Art 301: Art in Elementary Classrooms Reflection Paper

10/18/13 Jade Nord

I believe I should start this paper by answering the question of whether I was influenced by an art teacher. My father is an art teacher and has been for most if not all of my life. He has been a great father and someone to guide me through life in all aspects of life, not just art. My sister was the one who wanted to follow in his footsteps more than I did as an artist. I never felt like I was given the talents and gifts that he has as an artist. I know that his skills have progressed over many years of hard work and dedication. When he tells me and others how many hours he has spent on a single piece of art, we are left in disbelief that he could commit so much time to one piece. Growing up you can imagine I had plenty of chances to create art both at school with my father as well as at home. He always had an art studio full of materials and supplies for creating his art. At one point we even had a kiln in our laundry room to fire clay pots and art that we would create. That is one of the many memories that stands out to me is throwing pots on the wheel as well as just having fun creating things with clay as if it were play dough. I still have some of the small pots that I was so proud of throwing and choosing the glaze that I thought was just right. I even have a piece that I created with a baseball and bat with my name and age inscribed on the back. I have also been very fortunate throughout my life to have many amazing experiences in other art forms as well. I have gone to many of the amazing museums throughout Minnesota, Washington D.C. as well as some in Ecuador and Japan. I have seen theater and dance performed on Broadway such as Rent and Les Miserables. I have been more involved and interested in my vocal talents as I participated in both our Vocal Ensemble and choir in high school. My mother and father have blessed me with some ability to sing, even though I have never been confident enough to sing by myself in front of a crowd. I have also seen many local performances and live entertainment through my years in high school in Ecuador, during college and my life since then. I always remember when I was young that he would spend time in his art studio listening to wonderful, relaxing instrumental guitar music while creating amazing works of art. He has done a lot of work drawing and recreating amazing images of animals in nature. He also likes photography and so has taken many pictures of animals in the wild that he then uses to inspire him to draw or paint them in his work. He loves sharing his work with anyone who is interested and carries images on his iPhone all the time just in case. He is still passionate about teaching and creating art after many years.

He has had jobs in different cities in the United States as well as one abroad as a missionary in Quito, Ecuador. He was an art and English teacher at the Alliance Academy where I attended middle and high school. It is similar to a boarding school, where missionaries from countries all over South America can send their kids to attend an English speaking school accredited through the United States school districts. Having spent time living and growing up in a culture that was not my own has changed me in so many positive ways. My father was able to use his artistic abilities to communicate and engage people who could not speak the same language he did. One of the many things he was involved in was an outreach group that would find walls around the city that were in poor condition and design murals to paint over them. Some of these murals were small and some were very large in nature, but all created a better place to live and work while sending very important messages to those who saw them. He was able to use his talents and abilities as well as those students in his group to change peoples lives forever. He would encourage everyone and anyone to join and contribute to the work they were doing. I was able to help on some of the murals even though I had limited artistic abilities. There was always something that could be done and he was great at finding a place for each of us. There were many teachable moments for both art instruction and life lessons as well. Even though I have alluded to my answer to the question of whether or not I think I am good at art I realize that it is like anything else in life that is hard at first. I do not feel that I am good at art because it does not seem to come natural to me to draw or paint. It is probably somewhat because of my comparison to what my father is able to do. He can just see what he wants to draw before he draws it. It is amazing how he elegantly moves his hand and his brain can evaluate and decide what needs to go where and it ends up looking amazing. It wasnt that he ever discouraged me from the arts, but I found my passion in other areas of life to pursue. I never felt that I had the natural gift of artistic ability or the burning desire to become a better artist. Art is a talent and ability that can be grown and built by years and years of hard work and dedication. I am listening to music by The Piano Guys right now and I know they did not just pick up their instruments and play such beautiful music right away. They had to practice and learn for many hours before they became great musicians and artists like my father. So even though I have not put in that time and hard work to become a better artist, I do realize that I have certain strengths and weaknesses, but I can create wonderful unique pieces and have an enjoyable experience with art.

I could go on and on about the experiences with art that I have had in my life and I feel immeasurably blessed by them all. Now I want to spend a little time considering and reflecting on how I will incorporate the arts in a meaningful way in my future classrooms. I believe this is an obviously important aspect of every childs development as a learner and human being. We were made to be creative and express ourselves in many different ways. I do not like how schools and districts have to struggle with budget cuts and that the arts are losing their place in many schools. The schools I have been at only give art classes 45 minutes every 6 days which is not nearly enough. I believe art is important in schools for many reasons which are written very well in the handout you gave us by Elliot Eisner called 10 Lessons the Arts Teach from the National Art Education Association. I like how art can transform how a child approaches life and school all at once. For me it showed me that I will not be great at everything and not all things will come easy. It made me realize that whatever it is that I want to achieve I will need to have an effort based mindset, with a will to succeed and determination to never give up. It allows students the opportunity to express themselves in ways they couldnt have otherwise. Allowing students the chance to express themselves in art helps you as the teacher get to know them at a deeper level, which in turn helps you differentiate your instruction so it is tailored to each student to help them maximize their learning potential. I plan on integrating art into my classroom by having students create art that will be displayed in the class that helps them describe and show different ideas and thoughts about different subjects through projects. Depending on the grade that I end up in there will be the typical build a volcano that erupts for science class project or creating displays or costumes to help bring history to life. I want to use great projects like that to incorporate art, but I also want to have a time devoted to just teaching and exploring art on its own as well. Having this time devoted to art for arts sake will allow their creativity to shine without restrictions to content of a specific subject. It will be a great time for my students to explore their own creativity while taking a break from the typical day of school where they are lectured at and writing in workbooks and worksheets. I like how we have been able to try out projects from our textbook so far. By experiencing more art ourselves we will be better prepared as teachers to turn around and add those into our teaching tool bag of things we can have our students do during the year. I also found a book online that sounds like every art teacher needs to have, which I will probably order to have on hand as a great reference during my lesson planning. (Kodly Today: A Cognitive Approach to Elementary Music Education) I look forward to integrating art into my classroom in a meaningful way.