A Visit to the Traditional Classroom

I apologize for the lack of entries lately. I have been enjoying my first summer "off" as a teacher. This week I had the pleasure of teaching at a summer art camp for children ages 6-12. At first I was nervous to enter the traditional classroom again after my year in the online classroom. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this week and realized that all the confidence I gained this past year as an online teacher has translated well into the traditional teaching environment. I love working with different age groups as a change of pace and I got to try several new art lessons with campers that I have been thinking about for some time.
Who Am I Collage:
For one group I introduced the idea of a mixed media portrait collage involving things they like. I started with a lesson on facial proportions that I teach in my high school class. I followed that up with a step in which they trace the portait onto a page protector. Lastly, and the part they enjoyed the most, they constructed images of their faces using pictures from magazines. They paid close attention to picking things they are interested in. They also focused on matching the colors of their skin and hair tones. The final result is a layered portrait.

Pinhole Cameras:
I was so excited to try this lesson with a younger group. I have always been primarily interested in photography and I want to get younger students excited about traditional photography. The campers worked together to build pinhole cameras out of shoe boxes and captured images with them. I set up a darkroom to develop their photos and create reversals of them. When the students returned for a second day of my class they wrote creative stories about them and mounted them. The result was multiple ages of students excited about a method of photography they've never experienced before. I want to continue to develop lessons like this to promote the understanding of this older technology.
I also was able to showcase some of my recent art as part of the instructors' exhibit. What a great week!

Graduation

Last night I got to experience one of the biggest highlights as my first year as a teacher, graduation! You might ask if our graduation is online because the school is online. We do hold a physical graduation for those students who can travel to the location to attend. And boy is it a big one! My job for graduation this year was to help pass out honor cords for those students graduation with a GPA of 3.5 or higher. 

Look at all those cords!

 I also helped pass out the valedictorian medals and National Honor Society stoles. I had the pleasure of watching all the graduates walk by and directing them to the table if they had earned honors as well as putting on the cords for them. This gave me the opportunity to meet many of my students from this year and see their smiling faces in person as they experienced this important day. I also informed many of the students of their achievements of graduating with honors. I spoke with a student who was in tears about how far she had come after finding out she had earned honors. After getting the graduates ready I watched from the floor as over 1,000 students earned their high school diplomas. It was amazing to be a part of such an achievement. What an experience!

Congratulations

It is my birthday today and I couldn’t ask for a better present from my job than a conversation with an excited graduate. Scores for the OGT’s (Ohio Graduation Test) were posted today and I knew of a student from my first semester class who was just waiting to pass science to find out if she could graduate this year as an 11^th grader. I went to check her scores this morning and found out she passed. We talked this morning all about her future plans and all the excitement she is feeling. She plans to go into nursing. I have been speaking to many of my seniors this week, making sure they are on track to pass and graduate and it is a wonderful experience to see their hard work finally paying off for them. Some of these students are the first in their family to graduate high school and many of them didn’t see this as a possibility for themselves but they are accomplishing this because of the opportunities online school has offered them and their strength to stick it out. I am very proud!

Preparing for the End of the Year

I cannot believe I am only 3 ½ weeks away from the end of my first year as an in-service teacher. I have learned so much and couldn’t ask for a more positive experience. I am starting to get prepared for the end of the year in my classroom and there is much to do. A little bit ago myself and the other art teachers sorted through all of the best student artwork we’ve collected over several years (just one for me) for the graduation art show. The work will be viewed before the ceremony where over 1,000 of our students will graduate. I am so excited to attend this event. This week I have begun to work with seniors individually to ensure they pass my class so they can graduate. In my experience at brick and mortar schools, seniors often do not participate in final projects as they get out several weeks early but in my classroom I opened up all the content for the rest of the year. I can control what students see and usually I only keep current content open for them so they don’t rush through it but at the end of the year it is nice to give students the flexibility to finish early if they choose. So far I’ve gotten a lot of assignments submitted which I hope makes end of the year grading a bit less insane (yeah, right!).

A bit unrelated, with the completion of my thesis (and defense coming soon) I have had some extra time to start working on my own art again. I am really enjoying rediscovering making art for pleasure and I hope I can bring these experiences into my new classroom in the fall. 

Mixed Media on Canvas (in progress)

Spring Things

It’s been a little bit longer than I wanted since I updated but it has been a busy time for my school and myself lately. A couple weeks ago we took a field trip to the Columbus Museum of Art and had a nice turn out of students and parents. We had a docent-led tour that was very fun and informative. As always it is so nice to meet my students. I also had an opportunity to meet with them at our recent Family Night, an event held in many cities in the state for parents and students to attend and meet their teachers while doing fun activities like trying out for the talent show! It is neat to see how an online school holds a talent show. Students audition in front of a camera at Family Nights and their classmates vote on the best videos online to decide the winner. This is similar to how the Senior T-shirt Design contest is judged as well. Our art department picked 4 finalists and students will soon vote for a winner whose design will be printed on the Class 2012 t-shirt. At Family Night I had the pleasure of gluing down our Art Club collage for the year. Students each sent in several doodle squares and I combined them into a collaborative collage. I also worked with students at Family Night to create doodles that will be used to make another collaborative collage that will be constructed by students, friends, and family members at events in the future. I love finding new ways to get students excited about Art! 

Sick Day

This week I have come down with a cold and yesterday I took a sick day to try to get myself better. This is the first sick day I have ever taken as a teacher and I started to think about the preparations I would have needed to make had I been in a traditional brick and mortar classroom. In the online classroom, substitute teachers are only needed when teachers are out for a number of weeks. This means I did not need to write sub plans. Though I was out, my classroom kept functioning for students. I was not able to answer questions via phone but catching up from yesterday was fairly simple. I replied to emails and returned voicemails. This same concept applies to my students as well for when they might be sick or out for several days. I do not need to re-teach content and that student should not get too far behind. Students also attend school when teachers are at professional development meetings, another day they would have had off. During winter and spring break many of my students logged on to catch up on missing work and they had access to recordings of lessons and content. Online learning is not bound by time constraints or holidays, which provides flexibility for all.

Thesis Project

My thesis project is complete! This year has been such a beautiful experience and I cannot think of a better topic to have picked for my thesis project. I invite you to read it if you want. Also, I WILL continue to update my blog even though my thesis is done. Thank you all so much for reading!

Download it here!