When the teaching-artist walked into the room, the students were seated quietly, ready for their guest. They all seemed engaged by focusing their eyes on her. She gathered them around a table and all continued to pay attention except one boy who read on the floor to the side. When she told them that they would be making a board game one girl said, "Oooh!" She told them that one box of tissue paper squares was filled with hot colors and the other one was filled with cold colors. The students did not ask what that means. She modeled for them how to cut the squares into halves, quarters, eighths, or sixteenths. Again, the students do not question why and just continue to watch, waiting for it to be their turn.
As the students worked, they didn't question what they were doing. That is the teachers job. They enjoyed the opportunity to use a paintbrush to glue down their squares. It must have been a nice break from their other work. At times I heard comments that aligned with what we learned in our master's degree program; comments that alluded to aspects of children's' imagination and curiosity being expressed.
While the teaching artist showed her self-made visual to illustrate the fractions of a rectangle. There were papers side by side, matted on black construction paper, and each paper was white with a fraction of it colored red; each fraction getting smaller and smaller. One student said, "You should call that the invisible square!" When she explains that the glue is actually a varnish, another student asks, "Can you use it for paper mache?" While she's in the middle of gluing her squares, a pattern starts to appear and another student says, "It looks like checkers," who received an answer from the group, "Checkers are only two colors." Students continued to inquire about the materials, but they were not given the opportunity to explore them. "What makes it shiny?" "Where does white go?" (referring to hot and cold colors)
They worked quietly and contently. The only sad or disappointed face I saw was that of a boy who received rusted scissors. He wanted to exchange them for new ones, but was not allowed. As the students glued their squares, they talked amongst themselves. The classroom teacher was there to make sure the kids stayed in order, as that is not the job of the teaching-artist. "It looks like clear nail polish when you put it on your nails!"
The entire class, the classroom teacher and the school-based literacy teacher were all had an ethnicity/race other than white or Asian. One girl was Hindi and had homemade mini-pastries that her mother made for the Hindu New Year. The classroom teacher instructed her to offer me one. She came over to me and offered me one of each, making sure I was not allergic to bananas or cherries.
Soon the lesson was over.
It's not my job to include my opinion in this part of the evaluation. I'm also not the lead researcher, which means I do not have much say, and possibly not enough insight, in the overall project. However, when I watched this it made me question why a teaching artist is needed to do this. I questioned Studio in a School's marketing tactics and the survival of art education. Studio in a School does some really great work, but they really do market "artists" in a way that validates the lack of trained art teachers in schools. Studio in a School is cheaper than an art teacher and has the students create work that looks great.
I'm not sure about how the residencies work, which is the bulk of their contracts, but I do have insight into this program. The units were developed last year, with teaching-artists, classroom teacher, art teachers and literacy/math coaches from schools that they normally work in; schools that are not Title 1 or Corrective Action. I kept imagining what it would be like if school-based art teachers were given a considerable amount of paid prep-time to create a unit with the support of the others. I'm sure it would be great. Yet, this year, it's the teaching artists that go into the schools, training the classroom teachers and the art teachers, as though they have much more to offer. Under these conditions, how could they not walk into the school and give an impressive presentation?
This particular lesson felt like a regular classroom exercise, but without the instruction of a trained teacher. The students did not know they were doing math and did not know why they were playing a game. Maybe the unit has been more thought out, but I was not informed. In fact, I was informed that they needed to modify the unit that was planned last year and it's still a work in progress. They are not used to working in these conditions, with such "low-performing" students. I'm thinking that as the pilot program develops it will make more sense, however, after realizing that Obama is basically continuing where Bush left off in terms of education, I will not be to surprised if it doesn't.
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