Teaching - Future Forward

 Unit: Future Forward - Adventures in World Building

Products: 

Mural - Inside of the building. Student illustrations will be scanned and printed on ceramic tile.

Blacktop - outside on the playground. School-wide project where we are thinking about composition and storytelling through abstraction.

 

Background: 

• Operating under the assumption that humans have always wanted to record their history and experiences. 

 

Launch/Planning/Introduction to the Unit

“After the efforts of neighbors and friends, the neglected wall becomes a work of street art affirming the story of the neighborhood, its history, and the people who live there. Hey, Wall is a celebration of street art and artists, but it is equally a celebration of the heroism of children who take action to become change agents for their communities. Author Susan Verde uses spare text often with repeated sentence starters to weave a hopeful narrative about the ways a wall can unite rather than divide a community.” 

→ an excerpt from Katie Cunningham’s review of Hey Wall on the blog “Classroom Bookshelf”

(Show to students - where our project ‘will be and live’)

• This year, the artists (students)will collaborate with art teachers and other students to explore world-building and -shaping through a variety of artistic strategies. In the spring, the students’ artwork will be the basis of two murals designed for the school. One mural will be indoors and made of tile; the other will be outdoors, and made of paint.

Storytelling Lesson

Home Lesson

Leaving Your Story Behind Lesson

Reflection: 

I thought this would be a great opportunity to use this project to reflect not only deeper on this experience and what information it yields, but also how it relates to my own personal identity and experiences - how does this impact my teaching and learning? Could this change and impact my teaching style in the future and therefore their learning?

I grew up in a rural town outside of Pittsburgh in the 1990s.  My experiences- including my family, my home, my own art education, among many other things, contributed to my identity and who I am today, delivering this explorative content to these students.  I am a college educated, middle-class, white woman and this identity (as well as the experiences that built it) affects how I teach about identity whether I choose this or not.  It is my awareness that is imperative to address.  Students in my classes today are living through a different time, not only matter of factly, but ideas, values, and events have all shaped society and therefore their experiences that shape who they are - their identity.  It is very exciting to think about how all these identities will unite, while also remaining significantly separate, to represent the school we call ours.  

My home, growing up, was in a neighborhood.  It had five bedrooms and a pool.  I knew that others shared this experience while some did not. That is similar to some of my students and different from others.  I need to be aware of this.

 

Upon reflection of the storytelling activity present in this unit, I would have picked ballet, as I took ballet classes and danced on the dance team.  Dance classes and equipment and lessons take money, transportation and time. To purposefully repeat myself: I knew that others shared this experience while some did not. That is similar to some of my students and different from others.  I need to be aware of this. I have and will continue to present many questions to my students regarding identity because I agree with Milner in “But Good Intentions Are Not Good Enough: Doing What's Necessary to Teach for Diversity” when he writes, 

 

“In order to negotiate some of the power in the classroom, teachers might

pose questions which help students locate answers to questions and areas of interest, resulting in a teacher/student interaction that is dynamic and evolutionary. Such a partnership, where teachers are open to learning from their students, has the potential to minimize the power of the teacher because knowledge and expertise are negotiated and valued among all those in the social context” (p. 243).

 

 

I have some students who have experiences similar to that of my childhood.  Others might live in a small apartment and play video games as their ‘activity’.  Others might not have a supportive family relationship they can count on.  Others definitely have different experiences than I do, even if some of their experiences appear the same on the surface.  Milner comments on this in “But Good Intentions Are Not Good Enough: Doing What's Necessary to Teach for Diversity” when he writes, “students enter the classroom with different needs and expectations. As well, teachers should understand that they and their students operate through and must navigate through power structures that have a huge bearing on opportunities to learn in the classroom” (p. 249)

 

Each individual has a unique and complex culmination of their experiences, and therefore an identity impossible to replicate.  This is why, as an art teacher, I need to understand these various types of experiences that lead to identity and provide not only acknowledgement of them, but also the tools for students to understand and deconstruct them themselves.  

Milner, R. (2021). But Good Intentions Are Not Good Enough: Doing What's 

 

Necessary to Teach for Diversity. In 1134338892 854909810 W. B. Knight 

 

(Author), Diversity, Pedagogy & Visual Culture (Preliminary ed., pp. 

 

233-255). Cognella.