Week # 5 & 6: All Broken Up...

Monday
So today started off spring break week - meaning we had school today and tomorrow and then the kids are off Weds. through next Monday. Wednesday is an in-service/teacher workday for us though (womp womp), but on the upside our county wide in-service in the morning is going to be an art supply rep. presentation of sorts (aka hopefully some free supplies). All that aside, it was a normal and slightly chaotic Monday of an odd week - we had all four classes (3D, 7th, 8th, 8th). The 3D class was working on their reposse - I love this class because they are a fun, mainly good group once you get them going and they all seem to like me and respect me (yay). I worked with them, catching up folks and helping them start their book making (they will mount their reposse on books they make themselves) while my teacher took groups outside to "antique" the copper, using liver of sulfur (smells delicous - not). I could tell as soon as I walked in today that both my teacher and I were on the same level - and unfortunately that level was kind of out of it and exhausted. Over the week-end I didn't really get my chance to rejuvinate due to various obligations, and I could definitely feel the toll it had on me today - I can also tell that I just plain need a break! Teaching each day, planning and doing homework/paperwork each night paired with trying to prepare my design stuff and search for jobs is a little well - stressful, especially the job aspect of things. I cannot believe that in a month and a couple days this college aspect of my life will be over and I'll be transitioning into the real world - hopefully with a good employer lined up and a place to live!? I also am realizing that I don't have a lot of time to do projects with these kiddos - after spring break, the heat is on. I plan on using the days I have off to go home and really focus on getting both sides of my life together - teaching and design. I finally registered to take the last of my standarized tests, the VCLA (assuming I passed the Praxis II) - I'll take that in two weeks and then just have to make sure all my paper work is in order and all that - yikes.
Now that that's out of my system - today was good, although the 7th grade class I have today always gives me some trouble. We have one student that is really needy and drives me absolutely nuts truth be told, but I have started not answering all his questions and turning them right back around to him - it seems to work more often than not. When he asks if something is right or if I think it looks good I ask him to think about it for himself - "that's not a Ms. Adams question - that's a question for you." One of the other girls in that class informed me he's been like that since the 3rd grade haha.
During our 3rd block 8th grade class I sat with a student while they worked on their mosaics, everyone else at his table was absent so I thought I'd give him company. Its amazing what you can find out from students that way - we were just talking about art and he was asking me questions about the other classes and said he had heard some kids say that art used to be their favorite class until I came - WOW. I know I am more strict and have a lower BS tolerance than my teacher does and I think the kiddos that must be saying that are the ones that are acting up and "incurring my wrath." My teacher said not to worry about it - my thought is I must be doing something right with discipline if not every kid likes me - now they just have to earn their spot back in my good graces and I'll win them over with good lessons and good one-on-one interaction. I definitely realize that not every student is going to think I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread and that's OK with me, I have friends - I'm there to be their teacher. Just as long as they all don't hate me haha.

Tuesday/Wednesday
... were busy days - making sure my teacher and I had all our ducks in a row before we went on break. We finalized our long term planning for the remaining weeks of my student teaching, figuring out lesson plans and when I would hand things back over. I really enjoy the way my teacher runs her classroom and works with me, she just makes it very easy and I like to think that she and I make a good team in there. It frequently happens that if one of us can't find something the other knows exactly where it is and things like that - which is especially crucial in such a small classroom! I have seen my teacher's normal classroom (which is currently storing all of the auditorium chairs until the auditorium is done and her room can get redone - oh construction) and it is very spacious, the classroom we are currently in is not (and has no windows). I think trying to rennovate a school while the students and teachers are in there is just so unfair and should really be avoided. Teachers having to pack up their supplies and store them in mobil units, only allowed to have what is absolutely needed (and will fit) in their temporary classroom, students being shifted around constantly, interrupted learning and just general health and safety hazards - craziness.
The in-service was pretty cool - we had a rep from one of the suppliers to the county come and speak with us about ordering (getting discounts) and new products. We then got to have "play time" more or less and try out all of the new products, my favorite was a graphite crayon that you could apply water to - kind of like water color pencils - it made such beautiful marks. I also got to experience the planning of the next county wide inservice and volunteered myself to come back and do a graphic design/computers in art education inservice with the teachers (I think it'd be so fun and really really helpful). I also spoke for awhile with one of the other elementary art teachers who is currently doing his masters through JMU and using i-movie in the classroom with a group of students, very interesting stuff!


Tuesday (4/10)
Today was tough and got off to a bit of a rocky start. Coming back from spring break (which for me wasn't so much of a break), I think I might be a bit sick. I have had an iffy stomach and on-off headache for the past couple days and today I think I added a fever to that combo. I have a newfound appretiation for teachers that can teach while they are sick, I was trying to put on the happy face and get it done - but by block 3 my students were asking me I was feeling ok and I was wrapped up in my scarf and sweater. I've started pumping the fluids and have taken some advil since I got home - I'm hoping with a good amount of sleep tonight, this will go away. I'm not sure if this is stress caused or just catching whatever is going around - I know that I need to sort out my stress issues though. I've been trying to do student teaching, freelance work, searching for design jobs, and prepare for the end of all of this (aka college). I've also had some added stress because I am in a long distance relationship (luckily he lives back home) so I have been driving back home alot (for him and my family). Driving will take a lot out of you! I try to keep my personal life out of my teaching but it definitely does affect it; it can't hurt to have the students see you as a little more human though. I really got some sympathy out of a group of girls that normally give me a hard time.
I was observed this morning by my university supervisor - I taught half the class and my cooperating teacher taught the first half. The 3D class was working on their reposse and books with my teacher and about halfway through class we switched gears and I taught the intro to the cup and saucer lesson. I started a discussion on how they had interacted with cup and saucers previously, where they had seen them, etc. We then looked at a PowerPoint of images from a variety of artists, starting with the most shocking - the fur covered teacup, saucer and spoon by Meret Oppenheim. As soon as the students saw it - awesome reaction, which finally started the discussion. We explored all the images and I started to ease them into the concept of "part-to-whole" relationships - prefectly on the morning announcements this morning they were doing analogies, so I was able to reference that while illustrating the idea. I gave the students an overview of the entire project, got materials passed out and did a quick demo of how to make the plaster cup and saucer using the styrofoam dishes as molds. Almost everyone finished that portion during class, so when they are back in the classroom on Thursday they will finish that, move on to the next step and have some time to do their reposse. I think doing a couple projects at once is a good idea because it doesn't leave any down time - the studentst always have something to work on, also its more like being a real artist - rarely are you working on just one thing. If I was going to do today's lesson over again I would have brought in different cup and saucer sets and left one on each table, asking the students to study them - hoping that would fire the discussion.
The 7th graders worked on finishing their Kandinsky inspired paintings, as they finsihed they got to work on free drawings with the materials - giving them a little repreve before they start a new project on Thurs. I spent their class helping students that needed it and refining the lesson for the class tomorrow - they are already done with their paintings. They will be doing a representational self-portrait next, using newspaper to weave a grid (9 blocks) - I'll be using Audrey Flack and Louise Nevelson as the inspirational artists - I'm really excited about it. To warm them up to this new direction of abstract art they will do a symbols exercise that we did for visual journaling, I'll also be using this with the 8th graders before they start on their new project next week.
The 8th graders are finishing up their mosaics, some have even groted - as they finish they are helping other students. They will start on a new project next week, color collages - inspired by a book my sister gave me called "Colors" that I will read them. Before they start in on this though, since they will be finishing at different times - I'm going to do some painting to music with them (many have been requesting to do this) as they finish.
Ok, time to get on the lesson planning so I can hit the hay early and hopefully start feeling better ...

Wednesday
Another even day and another new lesson started! Today we had our two 8th grade classes and 7th grade all girls class - unfortunately they had a field trip today so we only got them for about 45 min. and that was split up by taking them to lunch. It was a good day though - I am thankfully feeling better than yesterday, well my energy is still kinda drained but hopefully with some more good rest tonight I'll be back to normal. I grouted my mosaic today with the first 8th grade class, it turned out really well (yay) and then was able to help the other students grout their own. I also learned how to spell grout correctly today - way to go Tyler! I am still struggling a little with the one girl in that class - she told me today that she has a problem respecting anyone my age because her first set of foster parents were my age and they were horrible. My response to that was that she shouldn't judge a whole age group on her experience with one pair of people, that I respected her and hoped it would become mutual. She still makes little side comments about me all the time - I can tell she is joking, but its that mean kind of joking - I just laugh it off and move on. She's very hot and cold with me, but I try to be consistantly warm with her, we'll hope that works - especially since she comes in everyday to visit my teacher.
The 7th graders today started on their new project - doing a warm-up activity that got them thinking about symbols. I used a visual journal activity that we did at one of our student teaching seminar - the students were to draw five symbols (circle, triangle, cross, square and spiral). Then they rate the symbols on a scale of one to five, one being the one they are most attracted to visually - after that they use these symbols to create a composition. They can repeat the symbol, use it with different sizes/colors and distort it - we used watercolor pencils for this and I instructed them to use different methods with each symbol. Then I read them the "meaning" of each symbol and how they related to them with their ratings. I think once they learned that and looked at their drawings they really started to get the concept of symbols - I discussed how to analyze the information with a couple students. After that I was hoping we would have time to view the PowerPoint I had made and begin the discussion on representational art, but they had to go for the field trip, so we'll get to that on Friday. I'm still brushing up the lesson anyway though so that gave me tonight to really get everything tested out and prepared.
During planning my teacher and i worked on lesson plans - I helped her create a PowerPoint on Georgia O'Keefe - showing her shortcuts of getting images from the internet. She loved it! I got started on a sample for the 7th graders and figured out some little things in the lesson that would need to be changed. I'm pretty excited to do more of the lesson with the 7th graders tomorrow when they get the intro.

Thursday/Friday
Some days just seem to run together, that's what the past two days have been like. I have really gotten into the representational self-portrait lesson with both of my 7th grade classes at this point. Earlier in the week we did the exercise with symbols to get them to start thinking in that fashion (instead of quite so literally). Now we have moved on to exploring the artists (Andrew Wyeth, Audrey Flack, and Louise Nevelson) through a PowerPoint and have started prepping their black board (cardboard) with newspaper woven grid (twisted newpaper woven to create 9 squares). The odd day 7th grade class went along with this doing what I asked, though moving fairly slowly with it as usual; however, my even day class of girls gave me a really hard time on Friday. My teacher had been called down to a quick meeting during the first part of class, so I had the girls all so myself and as soon as I showed them the images of Nevelson's work (Sky Castle, for one) they started rejecting the direction of the project. Well, we had a talk about respect and open-mindedness after that and I simply asked them to trust me that what we were doing was going in a direction that would bring them something that would be their artwork that they could be proud of. It was definitely a lesson in keeping calm under pressure and not taking things personally (this is a lesson I'm really excited about) . I have also learned that sometimes the best way to calm down a class is stand there, completely silent, surveying the room - for some reason students always find that so unnerving that they get quite long enough to hear instructions. I used that tactic with my 3D students on Thursday morning when they talked through about 95% of my instructions. I finally sat down on one of the tables and looked around until they got quiet, then I asked if they had ever had a conversation with someone that wasn't paying attention and the like and we talked about how that made them feel. Then I told them I had been having a conversation with them all class ... it was like lightbulbs going off - unfortunately with this age group that kind of novelty only lasts but so long haha. I also did some painting to music with one 8th grade class and will be doing one day of that for each 8th grade class because they had all heard about it from 7th graders or heard the music and had been requesting it, so I'm going to do it. I figure I'll test out a short form alternate approach to the lesson with them which can also act as somewhat of an intro to their color collages that they will start next week. My teacher and I came up with a cool way to give them their color for their color collage - they draw crayons and have to use that color (or shades similar) to create their collage along with two other words that they draw (adjective/adverb and an emotion). My teacher and I also discovered for one of the last lessons I'm doing that we can order t-shirts and iron on stuff from a catalog because she still had money left in her budget. When I have my own classroom I am going to try and make sure I have a little reserve for "emergencies" - it seems like a pretty rational thing to do!
I am now officially down to 3 weeks left of teaching, its going to get intense here the next couple weeks as I start, teach and finish up lessons ... and try to move out of my house all at the same time. Multi-tasking will be key for sure!