One of my top leading goals as a person, artist and teacher is to be a life long learner. To be forever growing and sculpted into the best me that I can become. This is achievable through consistently striving to learn from my mistakes and being inspired by the simple pleasures in life such as, the beautiful intertwined roots in trees, the exhilarating feeling when dancing, and the exciting discovers while reading. Before being called to be an art educator, I discovered my love for art as a young girl and knew that I wanted to be an artist. However, something huge was missing from this passion of mine, and this was people. When I was brought to light that the role of an art teacher is to develop relationships and encourage others to make connections, explore, and challenge themselves, I knew that this was what I wanted to do.
One of the many jubilant moments in teaching is being able to whiteness a student achieve a goal that they believed they couldn’t achieve. The distinctive memory that pops up in my head is of a student that told me, “I can’t create a collage, I can only do realism”. As his teacher at the time, I responded, “trust the process of creating and learn from your mistakes, you can do this!” After multiple reassuring conversations I had with him, you can imagine the joy I felt when he excitedly announced one day, “Miss. Glenn I’m doing it! I am making a collage, you were right about trusting the process!” Moments like these, where students move pass their mistakes, discover ideas, and grow as an artist, fuels my passion and desire to be the best art teacher I can be for my students.
While constructing rich and meaningful lesson plans for my students it’s imperative to allow time to play and familiarize with materials, connect the students to artists, artworks, and their community, and integrate the Big Idea within the lesson. I have witnessed many students be very hesitate in making chancy decisions while creating art. In order to reduce the doubtful mindset of students, I’ll strive to foster an environment that allows risk taking and experimentation with ideas and materials in a suitable manner.
Constructing a lesson plan around a Big Idea has personally opened my eyes and heightened my awareness to the world around me. Not that learning painting skills, or understanding safely procedures is important, however the core of art is what the students will walk away with at the end of the day. The Big Idea will encourage the students to look at the world with a unique perspective and assimilate art within those ideas. A great example of this, is my Utopia Lesson Plan where students construct historical inspired buildings out of an array of material while focusing on the Big Idea of, ” Throughout time, and across cultures, people have considered what places and buildings could be in an idealistic utopia.” Along with the guiding questions in the lesson plan “What factors make up a ideal utopia?” The students are discerning and analyzing throughout the lesson how a world should look and how they could make an impact on their community in real life. Connecting to the student’s life and the outside world will enhance the overall interest of the students.
I am aware that building relationships within the classroom takes a great amount of patience, care, and love that is necessary in creating a dialogical atmosphere. My hope is to understand and respect my students on a personal level so that they know they can feel safe to create within my classroom and have someone to turn to when they need further guidance. I will additionally, seek to differentiate my teaching ways to fit everyone’s individual learning style and need within the classroom. I will achieve this by making an earnest effort to open up communication through one on one conversations, leading classrooms discussions, collaborative activities, and group exercises. With all this being said, my role as a continual growing art educator is to develop deep and meaningful relationships where I can then use art as a tool to flourish the ideas, minds, and creative juices within my students.