Reflections

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September 4, 2009 Reflection # 1 In chapter one of Children and Their Art, the authors, Al Hurwitz and Michael Day, explore the foundations of art education. At the beginning of the chapter the authors note the importance of three main factors that anyone who plans on educating others must consider before doing so. They are the nature of those who will learn, the content to be taught and learned, and the values of the society in which the education is to take place. Further in the chapter the authors explore early psychological and philosophical influences not only on art education, but also on education as a hole. Individuals discussed in this section were, but not limited to, Jean-Jacques Rousseau who advocated that early child hood education be centered around the interests of the children and that material be concerned with the daily life of the child, John Dewey who stressed the importance of active and meaningful experience learning, and Rudolph Arnheim whose book offered a complete view of Gestalt Psychology and its relationship to art education. The chapter continues on by referencing other historical persons and groups as well as schools that influenced the modern realm of art education.
 * Summary: **

Before reading this chapter we had a group discussion in class about our own “art histories.” This discussion was led by Professor Nischal, who gave each student an opportunity to take the floor and share with the rest of the class their own artistic journey and how they ended up majoring in art education, or at least taking this course (Art Ed. Elementary Methods.) This discussion got us thinking about the formative events in our pasts, which would be useful while reading the assigned chapters for homework as it is always beneficial to be able to attach new knowledge to past experiences.
 * Class Connections: **

Last year I took a foundations of education course that, as the name suggests, outlined the historical and social structures that have influenced education, as we know it today. At the time I wasn’t aware of the influence that people like john Dewey had on art education because the foundations course was a general education class, the focus was not on art. I realized in this reading that while the theories and believes of individuals like Dewey, Piaget, Mead, etc. may not have been centered of arts education they can certainly be applied to it. I was also able to make realizations about my own art education and see what some teachers methods were successful while others were simply “Drill and Kill” styles of teaching that were fruitless attempts at engaging myself and my peers in meaningful, developmentally appropriate, exciting learning experiences.
 * Realizations: **

**Drill and Kill** : The process by which a teacher spends a majority of the time lecturing to students (this is the drill) and fallows the lecture with ciche, stereotype art projects that ultimately teach nothing new to the students (this is the kill.) The teacher, if truly unsuccessful will also grant the student’s with empty praise such as, “That’s nice!” “Wonderful!” and “Very good!”

September 11, 2009 ** Reflection #2 ** Teaching Children to Paint By, Nancy R. Smith **
 * Chapters 1 of Experience & Art:

**Summary:** Chapter one is titled, “Motions and the Marks They Make” and focuses on children ages one and a half to age three. In this chapter Smith analyzes the painterly behaviors of young children. She notes that in this early stage the main concerns of the young artist do not lie in any formal or structured ideas such as composition and arrangement but rather in the activity of painting itself. Younger children are excited by the paint itself as well as the variety of marks and colors they can create by making different movements with a brush and mixing colors together. Though there is a lack of awareness in doing so, children gain interest and enthusiasm when they witness the primary colors being mixed to create less than desirable grays and browns; Smith notes that they will not learn to intentionally mix new colors until sometime later in their learning. While it may appear to an adult that the children are simply playing around and having fun with the paint they are actually performing their first experiments with the medium. Much of what they do are in actuality nothing but accidents but it is these accidents that will later inspire them to recreate the same shapes, lines, and colors on purpose. Young students will become successful at turning these accidents into purposeful and meaningful techniques with proper instruction from their teacher. A teacher who comments on the art with comments like “You really enjoy the paint don’t you” and “How did you move your arm to make those lines?” will bring a consciousness to the painting process making the students aware that they have control over the paint.” Activities in painting will be far less educational if the teacher uses phrases like, ‘That’s very nice!” and “You made a pretty picture!”

In class we discussed the relevance of free flowing experimentation with very young students and how it is not important to the student what the end results look like but that they have a good time painting or drawing. Much of what they will learn will not be until later down the road in there education but it is these early stages of development that are crucial to any successful learning down the road. Professor Nischal also brought a few of her own daughter’s paintings into share with us and discussed the observable processes she used in creating her paintings. A fellow classmate also brought in some of her own childhood art we discussed the identifiable marks and methods she used in creating her art. Professor Nischal mentioned to the class that if she could collect Van Gogh paintings or early childhood art she would choose the latter as there is far more to learn and observe in the work of a child. I couldn’t agree more having read Nancy Smiths book.
 * Class Connections: **

**Realizations:** Until now I don’t believe I ever personally saw the relevance in children’s art, especially at such young ages. Reading this chapter however opened my eyes and excited me very much. My mother operates a home day care so I have seen plenty of children create lots of art whether it be in paint, crayons, markers or just a plain old number 2 pencil. In the past I viewed these masterpieces with a very ignorant eye but now know that there is far more to observe in the work of a child and that when instructed and led the correct way, young children can not only have a good time creating art but that they can also learn a great deal about themselves and the artistic process. I will never look at a child’s art the same again.

**September 18, 2009**
 * Reflection #3 **
 * Experience and Art Chapters 4 & 5**

**Summary:** In chapters 4 and 5 of Experience and Art Nancy Smith discusses further the artistic development of young children. Chapter 4 focuses on the idea of design and how to present it to younger students (ages 4-6 years old) as well as what to expect as far as organized design. As it turns out, by the age of four children begin to familiarize themselves with shapes (circle, triangle, square etc.) and the relationships between them. However, at this time children tend to use the paper as a means to separate shapes and grant each its own boundaries as they are still holding onto earlier methods of placing one scribble here and another here without much overlapping or sharing of space. Chapter 5 is titled Names for Configurations and Symbols from Designs; its focus is on children ages two to five years old. This chapter discusses the innate nature of representation in human beings and explains that the desire to do so in art begins to emerge in the second year. While it may not be visible to adults, very young children to not always create unintentionally. Students will begin to use certain shapes not only because they are familiar with their structure and how to compose them but also because in mind of the child they represent something and therefore the child feels a certain way about them. Children will gradually begin to challenge themselves, even if unconsciously, to create meaningful images. If a child expresses the desire to draw something they feel they cannot draw it is of no good to simply show them how or do it for them, constructive questioning and breaking apart of the problem are most beneficial to the children as helps them to develop logical reasoning and problem solving skills of their own.

**Class Connections:** In class we discussed the issues within the chapter but in a very hands on and interactive way. Professor Nischal had the class gather around a center table where another teacher had set up a still life for a drawing class. The still life consisted of pumpkins and corn. Using the corn as the subject of our discussion, Professor Nischal asked us to describe what the corn looked like, she asked us to observe it and identify the unique qualities of the corn. In a way our class, which consists of students ranging from age 19 to an adult student in his thirties, traveled back to our own elementary selves and began to describe the piece of corn. Some us took turns holding the corn, feeling it, flipping it in all sorts of directions, and made observations of it. This was all in attempt to get us to truly see the corn. I found this to be an extremely useful method of instruction on Professor Nischal’s behalf as it served perfectly as an example of a way to constructively get small children to see the whole object and in this way be prepared to draw it. Not only does a discussion like this help ease any worries a small child might have about trying to draw something foreign or “difficult” but it also gives them the opportunity to recognize they are eon the same page as everyone else and also to have fun while learning.

Reflecting on the content of these chapters as well as the other assigned readings for this week I have been able to make some disturbing realizations about my own art education. I never had a problem just jumping in and painting things or drawing from my imagination but when confronted with real life, with solid real objects, I was always overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. If I had a dollar for every time I said, “I can’t draw this” when I was little, I would be a millionaire! No, seriously, I would. What I realized is that I said this not because I didn’t know how, not because I was lazy or didn’t care but because I had never experienced the sorts of beneficial learning that can occur in the art room. When I was very young the closes thing I had to art was coloring books…which is a huge No! No! And I never had an art teacher when I was young that helped me to really see the hole object, to familiarize myself with the pieces in order to see the hole, to use my hands and my eyes when looking at something. I can certainly say that I will be far more prepared to teach art than some of my own teachers ever were. This is very disappointing.
 * Realizations: **

September 25, 2009
 * Reflection #4 **
 * Children and Their Art Chapters 11-14**

In Chapters 11-14 of Children and Their Art the authors explore the themes of design, art criticism, art history, and aesthetics. The chapter on design serves as a review of the elements and principles of design and includes a useful section on the language of color where it defines and explains some of what I believe to be the most commonly miss-used color terms. Chapter 12 is focused on art criticism and provides useful information on how to prepare students to critically discuss art. It does so by presenting methods for building an art vocabulary in elementary students and methods for developing a multitude of experiences to be had by students that will prepare them to value and critique works of art in a variety of mediums. The chapter points to a key concept: in order for a student to truly understand and appreciate any medium they must work hands on with that medium; someone who has never worked with clay has no room to critique a ceramic sculpture. The focus of chapter 13 is art history and provides a layout for teaching the history of art. It outlines the major historical periods and the art movements contained in each. It goes further to discuss the arts of specific geographic locations and draws comparisons and differences between the various cultures and movements. It makes a note of the importance of starting a lesson on art history by using art local to the area one is teaching in. This is because it is easiest for young students to familiarize with art that they have been exposed to since before they even knew it was art. Chapter 14 discusses the importance or aesthetics (the philosophy art and beauty) and the relationship aesthetics has with the previous three chapters. The most important item to note is that not one of these ideas (design, art criticism, art history, and aesthetics) can fully operate successfully without the others. A successful teacher of the arts utilizes all of these components to provided the richest learning experience for his or her students.
 * Summary: **

**Class Connections:** The material contained in these chapters can be connected to activity in class in several ways. The first is that as we normally do, we discussed the class reading as a hole allowing individuals to exchange and share ideas, opinions, and personal experiences. Secondly these discussions allow us to develop our own ideas on how to implement these concepts into our own teaching methods by hearing the good and bad that each student has to say about each idea. Furthermore, we are constantly being led by Professor Nischal in group activities that utilize the themes discussed in these chapters whether it be critiquing our own works or the works of others (i.e.: the paper exploration activity or artist trading cards,) researching historical figures relevant to the modern world of art education, and free sharing with one another the significance of our findings in any assignment or research. Most of the group activities include personal reflections from Professor Nischal that come compliments of her years in the classroom (ranging from all age groups as well as demographics.) In many cases these stories and the work we do in class present the benefits of using a variety of teaching techniques as well as implementing the elements of art discussed in this weeks reading. Professor Nischal also makes sure to provide us with useful ideas and tactics for providing successful learning experiences to students of varying ages.

**Realizations:** Reading much of the material in our class texts, not just Children and Their Art but both of Nancy Smith’s books as well, I have begun to realize how insufficient and unfulfilling my own art education has been. I don’ think I ever knew what aesthetics was until I was in high school, and as far as art history goes I think I had 30 lessons each on Picasso, Van Gogh, O’Keefe and maybe four other artists. I remember being in my first two art history courses thinking, “wow I never had any idea there were this many famous and important artists!” And even after deciding to be in art. Ed. I would never have thought that in teaching at the elementary level it would be appropriate to teach lessons on aesthetics and art history. In fact, I was so exposed to stereotypes of elementary art that I didn’t have a desire to teach at the elementary level until I began this course where I now see that teaching at the elementary level, when done successfully, can be highly beneficial to young art students in preparing them for a very rich and exciting education in art.

October 10, 2009

Reflection #5
**Experience and Art Ch. 9** In Chapter nine of Experience Art: Teaching Children to Paint, author Nancy Smith introduces the chapter by acknowledging the changes that occur in a young child’s perceptions as to what art is and their goals in creating art. She says “Children’s ideas about painting change dramatically between the ages of two and eleven.” Smith further explains these changes as a gradual growth from painting being a physical manipulation of the sensuous paints into the depiction of complex stories, visual descriptions of everyday scenes and the invention of visual metaphors. This process does not evolve naturally or successfully if left only to the child (in most cases) Smith notes that sensitive and thoughtful teaching can help children to develop their capacity to follow through the exciting and meaningful inquiry of the artistic process, particularly through paint. The chapter highlights the importance of structure and classroom arrangement, meaningful child centered questioning, how to respond to students, and how to properly evaluate students.
 * Summary: **

We spend a great deal of time in class focusing on the importance of directing and being involved in the growth and development of the child. Professor Nischal is constantly reminding us to avoid empty praise and to make use of questioning techniques when evaluating/observing student art. Also, we have had many discussions on how to appropriately prepare painting lessons (as well as other lessons) that are structured, organized, and overall successive in their ability to communicate main ideas and ensure students walk away from a lesson having learned just as much as they enjoyed themselves and their art. Realizations: ** As it often seems to be the case, when reading this chapter I was sparked to reflect on my own experiences in art classes and realized the many flaws of several projects I had even at the high school level. While our reading is focused on elementary students it is important to note that structure and proper classroom arrangement are just as vital to the success of a lesson at the high school level as well. I can remember several projects, particularly those that involved welding, working with metals, casting, etc. that were only successful for a small portion of the class. This was due to lack of proper attention to planning, organizing time, arrangement and placement of materials in the room, and availability of the instructors assistance as we had over 20 students in our class. I think the most important thing an instructor can do before preparing a lesson is to take a look at the lesson realistically and decide weather or not the size of the class, time restrictions, and space are appropriate for the lesson.
 * Classroom connections: **

October 16, 2009

Reflection #6
**Summary:** Chapter nine explores the wonders and possibilities of printmaking in its many forms and techniques. Like the other materials focused chapters, the authors do an excellent job explaining the history of the medium and its processes as well as in depth details on preparing and utilizing printmaking projects in the classroom. The chapter provides details into the four main processes: relief, surface, intaglio, and stencil. The book does a fine job at taking a medium that I imagine is often viewed as involving “too much work” and making it into a far less threatening format. With proper attention to time management, classroom arrangement, and organization a printmaking lesson could easily be executed and highly enjoyed by many students. While we did not have a class discussion or lecture centered specifically on printmaking, the basic ideas of simplifying a lesson and making it manageable are of regular discussion during class meetings. As students begin to plan their own lesson plans to teach to the class we have been placing even more focus on the preparation of materials, organization of lessons, and structure of the goals and objectives for lessons. We also recently took a look at the PA standards for art education and in doing so I can already see where a lesson focused on printmaking could easily meet many standards including those involving line, drawing, space (positive and negative), color, painting…the list could go on and on as printmaking lends itself to such a wide variety of techniques and materials. I only just had my first experience in printmaking last year (my 4th year of college) and I must say that I found it highly enjoyable. It is by far one of the most theraputich art forms as it involves great attention to process as well as tools and materials. Anytime you get to cut things up and dirty things up…well you get the picture…its fun! And it’s nice to imagine that woodblock as a final project for a writing class or maybe even the teacher of the class. Anyway my realization is that if I had been exposed to printmaking earlier in life I may be in a very different place as far as my personal choice of medium and process. Printmaking is enjoyable because it has a magical element to it, an element of surprise. I imagine that exposing youngsters to this process would be highly enjoyable for both student and teacher.
 * Children and Their Art: Ch. 9 Printmaking: **
 * Classroom Connections:**
 * Realizations:**

October 25, 2009

** Reflection #7 **
Chapter five of Observation Drawing focuses on the developmental stage that third and fourth experience around eight and 9 yrs old. At this time in their life they have begun to experience the world around them and are drawn by curiosity of their surroundings to constantly discover new things. These students also hold their social relationships at a high level of importance and begin to form social groups based on their preferred friends. In their art, the developmental changes can be seen in the emergence of a strong use of contour line by third and fourth graders. This new technique adds an overall wholeness to drawings and paintings done by these students. Also, their fine motor skills have developed much more efficiently and grant them the capability to explore and use new materials as well. Based on the information contained in Smith’s book I strongly view this age group as a great time to really get kids excited about Art.
 * Observation Drawing with Children, Chapter 5: Third and Fourth Grade **
 * Summary: **

**Class Connections:** I found it very exciting how Nancy Smith described the curiosity of third and fourth grade students. It was interesting to read about an age group that is really susceptible to receive the benefits of discovery learning in the classroom, particularly the art room. Reading this chapter reminded me of a group discussion the class had earlier in the term. For this discussion we gathered around a table of cobs of corn to explore the corn as well as to explore approaches to leading children in discovery learning through observation and questioning. We took turns holding a cob of corn and describing the textures and shape as well as what we imagined it could look like other than cob of corn. This was a great exercise for us, the students, to see first hand how to get the most out of a student’s curiosity and imagination. Reading this chapter I realized that third and fourth graders on the only age group that I have not worked hands on with, in the classroom. This is not a bad thing though as I will have both age groups this winter during my internship. I am by far most excited to work with these students. It will be interesting to see what observations will be made that directly pertain to the information in this chapter.
 * Realizations:**

October 31, 2009

** Reflection #8 **
In chapter four the authors explore the range of special needs facing many of today’s students. They also take a look at some of the law and standards that have been formed in order to insure inclusion in schools across the country. They use examples of schools that already practice school wide inclusion to showcase the benefits of inclusion. These benefits do not affect only the students with special needs benefit from classrooms that suit the needs of both non-disabled and disabled students. One example showed that the non-disabled students grew to be more caring and aware of the special needs students. We spent the majority of the last two weeks of class focusing on special education and meeting the unique needs of these students. I am glad we did this in light of the extremely large amount of information that is available on the subject. I was surprised to see that there was so much information online and elsewhere yet the chapter on students with special needs in the book is one of the shortest chapters. As part of our focus on special needs we were to complete a chart that consisted of about twelve different special needs areas and we were to fill in the rest of the chart with information and links to info on the subject. It was definitively and eye opening experience to find out the possibilities that exist in educating special needs students in regular classrooms. Before reading this chapter and exploring special education in class I had already been curious about the work and methods being done and used in the schools to make education productive and successful for these students. I have a family friend who is a special education teacher and as a result I grew up hearing stories from her classrooms. Not only did these stories seem appealing but also I could tell that this teacher was very proud of work and that she felt greatly rewarded and humbled by the daily gratitude from students and parents. Having read this chapter and participated in group discussions and activities in class my interest in special education as increased greatly and is definitely an area in which I would like to seek out more knowledge and experience.
 * Children and Their Art, Chapter 4: Children With Special Needs: **
 * Summary: **
 * Class Connection:**
 * Realizations:**

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