Lessons 1 and 2

Happy Halloween...I decided today to post a couple of lessons I originally posted at the other blog site.  Originally I wanted to put those "logistical" elements somewhere else to keep this blog focussed on the actions of the day.  I think that some who have read this blog may want to actually see HERE what I have asked the students to concentrate on during the cycle.  So today the blog will consist of the first two lessons posted here.

The first lesson was very successful in that the students seemed to enjoy getting out their still life objects, setting them up into their own compositions, and then drawing from them.  I had never given students this flexibility before...always deciding what objects, how and where they were to be placed, and requiring each student to draw the same setup.  I justified it by knowing they each had their own perspective and each work would be different in that way...even though they would all be using the same size paper, drawn the same direction, and using the same media for the same length of time.  When I decided the time was up, the work was "finished" and the setup came down and we moved on.  Oh, do I like this way SO much better.  Here is the current lesson on Space/Rhythm and Movement.

One thing I did differently this cycle is dealing with the test.  I gave the students a test/guide question sheet on each of the concepts and asked them to fill them out as they read.  After reading their first "self tests", I thought that they might need a little help figuring out what might be important information to remember about the lesson.  We will see how that works out next week.

"And the students have spoken"

I had a chance to talk to the issue of GRADES today while 2nd periiod was at lunch...my ramblings..

"Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next".

Jonas Salk

I had a great talk with my daughter, Kateri, last evening about this blog.  She brought a couple of things to my attention and suggested a couple of things that I found insightful and interesting.  I'm planning to incorporate some of her thoughts and ideas into my future blogs.  I believe you will enjoy them as much as I will.

Kateri said she would really like to hear from the students how "things are going" with this new type of class we're doing.  You know, I have never bothered to ask my students how they felt about what we did.  I don't know but what I must have thought that if they weren't enjoying my class they would let me know and just left it at that.  But today I decided to ask.  I said, "write me a few sentences that lets me know how you felt at the beginning, in the middle, and now that we are nearing the end how you feel/felt about this lesson.  As I read their comments, I was BLOWN AWAY by their responses.  I'm going to scan some in and post them to this and some subsequent posts.  I also plan to continue using this format to elicit this kind of response throughout the year.

As you can see, the students sound as though they are enjoying the lesson and having a feeling of real accomplishment out of creating their artwork.  I couldn't be more pleased.  Perhaps I'll include one of these notes in each of my blogs for the rest of the lesson.  In the meanwhile, I did take some pictures today of a couple of works that are finished or very close.

Don't Just Sit There...



I found this "quote" in a blog titled Thriving Too, which was one of the Daniel Pink's blogroll blogs.  I felt that it spoke to my concern for the process of creativity, which demands a certain amount of discipline.  I realize that most of the students "get it" and are engaged in their work.  I felt that at this point in the cycle, they all needed to be encouraged to analyze their work to this point and ask themselves honestly if they have spent enough time on it, or whether they have investigated alternatives to making their work better.  I reminded them, for example, of a short video and demo using colored pencils.  Some of them have used them as they might have used "map colors" in the elementary grades, coloring in a map lightly.  The video and demo addressed the use of the colored pencil by shading and glazing using a variety of colors on top of one another.  I also pointed out an alternative to finishing their crayon work, using watercolor resist.  From their reaction and work during the period, I think I was able to motivate them all in some way.

Speaking of getting in gear and doing something.  My daughter, Angela, suggested that I embed a counter which will tell me how many "hits" I have on this blog.  I was saying that I don't get many comments and can't tell how many people are actually paying any attention to what I'm doing.  Not that it matters, since this is, after all, mostly for my benefit.  But since I was curious, I did find a way to do that.  So over on the right, you wll see the number of times someone has stopped by to take a look.  I think most of them are probably me, since I look in every day to see if anyone left a comment.  Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, Ang.

I'm going to post this from my computer at school and then add some photos later from my home computer.  If you are looking at it now, come back later to view some great student work in progress.

Learning to Like Learning

"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary"

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone"

"Ah, good taste!  What a dreadful thing!  Taste is the enemy of creativeness"

Pablo Picasso (born this day 1881)

Over the weekend I had lunch with a friend, Bill Morgan.  Bill is a founding partner in a large accounting firm in Dallas.  In a discussion about this curriculum, Bill shared with me how he learned to like asparagus.  His mother required Bill and his brothers to at least eat one at the meal.  His brother liked it, so Bill would sneak his onto his brother's plate.  One day he decided if his brother liked it, maybe there was something about it he might like.  He cut off a tiny part, put it into his mouth, concentrated on the flavor, and found that, indeed, the taste was quite good.  Now it is his favorite veggie.  Later in life, after completing his college degree in accounting, Bill found that he intensely disliked BEING an accountant.  He finally decided that he needed to apply the same philosophy he used to learn to like asparagus.  He put away his watch, totally focussed on the problem in front of him, and got caught up in the "process" of solving the problem.  He found the time going by without notice and that he had actually learned to love the process of accounting.  From that day onward, his motivation became totally INTRINSIC as he proceeded to attempt to MASTER the art of accounting for the GREATER GOOD of his clients. I told my students Bill's story today at the beginning of class.  I also told them of something I participated in concerning DANIEL PINK and his posting of each of our "sentences". 

In his book, DRIVE, Dan describes what he calls our SENTENCE.  Describing in one sentence one most important thing for which  we would like to be remembered.  He has asked us to video a response to this question and email it to him at dhp@danpink.com.  I sent mine in last week.  I said, "I hope I have instilled in my students a lifelong desire to learn about art".  When I talked to my students today and relayed this to them I said that if I would change it I would stop at "learn".  I told them about Henri Matisse, whose last words were, "I wish I could have drawn better". 

In applying today's lesson to the overall goal of this curriculum, I told the students that they could take this attitude about learning and apply it to all of their classes.  It's the ACT OF LEARNING that is important, not necessarily the subject being learned.  If they can learn about art, even though they don't like art, they will have accomplished more than if they actually liked art to start with.  They can then apply this attitude toward all their classes...math...language...history...science.  Priding themselves on the fact that they learned something will become THE MOST IMPORTANT ACCOMPLISHEMENT they will take with them from their years in school.  That feeling will carry them successfully through life.

Now, for you visual readers, I will share a few more photos of works in progress.  I hope you enjoy them.

Mid-Cycle Grade reports

"Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself"

"We only think when we are confronted with problems"

"Failure is instructive.  The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes."

John Dewey (born yesterday, 1859)

Among other necessities, we averaged our SELF GRADING forms for the last 5 classroom days so the school can decide whether to send the students a notice of potential failure next week.  Except for one student who has never been to class for the last 9 weeks, and one who comes but chooses not to participate, all of my students are doing quite well.  The grades they give themselves aren't all that high, but they are all passing and seem to be enjoying what they are doing.  What more could a teacher ask?

I'm not going to say much today.  I'm going to let some of the students' ongoing art work speak for itself.  They are now about half way through this cycle, so none of the big works are finished, but some of the smaller ones are, since they need to do more of them.  Let's take a look.

As you can see, these works are definitely "in the process".  I'm very encouraged when the students ask how they can improve their work and also when they listen to suggestions and act on them.  I will post more next week and also updates as these get closer to and finally finished.

Working hard...or hardly working?

"He was sent to school, as usual, to a public school, where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him"

Thomas Love Peacock (born this day, 1785)

Most of the students are working really hard and dedicated to doing a good job on their artwork.  I find much more so than last cycle.  That's encouraging.  It still disturbs me when I have to keep at those students who haven't quite "gotten it".  Probably my impatience.  I have to remind myself that this IS a "whole new mind" and that for many it will take time to accept it as a way of learning.

I told them of an occurrence on Sunday evening when a few friends went to dinner.  We got to talking about a young man who had been in our pottery class at the community college where we take a class together.  It was recounted by one person that this young man had bemoaned the fact that his instructor was not interested in the "throwing on the wheel" process as much as the "hand building" methods of working in clay.  So he didn't feel as though he was "learning" as much as he otherwise might, if the opposite were true.  I didn't bring it up at the time, but in thinking about this situation, I discussed with my students that it was probably because he, like them and almost ALL students in today's education system, had been "spoon fed" his education up until now.  The teacher told him what to do, how to do it, how large, in what media, what expression, and when it was due.  He hadn't been taught how to think for himself.  The world today is an "information rich" place with more avenues to find out what you want to learn than ever before in history.  All that is missing is the DRIVE to make yourself go out and get it and not wait for someone else to hand it to you.  THAT is what this year in THIS class is ALL about!!

I have no videos or photos to share today, but I promise that Thursday's blog will be rich with them.  A number of students are just at the verge of finishing  up one of their artworks, so I decided to wait and take pictures of them on Thursday.  They will also be putting their grades into the computer on that day.

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.