Teacher: Isabel Fernandez
Friday, November 13th, 2021 at Johnson Elementary
I was very prepared going into this lesson, so my biggest focus was on the excitement I felt to be teaching this awesome group of third graders at Johnson Elementary again.
I would like to mention, for my future self, that at the start of class one of the students in the hall heard I was there today and yelled with excitement "Ms. Fernandez is here?!" It was such a small, yet heart-warming moment and makes me feel even better about my choice in becoming a teacher.
Overall, I would say that this lesson went very well despite exploring many more of the more difficult topics and teaching practices.
This lesson pushed me as a teacher because it was a collaborative lesson, choice-based material, and lightly covered the more sensitive topic regarding race and culture.
The collaborative part of this lesson went really well in this version of this lesson because we made specific time to work together as a class to come up with expectations before working in groups. I think that the students did great coming up with they set of expectations and understanding the importance of them for the success of creating a collaborative piece.
The students came up with the following expectations with some probing and scaffolding: Listen, Work/Participate, Communicate, Be Nice/Share, Do Your Best!
The other part if this lesson that went great was the students material choice and use. The students seemed to thoroughly enjoy the choice of material and every one was presented in each groups' final product. The ticket out the door was to tell me their favorite medium was and the average answer was the use of chalk pastels.
There is one problem that comes along with the enthusiastic use chalk pastels, and that is that the line/color/shape that the students so thoughtfully put down can quickly become muddy and mix together. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it can symbolize their identities and individual cultures mixing to create one "table culture. However, I can't help but be a little sad some of their great mark-making got a bit lost by the end of the making process. I think if I were to teach this lesson again, I would simply address how chalk pastels will mix if the artist is not careful to not mix the medium with itself. That or I could simply replace chalk pastel with another choice 2D medium, say oil pastels.
We were asked to address Mark Bradford one more time and talk about his artistic choices as a Black man who demonstrates his cultural history in his pieces. We were successfully able to talk about him and probe students to come to the conclusion that artists share there cultural pasts to share their experiences with viewers who may not have gone through or experienced the same. This made the connection between representing their own cultures, where they are from, and what they learned about the contemporary artist much more reachable/comprehensible for 3rd graders.
Another thing that was not originally a part of the plan, but worked very well, was hanging up each groups artwork in the hall for students to view on their way to washing their mighty dirty and chalk-covered hands, arms, and faces. If I were to do this lesson again, I could see myself utilizing this mini gallery walk type thing again whether there is a spot for pieces to be hung up or if they can be place on the floor on the way to the bathroom.
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