How Is A Work of Art Like a Toaster?

Wow, made it through another First-Week-Of-School! I love my students. These young teens are so talkative and yet so mute. So, so awkward and yet so sure of themselves. So cool and yet fun and funny. On Thursday we made toast and talked about how a work of art is like a toaster: when all the elements are functioning well the out-come is a complete experience like a a lovely, piece of buttered toast. This silly opening activity was a fun way to introduce the Elements of Art: line, shape, form, space, color and texture.

Breaking Bread together is a time honored tradition of connecting with others. A not so traditional ice breaker activity this week that helped us cool down while building bonds was an ice melting relay race. I gave each table group of 4-5 students an ice cube. The winning group melted their cube first. Such a simple and silly activity. We do not have air conditioning and it was a stifling 90 degrees in the art room with humidity to match. This was a very popular activity that left me with clean art tables!

Remember Your First Year?

Faithful Followers:

Do you remember being a first year teacher? Equal parts excitement and terror! Although I've been in the classroom for more than twenty years, I still experience happy anticipation and a few jitters at the thought of the first day of school! Below is an excerpt from an email I received a couple of days ago. I'm sure you all have helpful advice and suggestions for Debra. Please take a moment and respond to Debra via the comments link.

Hi!

I am a new art teacher and I am looking for some help and guidance! .....

I will be teaching 6^th grade (Art I) and combined classes of 7^th & 8^th grade (Art II & III). I am just having a hard time figuring out how to distinguish between the two classes and making sure they are not all doing the same thing......

Also, I know the techniques and processes; I am just VERY confused about order and amount of time. I was told I have to have student work ready to enter our county fair by the end of September.....

I am hoping some kind soul will take pity on me and give me some suggestions on order of lessons and amount of time to expect to spend on each. ..... I have found thousands of lessons/projects on the internet and I want to do them all – LOL- but I know there is bound to be a logical scope and sequence I should be following.....

I am just sitting in my classroom trying not to panic as time gets closer....

-Debra

Hi Debra,
I am also in the process of getting ready for the new school year. I am revamping my teaching web sites so a few of the links aren't up to date, yet. Hopefully, by next week I will be ready! Now, on to helping you with your exciting, first year of teaching. First of all, congratulations on getting a job! Now, the answer to your issues around what to teach and how to break down the curriculum between your 6th grade classes and your 7/8 classes is simple, so stop worrying! A certain amount of nervous energy will get you started, but you don't want to burn out before the first day of school!

Here are some thoughts:

1. DO THE SAME MEDIA WITH ALL CLASSES (with some differentiation for age/ interest/ ability/ state standards.)
2. Choose YOUR favorite medium (if you're excited, the kiddos will be excited.)
3. Then, choose several open-ended projects of various levels of difficulty. For instance, I will start with clay (my fav and middle school kids, as well) My classes are combined 7/8. Your 6th graders could do a simple slab bowl, while your 7/8 classes could make lidded boxes. A 2D example might be to have the kids do self-portraits, 6th grade could do "backwards" portraits while 7/8 would do more traditional portraits. So, your drawing lessons for 6th would focus on, for example, line, texture and space, while with upper classes you could add proportion. This would start to give you a progression for future years. You can do this with any media and any project.
4. Then, pull your learning targets or lesson objectives out of the project, so, look at your state standards, break them down into specific lesson objectives eg what your students will know and be able to do from the lesson. Choose maybe two or three to address in your first unit. The learning targets will be similar for each of the grades, but the assessment criteria will be more in depth as the students get older. Just adjust the quantity/ assessment criteria for 6th versus your 7/8 class.
5. Over the course of the year you will have time to start to think about future years. If you design a three year rotation on projects, then you won't have to worry about repeat students. For instance, if you start this year with portraiture, then next year your first unit could be printmaking. You use the same learning targets adjusted by grade level, but different projects/ media. Year four you start the sequence over again.

Art Centers

I am reworking some Power Point slides from my clay pendants unit to create six elements of art "Exploration Stations" for independent student work prior to beginning the clay pendants project.

I am planning for this to be my opening unit when school starts in September. This is a big experiment. I'm sure management will be the biggest issue, but I'm hoping that students will enjoy the freedom of moving from station to station at their own pace.

Pictured here are a few of the stations I intend to set up. A link to the pdf of all six stations along with some of the lesson resources is available on my classroom site, Ms. Wilson's Art Room. Or go straight to the pdf here. Just be forewarned, the art centers are NOT teacher tested yet. Check back sometime later this fall and I will let you know how it's going! To access the complete lesson click on the clay pendants unit above.

Exploration Art Stations

Ceramic Peace Pendant, 8th Grader

Days are shorter, nights are cooler, the garden harvest has slowed. Mid-August and school is soon upon us. Over twenty years in the classroom and I'm still excited about a new school year.

This year I am trying something new. I want to loosen things up a bit in the art room, so I'm going to begin the year with Exploration Stations. I will have six areas set up, each with different media and a focus on a different element or elements of art such as line, color, texture, shape.

I will also have i-pads at most of the stations used to deliver some of the content and provide opportunities for some of the art exercises using drawing apps.

Students will work their way from area to area at their own pace. I know this will appeal to students' desire to be more independent, social and, hopefully, more engaged. I will let you know how it goes!

A Little Art Horse History

Getting ready for back to school after a relaxing spring vacation. We will learn a little bit about Deborah Butterfield's horses and horses in art history in the video below. Then, we'll read about Butterfield and compare her work with Giacometti in preparation for creating animal sculptures. We've used wire to create sculptures as well as sticks this year, now I'm running low on materials. Sticks are free for the gathering, but the hot glue is pricey. Not sure what we'll use to build our animals this final term. Check back in a few weeks to see what we come up with!

This project was so fun! Here are a couple examples of the student art work:

"The Fox" sticks, bark, pine needles, hot glue

"Porcupine" sticks, twine, pine needles, hot glue

Collage Sketch Book Cover

A new term starts tomorrow. 100+ new students. I've been fine tuning a collage project this year for the sketch book cover we will begin this week. I find that clearly defined parameters actually help students relax and create more freely. I present them with a problem to solve, commission them, if you will, to produce art within the context of a "big idea" or in this case a set of characteristics their sketch book cover art work must exhibit.

Kari's Fun Art Lessons YouTube channel

Wow, have I been having fun lately! Click on the YouTube link on the video above to see it in full HD. I've wanted to create a set of demonstration videos for my art, writing and technology classes for awhile now. At last, my YouTube channel is up and running. Here's a link to karisfunartlesson channel.
The past few weeks I was out of the classroom for several days on school business. It was great to have demonstration videos prepared for my sub to use.  In fact, I got quite a laugh today when a student mentioned something I'd shown her how to do, insisting that I had been there, when in fact it was just the "digital me." I had to actually show her the video to convince her that I had been gone. I was just glad she paid such close attention to the ceramic glazing steps!
I am adding several videos each week, so check my channel and see if there's anything useful for your own teaching or art making activities!

Sticks and Stones

"Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." 

I don't believe those words. As any middle school student will tell you, words do hurt. Words are powerful. Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. School will be in session, but we will spend the day learning about the positively powerful words of Rev. Martin Luther King jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, participating in a silent march downtown and creating a school-wide monument. Each member of our school will receive a stone. 

They will write or paint the word "HOPE" on one side and a short message with their hope on the other: "To be Understood" "To Fit In" "No Bullying" "End US Debt" "Acceptance" "To Get Along" "World Peace" "Love" These are the messages my art club students used when they made their "Stones of Hope" last week. I was so proud of them! 

The recently unveiled MLK Memorial on the National Mall in Washington DC bears the inscription, "From a Mountain of Despair, hew a Stone of Hope."  These powerful words come from his famous "I Have A Dream" speech following the 1963 march on Washington. I hope this activity will be meaningful for students and staff as we consider the changes in our lives, the opportunities and possibilities in the years since the Civil Rights Movement.

Certainly at my middle school I look around and see a positive legacy of Dr. King's work and words. Students of all backgrounds work and play together. But they also behave like middle schoolers together. Which is to say, they sometimes exclude others as they themselves try to fit in. Name calling is one form this takes. Middle school students are adept at identifying differences and vulnerabilities. 

So, the work of following through with Dr. King's hopes isn't finished and perhaps never will be, as long as kids are kids. They do throw sticks and stones. Our job is to move them to an adulthood where they do not feel it necessary. And that's all about creating inclusiveness and collaboration.

 I am becoming ever more convinced that collaboration in art education is the way to go. The "modern art" image of the genius artist working in anguished solitude is so yesterday!
Many students leave elementary school hoping never to take another art class. After 5 or 6 years comparing themselves to the one or two 'gifted' artists in the class, they decide art isn't for them.
When I do partner or small group projects such as the Stick Sculptures pictured here, I get 100% enthusiastic engagement. A formal drawing lesson, each kid with their own blank white paper? Not so much. I hope when these middle school students grow up and grow out of their intense need to fit in, that building a stick animal with a classmate will have helped them work and play well with everyone. And that in some small way this art practice of collaboration and inclusiveness contributes to King's legacy.

Shining Stars

On October 13th, 2011 Police Officer Trevor Slot, husband of my co-worker and friend, Kim, was killed in the line of duty. In addition to Kim, Trevor left behind his two young daughters and many, many friends. Students at our school created this sculptural work in memory of Officer Slot. 

"Shining Stars" 2011
48" x 56"
clay, steel, acrylic paint

From the Mind, With Heart, By Hand

A significant challenge teachers face is meeting the needs of all their many and varied students. As a 'regular ed' kid in middle school in the early 70's I knew there were 'special ed' kids down the hall in a classroom I glanced into but never entered as we marched in line to the gym. In gym class, during the dreaded square dancing unit, I came face to face with sweaty palmed boys but never the boy from the special ed room who knew the names of every shark that swam the ocean. I knew he knew this, because one day his class line passed my class line on the way to the gym. He was reciting. I was amazed. I had a vague, unconsidered idea that the kids in that room were there because they COULDN'T: couldn't behave, or do, or think, or become.

Flash forward thirty-five years. The words,  "Every Child Can Learn,"  legacy of Bush era No Child Left Behind education policy, while not always creating welcome or helpful policy and legislation has had a positive influence in the way we think about educating kids. Even if we don't always know how to do it, even if we sometimes know, but don't have the man power or the technology to do it, even if it sometimes gets misinterpreted as Every Child Should Learn the same thing at the same pace.

This fall, at my school, we are working with an increasingly diverse group of students in larger numbers than ever before, with the smallest staff we've ever had. Teaching students who are hungry, tired, stressed out, distracted, or bored has always been part of the job, but in decades past there was general, societal acceptance that some of these students would move on at 12 or 16  or 18 to work on the farm or factory or family business. This way of doing business worked for many, if not most students, in the one room school house of the 19th century as well as the suburban schools of the twentieth century but for the 21st? Not so much.

I don't know the solution to the big problems in education today, but I do think a lot about what I need to do to reach all kids in my little corner of the world. In addition to students with a wide variety of learning challenges and needs,  I have five deaf/hard of hearing students. Searching for a way to engage and involve these students, especially, I invited them to teach the rest of the class how to sign the alphabet in preparation for posing and drawing over-sized hands. This lesson evolved over several weeks to include creating henna hand designs and large wire sculptures around a theme of "Helping Hands."

This past week I stood back and watched industrious groups of students exploring possibilities with chicken wire,  plaster, paint and papier mache' all the while talking and sometimes arguing, but also laughing as they worked together to solve problems of space and form, balance and stability, texture and color and ideas and concepts. 100% engagement. A rarity, unfortunately, when so many students are struggling with so much economic fall-out at home and social fall-out in their budding teenage lives.

Grand Rapid's third annual ArtPrize event was wallpaper to our lessons having contributed to the growing notion in our community that making art is cool and it's for everyone. On recent Mondays students came into class buzzing with what they'd seen and experienced visiting ArtPrize with their families. 

As students lined up to show their planning sketches to me, I struggled with my own art school, high culture ideas. Don't just illustrate, I exhorted, see if you can find a way to use negative and positive space mindfully, to engage the viewer in a deeper way, with layers of  meaning. Kids walked away puzzled. I want to encourage my students' ideas, but push just a bit for them to think more critically, engage more fully, dig deeper into their concepts.

Check back soon to see finished sculptures.

To be honest, I didn't expect much with the finished sculptures. I was happy that the kids had reached our basic learning targets for the unit. I try to be all about process not product when it comes to art making. Chicken wire scratches were minimal and no one shot themselves or anyone else with the staple gun. Success! 

So, yesterday, as I took a breather from helping kids solve technical problems, and actually looked at their work I was blown away. These young teens, all, in spite of and because of their many and varied needs have created works to rival anything at ArtPrize, from the mind, with heart and by hand. Passing kids in the hall, on the way to the gym, who knew what they knew, or could do or create, or become once given a chance?

Where Did the Summer Go?

August is almost upon us. How did that happen? I'm spending the last week of July finishing up a two week professional development course at my county office of education. We're learning about the Common Core State Standards in Language Arts which charge non-English teachers (such as math or art, and even PE teachers) to also teach readin' and writin'. I think it's a great move. I also applaud the move toward a set of National Standards, although no one wants to call them this, hence the ackward addition of the descriptor 'state' in referring to these standards now adopted by 48 of the states.
We are in so many ways still separate colonies. Remember that colonial era drawing of the cut up snake "Join or Die?" I've always really liked that illustration. Public school teachers' state organizations may want to consider this message. We are being harassed from so many directions. In Michigan, not only do individual schools and districts have their own curriculum, teachers within a building often do not teach to the same set of standards or with the same materials. I welcome a move toward a more defined set of expectations for both students and teachers, but let's not forget the role of parents in this effort.

During my lunch breaks I step away from the computer screen, curriculum issues, and politics, for an hour and relax while I explore the possibilities of pen and ink. I've been playing with an antique fountain pen my mother gave me. Fun, fun, fun! I tend to be waaay too uptight when I draw. My own art studies revolved far more around craft as I was always intimidated by the drawing and painting classes. I took haven in the ceramics and fibers studios. So, I tasked myself with completing three to four very quick drawings each day this week, maybe two to five minutes each. Here are a few.