ACT and SAT scores.  Maybe it's not solid proof that unionized teachers are better teachers but it does show evidence that this is probably true.  I'm not sure how long it will take, but I think that the education provided to students within the state of Wisconsin is not going to be as good as it was before the union was broke.  Not because teachers don't love kids or teaching, but because without the unions teachers are going to lose some of the working conditions that helped them be good teachers, such as smaller class sizes and prep time.  I hope I'm wrong.  I think most people will agree that we all want a great education for our kids we just don't agree on how to go about giving them that great education.

Hours 10 and 11

I couldn't complete my lesson this week with the first graders due to Easter break on Monday.  I did come to the school though on Wednesday and helped the fourth graders with their masks and the first graders worked on a drawing inspired by Klimt's the cradle.  I missed the introduction for this project. Talking with Mrs. A she had a power point with some of Klimt's paintings.  She felt that a lot of Klimt's work was inappropriate for this age group and had specifically chose the cradle painting because it was one of his more tame paintings.  I think that this is an interesting problem because there are a lot of great painters and paintings that you can't show to an elementary class.  Mrs. A even has a few art books designed for young children that she has had to alter some of the images because they were inappropriate for young children.  In the Klimt inspired drawings the students were allowed to pick some sort of character that would be sleeping under a blanket divided into sections and then the students decorated each section with patterns.  Today they were coloring in the patterned blankets with water color pencils.  Mrs. A demonstrated to the students how they could color lighter or darker to create more or less saturated colors.  Next week the students would be coloring in their drawings.

The fourth graders were working on building up features on their masks.  They added balls of newspaper, egg cartons and cardboard onto the base of their masks to create a nose, ears, or eyeballs that pop out.  The students did a pretty good job of doing this they did have a little trouble brainstorming ways to create the three dimensional form they wanted, this was most often fixed by just asking them what they were thinking of doing and then asking more questions and offering a few suggestions to help them think.  

Hour 9

Today I began teaching my lesson on Eric Carl's brown bear to the first grade class.  The lesson went well over all, but there are a few things I would change.  The students were all very familiar with Eric Carl which I expect, I was happy to see how excited the students were to be read to and to create the project.  I think however I would maybe move this project to the beginning of the year or perhaps the end of the year for kindergartners so that it would present a little more difficulty to them.

The parts of the lesson that were very successful were the reading and the power point.  The demonstration went well also.  Once the students were dismissed to the tables they really became engrossed in their painting.  Mrs. A had suggested that we roll the paper over the table and allow the students to work on covering the whole paper with paint and then scrap with different tools to cover the paper with texture.  I explained during the power point to the students that texture can be something we feel like rough sand or a silky ribbon and it can also be what we think something might feel like an for example the fur of a bear.  They had a ton of fun with the paint and texture tools, but had a little trouble filling the entire length of paper with texture, as they focused on one spot.  If given one sheet of paper perhaps they would have had been more aware of the surface.  The second problem came when I asked the students to clean up.  The paint dried on their hands and they kept scrubbing and scrubbing to get it off.  Part of the problem was that they need to use soap, but think a different paint would solve this problem.  I have a paste paper paint recipe that I wanted to use, I had tried the recipe at home and loved that it dried slowly and created a really distinct texture when scraped.  It also cleaned up quickly.  Mrs. A used acrylic mixed with a gloss medium for a similar project and wanted to stick with this type of paint.  The color was more saturated and glossy plus the paste paint requires that I boil a mixture of water and flour (wheat or rice) before adding color so paste paint is a little more work.

If I use acrylic in the future for this project,  I think that I will set up stations for the students to work at. One table where the students are working on a less messy project with minimal clean up such as drawings and one table where the students are working on the paintings.  This would eliminate lines at the sink for hand clean and the amount of tools that I would have to clean after the project was done.

Hours 7 and 8

This week the first grade class finished there Matisse paper cutouts.  One student was behind from the previous week.  To help that student catch up Mrs. A would usually allow them a sample that she had started with the class the week before or she might allow them to use another students who was present the week before but missed class this week.  It seems that none of the students really mind this although I think that it might undermine how much owner ship a student would really take in the creation of their work.  I'm not really sure how I would approach grading a project that wasn't completely done by a student either.  Her concern is that the student would never catch up if with the class if they aren't allowed to start where the class left off.  I do see her point, but I'm not comfortable with a student using another students work as their own.

I talked with Mrs. A a little about how her principle evaluates her.  The schools policy is to have a formal evaluation every other year and an informal evaluation every year.  Mrs. A didn't seem to think there was much of a difference between the two evaluations.  The principle stays within the classroom for the entire class and later the principle writes an evaluation for Mrs. A and reviews the evaluation with Mrs. A.  Mrs. A said that she doesn't do anything special for the evaluations.  In the beginning she used to always try and stay engaged with the students while her principle was viewing her, but she has with time become more comfortable with allowing the students to work while she multitasks prepping for other classes.  The evaluations seemed very informal to me and I'm wondering if every school approaches teachers evaluations this way or if another principle may stress the need to develop a professional philosophy and ask you to set teaching goals throughout the next year.

Hours 5 and 6

On this visit I was once again present for a first grade and fourth grade class.  The first grade class was starting a new project, Matisse inspired paper cutouts.  The teacher had a power point prepared that illustrated the life of Matisse and showed examples of his paper cutouts.  The presentation was much more than a dissertation of facts about Matisse's life and work.  Mrs. A narrated the life of Matisse in away the children could understand.  She segued into the project by including Matisse's cutout of Icarus.  She told the story of Icarus, she was very animated during her story and the kids just loved it.  The actual art making was very step by step.  Students were first asked to draw a stick figure falling and then we went around the room and drew skin on the figures (outlined).  The kids cut around the outlines and were then given more paper to glue their stick figure onto.  The student were asked to finish cutting out their shapes from a piece of paper before they were given more paper.

The fourth graders had been given the background information and demonstrations the week before.  Mrs. A reminded the students of some of the most important highlights from the previous weeks.  The students were then dismissed to their tables to work on the project which was plaster paper masks.  The students were each given a mask mold to lay plaster paper over.  There were a few students missing so to keep them from falling behind I created some extra masks and any students that finished early were asked to create extra masks or help their friends.  The hour went very quickly and for the most part smoothly.  The teacher for the class was late picking up the students from the art class.  This seems to be a chronic problem.  It makes things a little difficult for Mrs. All though because when a teacher is late picking up students from the art room it cuts into her time to set up for the following class.

When assessing student artwork I look for evidence that they learned the concepts I set out to teach within that lesson.  I consider before I teach a specific concept what the best way for me to measure what they learned will be for that concept.  I often use rubrics to layout what specific criteria I am looking for from the students.  Within the rubrics I most often look for students to have acquired a skill, knowledge of design elements or principles, the ability to recognize artist, define vocabulary, and recognize art movements.  At the end of the term I also look over the students work to assess how much progress the student has made throughout the term. 

Paul Weber's visit was informative.  I think most of the information that he gave during his visit to the our classroom was common sense such as dressing appropriately for the interview and being polite over the phone if you are not offered the job.  What surprised me though is that a school may ask you to teach a impromptu lesson during an interview.  Knowing this I'm now going to plan on having a short lesson ready when I interview so that I won't be thrown off balance.

On the second day within the classroom I stayed for two class periods.  The first class were 1st graders working on painting clay slab that was cut out like a goldfish bowl complete with goldfish and gravel.  They used tempera cake paints to paint the fired clay.  Mrs. A would later spray the fishbowls to make the paint permanent.  Mrs. A made sure when she demonstrated to the class the importance of handling their clay fishbowls carefully so that they would not break them.  In kindergarten Mrs. A has another clay project, she fires a few extra duplicates of this project and then pretends to accidentally drop one so that the students will see and feel the impact of breaking one of these objects.  She reminded all the students of the experience to encourage them to be careful with their fishbowls.

The second class was made up of fourth graders.  This class was finishing up a project inspired by Klee.  The students had drawn a cat and bird then outlined their pencil lines in cray pas.  During this class Mrs. A showed these students how to use the tempera cakes to paint their drawings. She asked them how they could make a color lighter or darker.  The students talked with Mrs. A about using more or less water to create light and dark colors.

I asked Mrs. A why she decided to become an art teacher.  She said she always new that she was going to be a teacher and originally she started going to school for early childhood education.  She thought that she would continue taking art classes though too because she enjoyed doing art too.  Then she began talking more with her adviser and decided to change majors to art education.  She has always seen herself more as a teacher than an artist and teaching is what is important to her.

My first observation experience at Cameron Elementary School was a fantastic experience.  I participated in the 4th grade art classroom which was just starting a project centered on mask making.  Mrs. Allen the 4th grade art teacher presented a power point which gave the students several examples of mask from different cultures.  She told the students that they would be creating a mask inspired by an animal.  She had a fantastic worksheet for the students to fill out that asked the students to list several animals real and imaginary she asked the students to create at least 2 drawings of their proposed animal mask and than met with each student to discuss their design and how they would achieve the design they created.  I helped the students brain storm different kinds of animals and helped them identify defining characteristics of animals to use on their mask.  The students were very excited about this project and receptive to my direction.

Mrs. Allen asked the tables to clean up and directed all the students to put their mask worksheets in the "art museum".  The "art museum" is a cubby that Mrs.  Allen has organized with files for dry work that the students do.  All the students know that dry work goes to the "art Museum and wet work goes in the drying rack. 

The students sat back down at their tables when they were down putting their supplies away and waited quietly to be dismissed .  Each table has a color and artist hanging above it.  The teacher then can dismiss tables by color or by artist name.

On the first day of class after drill the students on safety issues such as tornado drills and fire drills she assigns the students to a table.  Kindergartners are all assigned tables by color the rest of the grades are assigned tables by artists.  The students are also given several facts about their artist and these are reviewed throughout the year.

On the first day of class the students are also required to create a sketchbook which they can work in if they finish a project early.  The sketches are given a sticker or a stamp that students can use as art buck.  Art bucks can be turned in at the end of the semester for prizes.

I thought these were all fantastic ideas.  I especially like the idea of assigning an artist to each table and can see myself using this idea within my classroom.

Becky Marine is a special education teacher she primarily addressed how we as teachers can reach students with differing ability levels.  She suggested that as teachers we consider how we can lower the playing field for our students so that each student can reach the goals appropriate to their ability level. 

The idea that I found most helpful from her was using advanced art students to help students with a lower ability.  This would allow me as a teacher to address the needs of the class while still ensuring that students who are struggling are getting the one on one help that they need.

Peggy Larson stressed several things during her presentation.  The importance of keeping your options open so that your available to take the job offered to you.  She also pointed out that art teachers teach more than just art.  Teachers also teach math, organizational skills, social skills and the list goes on.  She feels that it is important for teachers to address in particular the social skills of a student before a teacher can begin to teach content to the student.  I agree that as teachers we will be teaching much more than content and many of the skills and attitudes we will be teaching will be even more important than the content we teach.

I teach a discipline based art curriculum.  I have specific skills that I want my students to have once they leave my classroom.  I believe that it is necessary for me to direct their learning until I know they have acquired the content knowledge that I feel it is important for them to have.  If I feel a student has mastered the material that I have presented to them I would begin allowing them to direct their own learning a little more.

I am not professionally committed to any specific trend in education.  I believe that each trend that comes generally has something of value to my teaching practice, but I don't believe that any of them will be able to provide a solution to every problem I will encounter in the classroom.  What I am committed to is reflecting upon my teaching and making adjustments to my teaching according to my students needs.

Teaching is infinitely more important to me than art.  If art was more important to me than I would not have pursued a teaching degree.  It would not be fare to the students for me to teach just to support my art.  I enjoy working with students and watching them learn and grow as people.

I think that it is important to know your content to be an art teacher.  I don't believe that you need to be showing your work in galleries and taking commissions to be an art teacher.  I think that would be very difficult to devote enough time to your teaching if you were pursuing your art outside of class.

Safety is such an important issue I believe it is imperative that as a teacher I'm methodical in the way I approach safety issues.  Addressing safety with in my class room begins before the students even enter my class.  By being proactive and looking for materials and tools I would prevent accidents before they could have.  I also plan on giving my students a tour of the class on the first day pointing out where there are safety hazards and the steps it is important everyone take in order to keep everyone safe in my classroom.  Thirdly every time I begin a new project or allow a student to use a new tool I would demo that tool to them and ask them to sign a contract acknowledging that they have been trained in the proper way to use that tool.

On the first day in my art room students will be asked to find a seat.  The first few minutes will be devoted to taking roll and then I will talk to them a little about who I am what kind of artwork I enjoy and some of the materials and artist we will be looking at during our time together.  I would also make a point of addressing the school rules and my classroom rules and expectations.  Then I would want to gather a little information about my students their background, hobbies and interests.  I would also want to know what their exposure to art has been in the past and if they had an favorite artist.  I would possibly do this by asking them to fill out a questionnaire.  I would also show them how to put together a sketchbook and assign sketchbook homework.

Begining Reflections

 I guess when I reflect upon where I'm at in my journey to become a teacher I think of it most often in how many hoops I've jumped through in order to meet Stouts requirements for graduation, such as passing the praxis test and completing the benchmarks.  I don't feel like these have been the most beneficial experiences for me however.  While at stout I've learned the most about what it means to be a teacher from my practical experiences.  It's one thing to know your materials and how they function and be able to manipulate them.  To be able to pass on that knowledge and experience to another individual is a completely different task though.  You can be a great artist, but a crumby teacher.  I feel like I have a strong grasp of my materials and the ability to create lesson plans to teacher art concepts.  What I always feel I need to work on is describing how a process works to a student who didn't grasp the concept as I explained the first time.