This semester, I will be practicing my VTS instruction on my introduction class, Foundation of Art. I teach in a private High School with about 400 students. This school is located in the north county of St. Louis. We are a very diverse school with our student population being almost half African American and half Caucasian. I am the only Art Teacher in the school, so I see almost all of these students due to the fulfillment of the required 1 credit in Fine Arts to graduate. All the classes offered in my Visual Art Program are a semester long. We just started a new semester, so all of the classes just started new after Christmas break. The Foundation of Art class is the entry-level class into the Visual Art program at my school. The class consists of 26 new students ranging from freshman to juniors. I have two sections of this class this semester and I will be practicing the VTS on both in order to keep the students at the same level of learning and understanding of art. Some of these student have never had an art class before, so this is their first exposer to art. We start at a very basic level of instruction and practice due to the range of knowledge of the class. Because of the new introduction to art and the student’s first exposure to me, as their teacher, I think they will be a perfect class for VTS.
I expect these students to be a little reserved to the practice of VTS. I think they will be reserved to VTS because of the unknown expectations that I will be asking them to do. I anticipate that the students will hold back at the beginning. On the other hand, I think that with my examples and teaching strategies they will ketch on to the practice and participate fully.
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ReplyDeleteHi officially, Molly! Our differences are quite apparent already, as I am an elementary teacher on the other side of the state, but I'm looking forward to reading about your secondary level experiences with VTS to gain a new personal perspective.
ReplyDeleteDid you hear me burst into tears when I read that some of your students have NEVER had an art class??? We as a society should hang our heads (and we as art teachers need to do all we can to make sure this kind of tragedy stops!! I think we might be able to drive our message home with the Common Core!!)
ReplyDeleteWell, the good news is that you don't have many bad habits to reverse with your students!
Your expectation of a "reserved" audience at the beginning is right on for high school students, but if we are able to locate images that they find impossible to ignore, I think that will change rather quickly.
I am so anxious to see how these students grow and change this semester as artist-thinkers. (And you will have TWO classes to field test images with. This will be exciting!)