Week 16- Reflection

Week 16- Reflection

It has been a semester of many challenges, and many new experiences. Experiencing first-hand what it takes to be a teaching artist, by planning lessons, practicing and rehearsing teaching methods, and self-assessments, has given me confidence in my own capabilities. I have enjoyed working at my residencies and placements, where I got to observe different styles of teaching, and interact with students in classroom environments. I became familiar with set-up and clean-up routines, with lesson structures, and comfortable in dealing with any conflicts.

To me, being a teaching artist, means sharing a particular skill set that I have with a group of people, and being able to build a connection with them through it. I see teaching as a two-way process, as I too learn from my students. I am a teaching artist because I am interested in facilitating art as a method of expression, a shared language, and also something to have some fun doing. 

Through this course I made personal connections with experienced and wonderful teachers and by observing their methods, I was able to refine my own skills as a teaching artist.

Week 15- April 27th-May 3rd

Week 15- April 27th-May 3rd

Week 15 

This week I taught my lesson, Comic of our Fears, to a few of the staff at Mia. It went well, and the results were wonderful. One member drew a bat, dabbing in a field of flowers, another drew a chicken on a floaty in a lake (I drew a bear sunbathing). Both said they felt calmer after the lesson. I felt very comfortable doing the lesson even though it was taught virtually, a result of practicing it out loud a few times. Both members appreciated my researched examples from the museums collection, and gave me some other helpful tips on how I could improve my teaching strategies.

 

A short version of my lesson is also now up on the Mia Website! Here’s the link: https://new.artsmia.org/virtual-open-studios/comic-of-our-fears/

Week 14-April 20th-26th

Week 14-April 20th-26th

 

It has taken me three weeks to get used to online classes and back into the groove of my work. With the end of the semester in sight, my pile of work has slowly built up and the pressure to get it done is very present. I think working on my senior project has been especially difficult so far, but thankfully this week, after talking to my professor, I made some breakthroughs and I got back to painting, and enjoyed it. 

This week I met virtually with a couple of my classmates and did my lesson plan with them. It was really helpful to do it with them, as it was good practice for my confidence and I was able to get some very helpful feedback from them. I am looking forward to doing my lesson this Wednesday! I feel more ready after practicing it a couple times with friends and family. I’ve loved all the responses I have got so far.  

Week 13-April 13th-19th

Week 13-April 13th-19th

This week the sun was out in California! I went for a walk on one of the trails in the nearby hills, and enjoyed seeing the bright yellow flowers of the wild mustard plants. I also saw a turkey vulture, and a snake lazily crossing the mud path that we were walking on. It is always fascinating to me how the moment the sun comes out and the cold gloomy weather goes away, our moods perk up. 

I started my community project for my Art in Community class this week. I decided to do a project with my grandparents and talk to them about how they are feeling experiencing Covid-19, how the lockdown was affecting them and whether this experience was like any other that they had experienced in their lifetimes. It was really interesting to chat with them, and just be able to hear them out and share their frustration about the uncertainty that we are all facing. 

Also this week, I spoke to Angela from Mia about sharing my lesson on Mia's website as part of the virtual open studios programming. Additionally I watched a fantastic demo done on mask-making as part of the live virtual open studios which happen on Fridays at 1pm CDT. Mia has an entire page on their website of art-making from home. (Here’s the link: https://new.artsmia.org/at-home-art-making/ ) I am excited to share my lesson with the staff at Mia in the upcoming week and hear some feedback from experienced professionals.

Week 12-April 6th-12th

Week 12-April 6th-12th

This week started off slow and gloomy. It’s been raining in California and so this week I have been stuck indoors. It has not been a very productive week, and I haven’t really had the motivation to do a lot of course work. I keep myself busy doing other things, helping out with making meals, or other chores around the house, as well as art that is not class related. I started making some small weavings this week which I plan to continue doing. 

I did however make progress with my lesson plan. I am planning a lesson about fears that will go up on the Mia (Minneapolis Institute of Art) website. In the lesson, we will start by addressing what fear is most alive for us in the moment. Then we will try to find an animal that represents this fear. Lastly we will think about this animal in a silly situation/doing something silly and we will draw it. This week I worked on writing down some of the questions that I can ask in the lesson that would stimulate thoughts. In the coming week, I will formulate my lesson plan, and give further thought to how I’d like to make a simple and fun demo video. I look forward to sharing this lesson, and seeing the creative outcomes.

Week 11- March 30th-April 5th

Week 11- March 30th-April 5th

Starting classes this week, I was surprised to notice how relieved I was to see my professors and my classmates. Over the last two weeks of extended spring break, I did my best to stay occupied, to prevent thinking about all the things that I missed. I was nervous about starting classes again, because it would bring me back to reality. But, on the contrary, it was wonderful to see familiar faces, to get back to some kind of routine. I felt a stronger sense of togetherness in my classes this week. People are being supportive to each other, kinder. It is both sad and amazing that a situation like the current one brings closeness. 

As a graduating senior, there are many disappointments, and I think it is easy for me to get trapped within them. It was encouraging to hear positive thoughts and empathy from my professors this week. As I begin to think about planning my second lesson, I am very aware of the characteristic of art as a language, a form of expression. I am thinking about creating a lesson, which is expressive rather than technical. Something which encourages creativity and imagination. Something which is simple and accessible to people. 

 At the moment it seems challenging to have to do a lesson online. How do I create a demo video in which I articulate myself clearly enough so that anyone watching can understand me? How can I share all that I would like to in just 5-10 minutes? How can I make it interesting? I’ve been looking at a variety of artworks that might be relevant to the lesson I am planning. Here are a few that I liked from the collection at the Minneapolis Institute of Art:

Week 10-March 23rd-29th

Week 10-March 23rd-29th

This week, as Mia, like many other organizations made the decision to close due to covid-19, I focused on keeping myself busy. Moving out of my apartment and my studio two months short of completing the semester and graduating, the sudden change in my environment has made me feel extremely displaced and confused but also inspired. It helps that the sun is shining and that I see blue skies. I have been forced to take a break from my regular studio practice, however I am lucky to still be able to paint. This week, my practice shifted from large-scale oil paintings, to small-scale watercolors. I have been taking solitary walks in the surrounding area, and collecting dried twigs, seeds, succulent leaves, other natural materials and then painting detailed studies of these objects. The walks are part of my process, they help me clear my head and also give me the space to think about all the things that are happening around me. In art school, we are taught to draw as WE see. This process of walking, collecting and painting really emphasizes the importance of observation. It is also personalized, as the things that I tend to pick up, dry, dead, covered with mud, sometimes decaying, may not be what someone else picks up.  

I have resorted to doing things that are slow, repetitive, and meditative, and that do not require too much thinking; crochet, a Dr. Suess coloring book, the detailed watercolor paintings and repetitive patterns in my sketchbook. 

I have been thinking a lot about how in this situation that we are in, art is so important because it helps to release or express what we are feeling. Many organizations are putting out short art exercises that anyone can do. An organization which usually does life drawing sessions, has started doing the same through a live instagram feed. (instagram: @lifedrawingbangalore) Museums are taking the time to showcase their collection online. In my own community back home, my mum and I came up with a short list of art therapy related exercises that members of the community there can take a few minutes out of their day to do. She is facilitating them with the community. I think it would be interesting to share them with the community that I have here as well. 

It's been a week of reconfiguration, in a sense. Familiarizing myself to a new environment, a new schedule, a new community, has been challenging but has also brought about a different mindset, a stronger longing to share art with the community, and to use it as a tool to bring people together, even if this might have to be virtually. 


Week 9-March 16th-22nd: Residency

Week 9-March 16th-22nd: Residency

Residency 2-Minneapolis Institute of Art-Angela Olson and Natalia Choi (2.5hrs)

The Toddler Tuesday program was cancelled this week, as Mia shut down. 

This week I packed up my studio, my house, de-installed an exhibition and moved to California to stay with some friends. It has been quite a rollercoaster. I am trying to wrap my mind around all this sudden change. Something I noticed as I travelled, is that the current tense atmosphere is really bringing out the kindness in people. As I was sitting at the gate, waiting to board my flight, there was a young boy who walked up to the gate, looked a little lost, and a little panicked. A couple crew members who walked up at the same time noticed his frenzy and asked him if he was okay. He had missed his flight. Under ordinary circumstances, when the airport would have been bustling with many more people, they might have sent him by himself to figure out what to do next, but on this day, airport deserted, the crew member walked him up to the help desk, made sure that he had got some help and felt more comfortable, and then came back to the gate. This small moment of kindness, of looking after each someone in this stressful time, was really wonderful to see. 

Week 8-March 9th-15th: Residency 2

Week 8-March 9th-15th: Residency 2

Residency 2-Minneapolis Institute of Art-Angela Olson and Natalia Choi (2.5hrs)

This week at Mia’s Toddler Tuesday’s I worked with Laura Wennstrom again. Like the previous week, she had set up multiple workstations for the day.  This week we had five stations; free drawing, paper collage, painting on foil paper, crumpled paper painting, and working with stickers. This session definitely felt more structured and better organized than last week. This week each of the children were able to spend more time with one setup, as each activity was slower paced, and there were less students in total. 

Given that there were less kids, I was able to interact with them more, and even sit down with them and guide them through an activity, or make an example along with them to show them possible options. As this class has kids attending who range from ages 2-6 years, they all have different skills developed and different attention spans. It is typical that some end up doing a variation of the activity. Laura clearly outlines in the beginning of the class, that this is totally acceptable. That said, by being able to sit by them individually and give them a little extra attention, sometimes they are willing to try a new way, and they’ll end up enjoying it. This happened with a couple of the children in this week's class, and this was really exciting for me.

Week 7-March 2nd-8th: Residencies

Week 7-March 2nd-8th: Residencies

Residency 1-Whittier Elementary School-Jane Swastosh (6hrs)

This Monday I did my art lesson at Whittier! I planned a lesson which focused on integrating art and storytelling. Students did both a blind contour drawing and a sighted contour line drawing of their shoes, then wrote a short story about the sighted drawing. Students really seemed to enjoy the lesson. They enjoyed the writing more than I expected. They wrote both fictional and non-fictional stories. One shoe had escaped from prison, another was locked in a safe in an ancient civilization, and the third was muddy because it had been used to jump in several puddles. 

The kids were patient and didn’t rush through the work, they were quite focused. At the end of the lesson, sitting in a circle, they shared their stories with the rest of the group. Since the kids had been interacting with me for more than a month before we did the lesson, there was a sense of comfort both for them and for me. I really enjoyed interacting with them individually, chatting with them about the stories about their shoes. It was special to see that even the kids who were usually pretty quiet in class, really opened up to me about the art. Some of the children whose first language was not english wrote their stories in Spanish. I think it was great that they felt comfortable to do that, and next time, I think I will specify that they could write in any language they wanted to. The lesson went a little longer than I expected, and though we were able to finish within the given time, the sharing part of the lesson was a little rushed. Some students were not able to complete their drawings. Ms. Swatosh kindly  gave them some time to finish their drawings the next day, and when I came in on Thursday, I hung up their wonderful drawings and stories in the hallway outside their classroom. Thursday was my last day at Whittier, and before I left, Ms. Swatosh and kids very sweetly thanked me. They thanked me for keeping them on track in their work, helping them with geometry and editing their stories, and they thanked me for the fun and slightly challenging art lesson. I appreciated their honest and thoughtful comments. It was really fun to get to know the students during my time at Whittier, and I will miss spending time with them. 

(Below are pictures from the lesson)

Residency 2-Minneapolis Institute of Art-Angela Olson and Natalia Choi (2.5hrs)

This week at Toddler Tuesdays, I assisted lead teaching artist Laura Wennstrom. This session was quite different from the previous ones. Laura had planned several different art making stations with the kids; free drawing, marble painting, painting with stamps, and painting by shaking things in a box. It was a very tactile lesson, and the kids loved painting with their hands, and getting messy. 

However they were not able to stay with each activity for very long, and many families left early. I wonder how a lesson like this with multiple stations could be planned in a way where each activity could keep the child engaged for a little longer.



Week 6-February 24th-March 1st: Residency 1

Week 6-February 24th-March 1st: Residency 1

Residency 1-Whittier Elementary School-Jane Swatosh (9hrs)

This week at Whittier, the kids started a new unit in math; algebra, and they loved it! As it follows a logical methodology, they found it easier to understand than geometry. I worked with various students individually. As I have been working with the students repeatedly, I have noticed that while some catch on quickly, others struggle to keep up. With just a little extra attention, they would be able to stay at the same pace as the rest of the class. In a class of thirty students though, with just one main teacher managing the class, it’s challenging to give them the time that they need. It made me think about what strategies can be used to help them understand the concepts they are learning better, for example, visualization; thinking of division as distributing chocolates between friends. I’ve also noticed that when Ms. Swatosh has another teacher helping the students with math, then the kids can be divided up into groups and extra time can be given to those who require it. 

This week the kids were also learning about the functioning of the government. They learnt about how representatives of the house and senate are distributed amongst the state, as well as the process by which a bill becomes a law. They were actively interested in learning about this, and asked pertinent questions that helped them connect theory to the real-world. One student suggested understanding the hierarchy of the government by comparing it to the hierarchy amongst students, teachers, and the principle in a school. I thought this was a clever way of making it relevant to oneself to understand it better. Ms. Swatosh makes her slides engaging for the students by helping them to visualize process through diagrams and videos. 

Additionally this week, I worked on my lesson plan and accumulated materials to teach at Whittier. The lesson is called - A Shoe’s Perspective - and I’m excited to share it with the kids next week!

Week 5-February 17th-23rd:Residencies and Shadowing

Week 5-February 17th-23rd:Residencies and Shadowing

Residency 1-Whittier Elementary School-Jane Swatosh (6hrs)

This week at Whittier, the children once again started their day with a journal entry, writing their opinions on what they would do if they saw someone else doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. This was followed by a brainstorming session about rules; specifically their own personal rules, or rules they were expected to follow in their homes. Then they came up with consequences for if they did not follow those rules. We brainstormed as a large group and also in pairs. This setup of discussion was beneficial as children who feel uncomfortable to speak up in a large group, get an opportunity to interact one-on-one with a friend, which seems less threatening. 

During Friday’s choice time, I chatted with a student about her favorite horror movie, and then we played a drawing game together. In math, I worked with two students, helping them with multiplication. Ms. Swatosh had recently introduced some new formulae to them, and it seemed like they were struggling to grasp the concept. I tried to help them visualize the questions. They seemed to grasp the techniques a little better working in small groups, with more individual attention. With thirty students in a class this is hard to do, that said, Ms. Swatosh often works with a group of students who she feels might benefit from some additional attention. 

A continuous observation with the fifth grade classroom, is that they have a lot of energy, and are easily distracted. I wonder what are solutions to help them stay focused on the tasks at hand. 

Residency 2-Minneapolis Institute of Art-Angela Olson and Natalia Choi (2.5hrs)

This week at Toddler Tuesdays, Akiko introduced the kids to clay. First, we strolled through the galleries, and Akiko showed the kids the Guardian Kings, these are often placed at tombs, as a form of protection. In class, students made their own versions of the guardians. Unicorns, snails, snakes, cats, lions, a vacuum cleaner, we had it all. The kids loved the clay, and got creative with it, adding pipe cleaners and lots of colors to their various creatures. 

With each class with the toddlers, they open up more and more, and this class they not only interacted with the materials, they also interacted with us, sharing their stories and creating sound effects to their creatures. As these classes have progressed, I have noticed that the more open ended the exercises are, the more options they have, the more the toddlers enjoy the making. 

Shadowing-Upstream Arts-Masanari Kawahara (5hrs)

This week with Masa, his Monday class was cancelled as Pillsbury house was closed for President’s Day. Instead I once again joined his Visual Memoirs class. From my perspective, this week's Memoirs Class was the most successful one I had seen. We started with a self-portrait. Then did blind contour drawing and some imaginative drawing. One of the students read something they had written, a personal anecdote about a life experience. The rest of the students listened, then created images for the story that had been read. This was my favorite part of the class. Students were really able to visualize the story, and draw out key moments that they individually felt represented the story. This exercise allowed them to be creative, and also showcased their own individual styles. This class was most successful to me as I felt it was well-balanced between learning technique and observing, and developing creativity, something Masa had expressed he wanted to maintain in these classes.

Week 4-February 10th-16th: Residencies and Shadowing

Week 4-February 10th-16th: Residencies and Shadowing

Residency 1-Whittier Elementary School-Jane Swatosh (3hrs)

This Monday at Whittier, as students came into class, they started their day with a journal entry. The prompt for the day asked whether they would like to be a rich and famous movie star or a doctor who treated patients but did not earn as much money. Chatting with different students, some wanted to be rich and famous but not movie stars, and some wanted to be doctors, like their parents. 

All the children had finished writing and editing their stories this week, so during literature we met in small groups/pairs, and shared stories. I heard a story about the Boston Massacre from one individual, who shared that his favorite part of the whole process was actually doing the research. 

In math, Ms. Swatosh was teaching some new concepts, so students worked together on the workbooks. I noticed that as they were all following along with Ms. Swatosh, some were not able to keep up with her pace, or seemed a little confused about her calculations. I sat down with them individually and tried to help clarify their doubts. 

Residency 2-Minneapolis Institute of Art-Angela Olson and Natalia Choi (2hrs)

This Tuesday at Toddler Tuesdays, we painted to music. Teaching Artist Akiko Ostlund was amazing with the kids. We walked around in the galleries, where she introduced the kids to some abstract art, and then in the studio, Akiko showed them different strokes/textures that she felt the music looked like. She encouraged them to move to the tune, imbibe the sound and paint. I helped her put up large black sheets of paper on the walls, and the kids had great fun working together. Having the paper on the walls allowed them to be mobile and free while painting. Akiko also gave them multiple tools to choose from, palette knives, their hands, brushes, popsicle sticks, cups, and shiny paper to stick on the page. Though usually I might have expected the multiple choices to confuse the kids, it actually excited them even more, that they could make marks with so many things. 

One child really took to painting with his hands. According to his adult, this was a big change. Apparently usually he did not like getting his hands dirty. It was wonderful to see how the freedom he was given to work, and also watching his peers encouraged him to try something new. 

Another child danced as he painted, feeling the tempo and the rhythm in his body, and it translated through the marks of paint; long curvy lines and small dots. 

We encouraged the kids to experiment. They had the freedom to get messy if they wanted to, there was no judgement and the kids thrived in it. As this was day two with the same group of toddlers, they had also become more familiar with and less scared of us. Something I realized today was that I enjoy working with the same group over multiple sessions as this allows me to build my relationship with them. 

Shadowing-Upstream Arts-Masanari Kawahara (3hrs)

This week I joined Masa again at his visual Memoirs class. As requested by his students, this class we worked on building technical drawing skills. Proportion, and value were explored through drawing a still life object from observation, and also imitating a face from a magazine. Masa introduced some shading techniques and while he gave them tips to draw a proportionate image, he also encouraged them to develop their own style. What I really enjoyed about the portraits that the students drew was that even though they were not necessarily perfectly proportional, they all captured the essence of the the people they were drawing. They were expressive drawings. 

After the class, Masa and I talked about how to balance the teaching of technical skill and encouraging creative choices and play. This aim of Masa’s class is to help students remove their own judgement towards doing art. A solution to this, I suggested to him, might be focusing on teaching them to draw as they see. This way, they are learning to practice observational drawing, while still maintaining their individual styles. It is a challenging balance, teaching what you want to, and teaching what the students want to learn. 

Next class will be my last class with Masa. I have really enjoyed being a part of his classes, he really cares for his students.


Week 3-February 3rd-9th:Residencies and Shadowing

Week 3-February 3rd-9th:Residencies and Shadowing

Residency 1-Whittier Elementary School-Jane Swatosh (6hrs)

This week at Whittier, I continued to help students with the editing process of their written chapters. I worked one on one with students, reading their work with them, and helping them with grammatical errors, sentence construction and layout. They had started writing out their own fictional stories based on the historic events they had researched prior. I was really impressed by the way students had imbibed their research. I think the three-step process of reading, summarizing and creating their own narrative reinforced the learning. In math, they continued to work on geometry. Some were self-motivated, others found the work challenging and were quite distracted. If they were confused about a question or a process I sat with them individually and tried to help them understand the process so that they could find the answer themselves. I found that drawing something out, or visually showing them what the question was really helped them understand what they were being asked.

I’m really enjoying working at Whittier with Ms. Swatosh. It is impressive to see her give individual attention to each student in a class of thirty children.

Residency 2-Minneapolis Institute of Art-Angela Olson and Natalia Choi (9.5hrs)

This week was my first week working at Mia. I worked at the Toddler Tuesday event with Teaching artist Akiko Ostlund and on Sunday I worked Family Day where the theme was Jazz. On Tuesday with Akiko we did collage with the toddlers. Though only three or four families showed up, we had an exciting class, and the kids loved all the colorful and shiny and textured paper that Akiko had brought for them to use. Akiko interacted with all the children encouraging them, and showing them examples of what they could do. 

On Sunday at Family Day, I worked largely in the studios. The activity planned was abstract painting and  while listening to jazz music, inspired by Wassily Kandinsky. A simple activity, it worked well for the continuous flow of people of various ages visiting the event. I loved seeing all the families come in and sit down to paint; mothers, fathers, grandparents, toddlers, pre-teens. An inspiring but also tiring day, by the end of the seven hour day, I felt myself beginning to slow down, and was not able to actively interact with the visitors. Given the winter weather warning, there were relatively fewer visitors to the event than usual, and yet it felt like a lot. It gave me a good understanding of how much it helps to keep the art-making simple in order to cater to a large population. 

Something that I noted working at the Mia was the abundance and high quality of material. This makes a lot of difference to the work that is made, and seems to make people more excited about what they are making. 

Shadowing-Upstream Arts-Masanari Kawahara (5hrs)

This week I shadowed Masa on Monday class with his students from EPIC (EPIC is an organization which does Day Training & Habilitation for Adults with Disabilities.) and on Saturday at his Visual Memoirs class. On Monday there were  7-8 adults who came in from EPIC for Masa’s class. We started class with a couple theatre based warm up exercises, including a game called orchestra. The students really enjoyed it. Masa’s energy and passion for these exercises is inspiring and contagious, and I thought it was a great way to start the class. We did two main drawing exercises in the class; drawing with two hands at once, and partnering up and drawing on the same page together, one person following the other. Masa encourages his students to stick to the plan, but also gives them the freedom to do what they want. What stood out to me was that often the most creative results were when students interpreted the instructions in their own way. For example, one student, when drawing with two hands, instead of creating one image with both hands, drew two separate identical images, one with each hand. 

On Saturday, Masa started the class with a self-portrait (every class starts this way), then went on to the main exercise, which was called Drawing Jam. As part of this exercise students pick out a number of occupations, and then go about quickly drawing what they think people in these occupations look like. Each person passes around their paper and as a result, each ends up with drawings from the whole class. Students enjoyed seeing each others drawings and learning from one another. Something that came up was that students wanted to learn more technical drawing skills, such as depth and perspective. Masa acknowledged this and decided to include it teaching some technical skills in the next session. It's a pleasure to watch Masa interact with his students and cater to their needs as well as push them to try new things. He creates an atmosphere of comfort, where students feel safe to share ideas and be not judged.

Week 2-January 27th-February 2nd: Residency 1

Week 2-January 27th-February 2nd: Residency 1

Residency 1-Whittier Elementary School-Jane Swatosh (6 hrs)

This Monday was my first day at Whittier Elementary School. We started class with circle time, where I introduced myself to the class and they asked me questions about myself, about art, and about MCAD. They were super-excited to know that we would be doing an art project later in the semester. 

After circle time we worked on editing some written work they had been doing. I worked with one group . They were happy to share their writing with me. Both students were fairly motivated and focused on the work, and noticed errors in the writing as they read it out loud. I was there to support them and help them edit, one sentence at a time. In math, they had just started a unit on geometry and today revised previously learned terminology. They did a couple interactive activities with Ms. Swatosh where they sorted shapes based on particular attributes.The class was very interactive and did not hesitate to answer questions. However, today they seemed slightly distracted. Ms. Swatosh mentioned that when the work gets a little challenging, that is when they tend to get distracted. This made a lot of sense to me. Ms. Swatosh did not raise her voice or shout at the children when they were distracted, she quieted down herself which helped to quiet the rest of the class. 

I wonder what are ways to keep children engaged so that they are not involved in side conversations.

I walked around the class and talked to them about what they were working on. They had a lot of questions for me, what languages could I speak, how come I had a different accent, I was happy to share. 

On Friday I visited Whittier again. As I reached in the morning, I began by helping Ms. Swatosh with prep work for an activity to be done in the following week. The class began today with ‘choice time’, which meant that as the children came to class, they could do/play any activity/game they wanted to, as long as their daily journal entries were completed. (Journal entries are usually 6-7 sentences answering a particular question.) We had a brief circle time after ‘choice time’ where they got to ask me a couple more questions about myself to get to know me better. We dived straight into literature work after circle time. I worked individually with one student and helped her sort her research material on the Boston Tea Party into different paragraphs. I helped her develop a topic sentence and sequence the writing into different paragraphs. 

In math, we built three dimensional geometric shapes out of paper from nets provided. This was really exciting. Many of the students had learned my name today and did not hesitate to call out to me for help. Some got tired after a while, as the cutting and gluing was quite intricate. I found that at this point, talking to them for a few seconds and empathizing with their tiredness, encouraged them to carry on. Over this week I also noticed that the activities they were doing engaged various skills. Literature activities built their skills in writing, reading, researching, and collaborating. Math activities, required them to exercise their motor skills, and gave them a visual understanding of spatial objects. 

Already, on my second day at Whittier, the children were more comfortable having me around, and so they were more open with me, and I was more open with them. One girl even looked up the meaning of my name, and came to show me what she had found. A small, but heartwarming gesture, and a wonderful way to start my day. 

Week 1-January 20th-26th: Residencies and Shadowing

Week 1-January 20th-26th: Residencies and Shadowing

Residency 1-Whittier Elementary School-Jane Swatosh (0.5hrs)

This week I met Jane Swatosh who teaches 5th grade at Whittier Elementary School. We talked about what work/projects the children in her class are going to start working on, as well as what a weekday typically looks like. Jane also introduced me to some of the other teachers, including their art teacher who I will be able to shadow as well. My first day will be Monday (27th) and I’m excited to introduce myself and interact with the class. 

Residency 2 -Minneapolis Institute of Art-Angela Olson and Natalia Choi (0.5hrs)

This week I also met Natalia Choi who is the main coordinator for all family programming at Mia. She specifically designs events for and plans the museums monthly Family Day event. I will be volunteering at a couple of these events, and so Natalia briefly described what the theme for the upcoming event is, jazz, and what kind of programs will be taking place. She also mentioned the themes for the next four planned events and was open to hear any ideas/suggestions for future art-making events. Family day events are attended by anywhere from 1000 to 5000 people. Working at family day provides an opportunity to learn to design large scale projects, where efficiency and meticulous planning is extremely important. 

Shadowing-Upstream Arts-Masanari Kawahara (3.75hrs)

I also started my shadowing with Upstream Artist Masa, at the Pillsbury House and Theatre. I met Masa early in the week, and had a wonderful conversation with him about his own personal work and about the journey that led him to being a teaching artist. He talked about his teaching philosophy, being present in everything he does, creating a safe space, an environment which fosters originality. I really resonated with these ideas. As I shadowed him later in the week, at his Visual Memoirs class for ages 55+ at Pillsbury House, I saw him actively engaging these philosophies as he taught, both in the activities planned and interaction with students. 

Masa began the class with introductions, and we went around the room, saying; My name is___ and I am feeling___,  along with an action to show the feeling. This was a great icebreaker, and also got everyone energized. The first exercise was to do four quick self-portraits on notecards; the first, of self as an astronaut, followed by self as turning into an animal, self as a fruit/vegetable and the last, self as a monster. This was followed by a reflection of the activity, where each person said one thing they liked about someone else’s piece. This was a clever way to introduce some art terminology. The next activity was timed drawings of a specific object, starting with a 2 minute drawing, and decreasing to a 15 second drawing. This activity was also followed by a quick self-reflection; what was their favorite? What qualities of the drawing made is their favorite? The third activity was drawing with eyes closed. During the class, I distributed materials, and as requested by Masa, participated in some of the drawing activities. I walked around the room and tried to help any individual who had a question/doubt. At the end of the class, Masa asked each person to give him one-word to describe the class, and he wrote these down. Not only a quick way to gain insight to the reactions to the lesson, but also this echoed the way that the class was introduced and brought a close to the session. 

All the activities that Masa had planned for the class served to remove any judgement held towards one’s own work. Drawing under a short time-limit as well as with eyes closed, were methods to prevent any overthinking, to allow the hand to take over. There was a spontaneity which created a sense of life to the drawings. I really enjoyed and resonated with Masa’s teaching methods. I wonder how as both an artist and a teacher, I can continue to bring this ‘play’ into the work.