Today I walked into the middle of an 8th grade class. They were watching a movie about pop art and were occupying every single chair in the room. 29 8th graders packed into one room. Not my favorite class, to say the least. spent this time kneeling by an empty table listening to the interview I conducted with Mrs. Powers and writing down what was said. One 8th grader thought I was using my headphones to listen to my ipod so he started complaining "why does SHE get to listen to her IPod?!". Oh 8th graders. Today will consists of setting up for the art show, which will be on Monday. This, art show, which will be displaying high school art only, pretty much sums up the entire year in terms of art. It displays all the artwork done by the students throughout the entire year. Because I am Mrs. Powers' assistant, this week has consisted mostly of cutting paper, mounting artwork, and labeling the artwork with people's names. This becomes particularly difficult when students don't write their names on the back of their artwork, so I have to do some detective work to figure out who the art belongs to. Now that I'm into my fourth week of the internship, I've noticed that students are much less hesitant to approach me when asking or advice, which is nice. I also feel like I inspired at least a few of the younger students. They've seen first hand that practice really does make a difference.

Interview

Here's the interview I conducted with Mrs. Powers yesterday:

How long have you been an art teacher?

I’ve been an art teacher for I think this is my 12th year here. I studied at a college and I did my student teaching I was ready to study art and be a teacher. But then I decided I didn’t want to teach right out of college so I went into another area.

While you were an art teacher, have you experienced budget cuts where you have had to restrict how many materials you buy and things like that?

Somewhat, but not significant at all. But what’s to come is a different story, because I think next year is going to be a tougher year especially having built the new school and I expect it to get worse.

With smaller classes, such as portfolio, do you find it’s easier to teach them, as opposed to the middle school classes which are really big?

You know, its all about giving individual attention and I usually don’t give a lesson where everyone does the same thing. I like them to go in different directions. When you have individual attention, you can work with each one and guide them in that direction. And you definitely can’t do that with a large class, so you teach differently with large classes. And I think ultimately the kids definitely miss out the larger the class.

In terms of imagination, do each of the students have the same amount, even if they don’t apply it to their art?

I don’t think so. Who can measure imagination? But some people go a little deeper. A think a lot of it is some people are afraid to put something down on paper. They want it to be their best and they don’t take risks and they expect it just to be a finished piece. I think if there’s more risk taking and they put whatever’s in their mind better things come out of it and they see more. But its just interesting to see the different personalities of the kids and their styles. You know, it obviously has to do with their style in everything they do; the way they dressed....all the things they do. You saw what just happened with the other student. That little line was bothering her and she wanted things to be real and perfect. Then you got someone else where the more little mistakes the better, it just adds to the picture.

Do you ever find that the school puts the needs of the art department behind the needs of the other departments?

For the most part their pretty supportive of the arts and I think people like the arts. But yeah...I think the fact that specialists don’t have more than one prep or in some cases don’t have any preps in a day. That doesn’t happen with the academic classes. And I don’t think that’s equal.

If you had unlimited resources, like an unlimited amount of money, what would you do to improve the art department.

I think I’d do more public sculpture or big construction things that we could have outside...or even inside. Sculpture would be a fun thing to do. With drawing we’re all set...with painting I’d have great canvases and better quality paints...but we could experiment more with glass, jewelry...other areas too.

Do you have a favorite class or age you like to teach?

I enjoy them all. I really do. And a lot has to do with the chemistry of the kids and how the kids work together. I don’t think I do. At first I gear myself to high school because I like helping them lead their way to their interests, whether its into college or just a different level. But there something about the middle school. There’s a big difference between seventh and eighth grade. Seventh grade they’re freer and they let go and theres an innocence and I love working with them. With the eight grade they’re a little more self conscience. Big difference. They want everything to be right. They’re more demanding in that way. But then you start all of a sudden seeing all this great stuff emerging; they’re discovering more. So, as crazy as they can be, because you’ve witnessed middle school classes with me, and they’re huge! Very big classes, bigger than we’ve ever had...but they’re great. I like them.

Artistically Gifted?

Today I wrote up a survey that I would hand out to the middle schoolers. I asked several art related questions, the answers of which I hoped would help me write my research paper. Many students struggled with the questions, which included "how important is art to you?" "what life skills are you able to learn in art class?" and "do you think art is a waste of time?". I noticed that some students didn't take the survey seriously and thought that the questions were ridiculous. They just couldn't imagine that an art class could provide a real-life skill. I read some of the survey answers and several kids said that they thought art was a waste of time because they weren't good at it. Mrs. Powers tried to tell them that it didn't work like that. There aren't people who are good at art and people who are bad at art. She then asked me, to prove a point to the students, if I was good at art before I had taken art classes. I told the students that in seventh grade my artwork looked just like the artwork of my peers. It wasn't until I really became interested in improving that things started to turn around. I would often look at other artists' drawings online to get a sense of how to draw certain things, or how certain styles worked. I have several sketchbooks at home filled with exact reproductions of other people's drawings. By practicing other people's works, I was developing my own skills. I told the students that after practice, I began to get better. Apparently my message didn't get across because they said that they believed that I had just always been good at art and they would always be bad at art.

Mrs. Powers is back =]

As soon as I walked in the door, Mrs. Powers approached me with wide eyes. She told me to look at the room, and when I looked around I saw open paint bottles, ruined paint brushes, oil pastels everywhere, and overall disarray. It seems that after I had left school because I was feeling ill, the sub had allowed the students to take out art materials and make whatever they wanted. I spent the first block, which is Mrs. Powers' free block, helping her clean-up and organize. It was clear that she was not happy about the state her room was left in. None of the classes have owned up to the damage yet. Also, I had given a short presentation with background information they would need when they viewed the movie Pollock. However, when I had finished my presentation and was ready for the video, we couldn't figure out how to rewind the tape. The remote had run out of batteries, so I was sent all over the school in search for batteries, someone who could rewind the tape, and someone who could help us turn the sound on. By the time we had figured everything out, class was over and we had wasted about half an hour trying to get the video working. Lesson learned; always make sure the technology is working BEFORE it's ready to be presented. Anyway, Mrs. Powers showed the middle school a video about Pop Art and the difference between Mrs. Powers and the sub was substantial. Mrs. Powers made them take notes on the video (which she collected) and had a discussion about the video after it was finished to make sure the students had learned something. She asked them questions and kept them engaged, which is good! When the kids stopped paying attention, she threatened them with a quiz.

I'm baackkk

Today, I got to school in the middle of first block to find that the middle schoolers were watching yet another movie. This time it was a documentary about a four-year-old painter and whether or not her art can be considered abstract fine art. After watching this movie again with the next middle school class, I went to print some permission slips with my SCORE adviser who told me a should take charge. So I went back to class (by then the class was an art foundations class) and told the sub that I think they had watched enough movies for the time being and should do one of the assignments that Ms. Epp had suggested earlier that day. Thus, I handed out a worksheet and told them to analyze one of the several pieces of famous artwork that I had spread out on a table. Thankfully, the sub was on board and after everyone had finished the worksheet, the sub held up each piece of art and the entire class analyzed each work together. I thought that while many students didn't take the analysis seriously, they still participated and even gained a curiosity about the artists and their intentions as questions arose about the depictions of the paintings. One student even looked up the artist Edward Hopper after seeing one of his paintings. I told the students that after they watched the next movie, there would be a follow-up assignment. Hopefully this will encourage the students to actually pay attention to this movie.

Setback

Today I am writing from home because as fate would have it, I am sick. Yesterday I didn't go to SCORE because I had an AP exam, so I prepared for today instead. But alas, I woke up sick and decided it would be better to work from home than surround myself with art students all day and potentially get them sick as well. Luckily, there is much to be done that I can still do from home. I emailed Mrs. Powers about the measures I can take in order to be more involved with her classes while she was away, and she gave me the green light to give permission slips to the art foundations students so that they can watch the movie Pollock, which is exponentially better than the other movies they were watching. I realized that when a teacher who teaches a specialized subject, such as art or music, is absent, the subs have absolutely no idea as to how to occupy the students. When students have art related questions, the subs simply can't answer (unless of course they studied art in high school or college, which is surprisingly rare among the array of substitute teachers our school has). With other subjects, such as math or english, the substitute almost always has a generalized knowledge on the subject, and can simply assign some busy work from the text book. Art is different. There are no text books in art, which makes things a little more complicated for the sub. Tomorrow I am determined to be in school and help the sub get something productive going with the students.

Sub

Mrs. Powers is out this week due to a family emergency. So far my day has consisted of telling the sub about the different classes. Although Mrs. Powers had left the sub instructions for each class, such as have the students continue on the paintings they have been working on, the sub took matters into her own hands and said that the students could have a 'study hall'. From what I witnessed, this study hall consisted of people sitting and talking freely. I'm pretty sure that isn't what Mrs. Powers had in mind. I know that each of the students in the painting class have a new project that they should be working on, and some of them aren't even finished with the last project they were assigned. I think tomorrow I will suggest that the sub doesn't allow people to have study halls. When the art foundations classes arrived, the sub had a movie that Mrs. Powers had left about the Museum of Modern Art. Before she played the movie, however, she said that she didn't care if people didn't pay attention to the movie as long as they didn't talk loudly. She also said they could work on homework if they wanted while the movie was playing. I feel like this just made the students think that the sub believes that art isn't that important, which can influence their own beliefs on the subject. Anyway, while the students were busy not watching the movie, I actually did watch it and found that it was fairly interesting. And I am a high school student, so something that I find bearable should also be bearable to the other students. I think it would have been worthwhile for the students to pay attention, but unfortunately they were almost encouraged not to pay attention by the sub.

In charge!

Yesterday was a pretty uneventful day at the school. I organized the middle school artwork. Mrs. Powers teaches four different middle school classes, so it was up to me to organize all their artwork into three folders. Keep in mind, a good amount of the art work wasn’t labeled with which class they were in, and some of the work didn’t even have a name on it. It was up to me to figure it out. This took me about an hour to sort everything thing out. It was tedious to say the least. Mrs. Powers was having trouble finding me productive things to do, so she would assign me little tasks like putting a tray of pushpins back into their box, or taking all the art pieces off the high shelves to she could give them back to students. They may seem petty tasks, but somebody has to do them. She also told me to prepare a powerpoint presentation to show some of her art foundations classes. The purpose of the presentation is to familiarize the students with certain artists that will be mentioned or portrayed in the movie Pollock that they will start watching tomorrow. At the end of the day, I came back to Mrs. Powers’ art class after lunch to find that she had disappeared. I thought this was unusual because usually when she leaves the classroom she locks the door behind her, but this time it was unlocked. Mr. Atkinson then came in and told me that Mrs. Powers had to leave and that he would be the sub. I was then in charge of what the students were to do that class. Instead of giving in to the students, who all wanted to “free-draw” during the block, I gave them an assignment so that I could show Mrs. Powers that they had actually done something productive while she was gone instead of “free-drawing” (which I’m sure would consist of about 90% talking and 10% drawing).

Return of the 8th graders

Yesterday was the first class in a week that I had with the 8th graders. Right from the get-go, I gave a powerpoint presentation to them about 2 point perspective and then handed them out handouts that I had made that day. The class has between 25 and 30 students, so I think it goes without saying it was hard to control. 2 point perspective is a tricky concept to grasp, and it wasn't long before students were raising their hands and asking for help. I didn't sit down once that class. Instead, I moved from table to table, explaining the next step, evaluating their work, and correcting their mistakes. There was one middle school, Cole, who grasped the concept quickly and easily, and was able to help me go around the tables and help his fellow students. There were some students who needed a lot more help and attention than others. Some just didn't understand what I was trying to say, and I often found myself struggling with the wording I should use to explain it. The thing I liked about the middle schoolers was that they weren’t afraid to ask me for help. With the older classes, I find that students are hesitant to approach me with questions. They are much more likely to either ask their peers for help or ask Mrs. Powers, even when she tells them to direct all questions to me. I got to know the middle school class in one day than I got to know the art foundations classes in two weeks!