What were your art teaching/learning perspectives before?

~I feel that my perspectives on teaching and learning were very loose and ambiguous. I did not really have any set standards or expectations. I just knew that art is something I love and I want to be able to share and inspire others in the world of art. 

 

What are your art teaching/learning perspectives now?

~ After completing ART325, I have a deeper understanding of all that goes into being an educator. Specifically, the experience of working with Artistic Abilities taught me a lot about differentiation and designing lesson plans that can balance challenge and support enough to keep students of all different abilities and interests engaged. The student-teaching at the Allicar was also incredibly beneficial because it opened my eyes to the variety of opportunities and options to being an Art Educator. I realized that I don’t have to be in a school setting; which is something I might prefer. 

 

How do you want to teach art in the future?

~ I had the opportunity to teach middle school children at Wellington Middle School through a different class and I feel like that has pretty much ruled out the younger grades for me. I would love to take my teacher to the Highschool level or even lead tours at museums and galleries. 

 

How does the art piece/metaphor represent your teaching philosophy?

~ For my art piece, I really want to focus on illuminating the diversity of the students' backgrounds and keying in on that differentiation. By paying attention to each student and being flexible and responsive and kind, you can help them bloom in art. 

I almost immediately jumped to the idea of Rainbow Fish: a childrens story about this beautiful rainbow fish who gave away all his scales to every other fish so they could be beautiful too. At the end, the rainbow was just so illuminated and colorful as every fish shone with a scale from rainbow fish. 

As I am primarily a 3-D artist, I want to do an abstract form that indicates the verb blooming.  I will be doing a sort of form like petals or scales and layer them to build this form. I was thinking of clay as it is a medium that I can add to throughout the semester. The act of molding clay is also a lot like how I envision being a teacher. Clay is such a delicate material and you have to pay attention to it and be diligent in your work. To incorporate the idea of diversity and differences coming together in something beautiful, I will be making each form a different color and size and perhaps even a different shape.