I have a Mentor!

I visited Fishers High School today and officially asked Ms. Ontiveros to be my mentor. She said she'd love to! I think Fishers is going to be a great experience and Ms. Ontiveros and I share a lot in common so I think we are going to work together really well. She is engaging, gives me materials to keep, and includes me in all of her conversations with students and faculty. I was looking for someone that really wanted me to be a part of their teaching and who wanted to share what they've learned with me and she fulfilled that expectation. I really look forward to working with her and the art department at Fishers.

I took notes (click for link) during the school day again. I think next semester when I begin going once a week I will take more specific notes geared towards a particular expectation I am working on so I can really hunker down and reflect on a significant event in my journal and use it as evidence. Today I observed a lot of things. Something very cool that happened was a student opened up class and talked about the North Dakota Access Pipeline and actions she was taking to help support Standing Rock. She asked the class to contact her to donate blankets, food, money, etc. This was fantastic because Ms. O allowed her to take time out of her class to discuss this issue and the student took the initiative to bring up an issue that was important to her. The student seemed nervous while speaking but I was impressed that she stood up to talk about something that she believed in. After she finished speaking to the class I asked the class 'How many of you have heard about the DAPL?' and about a quarter raised their hands. I went on to explain that most of them probably haven't heard of it because there is a media blackout on the protests. Then the girl who initially brought it up explained that they really should be called protests as Standing Rock views it as 'protecting' their land, not protesting. The class discussed a bit more about the issues going on including the use of rubber bullets, high bail fees for those arrested, and the need for support. It was great to see a student taking active interest in a current issue of human rights.One of the highlights of my day was watching a student give Ms. O a backpack to give to a student who expressed a need for a backpack but did not have enough money. What I love about this school is that the students are so genuinely nice and really look out for and include students that are marginalized. The school has "Giving Tuesday's" where they fundraise and students bring in items to donate to other students in need and each week teachers nominate a students who needs the resources or materials that were collected. The low point of the day was witnessing a student acting disrespectful towards Ms. O. Earlier in the week he had apparently called her a bitch in front of the whole class and she removed him from class. Today was his first day back in the classroom since the incident and he strolled in and she said, "Uh hey, have anything to say?" and he replied, "No." She kept pestering him to apologize and he kept acting like nothing had happened and eventually she dropped it. If I were her, I would not have let him enter let alone stay in my classroom until a proper apology was given. Other than that, the day went really well! ( The above picture is a project I particularly enjoyed in her intro to 2D art class. )

Final Project Reflection

Unfortunately, I was stuck at home with the ick (or whatever we were calling it) and could not participate in our final project for the CoT shuffle, so I will reflect on preparation for the project.

I was excited to do the bottle cap mural since it was right up my alley (because art). I am glad that I was put on this team because I felt as though my other co-teachers were unaware of the scale of a project like this and underestimated how much supplies would be needed in order to make it work. With my background in art, I was able to give them the reality of how a bottle cap mural would be accomplished. For this reason, I took on the tasks of preparing the canvas and collecting the glue guns and bottle caps. I painted a large foam board with an underwater design because I knew the bottle caps would have gaps between them and that color showing through those gaps would produce a better image than just white foam board. I chose foam board because of the weight that would accumulate once the bottle caps were glued on. I went to the recycling center by the antique mall to hunt for bottle caps because it was embarrassing to hunt for them on campus. I was lucky enough to have another IU student who interned there help me dig through the bins for bottles to get the caps. He told me that this center was going to be closed down the next week because Bloomington is only loaning the property and now wants to build apartments or whatever. I thought this was strange because I thought Bloomington was pretty green, so I would have expected the city to be a little more reserved in knocking out a recycling center. Anyways, I did have to purchase the foam board and I purchased 5 glue guns because I knew it wouldn't be productive if there 3 glue guns to share amongst 8 people. I feel like I am getting a taste of my future as most teachers spend a lot of money out of pocket for supplies.

Our objectives for this mural were that students would be able to collaborate with each other to construct a mural, recognize the disparities of usable water distribution, discuss water contamination, and acknowledge their personal "water footprint." The main idea was to get students to understand that clean water is a luxury for a majority of the world's population.

I could use this project again for a mural for elementary students. If I were to translate this into a high school project I would really expand it and make it a huge, permanent installation because high school students would need to be challenged a bit more and it would be a cool project for the school community to be exposed to.

A pattern I see after completing this project is that this is the second time I have purchased materials for a class project. I need to find different ways to get these materials without having to pay for them all by myself. This project my co-teachers did provide a glue gun each though, so they spent money too.

In evaluating my preparation for this project, I would have preferred to have clearer objectives and a more solid lesson plan. I though that the ones we came up with were a little vague and I didn't think that the questions we came up with for discussion would sustain a whole 45 minute period for CoT shuffle. I did well preparing the mural itself and making sure that we had more bottle caps than we needed so we didn't run short halfway through completing the mural.

Next I plan to compile this as evidence for an expectation.