Week 14

Literally start my journal the same every week for the past three semesters, but had an exciting day at Fishers today! There was sort of a tense situation with Ms. O and one of her AP students. Ms. O had posted on her teacher Instagram account T.'s painting that he was working on. While it is a beautiful painting I saw something about it that struck me as a little inappropriate. So I approached Ms. O today and asked if she saw what I saw and she was embarrassed she hadn't noticed it earlier. The AP students do and are allowed to create nudes, but the context of this piece being a self portrait and being kind of sensual made it uncomfortable.

Without being too graphic, the painting is a little phallic, or as Ms. O worded it "It looks like his winkie is out." T.'s pieces have been very personal and sensual but in a tasteful way, so Ms. O feels that is concentration is him coming to terms with his own sexuality, which a big topic to grapple with as a teenager. So now there was this dilemma concerning how to talk to him about this painting without being awkward. I suggested she talk to Mr. Rawlins and ask him to talk to T. so it's man to man, but Ms. O felt that would embarrass T. even more because he and Mr. Rawlins have no relationship. We also talked to Ms. Osborne who gave advice on how to word things when talking to him, which I thought was completely appropriate and sensitive. She said to say something along the lines of, "I’m glad that you feel this is a safe space for you to process and express your feelings and thoughts and I support your right to do so. That being said, it is still a school environment and this content, while perfectly appropriate for AP and when you go to college, is not accepted within the broader school community. I don’t want you to be in a position where you have to justify content that you might not be ready to share with others. So I would take a picture if this is the way you envision and submit that to your portfolio and then blend it in with the skin until you are able to take it home permanently. Then you could repaint it. "

Ms. O pulled T. aside and explained what she saw and she said he didn't get as embarrassed as she thought he would because he didn't even see it at all. He said it was just a shadow from the pants. So Ms. O just told him to rework that area so it does not appear phallic. While humorous, this experience was helpful for me as a future educator because I definitely wouldn't feel uncomfortable talking to a female student about a piece being inappropriate or too risque, but I never thought it would happen with a male student.

The rest of the day went smoothly. During lunch we had a discussion about blending graphite or charcoal with your finger and whether it's a universal don't or acceptable on occasion. The debate was between the Drawing 1 and drawing 2 and 3 teachers. The drawing 2 and 3 teacher is mad that students are coming from drawing 1 having learned to blend with their fingers which she thinks is unacceptable and even went so far as to blame it on his "poor" choice in schooling. Neither of those teachers were there or confronted each other, so I and the other teachers debated about it. It was interesting because we came to the conclusion that while some people learn that it is a no no because the oil from your fingers makes it harder to erase if you need to and creates a sheen on the paper, some artists do use their fingers, and isn't art about learning the rules and then breaking them? I offered that if the drawing 1 teacher were to demonstrate all the blending techniques, including fingers, and then note the cons to blending with fingers, then the students could make the decision of when and how to use their fingers if they chose. The rest of the teachers agreed. I know that sounds like a dull conversation, but it was pretty interesting.

During one of the Intro to 3D classes, I worked with D., a special needs student who comes in to draw and hang out outside of his normal classroom. Ms. O told me that he had recently become obsessed with the small molds for resin casting. I watched him arrange and re-arrange a necklace in the small compartments of the resin mold. I figured he wanted to fill the molds with something so I grabbed some beads and he smiled so big and began organizing the beads into the resin molds. When he got bored with that, he began to try and "string" the beads on the tip of his pencil, so I grabbed some wire for him to string beads on (as it would be easier to manipulate through the bead than string. He had great fun with that too! I think next week I'm going to try and get more tactile projects for him to work on.

Other than that, nothing much else happened. I talked to Mrs. Horst about possibly observing and teaching her Intro to 2D class next semester when I student teach so I can get more experience in that genre. She said she'd be excited to have me! I think it'll be a good opportunity because I think she and I are both the same Type A personality and I want to see some of her lessons and ideas in art education as I have already worked very closely with Ms. O and Ms. Osborne over the past year and a half. Looking forward to it!