The UAYSFA Experience

Photo courtesy of Beriet Bichel

The UAY School For the Arts experience was a very particular situation different from a secondary classroom. I really appreciated the experience I gained with secondary-aged students and team-teaching.

Our project was to create an "Exquisite Corpse Shadowbox" using mixed media. It was very collaborative, which each student working on a panel that would fit together like a puzzle to create a 4' x 8' final installation. It was a huge undertaking both for us and the students.

If I were to do this particular lesson again, I might scale the size of the finished product down and create more parameters for the students to work within. In this setting we did not want to inhibit the students' ideas or creativity so we had a pretty open range of what they could do. A problem with this was that they didn't necessarily know what they wanted to do. I think giving a couple of specific project parameters (size, media, etc.) would help the students to focus at the beginning of the project.

I would also have more specific goals for each studio work time and create more formal demonstrations for techniques. I think our students would have benefitted from a more structured environment. Although, I do think that you have to know your students well to know whether more or less structure will be beneficial to them; some people thrive under structure and some wither.

In the end I think both we and the students were very happy and proud of our finished piece. I was certainly proud of how it emerged. Working collaboratively was fun and educational. Each student tried something they had not tried before and learned something important from the project.

Building Classroom Communities

Creating a community in the classroom is something that I have been thinking a lot about this semester since it has come up in many of my classes. While I really want to be able to create a mini-community in my classroom I worry that external factors over which I have no control will hinder these efforts.

I think that building relationships based on trust and respect is where to start with creating a classroom community. Earlier in the semester we discussed how to do this after reading the first chapter of Fires in the Bathroom. A couple of things that stuck out to me were doing student surveys in the first days of class. I think that doing this and working it into a project of personal identity might be a good way to start a semester and get students to know one another. Especially in a larger school, where the students might not know each other as well or come from very different backgrounds. Learning about each other can help to understand and appreciate diversity.

A specific strategy that I believe would be appropriate to use in high school art to increase the likelihood that my students will feel a sense of connection to the classroom and school is creating after-school programs where high-school students teach middle-school students. I believe this strategy will help both sets of students and will be a good way to work within a small budget and to get students involved that are not members of other extracurricular activities.

Fostering a sense of community in the classroom is productive for many reasons. Students that feel a part of a larger group will automatically be more engaged with the material. Research shows that students that are more connected are less likely to engage in health compromising behaviors and have increased academic success. High quality student-teacher relationships are helpful for classroom management. A feeling of connectedness helps with social development. Each of these reasons alone is motivation enough to establish a sense of community in the classroom and individual relationships with students. Ultimately, fostering a sense of community in the classroom will help to create a safe, healthy, productive environment where students want to engage in material and will be more successful socially and academically.

Classroom Management

For the most part we had little classroom management problems in our UAYSFA group. I think because our group is so small, we have a 1-1 student/teacher ratio, that many problems that occur in bigger classrooms are not problematic for us.

A couple of things I have noticed, however, is trying to keep the students on task. Cell phones are a real problem, and in this casual setting it felt weird to try to regulate them. I think in the future I will just impose a no-cell phone policy.

Additionally, while I love that students are talking and engaging with each other, I want to make sure that they are still working while doing so. Some people can work and talk at the same time and others can't. It was and will be hard to try to get the students to stay on task without seeming like a mean disciplinarian. This was something we had a small problem with in our group, a couple of times I had to "shhh" a student and ask them to keep working on their project. To be honest, it felt mean and I kind of hated it. I hope that it will get easier, because sometimes the teacher has to be the authority.

I think that one thing we did that was successful was to work alongside our students. In this way we were able to show them our artist identities, but we were also able to quietly fade into the background and I think our productivity partially motivated the students productivity. Watching us work helped them to work. It also meant that we were right there at the table to work on any problems with them or to comment on their work as they were going along. I think this also helped to build a sense of community in our group, which I think helps in classroom management in that the group becomes self-regulatory.

One thing I would like to do in my future classroom is to have a posted set of classroom rules. I doubt I'll label them this way, and I would like to have student input on them. These would include being prepared, being ready to work and especially a being respectful to self and others. I hope that this will help to create a classroom where students feel safe and that will result in some great art-making.

Arts Advocacy

Being an advocate for the arts as a teacher is important in building community support for your program and helping both students and community members understand the importance of arts education.

Studies show that students with arts education perform better on tests, have lower drop-out rates and feel more connected to school I think these results speak for themselves on why we should have arts education in schools.

Being an advocate for anything can tread into dangerous territory, no one really likes to be told what to do or what (you think) is right. Especially in teaching, which is a very public position, I can see that being overzealous in advocating for arts could be a turn off for parents and community members. I do however, think that arts advocacy is incredibly important and a necessary part of being an art teacher. It will be important to know who to reach out to in the community and how, and it may be necessary to start to build a great art program slowly. Having community support will be invaluable for promoting arts and I think that parents and school administrators are probably the place to start.

Having after-school programs, community art shows, and mentoring programs are all places I would start in building an art program in a community. Also, making yourself personally available and getting involved in other extracurriculars as a teacher will show that you are invested in all aspects of a students' education.

Checking In...

On week three of UAYSFA we checked in with the students with a mini-evaluation. We had our students fill out a survey and asked for their feedback. We asked that the students bring back the evaluation form the next week, and none of them did. In retrospect we should have given them time in class to fill out the evaluation form. We didn't this time because we weren't very far in our process and a critique/evaluation didn't seem like an efficient use of our time.

We did however, meet with each student and talk about where they were going with their project, whether or not there was something they felt they needed help with and what kinds of materials they wanted to use/learn about. I found this discussion to be helpful both for the students and for us as teachers. I think it helped the students to concretize their ideas for their projects and to think ahead about the finished product. It helped us as teachers to see where they were struggling (even if they didn't know they were) and what areas they might need help with in the future.

What I took away from this exercise was that open and honest communication with your students is very rewarding. It not only helps to further their art, but also helps you to get to know them and establish a trusting relationship. I think that having mutual respect and trust in a student-teacher relationship is one of the most important things in establishing a good learning environment.