An oldie but a goodie. Got my @Cubs shirt on for good luck! Superstitious always. #goCubsgo #chicagopride #Cubs 💙❤️🎉 pic.twitter.com/K8xVXU1n7f
— Breanne Kanak (@MsBreKArt) October 12, 2015
Monday: my advanced students were hitting their projects hard and
starting to elaborate with details and pattern work on their handbuilding
projects, and details and color mixing on paintings. Some of them were starting
new projects as well! I think the pacing of my advanced students work is pretty
close to what it would be at college-level. I am trying to set them up for a
studio work environment and deadlines that are similar to those established in
college art courses. So far so good! Still working on compiling a blog post
about all my advanced students work – there is a lot to go around!
In drawing class students were working on their Dia de los
Muertos drawings. I was emphasizing to them the use of symmetry –either in the
skull or in the background – and personal symbols. They were really liking the
project and added lots of details to their work. The cool thing was even the
students who tend to go off-task were engaged in this lesson and making it
their own. The problem I was having with this group was their attachment to
logos and brands. I know I mentioned this with 7th grade but I will
get to it again later.. in more detail.
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| tying in her Native culture - super awesome details!! |
7th grade were working on their prints as well –
but today we went over what makes a good print edition. Aka why a number of my
early-finishers had to redo their prints! We talked about creating clean edges,
tips and tricks to pull clean prints, and the best way to clean up the
printmaking stations. Oh yeah – did I mention that I was able to set up two
separate print stations with this group? Two of my early finishers wanted to
get their work done asap – without waiting, of course. They decided to set up a
printmaking station at their table and pulled 5 brand new, clean, clear prints
each. They also pulled prints of their additional free choice designs with
success. I find myself telling students to take their time…. A lot! They all want
to rush through their projects, get them done, and move on. Move on to what?!
The next project is always a surprise – they can’t deal with delayed
gratification. They want all their information and projects now – now-now. I
don’t remember ever being that impatient because I was always just excited to
be doing art at all! Oh well.. generational differences I suppose.
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| before and after discussing clean editions :) |
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| before - after - super clear lines in that second pull! |
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| before - after - check out the clean edges! |
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| one student started to work with pattern |
Back at the elementary school I was working on a new lesson
with 3rd grade: Sea Animal Food Chain Collage. It’s a mouthful but
the kids really like it! Lesson plan coming soon, along with pictures! Today our goal was to choose
a sea animal to make out of paper scraps. Ms. Kanak learned an important lesson
by introducing that step – students will work to the size of the material you
give them. If they only have tiny paper scraps, they will make tiny paper
animals… and vise versa. So by the end of the
noisy-then-not-noisy-then-noisy-again class period, I had varying sizes of
animals to put into storage. I am learning better ways of quieting down the
class and also learning to not assume the whole class is being noisy. Sometimes
it is better to work with specific students and let them know their behavior is
not acceptable rather than punishing the whole group.
Tuesday:
In drawing class students were working on their Dia de los
Muertos drawings some more. I was seeing a pattern… the use of symbols. Logos,
brands, over-used visual imagery…not what I would pin down as my students’
personalities or main interests. So I kind of.. went a bit Tyler Durden on
them. “I understand that you all use lots of products and that brands are
important to you. But think of it this way.. you are not the clothes you wear,
you are not the car you drive…you’re not your khakis!” I explained to them how hard it was to see
their worldviews narrowed down to corporations and logos… and I think they got
it. Unless it was a sports team logo there were no more brands or logos added
to designs after that day. This class was not the only one that had this pattern
– some of my 7th graders were even worse! One of them had his entire
drawing covered in logos… I tried to tell him multiple times that he would have
to reverse them. But you try telling a 7th grader to drop the
ever-important logos, brands, and companies in their life. It is no easy task..
so now he has a bunch of backwards logos on his prints. I TRIED.
Speaking of 7th grade, the Art Survey kids were
being introduced to the character pumpkin lesson. This was a beginners lesson for working with clay and was centered around pinch pot making. No
printmaking today!
OH and in other news I received MY school picture today... when did I become an adult, guys?! This is terrifying and I don't know how to react. Hold me...
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| I am way cooler in person. For sure. |
At the elementary school the 2nd grade students
were working on texture rubbings.. what I was not prepared for was the TOTAL
INVASION OF SPACE that occurred during that lesson haha! I had my shoes drawn
on, my head drawn on, my keyboard was attacked.. I wasn’t teaching this lesson
but that did not stop the littles from incorporating Ms. Kanak’s textures into
their projects. Ayayay.
6th graders came in to finish their Discovering
shapes drawings and then it was time for me to take over. With a completely
different lesson: Weaving! I showed the students some of my personal pieces of
fiber art as well as digital examples. Then… we wove children. Before you go
all YOU DID WHAT!? on me let me explain!
I chose 8 students out of the class and separated that group
into two halves. 4 of the students stood at the front of the room, still as a
statue, straight as a board, and evenly spaced. The other 4 formed a line at
the end of the row and waited for instructions. I wish I had some pictures of
this process but there wasn’t time!
“Okay, so you students who are standing straight and still
are the warp threads. You should ALWAYS be tightly tied to the loom and
straight as possible. You hold the yarn or the weaving materials in place. The weaving
material is called weft. The students who are in a line are the weft. You act
as a unit – you are one piece of string/yarn/twine/grass and so you must follow
each other CLOSELY and carefully.”
I guided them through the warp strings and we talked through
the ‘under and over’ process as we walked through our people loom. “The pattern
of the weft is like a sewing machine – the thread is stitched under and over
the fabric to created LOCKED stitches. Weaving works the same way! The warp is what
holds the weft in place and when we create our under and over pattern we
created locked stitches.” After we wove our classmates a few times I handed out
cardboard looms to each student. And that’s where things got tricky… I hate to
use this excuse but at camp things were different! Campers had more freedom and
ability to wander and find what they needed in the craft cabin so weaving was
less of a hassle than in the classroom. I taught the students how we warp the
loom and demonstrated the entire process they would be accomplishing that day…
but I didn’t plan out how I was going to distribute warp thread to students…. So
I winged it! We had enough spools of thread that Mr. Keller and I could both
distribute string and what we ended up doing was having the kids wind the
string around their looms a bunch of times and that was what they had to work with.
They then went back to their seats and started warping… most of them. I tried
to go to each individual student or table group and re-demonstrate the process
of warping. I would say about 60% of the kids got it right away! (60% of the
time it works, every time). The rest of the students would have to wait until
the next class meeting to catch up.
After 6th grade headed out for the
day, the second half of 3rd grade rolled right on in to start their
Sea Animal Collages. This.. was.. a challenge. This particular group of 3rd
graders is a tricky one.. lots of personalities and noise and hyper and crazy. I
did, however, modify the lesson so students were challenged to make BIGGER
animal collages. They liked that a lot! They made all kinds of different
creatures but they..were.. noisy. I tried to keep them at voice level 0 for 5
minutes, meaning no talking whatsoever, just working. That would have been
okay.. if some of the kids didn’t have an INTENSE NEED to make a lot of noise
all the time and bother people around them. Two students requested they be
moved because they were being pestered by one of their classmates.. that kind
of day! And again.. I faltered on getting students cleaned up earlier so we
struggled with organizing the room and the students were dragging on getting
ready to go. I need to work on this SO MUCH. It’s a problem.. my strategies
need to be more varied and much much more effective than they are currently. Wednesday: High school… my advanced students are seriously the coolest. Their work is coming along so well and they are problem solving all on their own when it comes to improving their work and expanding their knowledge. So fun.
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| one of my favorite techniques - painting upside down! |
Today was a block day so I only saw my 7th
graders – they were working on finishing up their prints and moving on to their
pumpkins. Major takeaway from this lesson: certain students work at a higher
level of engagement BUT that means they work much slower than their classmates.
.. so they can add all the tiny details to all the things they want to add to
their project. It’s maddening! Especially when there is another project on the
docket.. however, it is best to let them finish their projects like the rest of
their classmates… and push them to work harder and smarter so they can move on.
It’s hard sometimes to accept the fact that yes, they are working. Yes, their
work is good. Yes they will – eventually – finish their art.. patience is a
huge part of teaching. Patience for students of all abilities is key.
Today was also particularly challenging with the behaviors
of a particular student. I actually ended up writing him a referral for his
behavior. He had to finish his printmaking project and he was Not. Having it.
So when I offered to help him finish it and he accepted it was a fight from
start to finish. I showed him, again, how to make prints and where to store
prints etc. and he listened. Kind of. Mostly what he did was a sloppy, careless
version of what I had shown him and he refused to listen when I would tell him
to stop rolling the brayer or stop inking the plate or stop anything, really.
He was essentially having a temper tantrum via media – it was a mess in more
ways than one! He didn’t have to leave class but I wrote him up for overt
defiance, mishandling materials, and not following directions. This student had
been giving me issues since day one of this project – working really slowly and
being distracted constantly from his project, bothering his classmates, talking
out of turn. Yuck… we are supposed to be tracking behavior, I know. The hard
thing is thinking that this student acts like this in ALL of his classes and
thinks nothing of it. Maintaining my cool with him is a big challenge sometimes
but I know he is expecting a defeated and negative reaction – I’m not giving up
on him just yet. He did, painfully and kicking and screaming all the way, pull
5 decent prints. It’s the little things. Definitely.
The rest of my day was super fun! I went over to the
elementary school and had some extra prep time for my push-in with 4th
grade. The students were going to stay in their classroom environment and we
were bringing their projects to them. These kids were LOVING the maps project a
lot so they were super excited to see them carried through the doors. I did a
quick review on expectations for the map and added a Compass Rose and a capitol
city to their required features. And they were off! The main challenge with this
group is behaviors – the nice thing about them being in their environment is
the classroom teachers were present to watch them. To be honest.. I do not have
many issues with this grade. We see things on a similar plane and I have a lot
of fun with them. The behaviors are fairly isolated and I know which students
to keep on a shorter leash. Now if I could just get to that level with some of
the other littles I would be in a good place! The kids didn’t want to stop
working on their maps so the classroom teachers offered to have them work
during their class time and hand back the projects later. So good! The kids
were really full of fun and unique ideas for their maps and they were glad to
have more time to add on more features and details. The sign of a well-organized
and well-paired lesson: kids don’t want to stop working!
Thursday
was a whirlwind at the high school! First ceramics, then drawing with print
plates being carved in between, all leading up to 7th grade
printmaking.. madness! The day went by so quick because in the afternoon we had
(drumroll) parent teacher conferences! Parents were invited to visit both
schools starting at 1:30pm and talk with teachers and staff throughout the
buildings. Mr. Keller went to the elementary school for half the day and I
stayed at the high school, putting in some much-needed time on my ceramics
examples and documenting projects.
In addition to that I was emailed by the local gallery which
is housing my ArtPrize/ArtLab/art-artwork this morning. They asked if I could
stop in and do an artist talk for some visiting high school students from the
neighboring school. I jumped at the chance! I had also not seen my work up in
the gallery yet so I walked over there and shared my work with some young
faces. I met a few of the teachers from the other school as well as the art
teacher and I was able to talk at length about the process and purpose of my
work. It was a cool opportunity and I felt like an adult – something that
doesn’t happen often anymore haha! Students were interested and yet hesitant to
get closer to the drawings. Exactly the effect I wanted when I created the
series. Perfect.
After my gallery talk I headed back to the
school and met with some parents. Not many showed up in the early hours of conferences but I was able to talk with a
handful of families- I was especially thankful to meet with one of my 7th
graders’ parents; the parent of the student I had written up the day before. He
walked in the room expecting to see Mr. Keller but was instead encountered with
me and he tried to walk out but his parent pushed him back in. I had a feeling
she had heard some things about this class… We, the three of us, had a good
discussion about the efforts put forth in class, and conversely the struggle
that the student was having to find his effort sometimes. We looked at his work
and I asked if I could be of any help to him in the class, if we could provide
something he wasn’t getting, and what he thought about the projects so far. He’s
a very stubborn personality and judging by the way he works in class he likes
to figure things out on his own. However, he also really likes to talk a LOT
during class and ends up distracting his peers and teachers during
demonstrations and instruction. I shared with him how impressed I am with his
work, because he does make some very nice art! He just needs to calm down and
embrace the process of making the work and try to not become frustrated. A
heavy task for this kid, but he was proud to show off his work and hear that I
hadn’t given up on him. I wonder how the rest of his conferences went…
I met with a couple of other families with kids from both
schools and it was so fun to show them the work their students were making! The
parents were so proud of their kids and wanted to see EVERYTHING. I was happy
to show them :) Paintings and wheel thrown pieces and handbuilding and all
kinds of awesome work. It was fun to talk with parents and hear the comments
students were making about the projects and classes as well! A few students
came in to visit and talk, too. Some of my future students came in to see what
their friends and peers were working on and they were pretty excited to meet
the new teacher. The rest of the day and evening I spent visiting with parents
and students. One of the local restaurants provided Indian tacos (aka red deer
venison taco meat and fry bread - YUM) for dinner. I spent a large chunk of
time planning and organizing teacher samples and lesson ideas. It was a good
day overall – I felt confident in the talks I had with parents and was happy to
meet the families that visited.
Friday was a professional development day where we LITERALLY
SAT ALL DAY. I was soooooo grumpy. When are they going to make professional
development for teachers into more active events? We spent the morning learning
about a digital data input website..thing for tracking student progress and
behaviors. Some cool things – mostly just a bunch of computer mumbo jumbo that
is hard to translate into art assessment at ALL.. but we got some work done on
our student learning objective project so I guess it weighed in as a useful
activity overall. We also had a representative from the Wisconsin RtI Center
come and talk to us about teaching indigenous peoples in our schools. That was
much more interesting than plugging in numbers and making charts, in my
opinion. We learned about the different ways native cultures clash with the
popular – in terms of mannerisms, personal communication, and familial values.
I was happy to share with the speaker that I am actively encouraging my native
students to incorporate their culture into their art AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. I
want students to make art about what is important to them… is that not common
sense? We make art about what affects, moves, or inspires us? Or angers us? Anyway.. moving on to my last little story of the week.
The Elephant Vase: This student isn't technically 'mine' since she is in the beginning ceramics course with my co-teacher but I try to walk around the room and offer help/advice on projects and problem solving. This student is really great at art - but she really wanted to paint - so we have that in common! We have talked at length about how much clay freaks us out, frustrates us, and can really not be all that fun...
During conferences she brought in her grandmother to see the art room and her projects. I think she was looking for Mr. Keller but she found me instead --and she was really excited. She walked around and showed off her work and then we just talked about student teaching, how everything was going thus far, favorite classes and life in general. It was nice to share and learn more about this student and her interests. She brought out this vase and we started talking about it. First off.. she doesn't want to bring it home. She says it will just get ruined or broken or forgotten, which I thought was really sad! I really like it and it shows her personality and originality in design. We worked together to solve the little problems like tusks and making the ears look good and all that stuff that added to the greater whole. I tried, again, to convince her to take it home after it was glazed. Her response? "Ms. Kanak. I want you to have it. You're an awesome teacher! I hope that you stay." I really have to thank her for that because... there are some days where I leave feeling really overwhelmed.. Like I've failed my students. Like I've failed myself and the work I put in to my lesson ideas and the time I put into trying to understand the best ways to tackle problems with different kids. Amidst the struggles of classroom management there have been personal things behind the scenes to deal with and confront each day. The greatest thing about teaching is being able to start over every morning and hold a new outlook and attitude on your day. You get the chance to start fresh as much as you want to - as much as you allow yourself to learn from your mistakes, that is how much you will gain in confidence and clarity of purpose.
I know I am not a strong ceramic artist, and this student may not like it at all, but she and I were able to work together to solve the problem and make something she can be proud of. Since she started glazing the piece I think she became more attached to it, and it might not make it back into my hands after the process is complete. But I will always have that moment where I realized I wasn't completely failing (okay, maybe with clean up k3 I was failing a bit) myself or my students. Because she wanted to share in the wealth of her learning with me and I am really a small part of her daily class. I hope to pass on the idea that failure is a learning process whereby we are given the chance to learn and start anew. This student is excelling in ceramics now and I hold no responsibility for that - she is very much a self-taught and self-motivated learner. But I like to think that me saying "Your vase is not the heap of crap you say it is," or something akin to that, was part of her decision to say what she said. I always hold my students to the highest standard because I know that if they're not afraid to fail, they can, eventually succeed.
Okay. Now that I've had my feelings I am going to BED.
Until next time,
Ms. Kanak
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