11-22-09

It's really difficult to talk about building community in the classroom without sounding naive about the prevalence of certain socially disruptive factors, and being idealistic about how a community can be effectively formed in spite of these challenges.

All a teacher can do initially is to make efforts from the beginning of the school year to create an environment where everyone is accepted and valued, by encouraging diverse views, appearances, and art-making, and enforcing a classroom policy in which one must leave negative things such as gang-related speech and actions outside of the room, perhaps even in order to enter the room.

A big part of when this community can be encouraged is in collaboration during work time and during sharing and critiques. If the teacher opens up to the students and encourages them to do the same, a number of students may follow, and members of the class may get to know each other as individuals, breaking barriers that exist outside of the art room.

In order for this to be truly effective, all students in the room must be invited to participate, and this community must be made attractive to each individual student by the teacher and others who have come on board. How to make community attractive depends completely on the students' interests.

11-15-09

I can't say that I've encountered any classroom management issues that can be considered "severe", but from my (limited) experience in the classroom it seems that the most common classroom management problem is a lack of motivation, manifest in potentially opposite ways--students' refusal to work, or having a chaotic classroom where not much is actually being done artistically (and of course both of these can take place at once).

In motivation being the biggest issue, I think it's important to acknowledge that the root of the problem can come from numerous factors, including the student not knowing why art is relevant to their own life, lack of examples of educated individuals in the students' community, a lack of value for education in the home, a lack of rest or down time outside of school, and other issues.

I think the best strategy to employ with most classroom management problems is for the teacher to make (him/her)self present and accessible in the classroom, apply student interest and energy toward artwork, and have low-pressure conversations with students before or after class.

11-8-09

I always wanted to be an artist so I was never much of a student in non-art classes, and I have lacked the motivation even to complete assignments that were of some interest to me, simply because of my schedule (I'd love to put in all the hours it takes to maximize my potential output in painting class, but I also have other classes and a job...and I need to sleep sometimes) or the timing of the assignment in general.

However, usually when I'm not motivated to do schoolwork, it's because the assignment does not apply to anything I want to do with my own life, or the guidelines of the assignment restrict me from handling it in the way I would like to.

I don't think there's any way to answer a question of how I would motivate uninspired students until it happens. I definitely won't win every battle against the general lack of motivation in some students or its many causes, but what I can do is be sensitive to the fact that my original presentation of a lesson may not be the best way to reach some students, and be willing to make adaptations based on student needs and interests. Knowing what those needs and interests are will (hopefully) come from meaningful relationships with the students, if only in conversations about hobbies during work time. Fortunately, art is flexible enough to apply to any student's interests or ambitions.

While teaching an art lesson based on the idea of personal fears, I tried to motivate one student at my site by speaking with him and asking him about his interests, but he would only give very short answers that weren't helpful to me or himself. I allowed the assignment to bend, and told him that if he wasn't afraid of anything, then he could create a piece that would draw fear out of others--but up until the last few minutes of the last day of the lesson, he would not work beyond the small lines he marked his paper with seemingly just to get rid of me. I can only hope that if I were his regular teacher, rather than an occasional student teacher of a four-day assignment, I would have gained a better understanding of where his lack of motivation comes from and how to find and direct whatever interests he does have.