Teachers demonstrate mastery of and pedagogical expertise in the content they teach.
One of the many strengths of the Colorado State University Art Education program is the number of studio classes we must take to complete our degree. I chose to complete the BFA, which requires a studio art concentration with a capstone art show. My studio concentration was metalsmithing and jewelry, and I have taken numerous classes in art history as well as two-dimensional design, three-dimensional design, and graphic design. By having so many studio classes I am comfortable teaching everything from sculpture to digital art. In addition to studio classes we have practicum experience in art classrooms at the elementary, middle school, and high school level. In these field experiences we slowly gain more responsibilites in lesson planning and classroom management under the supervision of the classroom art teachers. I rate myself as proficient in Quality Standard I because of the number of studio classes I have taken and the practicum experience I gained in the Poudre School District.
ELEMENT A: Teachers provide instruction that is aligned with the Colorado Academic Standards, their District’s organized plan of instruction, and the individual needs of their students.
The Colorado State Visual Arts standards align with 21st century skills in that the standards focus on the process of making art as well as the final product. By aligning lessons to all of the standards I can assess students on the entire artistic process. When designing a lesson my focus is on idea generation, providing choices in how to approach the assignment, and reflecting on the art-making process. By framing lessons in this way I want to prepare students for life beyond the art classroom by helping them develop criical thinking skills, perservering through challenges and teaching them how to talk about art. This artifact is a portion of a lesson I taught on stop-motion animation. It addresses all of the state standards and takes students through the entire artisic process.
ELEMENT B: Teachers develop and implement lessons that connect to a variety of content areas/disciplines and emphasize literacy and mathematical practices.
Teaching a lesson on stop-motion animation provided a way to incorporate numeracy into the lesson because the students had to learn about how the amount of frames per second affected the quality of the animated film. It is important as teachers to highlight to students how math is used in art, Artists measure things, use spatial reasoning skills and in animated films they must consider how pictures they must take to make the film. This student noted how long it took to make a short film in her reflection where she said she learned it takes a long time to make a movie because she must record every movement. All of the lessons I teach require a written or oral reflection because it helps students practice their communication skills by reflecting on their artistic process and final product.
ELEMENT C:Teachers demonstrate knowledge of the content, central concepts, disciplinary inquiry, appropriate evidence-based instructional practices and specialized characteristics of the disciplines being taught.
In designing a lesson I focus on the big ideas of the human experience common to everyone because this is one way to link art to the daily lives of students. In the middle school art class I taught a lesson on making art out of soda cans. I like to introduce contemporary artists to students to show them how artists use a particular medium to communicate an idea. In this case the artist was a metalsmith and even though she did not use soda cans in her art it was still a great example of how she used three-dimensional art to communicate a message. Through the work of this artist I could demonstrate to students how the artist was commenting on being an outcast through anthropomorphizing metal creatures with human names. In the attached presentation I was able to give students a brief outline of how metal art is made, the big ideas the artist was trying to communicate and gather feedback from students on their observations of the art examples being shown.