The Human Rights Project

I haven’t written in a few days mainly because there hasn’t been too much to report on. I went exploring on Thursday to check out the area a little more. Yesterday I attended an information session and campus tour to learn a little more about the environment in which I’ll be working. Coming from an urban research university setting of over 32,000 students, it’s rather intimidating to step onto a campus of around 1,700 students. Where some people would feel a little lost and overwhelmed being in a large, bustling environment like VCU, I feel overwhelmed being in a more traditional environment. Being a well-rounded person and professional is about broadening your horizons and learning to adapt, and that’s what I’m trying my best to do. I can’t wait to start my new job and really get into the swing of things. I’m planning to spend the weekend preparing for my meeting with the director of a local educational advancement program that I am planning to volunteer with. I’ve also been doing a little research for my job and finding a lot of cool things out there. For example, this video.

On my quest to find ways to translate my Art Ed skills to Museum Ed, I recently joined Art Education 2.0, “An online professional learning community of art educators.” This is a fantastic community to be a part of. I found this video among many others, that really spoke to me about how and why we need to be working to revolutionize the way we teach. Technology has changed the world tremendously and we have to remember that children today aren’t learning the same as children 20 years ago.

Take a look.

Here’s a livebinder that I’ve been working on for my new favorite artist, check out his website here.

I’m honestly not too sure how I feel about them. I wish that you could change the layout of each page especially if you’re working with pictures. I definitely think that this is an excellent resource, it’s just something that I’d like to play around with more.

http://livebinders.com

“LiveBinders is dedicated to helping you empower others with the information you work hard to collect.

If you’re like us, you’ve used ‘creative’ tactics to keep track of all your links either through email, word documents or endless lists in your browser bookmarks folder. It’s hard to put a group of links together in any meaningful format. And sharing a group of URLs is cumbersome for everyone - the sender and the receiver. Have you ever looked through your bookmarks list and forgotten what they are all for?

We created LiveBinders so that you could do with digital information what you do with the papers on your desk - organize them into nice containers - like 3-ring binders on your shelf. With our online-binders you can also upload your documents and easily combine them with your links in a neat and organized way.

We welcome you to create as many LiveBinders as you need to help organize the stuff you collect and share on the Web.”

ALL I want to do it sit here and work on my teaching portfolio and organize the million pictures I took of my kids’ work. Is that so wrong?

I LOVED THIS UNIT. 

Probably my favorite project that I’ve ever taught. A four week 5th grade unit on “Color Harmony”. Each student made a ceramic ipod and painted it using different “color harmony ipods”. We worked on our knot tying skills and made headphones to go with them. Checkkum out.

via

Broken Record phrases of the Day:

“NOT YET, but in a second. WATCH ME FIRST!”

“You worry about you. That’s the only person that you are responsible for.”

“If you can’t stand in line the right way, you will go back and sit down.”

“I shouldn’t hear your voice from across the room.”

“I need every single person to stop what they are doing and put their eyes and ears on me. If you are still coloring, you are not following directions”

I feel like Wednesdays are the longest days ever. I have three of my toughest classes back to back and I feel like I have to break every step down in to sub steps. I also learned today that my 5th graders are having a hard time doing knots. My teacher and I decided that to help them out with that, next week we will be starting a project on textiles/weaving. Yesterday I started doing a “5 minute finishing touches” warning for all my classes. At “ten till the bell” (meaning 10 minutes till the end of class, 5 minutes till cleanup) I stopped my classes and told them that we had only a few minutes left and to put on finishing touches, I found that this helped them to wind down easier and made cleanup go smoother. I’m going to bring that back for my last class of the day, maybe that will put a peaceful end to the crazy day.

Here’s my interactive color wheel that I created for my Color Harmony unit.

It took FOREVER to make, but it is SO worth it. Plus, I got to use the laminator… which is only the coolest thing ever.

How do I use this? 

When I began my lesson I reviewed primary and secondary and introduced Complementary and Analogous colors to them. I wrote up definitions on the board and explained them and if “we” (aka “they” - my students) were having a good day and behaving well, “we” got called on to come up to the board and pick out colors that fell under certain categories.. for example “I’m looking for a quiet hand that is raised to come up to the board and move a set of complementary colors out of the color wheel and onto the sheet music to make a “color formula”. I changed the wording of it depending on the class. For example, I stopped saying “move the colors” because in some classes the students would have to “move their colors” if they were being disciplined. I started saying “make a color remix by placing the colors onto the sheet music”.

Most of the time I’ll only talk about tertiary colors (blue-green, yellow-green etc.) as a bonus, because remembering the formulas is challenging enough.

Sometimes I have the color wheel scrambled and I put it together while explaining the formulas, or sometimes I have it put together and I take it apart. I love being able to switch it up on a whim if a class is taking longer to get it or I need to have the wheel displayed differently for another lesson.

If you have any questions about this or anything else I’ve posted, feel free to click the “ask” button at the top of the page :)

Today is day two of teaching a fourth grade lesson about public/street artist “Banksy” out of fear of my camera dying that I definitely need it for, I created a “photo booth” using photo booth to take their photos. Gotta learn to improvise!

Rule #129308123

Make the art product with the same materials that the students will be using, and make it well! I’m going to be honest with you, I like to “wing it” in my teaching sometimes.. but I used to “wing it” a little too much sometimes in this department. So far, I have learned that the best motivation that you can have is a finished example of the product that the kids will be making, this always makes the kids “ooooh and ahhh”.

I always feel like I’m in a cooking show when I whip out an example that I’ve already made. These are two practice mandalas. I used watered down tempera on the green one and full strength tempera on the purple one. I like the wash effect so we’ll be painting them with watercolors instead.

My kindergarten and second grade project was inspired by a Mandala project that a friend of mine is doing. In doing research I found that a mandala unit would be a cool way for kids to explore pattern, nature cycles, and different artistic mediums. On day 1 we talked about mandalas in Asian countries and we made paper mandalas using markers and alternating patterns with shapes. Day 2 is all about ceramics! We are using clay and different pattern stampers to create patterns. So far the project has gone very well. My main challenges have been understanding the need to break the steps down so that they are basic enough for the little ones to follow the process. You cant just say “flatten your clay”, you have to describe and show them exactly how to do it. Without being extremely specific and clear in your directions, you may get clay slaps thinner than a sheet of paper or a soggy mess stuck to the plastic on the tables. On day 3 we will be painting our mandalas with watercolor paint and deciding on “sacred places” to hang them.