Our neighborhood murals are up and been hanging happily in the hallways! We took up the whole hallway downstairs and by combining 3 classes we together created a 90 foot mural! The kids are having a blast admiring it on their way to the cafeteria :)
Hispanic Heritage Month (Part 2)
The murals we created didn’t span us the whole month of course!
We kicked off Hispanic Heritage Month with learning about Retablos & their usage in digital arts by the Hispanic & LGBTQIA+ artist Broobs.
We talked about how Retablos have been used historically in art to iconify Christian religious figures with radial symmetry and then discussed how using this format can bring light to important figures who may otherwise be overlooked for their good deeds in their communities.
The students researched an important role model within the Hispanic / Latin community and created with own digital arts Retablos.
Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month
Recognizing cultural background is an incredibly important value in my classroom. Recently the students learned about one of El Salvador’s national artists: Fernando Llort.
The students learned about how in an effort to rejoin El Salvadorians, Llort created an art style that pulled El Salvadorian values from Pre-Columbian (Columbus not Columbia) reign and also from Mayan influences. We talked about OUR values in our community and what we valued as a class community for the ideal community.
The major points from the students were….green spaces, activity centers, safe neighborhoods, & of course the mall to shop for all your teenage needs (We can’t forget good ol’ Zumiez or Chipotle!)
First the students brainstormed individually in mini-neighborhoods and then we created our own neighborhood with mixed media. Each mural banner spans over 30 feet long! Go Wolves!
Odessa Shannon MS: Identies & Community
Did you know…?
Col E Brooke Lee MS is getting a new name & new look! Out with the old & in with the new. Our new building is slowly building up and should be ready for school year 2022-23 however we are officially the Odessa Shannon MS, Home of the Wolves now!
To commemorate our new school identity the 7th & 8th grade students worked on a community mural at the entrance of our school.
8th grade drafted out the ideas for our new mural while the 7th grade worked in small groups to execute the plan!
Summer School Bonding
Summer School might be the most dreaded words in a child’s life.
When I heard the students would be without an arts or music elective option for summer school (especially after finally returning to in-person learning) I knew I needed to take matters into my own hands. This upcoming year is so vital for our students learning how to bond and communicate with each other again in person. My 8th grade students had not been in the building since the 6th grade! Can you imaging the amount of lost social emotional development? Taking deep focus on ice breakers & team building as the students entered my space and my classroom culture set became a priority for introducing my curriculums.
Lucky for me I was able to be the only teacher on the second floor of our building. Knowing that “marshmallow towers” might not be AS big a hit with my 8th graders as they were with my 6th graders….I came up with the idea of “Survival Island”.
The PLOT: We have been on a plane and suddenly an engine failure begins! The plane goes down and down and down….suddenly we wake up and we find ourselves on a deserted island. The sun is beginning to set & we need to make shelter. We scavenge some materials and begin to get working. We have a sandy ground (aka hall floor), Palm trees (aka lockers & doors of classrooms) & a great view of the ocean (aka blue walls).
The kids had an ABSOLUTE blast communicating in groups, exploring their materials and racing against the time of the “sunsetting” and the unleashing of “island night monsters”
Check out some detail shots of their hard work :)
Celebrating the "The Year We All Went Virtual"
This year I was SO proud of my students as they overcame all the hardships of our full year shut down. When we returned back to school I was able to take a small group of students on the last 2 weeks and create a giant mural to celebrate our graduates as they came through the Commencement Parade.
It was….count it…..3 meters by 9 meters!
The kids had an absolute blast making the banner and you could see the pride and joy brimming from the faces of parents and students. It was great to create something so large for the students that allowed our families to pose inside their cars or on the opposite side of the street if they we feeling Covid-Conscious.
Pandemic Working
The pandemic has been long and difficult for ALL learners. But I have never been more humbled and driven to complete admiration of my students this past year and a half. In our school we shut down in March of 2020 and we remained virtual until April 2021. Including summer school we were virtual for 12 full months of learning.
And yet this year we had deeply involved discussion panels in our chat, to which new friends were made & identities blossomed. We as a group created some amazing work by looking at the process of different artists and how THEY create and following their process in our own work step by step. We reflected and critiqued each other’s work.
Students shared snippets of their lives & hardships with me as they took on parental roles for siblings, weathered true grief & battled a deafening level of ennui. As a community my little artists found strength in each other this year. Over the months I was reminded again and again that I am truly blessed to have chosen education, a career which fosters a pride in your soul knowing you have made a difference. Check out the tab “upcoming shows” to poke through our two virtual exhibitions or click the links below!
Drawing From Observation
Early Finishers
In the art room I try to make as many crossovers to other subjects as possible. This year I launched a “reading area” as an option for my early finishers. Elementary School has access to picture books while MS has age appropriate comics in the closet.
BIG VS LITTLE painting
Forget the seats! 4th grade found the most success focusing on their paintings and color mixing by choosing to stand at their assigned “Spot” rather than in their seat.
DIVING INTO PAINTING
Painting in the art room can feel overwhelming with little ones…how will we clean up? How will can I make sure they get out their wiggles without those wiggles turning into paint on clothes?
Paint blocks rather than wet paint helped my little ones avoid any major mishaps so we could focus on color mixing FUN!
Working in Afterschool
Over the past year I have been BUSY BUSY BUSY. Working from 7am until 6 pm is no joke!
Luckily I have found that working with a club can be the make or break that keeps you going as a teacher. My Set Design students literally ROCK my world and help me make it through the toughest of days.
ESLI Art Illustration Journals
Over the past few months I have had the great honor to work as an ESLI Art Professor with the University of the Arts ISP pre-college. One of the many things that we are doing within this program is getting students to feel comfortable in expressing themselves...through art and writing in English. Many of the art terms that they need to use when entering the University as Freshmen or First Year Graduates students are not taught as English vocabulary to them prior to coming to the United States. Illustrated Journals offer a safe 'third space' for the students to develop their skills.
For more information on this particular program check out Dr. Mara Flamm's dissertation on the program's development and application. Below my student's examples I have attached the Abstract.
Abstract:
‘I ARRIVED IN A GIANT, CURIOUS, AND SCARY PLACE’: DESIGNING ILLUSTRATED JOURNALS IN APRE-COLLEGE ESL UNIVERSITY PROGRAM
Mara Flamm
Marybeth Gasman
As universities within the United States become more international and enroll a more diverse population of students, English-as-a-second-language (ESL) educators have questioned how best to socialize students into the communicative practices of their academic disciplines (Liddicoat and Scarino 2013). Despite recognizing the need to build more supportive and inclusive institutional climates (Zamel and Spack 2011; Kumaravadivelu 2003), research on international students presents a less optimistic picture. Indeed, studies repeatedly point to the presence of deficit discourses that serve to position international students, and those from Asia, as linguistically incompetent in English and in need of “fixing” before engaging with peers in their academic disciplines (Belz 2002; Zamel and Spack 2011). This study looked closely at one pre-matriculation ESL program for international students studying visual and performing arts. The program’s goal was to socialize international students into the communicative practices valued within arts education, with an emphasis on the ability to narrate how one’s identity as an artist shapes and is shaped by one’s art. Through a series of curricular innovations, and specifically the use of illustrated journals, this program sought to contest the deficit framing of international students at the institution by offering them the opportunity to narratively construct their identities as artists through a multimodal array of communicative resources (e.g., drawing, painting, collage, etc.), as well as English. Preliminary observations within the program raised intriguing questions about how the multimodal genre of the illustrated journal was affecting the kinds of autobiographical narratives the international students told. Drawing on theoretical work in second language development (Gao 2014; Norton 2010, 2012; Park 2011; Pavlenko, A. & B. Norton 2007; Pavlenko 2001, 2004, 2006; Scarino and Liddicoat 2013), multimodalities (Kress and Leeuwen 2000), narrative and identity analysis (Bruner 1984, 1986; Norton 2010, 2012; Pavelenko and Blackledge 2004), and genre studies (Hyland 2015), this study highlights the role of genre in enabling and constraining the autobiographical narratives that international students choose to tell. Close analysis of the illustrated journals revealed a link between this multimodal genre and the use of inspirational narrative tropes, which seemed to result in strong cohesion among students around inspirational notions of resilience and triumph in the challenging circumstances of navigating a new culture and language. The study’s findings allow Second Language Development practitioners and researchers to consider the ways in which traditional cognitive perspectives/deficit perspectives on language limit students’ communicative expressiveness and confidence, and instead argues for using genres like the Illustrated Journal, to encourage students to access their full range of expressive modalities to be comfortable and confident narrators in their new culture and academic disciplines.
Couture Hats and Headpieces
The last project I had the privilege of teaching with Bodine International was Couture Hats and Headpieces made with paper. We began with learning 10 techniques
Students learned the terms:
Armature
Cone
Curling
Cylinder
In The Round
Fringe
Prism
Quilling
Relief
Tabbing
Then they took to drawing up some design ideas. Here was one of my examples:
The students took the building process by storm pushing themselves to move their sketches from the second dimension to the third.
In the end the students were able to cultivate their camera skills with a mini modeling shoot in which they where given the opportunity to showcase their work.
Narrative Figure Painting
Over the past few weeks I switched from Elementary to High School teaching. Our first project together has been the student's first experience with paint during an Introduction to Studio Art.
We began with a "mini" lesson on body proportions. The students learned what the "Average/Ideal" body proportions were and then took selfies to understand how every body is a little different! It was great seeing them getting up out of their seats and interacting with each other.
After the selfies we used our new skills to begin mapping out our narrative figure sketches. The students needed two figures in different positions and a foreground, middle-ground and background. We looked at a presentation on Narrative Art and the different forms that Narration can be used in Art.
Want to check it out?
https://www.pinterest.com/graceuttal/narrative-art/
To give the students an idea of my expectations I drew an example in a demonstration...
Once the sketches were planned out we talked about how to paint with COLOR and how color can impact our narrative paintings. We talked about the science of paint and how light illuminates color. If you look at the RYW diagram you can see how light reverberates in the pigment. The class learned how layering pigment can cause an entire different color from mixing. We reviewed some ways to make skin tones AND how if you use thick layers of paint then thin you can accidentally remove the paint.
They were a little hesitant to start but it did not take long for them to get on a ROLL!
See that lovely cell phone? This student was using their phone as a reference instead of printing. Saving trees, ink, time AND using technology in the classroom!
As the lesson came to a close it was wonderful to see their progress as some of them had never even touched paint before!
In Progress Quilts
These are a couple in-progress "City Scene" quilts of Grades 4-5
Quilt Geometry
Today we began our classroom quilts. Grades K-3 voted on an environmental theme and were allowed to choose one of five animals in this theme. Kindergarden had the opportunity to color in the animal's shapes while 1-3 were expected to cut out construction paper geometric shapes from tracing tangrams. Grades 4-5 began creating "city scene" quilts. They could choose any scene in the city to re-create but only with geometric shapes.
Initial Aliens
During my student observations I learned of a great lesson called Name Aliens. The lesson asks the students to cut out their name symmetrically using bubble letters. However this is the first year the Elementary school has experienced art! Writing their whole names in bubble letters AND symmetrically proved to be too complex. However I found that the simplification of the lesson to creating aliens with initials was a home run! As my first lesson entering school it has been a great way for me to start memorizing the 400+ students.
We begin with do-nows that introduce symmetry and push K-2 to gain skill in their hand-eye coordination. The students have the opportunity to color in their do-nows and bring them home.
3-5 are prompted to brainstorm as many symmetrical shapes, letters, objects or even animals as they can recall.
The students spend the rest of the period practicing bubble letters.
After establishing a foundation that all students can create bubble letters students move on to the next portion of the lesson. As a Do-Now I found a great coloring book that allows students to develop their ideas of space backgrounds.
During lesson students fold and cut their letters as a class (step-by-step). At their own pace students can glue their letters onto their backgrounds and start coloring. I used oil pastels as our medium so that the colors POP!
Classroom Culture
In an effort to warm the elementary schoolers up to learning new languages I have made my table markers in THREE languages! From week to week I switch up the classroom by directing table colors in English, Spanish and French.
Check in with me!
Check in periodically to see what kind of lessons I have been brewing up for my classes!