Reflecting...

I've been thinking lately about a lesson I taught in my first year and trying to figure out how to write about it. I've felt like I can't commit to one teaching philosophy and the class I'm taking this semester (History, Theories, and Philosophy of Art Education) is making me reflect and question my teaching even more.

The students printed bubble wrap to make a background, sprinkled sand on the bottom, and cut and glued a fish on top. Here is something I wrote in the post:

I am too afraid to let Kindergarten students loose with bottled glue, so I put a squiggle of Elmer's at the bottom of their paper (students chose either horizontal or vertical layouts) and the students sprinkled sand.  I bought a 50 lb bag of play sand at Lowe's for a few dollars and probably only used about a cup for over 100 students.  I placed a little dish of sand at each table and after the sand was sprinkled, the students bent their paper to dump the excess sand back in the dish.  I love the texture the sand adds to the artwork- it makes a nice tactile connection to the element of art.

At the time, I didn't think there was anything wrong with this. Until I got a nasty comment telling me I should find a new career. I wasn't really "afraid" of bottled glue, I said that more as a joke. I didn't apply the glue because I wanted it to look perfect, I did it to save time and clean up with my back-to-back classes. The students told me what kind of line they wanted and I did a quick squiggle so they could get the fun part- sprinkling the sand! If I were to do this lesson again, now that I have more experience and confidence, I would probably just make sure I allowed time for the students to apply the glue. But, you live and learn. I understand the criticism, but my mom always taught me that you "catch more flies with honey." I would have responded much better to encouragement or constructive criticism. Wouldn't it have been nicer to say something like "don't be afraid of the glue bottle, the kids can handle it if you let them practice!" I know that's what I would tell 1st-year-teacher-me if I could go back in time. I hope that I always remember to say things out of love and never just to make people feel bad.
*Maybe I can clarify... I'm not looking for a pity party or saying that comment still haunts me or anything. It definitely wasn't a "comfortable" comment to read. But after I got over the surprise of it, it did make me think. The point is that we should be kind to others, including ourselves and forgive our past "mistakes".

What advice would you give yourself if you could go back to your first year of teaching?

Source: artteacheradventures.blogspot.com via Grace on Pinterest

2nd and 3rd Grade Snowpeople

Here are a couple snowpeople projects my 2nd and 3rd grade students completed in December. I have to say snow"people" because you know, it's an inclusive term and doesn't leave out the lovely snowladies.

2nd grade students learned how to overlap circles and create the look of spheres by adding VALUE with oil pastels. We've been on a value/shading kick in 2nd grade. My Tuesday classes who had an extra day practiced drawing and shading spheres in graphite in the first class then finished drawing their snowpeople scenes in the second class. Some still don't quite get that the shadows would always be on the same side but at least they are starting to understand shading. I'm hoping it will help when they start working on their duck stamp drawings in a few weeks. I left this lesson last year when I was on maternity leave and I think it went pretty well this year. I wasn't super excited about it, probably because it's a lesson you see all the time, but I suppose there's a reason it's tried and true! One little boy put his snowman in a leather jacket, which was super cute, but then he colored his sky in black behind it and it sort of disappeared. We're working on contrast...

 I had intended for 3rd graders to make snowpeople prints. but we made some changes.. 

I demonstrated overlapping the circles to make them look like stacked spheres on a snowperson, both as if you were looking straight at it and as if you were looking up to give them more options, then reviewed horizon lines. The students had a lot of freedom- their only requirements were to make a snowperson with overlapping and a horizon line. Any other features and details were up to them. They drew on these dense fiber board things, I really have no idea what they were used for but they are awesome, then traced with glue. *Of course when you trace a drawing with glue, you have to remind the students not to draw anything too small and to leave space between things so the glue lines don't run together or turn into big blobs. This started as another lesson I left during maternity leave.

 Last year the students used rainbow crayons made from recycled crayon stubs to rub over paper and make their drawings show through. I thought it would work to print the glue lines but when I tested mine, the glue was so bumpy that it was hard to make out the picture. I knew the students' lines were even bumpier so we changed the plan. I used it as an opportunity to talk to the students about problem solving and things not always going how we plan. I wanted to show them that even though my first idea didn't work very well, I didn't give up, just came up with something that would work better.

I haven't decided if covering the tables with vinyl cloths save time or not when cleaning up from painting...

In the second class period, I gave each table the primary colors, white, and just a tiny bit of black tempera paint to use. *It's amazing how many students will tell me I forgot green paint, for example, immediately after we review mixing primary colors to make the other colors they need! I showed them how they could use blue to add some shading (VALUE!) to their snowpeople. They were excited about making tints just like in their Polar Bear paintings. I gave them two brush sizes to use and suggested that they use the tiny brush to paint over the glue outlines of really important things. I actually don't mind the effect of the super-cheap-tempera-paint-I-wish-I-wouldn't-have-ordered here. It acted as almost a glaze and looked pretty cool with the glue showing through for snowflakes.

No fashionable snowlady would be seen in public without her makeup and best jewelry.

Students who missed the glue day drew with crayon then painted.

3rd Grade Surrealistic Sand Pictures

Play sand is quickly becoming a favorite art supply for me.  (Check out the Tactile Sand Paintings my 2nd grade students made here.)  I wanted to do a lesson based on my favorite Surrealist painting, one that  hangs out in the shadows of better known paintings like Salvador Dali's the Persistence of Memory. André Masson threw sand onto wet gesso as the means to stimulate an idea.  The shape of the sand suggested an underwater battle scene.  Click on the picture below to read more about Masson's work on MoMA's website.

André Masson, Battle of Fishes, 1926

I showed the students a PowerPoint about Masson and his automatic drawings and sand paintings to start us off. Next, I passed out supplies and demonstrated the process we would be using.  For the first day, we needed tagboard or sturdy paper, bottled glue, cotton swabs, and sand.  

1. Have students get their glue bottles ready to squirt: give it a shake, lid open, hold it up in the air over the paper, but do NOT squirt yet.
2. Prepare the students.  Tell them they will have 2 seconds to drizzle glue over their paper.  This should be like an automatic drawing.  It works best when the bottle is held over the paper instead of the tip touching like I usually suggest.  The best results come when the glue has an irregular shape- spread out but not just swirls over the whole surface.
3. Drizzle the glue.  Seriously, about 2 seconds is all you need and some students get WAAAY too much glue even in that little time.
4. Put the glue bottles away, no adding to it.
5. Use a cotton swab to gently smear the drizzled glue.  The glue should still look white.  If the glue is spread too thin, the sand will not stick very well and the shape will turn into a giant blob.
6. Sprinkle sand on the wet glue.  Dump extra sand back into sand cups.
7. Let dry.

If students had extra time after cleaning up, I gave them free draw paper for automatic drawing.  If you have never done automatic drawing before, it's pretty simple and a good way to practice skills needed for the second part of this project.  Fill a paper with kind of "scribbled" lines then go back and look for shapes that suggest images.  The students just used pencil for the first part of the automatic drawing and to add details to define their images.

TIP: I use a recycled gallon ice cream tub to hold most of my sand and have found the easiest way to distribute sand is to have a cup at each table.

On day 2, I passed out projects and encouraged the students to try turning their paper different directions to look for pictures that jumped out at them from their sand splotches.  They were allowed to use the whole shape of the sand or part of it, the positive space or negative space.  We used black tempera paint and thin paint brushes to add lines and shapes to create the picture.  As long as the image was informed by the shape of the sand, that was the most important part.  We talked about how things don't always make sense in Surrealism so they were encouraged to keep that in mind.  We had a lot of "_______ in Space"!  After enough detail was added with paint to make the picture clear, I gave the students black sharpie markers to write a title on the front.  I love the titles the students think of on projects like this.

I also had students with extra time write artist statements on the back of their papers.  I wish I could find the exact wording that one of my students used to give his very honest opinion.  To paraphrase it was basically: I hated this project.  I didn't like the sand and glue to make a picture.  Most students really enjoyed it once they let go of it being "perfect" and just had fun.  I will warn you that I had a couple students very close to tears at the beginning of day one.  I made a big deal of telling the class that they were smart enough and creative enough and imaginative enough to "find" their own pictures in their artwork.  (This is where the automatic drawing practice comes in handy.)  I said that the pictures didn't have to look realistic and if they couldn't think of something right away, keep trying or turn it into some sort of made up creature or machine.  When I had 3rd grade boys close to tears, I did offer a little more help.  The other students at the table and I helped point out a few ideas.

Take a look at some more examples below or check out the Artsonia exhibit!

2nd Grade Cityscapes

2nd grade students made cityscapes inspired by Wayne Thiebaud's painting, Apartment Hill, 1980.  (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art)  You may never have seen this painting before.  I happened upon it when visiting the museum a couple of years ago and thought it was cool and a different subject from Thiebaud's most popular paintings.  I liked the results when I did this project last year so I kept it pretty much the same. 

Day 1: Introduce the artist, discuss the artwork (describe, analyze, interpret, judge), students draw 1-3 buildings with pencil on black construction paper to be traced with bottled glue.  Ask students to leave a "pinky-width" between shapes so the glue does turn into a big blob.

Day 2: Use construction paper crayons to color in all the shapes.

I'm a sucker for construction paper crayons on black paper and the added texture from the glue makes it more interesting.  The kids really enjoy this project too.  If a student missed the first class, I had them draw their lines in shapes with a white crayon then follow the same procedure for adding color as if the white crayon were glue.