Ch. 4 Reflective Response

Chapter 4 discusses how one might make choices for selecting content for her curriculum. The main focus of this chapter to me was the importance of big, enduring ideas and taking the time to find and teach about artists and artwork that would relate to the enduring idea and the students. The last paragraph of the chapter summed up well what I think the most important concepts are and what I want to implement in my teaching:

"Taking the time to question how particular artists, artworks, artifacts and culture relates to a specific student population, how they correlate with other curriculum selections and overall options, how they stimulate specific key art understandings and inquiry, and how they connect with enduring ideas will benefit at the depth and breadth of the art curriculum and will avoid a hit-or-miss approach to art learning" (59).

I think that taking that time to question and plan is key to a successful curriculum and lesson, but it isn't always easy and takes a lot of work. I think it's important to realize that most students won't remember the specifics and details of the art class, but they will hopefully remember the big ideas that we discuss and learn about in the classroom. An important question that I will need to remember to ask myself as I teach is, "what do I want my students to retain and understand about art long after they have left my classroom?" The list of key art understandings from TETAC on page 42 are some of the ideas about art that I want my students to retain: art is a purposeful human endeavor; art attains value, purpose, and meaning from the personal, social, and cultural dimensions of life; art raises philosophical issues and questions; artworks are objects for interpretation; change is fundamental to art. I want my students to realize that art is not exclusive. It is something that can be learned, practiced and used to solve problems creatively.

Something else that I found really interesting in the reading was that research showed that breadth of knowledge is a key personality trait among creative thinkers. I want students to know that art is a way of gaining knowledge. Through research of a topic that they are interested in, they can create art and learn in great ways. I want to instill this in my own way of making art as well. I want to do better at gaining more knowledge about divers topics so I can be a better creative thinker and connect with more people. I think that learning about art through art criticism, art history, artmaking, and aesthetics are good and important because they allow for contextualization of art. Students can learn to connect with art and understand why art has changed, how it will continue to and how their art might fit into that spectrum.

I think that learning about and understanding art can be a great blessing in the lives of students. I hope that through taking the time to really plan and apply these principles into my curriculum will help them to realize how art can benefit them.

Metaphor For Teaching

A teacher is a gardener working to cultivate her students, like a gardener cultivates her plants. She must tend to her plants daily to create and preserve a productive environment. Through the process of gardening, the plants are stretched and grow to become something greater than they were originally. Through the gardening process the gardener is also refined through hard work, dedication and discerning when and where to weed or make adjustments in the garden. The gardener learns from her plants and their reaction to her care. At the end, both the plants and gardener benefit from the fruits of their labors.

Week #2: Relationships Shape Us and the World

Lesson Plan

Enduring Idea: Relationships connect us to other people and the world.

Rationale: Relationships among people, places and things are what make up life. Finding and making connections is an important way of understanding the world and our relationship to it. Our relationships to people, especially family make up a large part of our identity. Through exploring relationships, we can learn about our context in the world.

Artists/Artworks: Rebecca Campbell

Big Fish

2014, oil on board, 33" x 40"

Two Year Supply: Clean

2016, Glass, Windex, Water, Tin, Wood, Video Projection, Dimensions Variable

Two Year Supply: Saved

2016, Graphite, Glitter, Resin, Mirror, Dimensions Variable

Key Concepts:

• Relationships can be between people, places or things
• Relationships are connections
• Relationships can be public or private
• Relationships make us happy
• Relationships can be made stronger or weaker
• Relationships require work
• Relationships can be created instantly or over a long period of time
• Relationships change and evolve
• Relationships can be discovered
• Some relationships are born into

Essential Questions:

1. What is a relationship?
2. How do we form relationships?
3. How do we strengthen or weaken them?
4. Who or what do we have relationships with?
5. What kind of relationships are most important to you? Why?

Unit Objectives:

Students will understand why relationships are important to human life

Students will recognize their own relationships to others and contextualize that information

Students will connect with and create new relationships

Crosscurricular: Write letters to someone that you want to strengthen your relationship with.

Instructional Plan

Objectives: After considering Rebecca Campbell’s artwork, students will research their own family members to understand and synthesize information about familial relationships to create a work of art that reflects their new understandings of relationships.

Lesson: Begin by looking at the artist, Rebecca Campbell’s series of artworks about her family history and relationships. Discuss the essential questions and think about how we are affected by and depend on relationships. Discuss other artists that explore family relationships in their artwork and ask why this is such a common and important topic to so many people.

Activities: Students will research their own family histories from finding out information about ancestors they are unfamiliar with or talking to living family members. After researching, students will create an artwork based off of their new relationship to this person. Like Rebecca Campbell shows, there are many different ways to respond to such a prompt, like painting or creating an installation. Students will not be bound by a specific medium, but rather are invited to create what feels right for a representation of that new or strengthened relationship.

Formative Assessment: After completing this project, students will write a short explanation about their research and newfound or strengthened relationship.

Summative Assessment: At the completion of this unit, students will curate a show based on relationships. Or, they will share in front of the class what they learned as well as their finished product.

Week #1: Dreams and Alternate Realities

Lesson Plan

Enduring Idea: Dreams and alternate realities help us tap into the subconscious.

Rationale: Dreams are an important and interesting part of everyone’s life. They can tell us about our thoughts, desires, fears and what our subconscious is experiencing. Dreams are also an interesting and fun way to connect with other people and cultures because they hold different significance to different people. The concepts of dreams and alternate realities are prevalent in the arts throughout history, as well as other subject matters.

Artists/Artworks: Rene Magritte

Golconda, 1953

The Banquet, 1958

Key Concepts:

• Surrealism- A cultural movement that began in the early 1920s. In a revolution against a society ruled by rational thought, the Surrealists tapped into the “superior reality” of the subconscious.
• Automatism- involuntary actions and processes not under the control of the conscious mind—for example, dreaming, breathing, or a nervous tic.
• Assemblage- is an artistic form or medium usually created on a defined substrate that consists of three-dimensional elements projecting out of or from the substrate. It is similar to collage, a two-dimensional medium.
• Juxtaposition- the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect.
• Non-linear narrative- narrative technique where events are portrayed out of chronological order or where the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern of the events featured
• Subconscious- of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one's actions and feelings.

Essential Questions:

1. What is a dream?
2. Do you remember your dreams?
3. How do your dreams affect you?
4. Do you think dreams affect your subconscious? Why or why not?
5. Why do you think dreams are important?
6. How do dreams connect us as a people, culture, world?
7. Why do you think the Surrealist movement was a revolution?
8. Where do you see surrealist influences in our lives? (Media, narratives, fashion, school, entertainment)
9. How do dreams connect to art?
10. Does art need to be realistic? Why or why not?

Unit Objectives:

Standards:

• VA:Cr1.2.6a: Formulate an artistic investigation of personally relevant content for creating art.
• VA:Cr2.1.8a: Demonstrate willingness to experiment, innovate, and take risks to pursue ideas, forms, and meanings that emerge in the process of artmaking or designing
• VA:Pr5.1.8a: Collaboratively prepare and present selected theme-based artwork for display, and formulate exhibition narratives for the viewer.
• VA:Cn11.1.6a: Analyze how art reflects changing times, traditions, resources, and cultural uses.

Crosscurricular: Write a non-linear narrative in English class. Talk about the subconscious in

Science class. Record your dreams in a journal for a month and analyze what they might mean.

Instructional Plan

Objectives: Through studying Rene Magritte’s artwork, students will learn about the surrealist movement and create an artwork generated from thoughts of dreams, alternate realities and the subconscious.

Lesson: Begin by asking students if they remember what they dreamed last night, or if they have any dreams that have stuck out to them in their life. Talk about dreams and what they mean to us personally and as a culture. Talk about the setting of our dreams. Where do they take place? Is there a background? Is the setting important? How does place affect our dreams? Or, how do our dreams affect the places we are in? We will look at Rene Magritte’s artworks entitled, Golconda and The Banquet. Notice the setting in his paintings. Where do they take place? How are the dream-like? What is odd or alternate reality about them? Look for surrealist influences. What is surrealism? Discuss the surrealist movement and how it affected art.

Activities: Students will create a painting based off of alternate realities and dreams. Their painting should have a prominent setting, like Magritte, and be influenced by surrealist thought.

Before beginning, students should brainstorm at least 15 different ideas for their setting in their sketchbook. They can create thumbnail sketches if they want to, but improvisation and allowing their subconscious to influence their work is supported.

Students are allowed to use mixed media, like pencil, pen, some collage materials, paint, and colored pencil if they so desire.

Formative Assessment: After completing this project, students will write a short story to accompany their artwork. The story can be nonlinear and doesn’t need to explain the painting, but rather accompany it.

Summative Assessment: At the completion of this unit, students will curate a show based on alternate realities and dreams.

Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework for this class provides for student development in the way students interact with each other, the artwork and the development of a self-identity within art. Through improvisation, exploration, making connections and gaining a greater understanding, students will learn to create interesting art artifacts as well as to contextualize their art-making within their world. The teaching method in these lessons is meant to provoke exploration and improvisation to discover new ideas and ways to connect or understand them. These verbs explain the basis of this discovery and teaching process.

Improvise: to create and perform spontaneously; to produce or make something from whatever is available. This course will allow for and encourage students to improvise in their art-making to solve problems creatively. Spontaneity and improvisation are an important part of developing one’s own artistic voice and allows for critical thinking in a relaxed environment. I don’t want to impose specific expectations of what “good art” is, so I want students to improvise with what is available to them to create an unexpected finished product.

Explore: to inquire into or discuss a subject or issue; examine or evaluate; search for resources, travel in or through an unfamiliar area in order to learn about or familiarize oneself with it. The experience of working through something unknown is important for self-discovery and ownership of an experience or idea. Through exploring different artists, media, concepts, students will create their own learning experiences by exploring and discovering what is important to them. We will also examine and evaluate art through a critical lens and learn to talk about it individually and as a class.

Connect: to join together so as to provide access and communication; to form a relationship or feel an affinity. I believe that art is about making connections. Through this course I hope that students will connect with history, art, and each other. They will learn to connect art to their life, culture, and foreign cultures. I hope they will make connections between art and their other studies, interests, and hobbies. They will find ways to make connections and create relationships and form a way to communicate those connections.

Understand: to perceive the intended meaning, significance, explanation; infer something from information received. As we look at different artists and each other’s work we will learn to understand conceptual meaning or the artist’s intention. This course will help students to infer concepts from looking at an artwork, as well as defining a stance about how they feel or understand the artwork. I also hope this course will help students to have a greater understanding for people, especially those that are different than themselves, and increase empathy.