Class # 6 - Art Fair Presentations

Art Fair research presentations - we used the following protocol to review the presentations:

Presenter

• State your Learning Goals (Questions)
• Start your presentation
  

Viewer Protocol for discussion and feedback:

• We will make one round with "I see..."
• Next round "I think..."
• Next round "I wonder..."

During this response time the presenter will listen to each round. At the end of the final "I wonder..." round the presenter will have time to respond to audience remarks.

HOMEWORK Due March 2, 2009

This will be a light week so you can catch up with other reading and postings. There are 2 things we want you to do:

1. Write a short refection about the Art Fair presentations - what did you learn from this experience both as a listener/viewer and as a researcher/presenter?

1. Read the introduction to Bell Hooks book Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, page 226 in you reader. This is a short inspiring article. Use the following protocol to respond:

• Find a quote in the reading that resonates with you and write it in your blog.
• Tell why you picked this quote - relay any personal experience that resonated through this quote - why it stood out in the texts for you. Why do you feel it is an important statement in regard to the ideas and aims of art education that Eisner, Oaks and Lipton articles addressed? What is the relationship between these authors thinking around education?
• Bring your quote to class with you on Monday - we will use this to begin our conversation about the reading.
  

Class # 5 - Research, Art Fair Summaries and Teaching to Change the World

Overview of Day

Check in with how things are going for you with the class and blogs entrees.
NOTE: don't forget to comment on your fellow students posts.

Art Fair Research Summary Presentations
Today you will make a 5 minute presentations summary about your Art Fair sites and research. We will use the Ladder of Feedback protocol to give to each other feedback on your research so far.

Ladder of Feedback

The Ladder of Feedback is a protocol that helps us to balance feedback when looking at work with honesty and support.

Step 1 - Clarify - Ask clarifying questions. What does the author mean to say? Questions of clarification are questions that can be answered with very brief, often single word responses.

Step 2 - Value - Offer your classmate a statement about what you value about their project and research.

Step 3 - Concern - What are your concerns about this project or research? This are the ideas that you wonder about or may disagree with.

Step 4 - Suggest - Finally, after exploring the questions that arise and understanding what is valued - this is the time to offer suggestions.


Discussion of Reading: Teaching to Change the World - by Oaks and Lipton, Chapter 1 - Wrestling with Tradition
As a class we will discuss this reading using the Text Rendering Experience Protocol from the National School Reform Faculty site. This site has a list of different protocols that can help promote dialogue and inquiry in discussion - we highly recommend you check it out.

If we have time we will create a chart about pros and cons of Myths of Education: Merit, Scientific Efficiency, Competition, Progress

• When does Merit make inequity acceptable? Or does it ever?
  
• Should schools be responsible for Student Achievement? If not, then whose responsibility is it? Is it the individual responsibility of the student? The family? Or a combination of factors?
  
• How does scientific efficiency method play out in the development of today’s education system? How are the effects of this method good for education? How is it not good?
• What are some of the ways we can build democratic environments in schools around issues of equity?
• How can the idea of hope be an anchor for reform and change in our present day educational system in U.S.? What will it take to make bring hope to action?
  

HOMEWORK Due February 23, 2009

Art Fair Presentations DUE NEXT WEEK! Please come to class prepared to set up your installation and make you presentation about BOTH your school site and agency or non-profit arts education organization.

• Your Art Fair worksheet is due completely filled in!!
• Make sure to review the rubric so you know what is expected of you!!
• Make sure to bring all and any components of your installation - if digital make sure to bring it on a flash drive or CD.
• If it is in book from - make sure to come up with an way for us all to interact and view your materials and information at the same time.
• Make sure you include in your presentation some information about your RESEARCH PROCESS! REMEMBER Twyla Thorp's box and come up with a way to collect and organize your reserach and present that along with your Art Fair sites.
• Make a new post on your blog - it can be brief, stating any information about your research this week - How is it going? What new questions came up for you? What knots have you hit and how have you unraveled them? What surprised you?
• Make a comment to a fellow classmate you have not talked to before.
  

GOOD LUCK - we are looking forward to seeing your work!

Class #4 - Clarifying Questions and Art and the Creation of the Mind

Overview of Day
Blog - Make sure you keep up with your blog assignments and adding comments to your fellow classmates.

REMINDER - always check this site first for latest homework assignments and Blogging Journal site for latest writing prompts.

Video - Ascend School in Oakland

• Ascend on KQED SPARK
  

Art and the Creation of the Mind - Reading Discussion
Through the lens of our 3 big questions:

• What is the relationship between art and learning?
• What is art education?
• What is art education for and why does it matter?

We will look looking at the Elliot Eisner reading Art and Creation of the Mind, and use the following protocol for a discussion format:

1. Clarify: What are the key points advanced in this reading?
2. Analysis: How does this reading resonate with your personal experiences, beliefs and knowledge? Does it affirm or challenge? Explain.
3. Puzzles: Did this reading confuse you in any way or raise new questions?
4. Extensions: Note how this reading challenged, extended or deepen your thinking.
5. Reflection: How do the ideas in this reading relate to the Studio Habits thinking framework we have examined? You as a learner?
6. Follow Up References: Note any core ideas (or quotes) that you’d like to draw on from the reading in articulating your own art education philosophy.
   

Formulating and Refining Good Research Questions

Each student will present your leading research questions for your site research, along with the names of the sites (one school site and one organization).

1) In pairs help each other to refine your questions using the following protocol from the Madison Metropolitan School District Action Research Group:

• Guidelines for Developing a Question

2) Ask each other the following about your questions:

• What do you see?
• What questions does your review of this sampling raise for you?
• What are the implications for your focus on higher order questioning?
  

3) Then select one question and tune it with your partner using the Guidelines for Developing a Question (see link above).

4) Offer at least 2 ways the questions could be phrased to take students to higher order thinking.

5) Present out refined questions to the group.

HW – Due on February 16, 2009

1. Readings & Written Reflections on blogs: (see website for writing prompts)
Oakes, J. and Lipton, M. Teaching to Change the World, Chapter 1: Wrestling with Tradition, (Chapters 1, 2 and 3, starting on page 166 in your reader)

2. Art Fair Research and Presentation

• Present a 5-minute summary of the organization in class —it’s history, mission, art education programs and goals, pedagogy, who it serves and other things you think are important. [Make sure to include all content areas outlined in rubric.] Be sure to express your viewpoint on the strengths and weaknesses of the organization in relation to your thinking about the aims and purposes of art education. This will allow you some feedback and reflection time before your final presentation.
• Plan for your visual display you will install temporarily in our classroom - Plan ahead…think about where you will install in the room. Will you need to use tabletops and wall space? We will review the room space next class so that you can begin to envision your display.
• Please email your questions or concerns for any work you do this week so that we can continue to support you.
  

Class #3 – Self as Learner – Frameworks and Process

Overview of Day – Check in on the last 2 weeks

CCA SAMART Program
Ann Wettrich, Co Director of the Center for Art and Public Life will talk with us about CCA's SMART program and other student opportunities at the Center.

Reading Reflections and Sharing SHoM
Building off of the homework assignment to reflect on their own artistic process through the lens of SHoM, we will begin by talking about Twyla Tharp article, The Creative Habit
:

• What did you learn from the article about artistic process?
• What are the ways you begin your process?
  

Each student will be asked to think of their own artistic practice through the lens of Studio Habit of the Mind and to write each habit along with how that habit fits into their individual process on Post-Its. Each do a 3 minute analysis of their artistic process using the language of SHoM while we chart what they have to say in a large SHoM wheel on the wall.

Next we will discuss the Hetland and Winner article Art for Our Sake: School arts classes matter more than ever – but not for the reasons you think (Boston Globe, September 2007) - making the point that habits are not hierarchical or independent, but flexibly, interchanging habits that skilled artists move back and forth with in a fluid way.

• What contribution do you think that Hetland and Winner's work makes to the field of arts education?
• What is the potential contribution for artists themselves and\or for the public value of arts in schools or artists and arts in community and public life?

Looking at Artistic Process - Artist Fred Wilson - Art 21 video series.
We will watch Fred Wilson talk about his creative process and examine this through the lens of SHoM. After the video we will talk about Wilson's process using the language of SHoM.
Homework - Due February 9th, 2009

1. Reading and Written Reflection on blogs: (see website for writing prompts)

• Make sure you catch up with all the required blog entrees for the past 3 weeks.
• MAKE SURE YOU COMMENT TO AT LEAST ONE OF YOUR FELLOW CLASSMATES FOR LAST WEEKS POSTS AND THIS WEEKS POSTS.
• READ - Eisner, E. The Arts and the Creation of the Mind, Chapter 1, The Role of the Arts in Transforming Consciousness, Chapter 2, Visions and Version of Art Education, Chapter 8, What Education can Learn from the Arts, Pg 21 - 46. SEE Blogging Journal SITE FOR WRITING RESPONSE PROMPT.
  

2. Preparing for Art Fair Presentation

• Thinking about the Tharp article and SHoM, start to come up with one or two questions – “big questions” that you want to know about how art is essential to learning and how local arts educators are thinking about how arts are connected to learning. What methodology are the using? What evidence do they have that students are learning through the arts?
• You will be asked to pick two site to research, a public school site where there is an active arts or arts integration program; a non-profit or arts organization like a museum or gallery, etc, where they offer arts education opportunities.
  
• You will be asked to research and present in an “installation” style presentation called the “Art Fair” the information your find through this process.
  
• Take your two questions and anything else that is related to this research learning process for you, put them into some kind of organizational process like the “box” that will help you be able to make your process of learning visible to you and to others – the method you come up with is your choice – but you will have to share this method as part of your final presentation.
• Fill out Art Fair planning worksheet and bring to class next week - you will be emailed this sheet along with Project Guidelines.