Week 11

I experienced our first snowfall this morning at 5:30 am! It was pretty but it made me 20 minutes late to Fishers because it was so dense and traffic was unusually slow through construction. Once I finally made it to Fishers I caught the last half of 1st period where they continued to finish up their tile project and then were given a presentation on glazing so they could start glazing work from the beginning of the semester. While they worked I noticed strange objects on the table at the front. I asked what they were and they were Ocarinas (ceramic whistles). Ms. O said that she set examples out and a step by step how to tutorial for students who had already finished their tiles and finished glazing their older pieces. We then talked about how having a resource file full of short tutorials on making odd, ceramic objects was a great strategy for those who finish projects early or work faster than the rest of class. These tutorials are great because it offers students the opportunity to apply skills they learned from a project in class to an independent project that develops their problem solving skills and deepening and broadening their scope of possibilities that come with each learned technique in class (ex: using the pinch hand building technique isn't just for building simple pots, it can be applied to make a complex object like an Ocarina). I will definitely apply this strategy in my own teaching as these individual projects expand on techniques taught in class, allow for student choice, and puts students in a position where they can't depend on the teacher to solve a problem but have to rely on the text and own research and problem solving abilities, while simultaneously functioning as a classroom management strategy by effectively keeping students who have finished early from distracting or disrupting other students' work.

During breaks throughout the day I worked on building my own ocarina which is shown below! I will have to bring it to class sometime, it's very awesome! And then I included some other examples from previous years.

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Intro to 3D had a quiz over their unit on clay and they all did very well! Meanwhile, I began to grade my quiz for the unit on the wheel for Ceramics 1 and realized that Ms. O and I had accidentally given them the wrong version. I had created the quiz before the unit and sent it to Ms. O. After the unit, I went back and modified aspects of the quiz to include concepts that I emphasized and get rid of information that I had cut out of the presentation or didn't go over in depth. I also created a review powerpoint for students specifically tailored to this quiz and had it available on Canvas. I guess I had forgotten to send Ms. O the modified version. It wasn't to tragically different from the original, but I was bummed because there was information and ideas I really wanted to see their responses to. I had to go through and make sure not to take away any points for parts of the quiz I didn't include in the review or go over in class. One part of the quiz was a written response. We had discussed examples of the topic in class, but I should've included in the quiz to provide an example we didn't talk about in class because a lot of them just regurgitated examples from class when it is supposed to be more of a conceptual part. Then, a lot of them didn't fully answer the question, so I took points away, but wrote on the test that if they answered A, B, and C on a different piece of paper and gave it to me, I would give their points back because I am more interested in mastery than performance in one moment of time. I also noticed that I accidentally made a "trick" question for a true or false statement where half of the statement was correct and half was false. I don't like those because my goal isn't to trick the students, it is to assess what they have learned, so I will edit that. As I graded, I made sure to make not of parts that were repeatedly wrong for multiple students and I will discuss those in class with them next Wednesday. None of their scores were deeply affected by those lost points so I'm not too concerned, but I just want to clarify why the answers are what they are and why the interpreted the wording the way they did. So I learned a lot of lessons from giving my first quiz!

Notes on Common Mistakes

Notes on Common Mistakes

Exceptional written response

Lower student response

Typical student response

During lunch, Ms. O and Ms. Osborne talked about their pet peeves when it comes to art supplies. Each art teacher in the department has to create a list and order supplies for their specific projects. Sometimes those supplies overlap and what they hate is when other art teachers take from their supplies or ask and expect them to give them their supplies. It just made me aware of the fact that at the end of the day, each teacher is given a budget and it's one thing to ask for extra erasers and another to ask for more bristol board or clay.

During AP Drawing/2D I talked to a girl about a watercolor she had done of ballerinas. Since my mom owns a dance studio I figured it would be a great opportunity for the student to sell her art. I asked my mom if she liked the piece and would be willing to pay money for it to display in the studio and she said yes. The student was so excited to have one of her artworks sell. It'll be good practice and she'll learn how to price artwork so she is not underselling or overselling herself.

So my day at Fishers went really well and was jam packed with a lot of experiences that will come in handy in my future teaching. After Fishers, I traveled to Triton Central High School, a.k.a. the total opposite of Fishers, for an interview! I think they have 500 students total and it's in the middle of nowhere. It was definitely different. Anyway, I met with the band director and two guard instructors about a position as a co-director for the school's winterguard. It went extremely well. I had amazing letters of recommendation from my past employers and I think I have a very confident and professional presence. It was one of my first "formal" interviews and it was education related so that will be a good reference for when I begin interviewing at schools for a teaching position. I look forward to hearing back from them. I think my only downfall is that I can't guarantee that I would be back next year because I will have just graduated and will be looking for a job and I think they are looking for someone long term, so we'll see!

That was my jam packed day!