Center Grove HS Visit

This week I was able to schedule a quick visit to Center Grove High School. I always get super nervous before going to observe for some reason, but luckily the whole art department was extremely friendly and welcoming. I met Mr. Jones, the art department head, as he was teaching his first class of the day, so he handed me off to Katie, a 2D art teacher, to get a tour of the department during her prep. I think the school is undergoing renovation, so I didn’t like the feel of the hallways because it was so barren, but the art rooms were great. She introduced me to everyone in the department and then she took me back to her classroom to show me what her students are working on now and where they’re headed. It was really helpful because she let me look at her materials and student projects, which projects completed the requirements and which ones had to keep working on it, and exercises to prep them for the next lesson. I headed back over to Mr. Jones classroom to take a look around during his drawing class. They were working on proportions of the human face in preparation for a self-portrait project. He was helping students choose which photos they should draw from and let me keep some materials for the art history portion of his class. He told me that instead of asking them to memorize the names and dates of works of art, he asks them to critically examine the components of them and write a critique on the historical piece of art. I think this is a great approach, because to me, what I gain from my art history courses is the chance to analyze the composition, context, and technical skills of the work and why it was made the way it was, not what year it was painted. After visiting his class for a while, I went to another 2D art classroom. I can’t remember her name and the art department guide on the school website isn’t up to date, but she was fun to observe too. She also teaches textiles so I got to look at some of their projects and they are incredible. Her 2D class was interesting to observe though because she had students working on contour portraits of the person sitting across from them, but she had two special needs students that needed the project to be adapted for. So she had them take a picture of their partner on their iPads (the school gives one to each student) and then trace the features. She then printed out their tracings onto transparent paper and had them trace it on a larger sheet of paper using a projector. Then they used tissue paper and glue instead of color pencils to color it in. I thought this was a great way to observe how a teacher can effectively adapt projects for students who need extra help and still come up with a cool finished project.

I also tried to talk to students more this time and it made the observing process a little less awkward. I even got to talk to a student who was in the marching band so it was fun to hear about her experience compared to my own in high school. I think what makes observing so awkward for me is that it’s an art class, so there are limited amount of times where the teacher is at the front of the room instructing. It is more of a work time for students, so I always feel like I’m invading their personal space when walking around. For example, I feel like it would be more natural for a student whose subject area is English, because they could sit at the back of the class and watch the lesson. In art, there’s so much free time. Not saying that the art teachers aren’t helping their students and doing work, just that I feel awkward because I’m just observing students working. I will say Center grove did a better job of talking me through their lessons and letting me look at materials, etc. but there always comes this point of “okay what do I do to occupy her now” feeling I get from the teachers. Not in a mean way, just that they know it’s not exactly insightful to watch students silently do work, so they feel a need to fill up my time. I don’t know if you have any suggestions for this?

I then got the opportunity to sit and chat with Mr. Jones during his prep period. I really align with a lot of his values and beliefs about art education. Like he believes in order for the school to support the arts you have to tap into community pride. To do this, he enters a lot of his students’ artwork in the scholastic art awards and when he comes back to the community saying we had 10 students get gold keys and two move onto nationals, it makes the community proud of their art program and in turn encourages the school to support the program. I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that and I’ve seen it play out at Concord (the school I work for with color guard). There’s so much community pride in the marching band that it’s become this massive entity in the school so the music department is huge and well supported there. Aside from that, he said that the department has weekly meetings during school and they are all very involved in each other’s classrooms and collaborative. It seems like a really great group of people to work with and Mr. Jones seems like he has a lot of experience and wisdom. I did get the opportunity to briefly explain what CoT was and my reason for observing (scouting out a mentor) and I can’t tell if he was receptive to it or not. I figure I’ll observe a few more schools and then if Center Grove is still where I’d like to be at, email him saying his principles and values in art education most aligned with mine and that I would like to continuing observing only his classes on Fridays. I don’t know, I think that sounds good. Even if he personally doesn’t want to take on a mentor, I would be happy working with the other two teachers I met. I still need help working on that next step form observing into mentorship. Maybe we could discuss strategies more in class? Only if I’m not the only one who’s having the same kind of fears and troubles.

I only stayed at Center Grove for half the day because I started to feel like I was just hovering and making the teachers feel awkward, so I left before lunch, but overall it was a great experience!