ARTE 302
with Dr. Laura Hetrick
During the Fall semester of 2023, I took Art Education 302: Art Learning at the Secondary Level with Dr. Laura Hetrick. During this time, I gained teaching experience at Urbana Middle School, and observing experiences at Franklin Middle School and Urbana High school. This was my first experience observing and teaching at the secondary level, and I learned a lot about what it takes to be a successful educator to an older audience. Featured assignments for this class include my presentation and activity on Assessment, my group curated lesson plans that were taught at Urbana Middle School, and the curriculum grid I created for a hypothetical High School Level drawing class.
Assesment Presentation
One assignment for this class was to present content from a chapter of our class textbook, and the chapter I was assigned was about assessment. During this project, I learned about not only the different types of assessment, but effective ways to implement assessment into multiple stages of the lesson. One example of this is the use of informal assessment, and how it can be used as a checkpoint to gain insight on students' understanding during the lesson.
Assessment activity
After my presentation, I asked the students in my class to complete an activity based on what was presented. This activity entailed creating a rubric for a pre-made lesson plan that I had brought printed copies of. After learning about successful rubric making during the presentation, students were asked to put their new knowledge of assessment to the test.
Reflections
After reflecting on my experience, I feel that I had a successful presentation, but could have had a more successful activity planned. The students seemed overwhelmed by the lesson plan that I presented them with, and were unsure on where to start on the rubric. If I could do this lesson over, I would factor in time to first create a rubric together as a class with a much simpler lesson plan. After this, I would have the students try to create their own rubric in pairs so that they could refer to a neighbor for help or inspiration.
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Curriculum Grid
For this assignment we were asked to create an 8 week curriculum for an art class at the secondary level. We had full creative freedom over this assignment, and were able to choose the specifics of the hypothetical class.
Reflection
This curriculum grid assignment showed me how much work is required to be a very well prepared teacher, and the thought required to be the teacher that I want to be. I chose to create a curriculum for a high school drawing class, and touch on topics such as value, perspective, figure drawing, and mixing materials. On a socio-emotional level, students are intended to learn about their community through the analysis of place and people.
Urbana Middle School
During this placement at Urbana Middle School, my group and I learned a lot about what it takes to teach at a middle school. Our cooperating teacher, Janice Knight, helped us stay on track with our lesson plans. Our lesson plans surrounded around color theory, and had art history elements including a presentation on Andy Warhol and the Pop-Art movement.
Reflection
Overall, I feel that our lessons went alright. The first day, we didn't have enough time to get through everything we had planned. The students were not incredibly receptive to our presentations on color theory or Andy Warhol, but when given an informal assessment about the primary and secondary colors, they were able to successfully name the correct colors. I think the students enjoyed the main activity of their celebrity portraits, many of them understood the assignment and chose non traditional colors to fill in their drawings.