AED 401 Post Lesson Reflections

Implementation in the Classroom

          For my art lesson on understanding the longevity that clay works can have in communicating about social circles and personal communities, I gave an 8-minute PowerPoint presentation about artists Antony Gormley and Josephina Aguilar. Their works of small clay figures that represented their communities were the catalyst to inspire students in creating a minimum of 15 clay figures that communicated about the people in their lives. The supervising art teacher, who gave me the opportunity to teach a lesson in his class, advised that students will become bored if the presentation about the project and instructions lasted for more than 10 minutes. The classroom was set up with two long tables vertically parallel to one another, a series of drawers to the right side of the room, and a line of windows immediately in front of the entrance.
          I wanted my students to take the clay balls they have and envision those who mattered to them. I asked students to communicate with a feature or symbol the core essence of each person that they know in how they sculpt the clay for a collection of individualized lay figures. After some thought and writing down the names of those they have chosen, students then tore the clay into smaller pieces so as to create a representative figure of each chosen person. They used their hands to give the clay figures form and used the toothpick to carve out eyes and symbols. The popsicle sticks were used as a means to smooth clay down for those wanting smoother pieces.
          While all of this is happening, I walked around and talked with all 16 students about who they chose and learned more from them. I tried to spend around 3-4 minutes with each student. I asked questions like "Why this certain person?", "What symbolizes them?", or "What memories do you have with this person?" to have students ponder their connections. Some responses I received included:

• A student who made a boxing symbol on a figure that represented their friend who practices boxing in the local gym.
• "A turtle to symbolize my mom who saved a turtle from being run over while I was in her stomach."
• One student who made a series of figures based on friends they made overseas.  

Conversations arose amongst the students themselves as they learned and created alongside one another. In the end, we all gathered our pieces together and inspected the cumulative work put together. We discussed aspects of community and what made each person stand out, all while marveling at the unique forms given by each student. At the end, I had students reflect on notecards what this lesson did to expand their thoughts on community while we cleaned and packed up. After the class ended, I picked up these notecards and these were some noticeable responses:

• "This lesson expanded my thoughts by... how many different people are in the world."
• "It helped me to think about how I view the people around me completely differently compared to each other."
• "I think that this made me realize that most people have handfuls of people that they are close to. I prefer to keep a small circle, which is why I spent a lot of time on each one I did."
• "How many friends and family members I have."
• "It made me realize a community more than just a small group, but its people you see in your everyday life."
• "It Didn't."
• "There are a lot of people in this world all with a special something. This lesson was fun and especially helpful to help me see who is most important in my life." 

Post Lesson Reflection

1. How did you incorporate your enduring (big) idea(s) in your plan?

          For my idea on representing the personal histories of the students, I felt that using clay as the medium would be the most beneficial. Ceramics are often known to last for long periods of time compared to other artforms and this allows students the possibility of keeping their history in a long lasting physical state. Along with this, having the pieces stay small allows for multiple parts of a student's history to be displayed and understood.

2. What do you imagine happening in teaching the lesson? What did happen?

         In my mind, I imagined that I would have more questions for my students about their representations and have the ability to challenge them to consider what makes each person unique. While this did occur in the classroom, it did not go as I had planned which was in part due to the students being so enthused about creating their works and talking about their pieces. It was difficult for me to ponder more meaningful questions with every student as there were 16 of them and I felt the urge to talk and learn about each of their works. Sometimes groups of students would also just be too engrossed in their conversations that I felt rude interrupting their trains of thought to ask what they were making again.

3. What challenges did you expect to face and plans did you make to address the expected challenges? What challenges arose and how did you address them, or will address in the future?

• I expected to have difficulty getting my big picture across to the students so I planned to circumvent this through my PowerPoint presentation and implementing a reflection question.
• Alongside this, I figured that students would just create many figures of their family so I made sure to mention other social circles that students could pull from in my talks.

          On the other hand, two challenges I actually did come across were the issue of students creating too little artworks with the allotted time and keeping a professional look while talking to the class. For the first one, I tried addressing it by reminding the class of the time they had left before wrapping up and giving them a reminder as to how many figures were expected before the time was up. This also calls on me to keep a closer eye on the time as it got away from me just as fast as it did for the students. As for the second challenge, this is something I believe comes with time and experience, both of which I am still lacking. It didn't help that the students were still near my age so I believe I may have not been taken as seriously, a good thing for this particular lesson I suppose. I also need to work on my voice in terms of speaking more slowly so I can get my words across without stumbling.

4. What changes (curriculum or pedagogy) or research are you interested in doing to prepare to teach the lesson again? Why is this preparation important?

          In preparation to teach this lesson again, I would like to research into more artists who use clay for figural representation. I aim to understand different methods of representation with clay and to see new techniques alongside learning about new ways of thinking about the figure. This preparation would allow me to create a larger library of examples to pull from while teaching and can expose students to new artists they can then learn from. Along with this, having knowledge of and learning about more artists may shift my teaching styles or learning objectives in unpredictable ways.

5. Reflecting on the entire process of preparing for and teaching your lesson, what stands out or is significant to you now?

Overall, there were a multitude of lessons I learned while teaching in this classroom space with each being as important as the others. The ones I can think of include:

• Managing time efficiently as while it may be fun to enjoy spending time with students, there are still goals to be met and results to be shown in a class period.  
• Having clear objectives and instructions since this allows students to work with a sense of understanding and drive they would not have if the instructions were vague. This also allows me as the teacher to more easily assess if students are following directions and better answer questions they may have. 
• Not bogging students down with too much info since this can appear as authoritative and lead to a lack of creativity in student works. Also students often understand the subjects they are taught on some level and just need a direction to exhibit their knowledge.
• Preparation goes a long way in teaching and will make my own teaching much more manageable. This also grants me a boost in confidence as I know what I want to talk about while giving students the assurance that this lesson is important for their art making in some way.   
• Relations with students helps foster more earnest conversations and growth. I've found that more work can be done by students when they have an outlet to discuss their works, whether with peers or with me as the teacher. These conversations allow them to explain their views on subjects while allowing me to see what matters to each student and plan accordingly for future lesson.s