BRAINY 

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1. ​There were many small tweaks that I made when giving my tour plan from tour 1 to tour 2, most of them were ways that I framed and asked students questions. I also changed where I gave students information on the actual work, and re-framed connections right away. Most of the time when I changed something it was because I had gotten a feel for the timing better by the second tour and so that allowed me to concisely condense all the information I thought students needed to know. I also changed up the order of what objects I went to based on the flow of the room and what direction we were traveling, this allowed for students to follow me in a much easier way than during the first tour. I also changed small things based on what my tour group was relating to or discovering within the piece, for example on the princess painting all of my students thought she looked like royalty immediately so I began to shape my questions more on why she actually does not look royal here and the intentionality behind that. This allowed me to reframe the information for them slightly while still highlighting what I put in my original plan. 

2.  During the tours, I felt as though I was able to ask and then re-ask questions to connect students to the learning. I also feel as though I was able to connect students to feelings by asking close-ended questions like "do you think it is easy to relate to people who have a lot more money than you, like a celebrity?" And then ask them why based on their answer, which framed in a sense what I wanted them to answer and I think helped them develop a strong emotional relationship to the piece. It also allowed students to feel confident in their answers when I framed things this way, as I was asking for their opinion rather than asking things like "what do you think the darkness means", those questions had fewer volunteers to answer them and the students seemed more nervous about getting something wrong. 

3. The greatest challenge had to be an overall engagement or equal distribution of responses. Every single group seemed to have students who were more comfortable speaking in large groups and answering whatever question I threw at them, however, I tried very hard to select students who were contributing for the first time or very rarely when they felt like sharing. It was very difficult engaging everyone especially in much larger groups such as my group of 15, but I feel like as students warmed up and I reframed questions they were more likely to share at least once. Getting them engaged and keeping it that way was definitely the hardest part. 

4.  There were many similarities to classroom teaching, but also quite a few differences. The largest similarities would have to be trying to accomplish a student-driven discussion, by letting students direct their own learning I think leads to great discussions and greater connections. Also rooting your lesson or activity in those discussions and using motivation and ideation was another big similarity that I was able to use in both the museum and classroom. The differences then would be it is mostly discussion-based, also my teacher example is really the only instruction I made on how to create the project, whereas with teaching especially if its a newer skill they have to prepare all the different aspects and it tends to be more complex and guided in the steps to create it. Also within the classroom, while it is student-driven you also want the activity and creation process to take the most time, or for most of the class, students should be creating something. In this setting, students should be connecting their creation to their activity but they are here to learn and interpret art so the activity is more supplemental than in the classroom. Students were able to respond to the activity, in the same manner, they all knew the point of the activity and were able to connect, and explain their decisions regarding their mask and animal. However, how they created, colored, and what animal they chose was up to them, one girl created a goldfish as her animal. Many students chose animals we would consider to be strong, but as long as they made an intentional choice and were able to tell me why they chose that animal and saw it as a protector they achieved the project goal. 

5.  The interpretive strategies were very helpful because they allowed me to really focus on how to connect this art to students based on what they already could see. To me it was almost like pre-assessment, I was able to build on the material they were most interested in and ask them questions that would get them more engaged and delve deeper into their learning. It was also beneficial because I did not feel as though I was scripted even though I had a tour plan, it allowed me to shape my conversation on the group of students in front of me based on what their discussions were on. Which in turn allowed the students to engage and come to their own conclusions and shape their own learning in a more concrete manner. 

6. I learned many things from this experience but one of the main ones would be interpretive strategies, by relying on these strategies I was able to reframe questions faster and in a more relatable way, and it allowed me to think faster on my feet. I think I can continue to bridge these strategies into my classroom and future teaching by allowing students to frame their own teaching so we can learn and grow together.