12-6-09

In the interest of brevity, I would describe the lesson that my partner and I taught as one rooted in the idea of fear, in which students were encouraged to express intense personal emotion, or attempt to draw emotional reactions from their viewers through a mixed-media piece. We equipped students for this task by showing video clips and images that used aesthetic devices such as lighting, size, and color to express or evoke fear.

Something that was in the original plan that was not carried out well (due to me forgetting, to be honest) was a classroom discussion of composition--how to creatively use the elements and principles of art to one's advantages in filling the paper. Some students drew extremely small figures or did not think enough about the size and shape of the objects involved in their piece, causing the finished product to possibly be less powerful than its potential as an artwork. Even this issue goes back to a larger one, which was a disorganized demonstration on my part.

Another related factor is the simple condition that it was not our classroom; We had only a limited time to prepare resources before students arrived, and had limited relationships with the students, which served as a disadvantage in the ability to motivate the two or three students who were not interested in the project.