Franklin School - Melodee Strong/ shadowing - 10.0 Added into week 10
This was a wonderful opportunity to see an MCAD instructor in another environment and to get some clues on how to go about doing a mural for Sejong Academy, a different school I teach at. Melodee has a wonderful rapport with the kids she works with and is an extremely valuable asset to the Minneapolis Public school system. It was really an awesome experience to see such a well prepared classroom and structure, it gave me much inspiration for my own classrooms. It was also really amazing to see how well the kids responded to the mural itself. They were very excited and glad to be able to be a part of it. As soon as it was time to paint, the kids got right in there and started working. Melodee has a very good presence in the classroom and you can visually see that the kids care about her and respect her a great deal. A portion of my shadowing was done at MCAD when the students visited. This was an interesting event, to see the kids' curiosity grow as they explored MCAD students' work was very joyful. They asked many questions about different works and methods of work making. The last part of the day was creating a paper mural for the walls at MCAD. AT first, the kids were shy and intimidated, but with continued urging and compliments on their vision, they slowly began to get more involved and when it was time to be done, many didn't want to be finished. I really enjoyed my time shadowing Melodee, she is such a strong teacher and truly inspires me.