Due to COVID-19, my middle school teaching experience turned out very different from what I had originally expected. The schools were closed, and so the placement was completed virtually. My mentor, 8th-grade art teacher Amy Anderson, guided me through the placement entirely via Zoom sessions and emails, and we really worked together through what was our first remote-learning experience.
I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to participate in such a unique form of teaching, and I think I'll be able to use the experiences and skills I've gained from this placement for the rest of my art teaching career.
I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to participate in such a unique form of teaching, and I think I'll be able to use the experiences and skills I've gained from this placement for the rest of my art teaching career.
Throughout my time working virtually with 8th grade, one of our biggest challenges was technology. Students were struggling to get set up, and having trouble figuring out how to organize and where to put assignments. My mentor and I discovered that instructional videos would be extremely beneficial for the students, and so I began to screen-record quite often. I created videos to show students what I could have shown them in person, if I had been in the classroom. Below are two examples of instructional videos recorded with QuickTime Player.
The Shoe Project
When teaching through a remote platform, it's hard to communicate with students, and it's especially hard to motivate them. My mentor and I quickly realized that roughly 65-75% participation from all of the students was the new normal, and that we would need to switch things up to get better involvement.
Shoes are an excellent subject matter, being that they're so personal and unique to who's wearing them. Your shoes really tell a story, showing marks from where you've been and what you've experienced.
In a Google survey that we asked the students to fill out, we asked them:
"What can we do to make this art-making experience better for you?"
I was happy to see so many students respond honestly and thoughtfully, and one of the most popular responses asked us to give them some freedom in their art-making. From there, my mentor helped me to turn what was originally going to be a still life project into a choice-based lesson. Teaching a lesson with multiple options isn't an easy task to complete through a remote learning environment, so we tried to keep things as clear as possible. Below are some videos I posted for the students to clarify the 3 important documents: The Slideshow, the Checklist, and the Rubric.
Shoes are an excellent subject matter, being that they're so personal and unique to who's wearing them. Your shoes really tell a story, showing marks from where you've been and what you've experienced.
In a Google survey that we asked the students to fill out, we asked them:
"What can we do to make this art-making experience better for you?"
I was happy to see so many students respond honestly and thoughtfully, and one of the most popular responses asked us to give them some freedom in their art-making. From there, my mentor helped me to turn what was originally going to be a still life project into a choice-based lesson. Teaching a lesson with multiple options isn't an easy task to complete through a remote learning environment, so we tried to keep things as clear as possible. Below are some videos I posted for the students to clarify the 3 important documents: The Slideshow, the Checklist, and the Rubric.
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Here, I run through the slideshow, emphasizing the parts that I thought might get confusing for the students to understand. The slideshow is color-coded, in hopes that students would choose their preferred project and refer to only those colored slides for directions and information. |
In this clip, I review the Shoe Project Checklist. This is a checklist designed to help the students ensure that they have completed each necessary step, all the way up to submission. This checklist is submitted, filled out, along with the other parts of the assignment. |
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The self-grading rubric is the final piece of the assignment that the students are asked to submit. I created this video to clarify that depending on which project they chose, students are only required to fill out either the first or second half of the rubric. |
Below are examples of final project submissions.
The Shoe Project was originally created for a remote-learning environment. Below is a unit plan designed to teach the unit in a classroom setting.