After the "PSAT" interruption

"For Thanksgiving this year, I  think we'll have flamingo"

George Carlin

Changing Education Paradigms   This is a post on Youtube from a presentation on TED that fits right in with what this curriculum is all about.  Derek Dibburn posted in on Facebook and I really appreciate his bringing this to my attention.  So I'm passing it along.

Students were very busy today working on their chosen works of art.  I discussed their work with a couple of students in my first period class and recorded it for you to see what they are up to.  The first is a girl working on a composition of triangles.  If you listen closely, you will see that her idea for choosing the shape came from her geometry class.  Is that not a good sign?  A little collaboration of core and elective classes?  The link to Youtube is Geometric Shapes 1.

A couple of other students were working right next to the student doing the triangles.  They were working on designs using circles.  They had chosen charcoal as their media.  Even though similar, the designs are each very different.  One of them intends to finish hers with colored pencil.  The link to this video is Geometric Shapes 2.

I titled this blog "after the psat interruption" because on Wednesday the students were all involved in yet another testing situation which disrupted their focus on the tasks at hand, i.e., learning.  Since we had this 3 day span from Monday to Friday, I felt that they definitely needed to spend the bulk of time on their projects.

Tuesday night we had parent conferences.  About 15 parents came by and I was able to discuss our curriculum with them.  One parent was more interested than the others and wanted to know abut "extra credit" for her student.  I said I hadn't factored that aspect in, but somehow it would be totally possible.  After giving it some thought, I told my students today that ANYTHING they did at home that they could relate in some way to the lesson we were studying during that cycle would be allowable for extra credit.  This would also apply to all work done in an artistic way for any other course they are taking.  If they either bring it in or even take a picture of it with their phone and show me, we'll make a note of it and they can give themselves a little boost on their cycle grade.  That parent, by the way, went to this blog, read it, and became a follower.  Yeaaaaa!  THAT'S why I'm taking the time to do this, by the way.

I was so encouraged by this fact that I came up with another (hopefully) motivational factor to encourage checking out the blog at home.  I am going to prepare a dozen demonstration videos that I will post on Youtube and link from this blog.  As an example, I'll demonstrate the use of plaster gauze in a figure sculpture.  IF a student watches this and comes in and wants to do it, I will make sure he/she has what they need to work in this media.  Each time I post a new video, I will tell the students about it (but not the subject) so they can go to the blog and check it out.  I'll let you all know how that goes.

Gotta go and finish getting studio ready for the weekend White Rock Lake Artist Studio Tour starting tomorrow.