Wrapped Up

To reflect on the whole experience, I think student teaching the class gave me a whole new understanding of communication and the ability to understand the needs of others and tend to their needs to the best of your ability. The students have taught me ways to communicate that I was unable to do before I started teaching. The switch from being taught how to do things to teaching certain techniques and ideas that may be a little abstract and therefore hard to explain was what really taught me the most. Although I may not necessarily be interested in teaching in a school environment, I’ll need to do a lot of communicating and teaching in the field of study I want to go into. As a physical therapist, people will need to communicate to you what they feel, where and what type of pains they are experiencing and as the therapist you need to be able to communicate back what your plan of action is, what you’ll be doing and especially being able to ask questions to ensure that the patient is being treated for the right thing. So basically, as a caregiver you need to be able to get on the same page as your patient, which is exactly the same in the classroom, you need to be on the same page as your students if you want to explain techniques effectively. My family has told me that I lack in that part of development and I even recognize it myself, however my experience student teaching has given me a deeper insight into communication and a better idea of what works and what doesn’t work when trying to communicate your thoughts. I think I had some difficulty in the beginning of the semester and I was struggling with trying to figure out effective strategies to teach the students new techniques. I would definitely also admit that I was a bit shy and laid-back in the beginning of the semester but that definitely changed as the weeks passed by. When you’re in the position to teach others or in a leader position, you have to take control and just go for it, when trying to communicate your thoughts, giving it a good try will teach the other person more than not trying at all. That was another learning opportunity for me, learning how to take control and explain exactly what I want done and how the students could best do it. I ended up not having a problem with authority but to use it to my advantage, in a way that I don’t dominate or dictate the classroom. Certain students needed a little bit of extra strictness and extra help but I was glad to help them and those times really made me grow. 

To sum it all up, I had a great time in the classroom helping out Mr. Angelis and I think that I learned a lot of new skills that will turn out to be very helpful when I continue on with my studies. Although things may not have run as smoothly as I would’ve liked, the whole first semester was a blast and the students have taught me as much if not more as I taught them.

The Final Showdown

The end of the semester is nearing and student are well on their way to creating their final piece of art to top them all. From what I’ve seen so far, they’re all throwing around great and ambitious ideas, revamping billboards, creating graffiti art and even creating full catalogs. They’ll be expected to show all the skills they’ve acquired over the semester into one final piece. The atmosphere in the classroom has been very relaxed and independent but the student seem to be doing a great job at occupying themselves and getting down to work. They have the freedom to talk while also being asked to work hard on their finals, a responsibility that not all students can handle but hopefully learn to combine the two things. Some students may need a little guidance to get going on their final projects, but I think that once they get started they’ll get really into their projects. Also, the reason I’m a student teacher is to learn more about teaching, communication and aiding students or people in need, so logically it’s only beneficial to me to help out students with questions. I’m very excited to see what they’ll create and I’m very proud of the progress they have made as a collective class.

The Evaluation

One thing that I learned from helping Mr. Angelis grade the students’ projects is that grading isn’t just based on skills and execution of a task at hand, effort also plays a big role in the grade a student receives. Of course, the natural artists create impressive pieces of art, if they lack in effort their grade will suffer as well. Likewise, students that may not be as artistically gifted but that give it 200% will also receive good grades. Overall, I’ve seen such an intense improvement with every single student compared to the beginning of the semester. Their works have become so much better than when they started and I personally really appreciated being able to see them grow in that aspect. There are so many things that go into grading and I think that art especially is very hard to grade because of the varying skill levels. Mathematics is easy to grade because an answer can be right or wrong, but when there are multiple factors that affect the end product, grading becomes a lot harder and you have to establish a thought-process to approach each individual student. In that regard, to be able to give the most accurate grades, you definitely need to get to know the students before you can grade them very well.

Unleashing the beast?

Time rolled around again and the spotlight turned on me again. This time I taught a project revolving around drawing animals and some techniques that may be useful when drawing different types of animals. A big challenge that I faced when teaching this unit was that giving students a lot of freedom and a broad range of choices for their projects often makes it that much harder to teach lessons that all students can apply to their work. For example, some students were drawing hairy mammals such as tigers or chipmunks, opposed to others who may be drawing aquatic animals with a whole different physical appearance, making it harder to explain techniques that all students can use to improve their work. I did try to go over enough information so that all students had a good amount of tips and techniques to work with. For example, I went over my strategies for drawing fur, ears, eyes and shadows with furry mammals, but also shared my insights as to how to get started and what the best ways to get the proportions of any animal down. It seemed that the students understood my lessons and were applying them to their works, of course, I hung around to answer any individual questions and help with specific problems. Overall, I must've done something right because the results were awesome.

Mirrored Images.. Literally

Once we wrapped up drawing mannequins and cloths, we moved on to drawing portraits and more specifically self-portraits, and the students impressed me even more with the portraits than they did with the figure drawings. Not only did we do real life portraits, we also did a lot of posing and sketching. We had multiple teachers come into the room to pose for our lessons at which point the students had a few minutes to sketch and draw the person as well as possible in that time. I personally had a really hard time with drawing from real life, especially people. That seems to be the reason that I was so impressed with the students’ ability to draw something that’s right in front of them, simply because I lack that skill. The self-portraits they did were very accurate and I was amazed by the way you could see the similarities between the drawing and the student. I think that this project was a little more laid-back, allowing students to draw at their own pace and letting them pace themselves. The pace showed in the drawings, I think a lot of students really took their time in drawing the portraits and that may be the reason that they turned out so well. Mr. Angelis also had a lot of good examples to show.

Figure Drawing

After the class finished drawing the cylindrical sculpture I created, Mr. Angelis began the figure drawing and cloth drawing project. To try and incorporate both lessons into a multi-day project, we divided the class into groups and gave them all a drawing mannequin and some pieces of cloth so that they could make outfits on the mannequins. They came up with a lot of creative ideas, a couple of the groups made intricate togas while another group dressed one to fit a famous scene from Hamlet. I remember when I took the drawing class with Mr. Angelis, I thought it was very hard to try and get the proportions of the mannequins down correctly and this class did a great job with it. I was very impressed by the way they were able to tackle two difficult tasks, drawing a proportional figure as well as bringing texture and life to the cloth. I definitely see the differences in the artists and their processes to tackle a task, which seems crucial when it comes to teaching a lesson or connecting with your students. Some may be great artists with natural talent that don’t push themselves, whereas others that may not be so naturally skilled try their hardest and create beautiful pieces of art as well. All in all, the students did a great at calmly working on two foreign and challenging tasks.

Drawing Mannequin