Synthesis and Conclusion
I began this semester with almost no knowledge of teaching within a classroom, but during this semester I learned many different concepts, theories, and skills to help me develop as a stronger and more self-sufficient educator. One of the most important concepts that I built within this class was differentiation, this concept stayed with me during every single lesson that I taught during this semester. Allowing me to hone in and focus on how I as a teacher can better my lesson planning, adjust the way I think, and probe students thinking and creating to help students learn in the way that was best for them. I also learned different ways to assess students learning before and after lessons, delve deeper into the studio habits of mind, and how to develop lessons, document them, and use various tools and skills to reflect on my learning as an educator.
Looking back at my art education experiences this semester many things stick out as impactful, specifically the numerous guest speakers who opened my eyes to different ways to guide and encourage students in their ways of teaching. When learning to Assess students’ art there were many ways to see students’ markers of success and base their art off of their own experiences and development of Artistic skills which was seen in our readings on Kellogg and Lowenfeld.
This knowledge was then furthered by meetings and discussions on schools of thought such as Reggio-Emilia’s approaches to teaching art or TAB (teaching artistic behaviors) approaches to Art. Both of these are very student-centered and driven forms of teaching students to develop their artistic skills, however, these forms of thought do impact how we assess students and their development, as each style of teaching comes with different ways to assess and develop students learning. Reggio- Emilia is student-centered, they decide who and how they plan to interact with the workaround them and also their materials meaning when they are done and when they are not done, this conscious decision for students to be the ones to decide to guide and shape their learning in these environments means that assessment comes more from their development of skills and how they are guiding and shaping their learning rather than assess a specific assignment.
This in itself brings up another interesting topic we learned this semester which is who guides students teaching and when, this is simply acknowledging the different approaches there are to teaching students whether if it is student-centered, partly student-centered, or teacher-centered. No matter what approach or school of thought you use when teaching, it is important that you are pushing and developing students’ minds, while also being flexible if something is not working as planned, and managing your learning. A valuable quality that teachers should have is being flexible and able to learn what to do differently next time. Through this course, we have reflected on many different experiences, such as service-learning, and our different teaching projects, which have helped me be able to improve. As we continued to make lesson plans I was able to take feedback from previous ones which helped me be able to improve my last one and allowed me to break down lesson planning as I developed as an educator.
Keeping in mind the developmental stages that the students are in will be key in having an engaging lesson, and one that will allow students to understand and grow from that lesson. We can also learn new ways to invite students to play and interact with that lesson depending on their development and age, the movement for example is a great way to interact and introduce a lesson with students for them to connect in a new and fun way to that lesson. These small building blocks that are used to understand and develop a lesson allow teachers to think and understand the processes of lesson planning but from a student’s perspective. From my service learning with Artistic Abilities, this was something that became very apparent, what aspects need to be developed more in my lesson plans to assist students. I found myself asking not only my students questions to help me gauge their thinking and understandings but also asking Alison for tips on how best to explain and expand my lesson planning to help accommodate those issues that may come up straight away.
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The studio habits of mind were also very helpful in helping me connect to students’ understandings and help them in the process of art-making. In my lesson plans this semester I kept in mind the studio habits and how my expectations and understandings of the lessons would connect to these studio habits. Observe was one that I consistently put into my lessons, allowing students to observe the world around them to express and develop their art. While developing their ideas I encouraged students to envision and plan, stretching their ideas. By incorporating these habits into my lesson planning helped me understand the different ways to engage and encourage learning and the different ways that objectives can be more than how to create a piece of art, but also how someone planned, discussed, and engaged in the art-making as a whole. Including all 8 studio habits into a lesson helps the teacher work with every student's needs.
As a future teacher, I hope to continue to learn and develop in not only my learning but also in how to make my students learning stronger. Throughout this semester there are many things that I have done that have progressed my learning by allowing me to make deeper connections. Overall I found myself learning so much during this semester, not only conceptually but putting those concepts and ideas into practice which allowed me to think about what I value and wish to incorporate when I am an educator. I feel as though I grew so much this semester, and while I faced some challenges I was able to push through and learn even more from my mistakes.