Tuesday was my first day at Rondout Valley High School. My partner and I had just gotten our placements, so we didn't know that we were partners until we saw each other at the sign in desk. Our mentor teacher met us and took us to her classroom. She is very nice and easy going. She also has a sense of humor. Her classes are mostly ceramics, but she has one portfolio development class. Since ceramics is a very time sensitive art form, she told us that we can teach our lesson to the portfolio development class that will be doing self portraits.
During her planning period, our mentor teacher let us look at her binders of lesson plans for each class. She is very organized so it made it easy to understand what we were looking at, and it helped us to see what the students would be doing during our time at Rondout. She starts each lesson with a powerpoint presentation where she introduces the lesson and provides historical context.
Her ceramics classes have been working on an assignment called whimsical fish. The students started by making two pinch pots and connected them to make the body of the fish. Each student had a completely unique fish, and they had a lot of personality. Some of the themes we saw were pirate fish, a mexican fish that was holding a taco in its fin, a french fish with a painter's palette, and some that didn't have a particular theme but were definitely had whimsical qualities. One of the requirements was that the fish had to have texture. The students approached this in very different ways. Some used the ceramic tools, others used found objects to press into the body of the fish. We noticed that some students were reluctant to put texture on their fish because they seemed to enjoy their fish's smooth body. Another requirement was that the fish had to have a large hole to let air in and out during the firing process, or else the fish would explode. Most students accomplished this by opening the mouth, and others cut out a hole in the bottom of the fish, as long as it wasn't going to sit flat on the shelf where the hole would be covered. At the start of the class, the teacher went over attaching parts with slip and blending the parts together. She also went over the importance of not having any parts that are too thick because they would blow up in the kiln. The students showed a lot of creativity and technical skills.
The portfolio development class had been working on drawing skills, starting with contour. After they learn contour, they will begin learning gesture. The teacher explained to us that there has not been a constant drawing and painting teacher, which has made it challenging for the students to learn to draw. She said that they were basically starting from scratch. They are now working on self portraits using contour lines of different thickness. Most of the students' work was well drawn, despite their problems with teachers in the past. The students taking this class are very interested in art and want to pursue art in college. This class helps them develop a portfolio to help them get into the schools they are interested in. Many of the portraits were well-drawn, but a few of the students lacked the confidence needed to take their drawing skills further. For example, one student chose to draw the back of her head, instead of her face, because she said she couldn't draw. I thought this was very unfortunate because the image of the back of her head was not very interesting, and she could have done so much more if she had attempted her face. Most of the students were done with the contour lines of their portraits and were moving on to color. The materials used for color were their choice. A lot of students chose to use water color, which looked great contrasted with the bold outlines that were done in marker. Some students chose to work in colors true to life while others chose non-realistic colors for their portraits. One thing that I noticed was their work was very expressive. I was glad to see that they were able to include their personality in their self portraits instead of just worrying about their technical skills.
I am looking forward to teaching a lesson to this class with my partner. Our mentor teacher is amazing and I think that this experience will teach us so much about being an art teacher. Our mentor teacher has a great relationship with her students and her classroom is such a comfortable environment. I am very happy with my placement at Rondout Valley High School.
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