A Great Man

“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”

Sad news today, hearing of Maurice Sendak's death. I grew up reading his books and watching Little Bear. He was one of the artists whose work I really felt a connection with at a young age, and I still respect him now as a serious artist. Rest in Peace, you charming, grumpy, wonderful old man.

Blogs

A list of other art education blogs! It's unclear who runs the blog that these come off of, but they've been useful to look through.
http://mastersinarteducation.com/2010/top-50-art-education-blogs/

It includes useful tools to be found online for artist and specifically for art educators. Even if you don't agree with everything on the blog it's a valuable resource. I browsed through some of the blogs it listed and saw some really neat lesson plans (and some standards)

And just a thought, related to lessons, why do art teachers so frequently seem to work off of Georgia O'Keeffe (who apparently was somewhat active in the art education community, I recall reading at a show at the Whitney) and Frida Kahlo?

My Mentor Teacher

      I looked up my mentor teacher and found his personal websites and blogs, where he posts his artwork. It was interesting seeing his personal work, which is well executed. I discovered that I was fond of the personal art of my cooperating teacher, but also that it is possible to maintain a personal practice once becoming an art teacher. I have heard that many teachers being comfortable and stop producing their own work, or that finding the time becomes a lot more trying. This is something I've worries about, wondering if I have the self-motivation to keep up with art outside of the classroom. Seeing that others do gives me the inspiration and hope to put effort into my work.
Below are some links to my teacher's cites and examples of his work.
http://npcaa.blogspot.com/
 http://npcaa.com/Gallerynew.html

 
 And a bit of him at work, with rich commentary:

NYSATA Region 7 Symposium

Some of the awesome stuff from this weekend's NYSATA Symposium! Thank you to all those who came or volunteered! 

Keynote Speaker Deborah W. Meier, currently works at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education as a senior scholar as well as Board member and director of New Ventures at Mission Hill, director and advisor to Forum for Democracy and Education, and on the Board of The Coalition of Essential Schools.

Meier has spent more than four decades working in public education as a teacher, writer, and public advocate. As a learning theorist, she encourages new approaches that enhance democracy and equality in public education.

Action in the workshops and discussions

                                                                           

                          

See more at http://www.nysata-7.org/artsymp_12/symposium12_pix.htm

Example

Just some approaches to art education in classrooms

Assessment

Well, browsing the internet for views or approaches to assessment in art, it seems what we've been using in class is in the forefront. What came up immediately were Beatie articles and our class textbook. I'm not certain what else to put here, I didn't find anything that seemed useful that we hadn't already covered in class.

I will say that I like the idea of using reflexive video as a form of assessment for student, where they would reflect and write feedback on their performance/success based on what they see in video. This would be impractical to do for each lesson, but maybe twice a year.

Game Presentations

All of the games from class today were really well thought out. I thought ours had valid categories but agree that the art history/style part could've been made part of a broader category. Danielle's group  was the only game to involved assessment, which I thought was useful.

Critiques

      Tied to discussions on assessment, from Goshen:
http://www.goshen.edu/art/ed/critique1.html
Has some templates and useful guiding strategies, similar to what we discuss with observation and interpretation in Bloom's Taxonomy. The language used though is curiously "feeling" heavy, working off of empathy which is where I think our program turns away from depending on for the basis of critique.

Below is another students video on critique

Personal Research

               My project last semester dealing with personal narrative was only so successful, but I think having that prior experience will help me for this project. I have more of an idea of what I want to work with, teacher interaction with students and the idea of the "teacher voice". I'm not sure where this footage is going to come from though. I'm thinking of combining what I have from Disabilities Studies with some clips from fieldwork? And tomorrow I'm going to capture myself doing a reflexive monologue.

Aesthetics?

It may be simply because of the long history that has been conditioned into part of my conception of art, but I feel that aesthetics are relevant. If beauty, even going against it, is part of the conversation at all traditional aesthetics still have a role. They cannot be taken out, and I am for progressing the model, but wary or curious of where the new relevance stems from. Which in turn may be due to the uncertainty that comes with paradigm shifts. The conversation in class was very stimulating though, and I think important to us as artist and art educators. Aesthetics is a term thrown around without definition. We have the task of putting words to the visual.

Post Mod

              The readings from Barret were nice reviews, but I think more appropriate for introducing high school students to post modern ideas and analyses. At this level of education and this far into the program, I felt almost insulted reading something so simplified. I admit, I scanned, because nothing new caught my eye. I don't know how many times I've seen the same things reiterated now throughout my coursework. Of course, it's probably a good thing everything remains so connected and that I feel this comfortable with the information, but I didn't feel stimulated. 

            And that guy, Bloom. Him and his taxonomy, that thing is everywhere. I'm aware of few other approaches, and they seem very similar. Is Bloom's just the more concise/modern one?

I found a presentation for the taxonomy that may be useful:
 http://prezi.com/5i9erqvyfbue/teaching-taxonomies/

And here, Anderson and Krathwohl have an updated version (2000)
 http://www4.uwsp.edu/education/lwilson/curric/newtaxonomy.htm

Gaming

         Reading about morally and thematically conscious gaming was interesting, and I recognized a number of the games that were being mentioned as examples. I talked about this element of gaming later on with my boyfriend, and he felt that this kind of consideration in games, video and otherwise, was always an added richness for the game. Not necessarily because it was ethically responsible, but such considerations add a sense of complete atmosphere for a game, allowing the player to be more fully immersed in a world that includes even these subtle nuances of real-life issues.

I came across this blog, related in that it seems to compile ethical benefits of gaming. The background of the author is interesting, read the brief about page.
Something I found on the blog:

Gude Digication

After looking at the lessons from the Spiral Workshop, I also found Olivia Gude's digication account. It has lessons from Spiral as well as other resources. Digication is also a resource that we can all use, assuming you have an NAEA membership. It's an online portfolio more or less, but very customizable and you can chose to frame it in whatever way suits you. This is Gude's.

S'rreaaallll

The surrealist games were fun, although some of them are getting a little tired for me at this point. I don't know how many times I've seen an accordion book or exquisite corpse project. Why are we as art educators so drawn to these games in particular?

I was more interested in the collages of artists like Max Ernst, and a more contemporary artist who does something similar.
 Dan Hiller's stuff is pretty cool, he seems to collage with printmaking techniques. Check it out
 Dan Hiller



(Below; Max Ernst's  collages from A Week of Kindness