Response and Application (Ch 4)

This is the response and application from Chapter 4 of Rethinking Curriculum in Art by Marilyn G Stewart and Sydney R. Walker.

This may easily be my favorite chapter so far. I feel like I finally understand what we're talking about when we talk about "unit foundations". Most especially I appreciated and will apply this question:

"What do I want my students to retain and understand (about art) long after they have left my classroom?"

In quoting this question I put "about art" in parentheses because using the enduring ideas as my foundation I know that students will hopefully gain lessons beyond the art world about life and ethics and goals. 

But as an art teacher I appreciated this succinct list that helped me realize what I want my students to be left with:

• "Art is a purposeful human endeavor." > a free space for experimentation
• ART MAKING: a process of inquiry
• "Art attains value, purpose, and meaning from the personal, social, and cultural dimensions of life." > ART HISTORY 
• "Art raises philosophical issues and questions." >compassion
• "Artworks are objects for interpretation." ART CRITICISM 
• "Change is fundamental to art." > adaptation

Teaching is not.....

Teaching is not like filling up a bucket, or even planting a seed.

It is not like handling a fire or even starting one.

Students are first and foremost their own teachers. 

Teaching is a little like parenting, 

a little like unwrapping a present,

a little like climbing a mountain,

a little like having a best friend,

a little like running a business, 

a little like growing a garden,

a little like juggling ,

or being a movie,

or a politician,

or a big sister,

or a coach,

or glasses,

or light.

Teaching is like nothing else.

WEEK #2: How Do We Look? (Middle School)

Enduring Idea

Our context is our perspective.

Rationale

In order to gain a balanced perspective of an image
 it is important to understand the context 
from which it comes and from which we view it.

Artist/Artwork

Demonstration in Baton Rouge (9 July) Jonathan Bachman/Reuters

Key Concept

Visual culture influences how we see the world which influences how we understand images an

Essential Question

How do our beliefs affect how we see the world?

Unit Objectives

• Standards
• Compare one's own interpretation of a work of art with the interpretation of others. VA:Re.7.1.5a
• Identify, describe, and visually document places and/or objects of personal significance. VA:Cr2.3.5a  
• Identify and interpret works of art or design that reveal how people live around the world and what they value. VA:Re.7.1.6a
• Design or redesign objects, places, or systems that meet the identified needs of diverse users. VA:Cr2.3.6a
• Explain how the method of display, the location, and the experience of an artwork influence how it is perceived and valued. VA:Re.7.1.7a
•  Apply visual organizational strategies to design and produce a work of art, design, or media that clearly communicates information or ideas.  Apply visual organizational strategies to design and produce a work of art, design, or media that clearly communicates information or ideas. 
•  Explain how a person’s aesthetic choices are influenced by culture and environment and impact the visual image that one conveys to others. VA:Re.7.1.8a
• Select, organize, and design images and words to make visually clear and compelling presentations. VA:Cr2.3.8a
• Own Situation: I need to evaluate my own understanding of how I understand visual culture.
• Cross Curricular Application: History: Since the start of humanity we have decided our history in large part by the images that record it.

Instruction Plan

• Objective: Recognize how our own cultural context affects how we understand and read images. 
• Lesson: Analyze Our Own Understanding of Images
• Activities: 
• View Demonstration in Baton Rouge (9 July) by Jonathan Bachman/Reuters
• Discuss what students see and understand. 
• Open it up to why they think about the image the way they do?
• How might someone from 100 years ago in Africa view this image? What about 200 years ago in America?
• Brainstorm and create a mural collage to represent how they view their generation. 

WEEK #1: The Most Important Skill (Junior High/High School)

Enduring Idea

The most important skill is how to learn.

Rationale

The creative process requires a growth mindset.

Artist/Artwork

El Anatsui

Key Concept

Learning is Fluid

Essential Question

How does Failure help us?

Unit Objectives

• Standards
• "Redesign an object, system, place, or design in response to contemporary issues." VA:Cr2.3.IIa 
• "Visualize and hypothesize to generate plans for ideas and directions for creating art and design that can affect social change." VA:Cr1.1.IIIa
• Own Situation: Love for learning
• Cross Curricular Application: Psychology

Instruction Plan

• Objective: Experience and recognize the growth mindset
• Lesson: Skills and qualities can be learned and improved
• Activities: 
• Brainstorming: ten minutes "hash it out" through drawing or writing or compiling images from the internet to the prompt:
• Describe yourself now. 
• Describe who you want to be? 
• What do you wish you were good at?
• Cross Curricular Application: Take the mindset test as a class (students writing down answers).
• Watch video that introduces the idea of growth mindset. Discuss applications (personal life, future, history, making art.)
• Make stuff
• Explain project leaving room for suggestions.
• Each student chooses something they want to make a picture of  (anything: self portrait, animal)
• Each student draws a random scribble on a piece of paper and submits it to a basket. (rocks, clay bits, whatever can be used)
• Each students draws a scribble from the basket (or handed out).
• Using that scribble as the foundational structure for their picture they can add to it to create whatever they planned on making.
• Discuss how the scribble could still be what it needed to be. 

Conceptual Framework Verbs

E N G A G E

to be involved or to participate; to be a proactive participant in the learning experience, self-motivated and dedicated for your own learning

Through open-ended discussion art making, students will be empowered to lead their own learning and make their own discoveries through their own questions.

E N C O U N T E R

to experience; to face

With historical and critical context, students will be prepared and read and apply the meaning and significance of art work.

C O N N E C T

to join, link, fasten, unite between seperate entities

Armed with historical, current, and personal contextual awareness, students will seek out and create relevance of the conent to themselves, other disciplines, and other times and groups.

I N T E R A C T

to act in reciprocation; to have an affect on another

To expand their context, and to gain appreciation, compassion, and respect for those around them, students will work in collaboration with to gain additional perspectives and applications from their peers and community members.

U N D E R S T A N D

to construct knowledge from context

Students will learn how to learn beyond a set discipline through re-applicable interpretations of meaning, gaining an expanded perspective with greater compassion.