Hope for the First-Year Teacher

A fellow teacher wrote this up summary of a great article on traditional vs. non-traditional teaching methods:

"The Educational Value of Creative Disobedience," is a fascinating article in Scientific American (July 7, 2011) in which Andrea Kuszewski explores the difference between traditional educational methods and those based on arousing curiosity.

Kuszewsji described a study which compared "a group of students taught by an inexperienced instructor, but one that utilized hands-on demonstrations and student involvement...and a similar group taught using traditional methods (lecture) by a highly rated experienced professor." The result: "increased student attendance, higher engagement, and more than twice the learning in the section taught using research-based instruction."

"The quality of the instructor didn’t have nearly the impact on student learning that getting the students actively involved in the learning process did. Just by moving the students from passive observer to active participant, you are lighting a fire in the brain—making more connections across association areas, increasing plasticity, and enhancing learning. Not only that, students that are more actively engaged are more intrinsically motivated to learn—no bribes or artificial rewards needed, just pure enjoyment of learning."

Ok, back to the job hunt. . . Thank you for your patience. I promise to post more soon!

Be back soon!

I need to take a hiatus and will be back soon. Thank you for your patience.

Arts & Activities: Online & Free!

Did you know that you can read Arts & Activities online? Here's a link to the September issue. Their web site and magazine has so much good information, I highly recommend checking it out if you haven't already. Last I knew, they offered student discounts to NAEA student members.

Books (More Books)

Last month I linked a list of great books for the elementary classroom. Today I stumbled across EduGuide's Annotated Bibliography of Art Books for K12 Grades. I love reading and all students seem to enjoy reading books about art, especially when starting out a new unit.

Setting Up A Classroom

It's that time of year when teachers get to head back into their classrooms to start setting up for a new year of learning. How do you go about making one room meet all of your needs? Choice Literacy posted an article about just this, "Room for Beliefs: Linking Classroom Design and What We Value."

Reggio Emilia schools consider the environment to be the teacher. Reggio is a choice-based education system for early education. This Design Share article, "Artistic Codes in Early Childhood Education" shows how the environment can help students construct meaningful learning. The information in this article can be applied to any classroom and to learners of all ages:

It embodies Reggio educators' belief that children are resourceful, curious, competent, imaginative, and have a desire to interact with and communicate with others (Rinaldi, 1998, p. 114). They believe that children can best create meaning and make sense of their world through living in complex, rich environments which support "complex, varied, sustained, and changing relationships between people, the world of experience, ideas and the many ways of expressing ideas" (Cadwell, p. 93) rather than from simplified lessons or learning environments. They also believe that children have a right to environments which support the development of their many languages (Reggio Children, 1996).  

Most art rooms have some kind of table set up for every day working. The teacher's desk is often hidden off in the corner since we're not really sit-at-the-desk kind of teachers. However, we need a demo space, a place to present art, a place for critique, a place for supplies, a place to let work dry, etc. With so many needs, it's important to set goals and then evaluate your space to make sure that your classroom is working with you to and not becoming an obstacle.

Visual Journaling

Check out Michael Bell's video on Visual Journaling. The journals are incredible works of art on their own and they really help the students get warmed up, master subject matter, organize ideas, work out color/composition choices, and store notes/keepsakes, etc. Journals like this also help show the progress the artist makes over time. Imagine looking at senior journals compared to freshman journals. I have many journals from my college years and I refer back to them frequently. This is such an amazing tool and learning aid for students at any level.



For more information on creating visual journals, check out the Journal Fodder Junkies blog and/or read the Journal Junkies Workshop book.

Happy Birthday World Wide Web!

Today is the 20th anniversary of the first web page. Want to see it? Here you go. The way we see it now is different from the way everybody saw it back then because the browsers are so much more sophisticated. We still see the default Times New Roman type, underlined blue active links, underlined purple visited links, no navigation (other than links), no graphics, and no design. What we don't see is the gray background that was the default on the old browsers (modern browsers let come with white background as the default and allow you to change your settings) along with the primitive buttons. The internet has come a long way since going public in 1991. I have been lucky enough to be along for the ride since 1992 or 1993 thanks to my years at Michigan Tech, coincidentally the first school in Michigan to get the World Wide Web.

Freebies!

As I try to get my materials in order for a potential job, I stumbled across this great list of free things at the Incredible Art Department including the New Teacher's Survival Guide (PDF). The list at the Incredible Art Department is awesome and includes freebies like posters, artwork, books, magazines, and technology (printers and computers). The survival guide has a lot of good advice and ready-to-go worksheets like self-assessment worksheets and class grade sheets. There's a ton of material packed inside.

At the end of January, I ran up to my local book stores and bought every art calendar I could for $1 a piece. I'm missing some of the masters because those sold out, but still managed to score lesser known artists like Inuit and Woodcuts.

Any other tips for freebies or cheap classroom resources? Does anybody extreme coupon? Write for grants? I'm always looking for ways to be resourceful and to maximize my budget.

Inspiration: Science

I love NPR's Science Friday. Maybe it's the fact that I went to Michigan Tech for four years, or maybe it's their storytelling, but the stories are always interesting. Last week's story was on cephalopods (octopus, squid, and cuttlefish) and their ability to camouflage. Even if you're not interested in the science, watch the first 20 second of the video below. It's fascinating.



How does a science video about an octopus fit into art education? Easy. I'm a big believer in integrated education rather than breaking everything down into subjects. It's not like we go to the grocery store and only do math. No, we are using science, art, language, etc. Life is integrated and my feeling is that education works better when it mimics life. So... here are four lessons using this video:

1. Elementary: Students can paint the underwater with tempera and draw in their camouflaged cephalopod with oil pastels or cray pas.

2. Middle School: Students can paint the background, underwater elements (rocks, leaves, etc.), and the cephalopod. They will then cut and glue together their underwater scene.

3. High School: Students will draw the transformation process using colored pencils.

4. Middle or High School: Students will sculpt the hidden cephalopod in clay (ceramic or air-hardening) and will glaze/paint to complete camouflage process.

Matt Damon's Speech from the Save Our Schools (SOS) March