Middle Schools
Eleni Dykstra

Technology in Art Education

    Another year is ending and it is time to take a moment to look back and reflect.  Technology has played an important role in every aspect of my teaching this school year.  Computer technology and electronic networks have infiltrated our schools.  The impact of technology on education is evident in the decline of the print culture and the continuous rise of a visual culture.  Yes, it started 30 years ago with TV….but look how far we have come.  Because of the widespread and growing use of technology in both the home and the workplace, computer equipment is unlikely to end up in closets except the replaced models of course.  As educators and as learners, how are you using the computer in your classroom?  1) as a tool to word process, create spreadsheets, and email  2) as integrated learning systems that present exercises for student to work on individually and that keep records of student progress for reporting to the teacher; and 3) as simulations and activities that engage students in computer based activities designed to be motivating and educational.  Many aspects of our workplace have changed in order to incorporate the computer.  Even the nature of schoolwork has made a parallel change.  Computers have come to be seen as necessary tools for students and teachers not as a “foreign body”.  But how do we take all of those images that are available to us and help our students visually communicate to a viewer without making them dizzy?  We discuss design and visual experimenting. The elements and principles are applied in order to come up with a creative solution.  I use the word solution to mean that the final product is original. 

necessary tools for students and teachers not as a “foreign body”.  But how do we take all of those images that are available to us and help our students visually communicate to a viewer without making them dizzy?  We discuss design and visual experimenting. The elements and principles are applied in order to come up with a creative solution.  I use the word solution to mean that the final product is original. 

     Yes, there are the prevailing factors of funding and training in technology.  But the availability of reasonably priced and user friendly hardware and software is here.  This availability results in more integrated approaches to instructional uses of technology.  Thus, increased “computer awareness” and “technology comfort” will continue to fuel the technology revolution.  Sign up and take your students to the computer lab.  Have them invent a creative solution to a visual problem.

“ To design is to plan and organize to order and relate and to control.  In short it embraces all means opposing disorder and accident.  Therefore it signifies a human need and qualifies a man’s thinking and doing.”  - Josef Albers

Middle Schools
Eleni Dykstra

Project Zero:
Artful Thinking Program

     Art teachers have always known that there is a direct correlation between the incorporation of the arts and student achievement.  Too often, we have witnessed teaching that is unable to spark motivation and produce learning in our children. The arts can, and do, provide a dynamic, and cohesive curriculum.  There are a growing number of programs that support the power and value of arts in education.  One such program is Project Zero:  Artful Thinking Program – at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  This program is designed to help classroom teachers use visual art and music in their curriculum in ways that strengthen student thinking and learning. There are two broad goals: 1.To help teachers create rich connections between works of art and curricular topics; 2.To help teachers use art as a force for developing students thinking dispositions.

      My sense is that this program can help shape the learning environment around the standards of authentic instruction; providing a dynamic experience for our students, one that has the capability of staying with them for years to come.  One such example was an interdisciplinary unit among Art and Social Studies.  Mrs. S had transformed her middle school art room into a Japanese Tea room.  During this unit, students were exposed to cultural exemplars, music, traditions and folktales of the Japanese.  Students created beautiful ceramic tea bowls which would be used in an upcoming class.  The teacher dressed in traditional Japanese Kimono for the culminating activity – The Japanese Tea Ceremony.  The students sat on small rugs in groups of 4 and 5.  In the center of the group sat a freshly brewed pot of tea and 4 handmade teacups.  Parents lined up around the perimeter of the room quietly watching the ceremony.  I remember looking around and seeing the students focused and anxiously awaiting the next step.  When the students were asked to report in their journals on their unit, they could draw from their experience rather than reciting words from text. 

    Classroom teachers are using the artful thinking program to create rich connections between works of art and curricular topics as a force for developing students thinking dispositions.

     So how was a “rich” connection made in Art to the Japan unit in Social Studies? Isn’t understanding about making connections among and between things?    Visible thinking can change the culture of the classroom.  It allows us to ask our students to think beyond what they know and make their own inferences.  It is suggested to ask questions, taking stock in prior knowledge, probing certainty of the ideas, and visibly connecting new knowledge to old.  We can significantly influence a student’s learning by providing school experiences that promote thinking and by making learning as positive an experience as possible.  This in turn can promote an ongoing commitment to learning.  Brainstorming and other cooperative learning strategies are ways we can evoke the enthusiasm and speculation needed to motivate our students.  Students can then call upon a broad range of information from personal knowledge or experiences.  When students work together, thinking and active learning, listening, and a spirit of cooperation can flourish.  Research for the past 50 years has been examined and documented that the arts enhance the basic literacy skills to include cultural literacy and literacy of non-verbal stimuli.

        It is crucial for all teachers to vary the academic methods, and materials employed in the classroom.  In doing so, we can readily meet the individual needs of our students.  We need to address the way students think and the suggestion that learners are disposed toward curiosity, flexibility, precision, organization, and patience in their thinking.  Critical thinking can be defined as cognitive activity that allows a learner to analyze or synthesize information in order to make a judgment.  On the other hand creative thinking is generating ideas that may emphasize fluency, flexibility, originality and/or elaboration.

        The overall quality of a child’s experience increases with visible thinking no matter what the subject area.  So go check out what your students are learning in other subjects and use that as a springboard to your next unit.  Don’t just have your student make a tea bowl – have them understand and experience it! The incorporation of the arts can and does provide a more dynamic, coordinated and cohesive curriculum.

         For more information about this program and ways you can work with others in your school building check out - Project Zero:  Artful Thinking  – http://pz.harvard.edu.

Middle Schools
Eleni Dykstra

Visual Thinking continued...

     As educators, we have seen students grumble, stress out, fall asleep or become an instant behavior problem when the words reading and/or writing are mentioned.  Especially during these times of state assessments which students are required to manipulate, clarify, and synthesize information.  As art educators, the visual journals or sketchbooks are a great vehicle to generate some of that writing with paper and pencil.  Bringing learners and text together involves putting plans and practices to work that result in active student involvement and cooperative learning.  Thematic units provide the structure for bringing the learner and text together by giving them that “total experience”.  So how do we organize instructional activities around that multiple text?  We must focus on the conceptual activities in order to provide the framework needed to study work critically.  There are so many strategies that may be used to reinforce and extend a student’s abilities to perceive relationships among concepts they are studying.  Which ones are you using?  
              
     “What’s the same?” exercises skills of discrimination and perception.  A student is asked to compare two different items and describe how they are the same.  Meaningful learning occurs when students experience a sense of satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment.  It takes motivation, direction, purpose, and an educator who knows how to create those conditions in the classroom to enable students to establish their own motives.  “Brainstorming activities”, “What might explain?” and “What is the difference?” are a few of the many possibilities for stimulating excitement pertaining to content.  Those good ‘ole graphic organizers continue to be extremely effective when integrating their use within a cooperative learning context.  I can recall using the Venn Diagram when I was in middle school to generate ideas as an entire class, but I must admit I don’t remember everyone participating and any type of accountability for synthesizing that information.  How can I effectively use the Venn Diagram in my classroom?  How about comparing and contrasting two paintings – Surrender of Breda by Diego Velasquez and The third of May, 1808 by Francisco Goya; both illustrate the same theme, but represent two very different perspectives on war.  Students will utilize the think pair share strategy by listing the characteristics of the 2 paintings on the outside sections of the diagram for 5 minutes to themselves then at the end of the time, the students pair with their designated partner and compare their Venn Diagrams.  The students would then be instructed to complete the center section of the diagram by discussing the common

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attributes of the 2 paintings.  I would then ask random students to assist in filling in the diagram in the front of the room in order to create a class version of the diagram for reference.  For a final activity, I would ask students to write a summary of the characteristics of War, citing examples from the 2 paintings. I would then collect the assignment, review them and return them with comments.  Looking at the big picture this type of activity is just one of the goals we have been striving for in education because it allows all students at all levels of performance to work together in a group toward a common goal and yet provides for individual accountability.  The traditional visual organizers have proven to me to be effective tools for enhancing thinking and promoting meaningful learning, helping my students and I to organize, generate, elaborate, represent, illustrate, relate, retrieve, and assess.

        In this day and age of assessments mere assignments or demands placed upon students are not sufficient.  We must go beyond teacher-centered instruction to continually educate ourselves on how to use different strategies effectively, as well as exploring other instructional alternatives.  The learning process varies for each of our students so we need to understand it in order to enhance the partnership between the teacher and the learner.

Marina N. Grade 7, Still Life, Perry Hall Middle School

     Works by Maryland students are now on display at the Third Annual Underground Art Exhibit at the state capitol in Annapolis.  Congratulations to Baltimore County – 100% participation!

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Middle Schools
Lisa Manasar

Surviving the First Year!

Only when we sleep do we make no mistakes. Mistakes are the privilege of the active person, who can start over and put things right.
                                -Ingmar Kamprad
       
     We are now or have been that person who is praised to have simply survived the year. That would be the crazy first one! Our particular little struggles vary in a lot of ways, but our experiences teach us like nothing and no one else. I've fallen in love with the process of trial and error. I've failed so much that I ceased to see it as failure. When I began recognizing and reconciling my errors, these became my definition of success. It was a relief to try something a different way the next time. In bits of passing time, I had found a magical invisible eraser and kept scribbling away. I took in so much, I could more accurately refer to myself as a student rather than teacher. I’m not sure if I’ll ever think differently. I like works in progress.

   If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?                                                             -  Rumi

     I’m just thankful for other peoples’ patience, time, and jokes. I listened and talked to many other people in school, which was helpful in maintaining my sanity. I would think a lot about the day, even when I didn’t want to. I called my family a lot. I traded stories with my roommate, another first-year art teacher. Our comparisons had comedic dimensions; our stories entertained and reassured us. My co-workers lifted me out of my fog many times. I have a colleague with an adjoining room; we’d bait each other with ridiculous practical jokes, and the absurdity fit right into that middle school air. I'm grateful for the resiliency and trust of most of the kids. There were seemingly perfect moments I just couldn't believe, I just wanted someone else there to see it; they were so into their work I would just look around and breathe, amazed. They weren’t goofing off or developing their social networks. More frequently, however, they wouldn't exactly buy into it, following my lead grudgingly with a guarded demeanor. They were figuring out who I was, and I was often unsure about what I was doing. Months later, I had kids I hadn’t seen yet asking me

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questions I didn’t anticipate. They had seen something so cool, when could they do that, could they try doing it this way, and would it work?  When I got a fresh group at a new quarter, they'd hit me with questions and express their preferences.

        There are fun parts; "Whoa, check this out!", the ritual jokes, the kids who come help -and better yet - bring friends, the palpable sense of excitement as they find a magically engaging image or technique. There are hard parts; the kids who delight in trying my patience, the failed results despite a seemingly engaging problem. Then there is part that seems trickiest and slowest to develop; how we assimilate and craft traditions - of the previous art teacher, of mentors, of colleagues - and make them our own. As new teachers, we are where someone else once was. We pick up, cast off and accumulate ways of being and of doing things. We experiment, explore, and play. As art teachers, the process of creation is captivating. I just try to pose art problems, and create solutions to, well, problems. I just keep thinking to myself, however I manage behavior, I'll try my best to respect a child. Whatever art problems I develop, I'll expect as much as it's possible for them to give.

     It's not enough to be busy; the ants are busy. The important thing is, what are we busy about?       - Henry David Thoreau

        I'm proud to leave before the evening hours this year. I'm happy to leave behind my inheritances for a few hours; to get out of that ancient, chaotic supply closet and see something else beside the hilarious broken skeleton I found in there. My latest joy is practicing many ways to replenish myself before the next morning. How do I plan to rejuvenate myself during the summer months? Of course I'll spend time with people I love. I'll also teach six kids' studio classes. How is this a break? I don't know. I do know I find excitement in watching things come into creation; the unexpected refreshes me like nothing else, even if it's through someone else's hands and mind. But we need to do it ourselves. So I know I'll also steal many hours, picking up some materials and shaping them. Before I know it, it'll be late into the night, and it will become very clear to me, again and again, how I found my way into this profession.

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