Little Earth Natives Youth Arts Collective - Heidi Haferman - 0.5 hour
Heidi recommended that I meet up with Courtney to kind of catch up with each other on the plans for February 20th and 27th. I met with Courtney on Friday @ 12:30 pm and we discussed some of the topics/prompts that Heidi emailed to us to help students get an idea of what starting at MCAD is like:
how did your idea or image of college life compare to the reality?
what have you done or learned that you are most proud of?
what would your dream job be, after graduating?
what is your definition of community art?
Courtney and I briefly discussed the struggles we went through like pronouns, culture/identity, and the intimidation of MCAD as an institution.
We weren’t able to talk too much as we had to part ways quickly, but we’re going to try to meet up again to brainstorm more about these questions and come up with an ice breaker activity!
El Colegio High School - Peter Glaser - 1.45 hours
On Saturday, I was able to meet up with Peter Glaser, who teaches science at El Colegio, at Dunn Bros for coffee. We were able to get the schedule confirmed:
I will be at El Colegio on Tuesdays from 8:55 am - 11:30 am & Fridays 8:55 am - 11:24 am.
(Peter advised me to call on Monday to see the status of the BG check, so I’m not sure what week I’ll be able to start as of now).
Even though he teaches Physical Science, Chemistry, and Biology, I will only be present in the Physical Science classroom as I feel that physics and animation go hand-in-hand, especially lessons about the illusion of movement, gravity, and color.
I got to know a lot about Peter’s teaching style, which was quite refreshing. He doesn’t give out multiple question tests or exams - to test the students’ learning, he has them make their own questions for each topic. He does “Do-It Now” (or bell-ringer) problems after the student’s get settled after the bell. Repetition and patience are the main points in his teaching style as students learn better when information is given to them repeatedly and allowing students time to think about questions. Also, not giving them the answer outright, but leading them to the answer instead.
Also, Peter gave me lots of advice going forward in my own lessons and classroom teaching. He says to not be afraid to crack jokes and have students laugh. Laughter in a classroom makes a happy classroom. Also, the concept of scaffolding makes it easier for students to understand hard lessons. Scaffolding is the breakdown of concepts to where it’s taught in a “stair-step” style. The lowest stair-step is tying what you’re teaching to what they already know, then go from there. In example, tying the concept animation to animation they already are exposed to whether it be Disney movies, favorite video games, or main-stream apps.
The biggest piece of advice was to remind myself that, even though the students look like adults and (sometimes) act like adults, that they are still children - but not to treat them like children. Children are slower at thinking and do dumb things sometimes, but not to take it personally. There has to be a level of patience and respect for all.
TOTAL HOURS: 1.95 hr
Other than that, that’s all I’ve got! Seems as though I have dates in set for my shadowing and two residencies. For now, have some sketches I did for my Digital Illustration class: We’re making playing cards with a limited color palette. I chose the theme of Holidays!
