During my tenure as Arts Coordinator at The Arts of Life, my position required an innovative and instantaneous willingness to help a diverse community of artists with developmental disabilities reach each of their personal art making goals. It was just something you had to be able to do and it was not always easy. It was a beautiful struggle discovering how each of the artists presented their own unique interests, perceptions, and abilities toward creating and connecting to art-making practices. When I began the MAT graduate program at Columbia, one of the first key concepts I remember coming to understand was how to teach to diverse students. It was during that first semester when I discovered the educational philosophy of June King McFee. Her theory was concerned with why student draw the way they do and how they develop and learn cognitively. Chiefly, how student perceive an environment based on personal cultural perceptions and make sense of it through art. “How art relates to cultural maintenance and the enculturation of students; how art transmits cultural values, attitudes and beliefs; and how art functions as a major communication system in society,” (1984, p. 188) were essential to McFee’s investigation of educational deficits and the development of her theory. I was absolutely enamored with her insights toward how as educators developing a subculture is key for a charismatic learning environment. After all, if a classroom is a place where shared values and attitudes need to exist to begin with, the teacher need only to do two things to develop a subculture within that framework. According to McFee (1961), the first is to have an enthusiastic and appreciative attitude toward art. The second is to have a tolerance toward new and interesting things and ways of performing and recognizing them as having high value regardless of one’s own culture or preferences (p. 19).
During my high school student teaching experience, one of my classes contained 12 students with emerging English Language skills. Their diversity spread across six different ethnicities and languages. Even though a translator was present in the classroom, not every language need was able to be met, even with the additional support. Several of these students were refugees and had never had formal education, let alone Western education. As a result, I found myself constantly revisiting these concepts and embracing these attitudes throughout my lesson design as well as my day-to-day interactions with my students in order to ensure that each student was being heard, appreciated, and excelling in meeting the objectives of the course curriculum.
Additionally, I taught a Cartooning class in my high school placement which had eight students with 504 and Individual Education Plans. This included students with hearing impairments, ADHD, and Autism, to name a few. The methods and tools for providing appropriate and effective differentiated instruction I acquired during my coursework at Columbia quickly came into play. Any determination to achieve student achievement through exclusive direct instruction went straight out the window. I had to design and even re-design modes of instruction that appealed to a broad range of learning styles. I provided day-to-day class schedules and checklists to help students stay organized and maintain a low level of anxiety. Per IEPs, I made sure students had the adequate time they needed to finish projects that reflected their highest level of understanding and potential. The summative assessment of teacher readiness for my coursework at Columbia was the edTPA. Task one of edTPA reflects how I designed a unit for this class to meet these diverse needs of my students.
Keeping these diverse needs of my students in mind, I encountered another invaluable resource during my course work, Studio Thinking by Louis Hetland. This book presented eight studio habits, or dispositions, which researchers observed being taught in studio classrooms. These studio habits (developing craft, engage and persist, envision, express, observe, reflect, stretch and explore, and understanding art worlds) are non-hierarchal and are not taught in any particular sequence. Rather, according to Hetland (2013), “one can begin with any habit and follow its generative energy through dynamic, interacting habit clusters that animate studio experiences as they unfold.” These studio habits played a significant role in aiding content area literacy, sequencing of learning, and developing my own methods of student-inquiry. During my elementary student teaching, these habits were posted at the front of the classroom. At the end of each class students would engage in reflective practice by identifying which studio habits were used during that day’s learning and why. This provided opportunities for me to assess student understanding as well as help students connect to rationale for their learning. In all, these dispositions provided a thorough framework in designing learning experiences for my students that would guide them through a variety of art making process both physically, socially and cognitively.
In addition to meeting the diverse needs of my students as prescribed in edTPA task one, this evaluation required lesson design with a special focus on student use of discourse and syntax as it related to the use of content focused academic language. Preparations for edTPA were integrated throughout our coursework which resulted in an existing familiarity with methods for achieving successful student discourse and syntax. The unit submitted for edTPA required students to read a New York Times Article on comics as high art. Students read the article aloud, engaged in whole group discourse, and responded through the creation of a comic interpretation of a famous piece of art work. Finally, students displayed their understanding of academic concepts by composing an artist statement, presenting their work before their peers, and engaging in a final critique. The lesson was a perfect opportunity to integrate the concept of visual literacy as well as English Language Arts standards into their learning.
During my high school student teaching experience, one of my classes contained 12 students with emerging English Language skills. Their diversity spread across six different ethnicities and languages. Even though a translator was present in the classroom, not every language need was able to be met, even with the additional support. Several of these students were refugees and had never had formal education, let alone Western education. As a result, I found myself constantly revisiting these concepts and embracing these attitudes throughout my lesson design as well as my day-to-day interactions with my students in order to ensure that each student was being heard, appreciated, and excelling in meeting the objectives of the course curriculum.
Additionally, I taught a Cartooning class in my high school placement which had eight students with 504 and Individual Education Plans. This included students with hearing impairments, ADHD, and Autism, to name a few. The methods and tools for providing appropriate and effective differentiated instruction I acquired during my coursework at Columbia quickly came into play. Any determination to achieve student achievement through exclusive direct instruction went straight out the window. I had to design and even re-design modes of instruction that appealed to a broad range of learning styles. I provided day-to-day class schedules and checklists to help students stay organized and maintain a low level of anxiety. Per IEPs, I made sure students had the adequate time they needed to finish projects that reflected their highest level of understanding and potential. The summative assessment of teacher readiness for my coursework at Columbia was the edTPA. Task one of edTPA reflects how I designed a unit for this class to meet these diverse needs of my students.
Keeping these diverse needs of my students in mind, I encountered another invaluable resource during my course work, Studio Thinking by Louis Hetland. This book presented eight studio habits, or dispositions, which researchers observed being taught in studio classrooms. These studio habits (developing craft, engage and persist, envision, express, observe, reflect, stretch and explore, and understanding art worlds) are non-hierarchal and are not taught in any particular sequence. Rather, according to Hetland (2013), “one can begin with any habit and follow its generative energy through dynamic, interacting habit clusters that animate studio experiences as they unfold.” These studio habits played a significant role in aiding content area literacy, sequencing of learning, and developing my own methods of student-inquiry. During my elementary student teaching, these habits were posted at the front of the classroom. At the end of each class students would engage in reflective practice by identifying which studio habits were used during that day’s learning and why. This provided opportunities for me to assess student understanding as well as help students connect to rationale for their learning. In all, these dispositions provided a thorough framework in designing learning experiences for my students that would guide them through a variety of art making process both physically, socially and cognitively.
In addition to meeting the diverse needs of my students as prescribed in edTPA task one, this evaluation required lesson design with a special focus on student use of discourse and syntax as it related to the use of content focused academic language. Preparations for edTPA were integrated throughout our coursework which resulted in an existing familiarity with methods for achieving successful student discourse and syntax. The unit submitted for edTPA required students to read a New York Times Article on comics as high art. Students read the article aloud, engaged in whole group discourse, and responded through the creation of a comic interpretation of a famous piece of art work. Finally, students displayed their understanding of academic concepts by composing an artist statement, presenting their work before their peers, and engaging in a final critique. The lesson was a perfect opportunity to integrate the concept of visual literacy as well as English Language Arts standards into their learning.