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During Art AID week I attended the virtual talk on Wednesday afternoon. It was two individuals who are currently working in education. The main takeaways I got from the talk were integrating other cultures and the importance of forming good relationships while student teaching. 

There was a short talk on integrating cultural themes into education. A teacher may wish to teach a lesson on sugar skulls to students as a way to teach about the Day of The Dead. The problem with this is students will decorate the skulls with no true connection to the holiday or culture. They are copying and pasting a sugar skull with no further explanation as to why. He had stated that it’s great to teach about the Day of the Dead, but it is better if they don’t copy and paste the action of creating these products. Rather than learning and understanding the culture, the students will just be taking away a surface-level replica of the holiday.

The speakers had stated the importance of forming great connections with others during the time spent as student teachers. Once reaching the end of student teaching, the current teacher told the school that they would love for the student to take over. She made the agreement that if she were to retire that year, that individual would take over her position. This was great to hear that you can be offered a position at the same location you student teach at.

Sketchbook Doodles

For this lesson, I did a small scale version of what I would plan on students doing. Over the course of 25 days, they would complete one full page/day of sketchbook doodles while listening to music. note how they’re feeling in that moment, what time of day it is. The goal of each sketchbook page is to reflect their feelings/emotions over the course of about a month. Once all 25 pages are completed, we’ll grid them together as one, looking at all 25 squares at once. This will give students the opportunity to reflect on their days of sketching – maybe they’ll look at a specific square or section and it will remind them of how they felt that day, and how they illustrated that feeling. A cluster of squares may look particularly similar, which could reflect a rough week, great weekend, or exhausting school days.

The first two I did myself, and the last one was done by my friend, Brian. I wanted an outside perspective for this lesson, and Brian has no true experience/strong interest in making art himself. He said he struggled a bit with the abstract thinking/mindless doodling part, and that he couldn’t not draw a figure or form of some kind. So that was an informative mindset.

Lonely                                         Optimistic                                   Anxious

Abstract-Self Portraits

Using acrylic paint, this lesson would involve students portraying their own emotions/feelings within a self-portrait. The goal of this project is for students to use the material to their advantage and in ways that will best articulate whatever feeling – whether that be paint splattering, thick application of paint, brush strokes, heavy drips, use of color, and for the two darker pieces I used my fingers a lot for smudging. 

The first one might be as metaphysical as you can get with a self-portrait, since the basis of the assignment is to illustrate yourself. But with proper proposal/explanation, a student’s perspective of themselves is entirely their own.

I plan on surrounding my lesson plans around what the artist’s experience is from making art. What life experiences change the way we make art, who do we make it for, what does the artist gain, art in different settings, etc. A lot of art theory involved I guess so these lessons are probably most appropriate for more advanced/accomplished art classes.

Here’s the link to my blogpost discussing the project