Teaching Philosophy 

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In my personal lens, the overarching purpose of schooling is to introduce a social possibility of “we” while also curating the learning and development of individuals in the now and for their future endeavors. I view the learner as a surface to be built upon. A student is a canvas but not in a prepackaged titanium white kind of way. Each one comes with their own colors, mediums already added, and pieces chipped away or curved from the learners past and ever-changing present. In my classroom, students will demonstrate execution of the curriculum while having the space to ask questions and expand upon their artwork. I think about quality over quantity as work progresses, but at the beginning of skill-based work, there will be quantity before quality.  

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My image of a teacher is a change agent. I am an educator who is a dynamic communicator, networker, and facilitator. An individual who can engage in self-assessment, self-reflection, and analysis while being committed to the lifelong learning of themselves and others. I am continually working to expand my understanding and growth within diverse environments, while blooming in my social and economic connections. As an art teacher, I have the unique ability to solve problems creatively and exceedingly enjoy working in cooperation with others. In this role and in life, I am passionate about pushing myself every day to be caring, enthusiastic, passionate, and inspiring as a role model for the students that walk through my door.  

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In schools, curriculum is designed to help students succeed in their learning and development. Its main component is collaborating with the other educators in the school. It sparks creativity while also teaching physical, emotional, and mental skills. Inquiry-oriented teaching is my preferred pedagogy. Laying out an initial backdrop for a lesson provides the background details that are necessary to engage in thoughtful conversation. This type of teaching allows students to take ownership of their learning, reach their goals, empower their individual voice, increase engagement, foster curiosity, and establish a growth mindset. At the beginning, a student's learning developments are piling up in a backpack as “survival skills.” Then as they start to find a sense of individuality, their learning can become more hyper specific. As educators, we need to leave an open door of possibility for them and not assume or place pre-defined expectations on them as developing minds.  

My preferred school climate is one of collaboration and support. With those two things, any problem becomes smaller and easier to solve. It is cheesy but with everyone being on the same team, there are no opponents, rivalries, a need to be top-dog, drama, etc. there is already going to be enough of that within students' relationships with one another.  

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Unit Plan

Big Idea: Environment 

Themes: resourcefulness- reducing, reusing, recycling, making do, repurposing, repairing, consumer awareness, imaginative problem solving, and divergent thinking  

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Thematic Summary:

Anytime you are purchasing or using an object, you are actively being a consumer. To be aware of your own consumerism is to know what your wants are versus your needs, and how your overall intake has an influence on the world around you. By recognizing these things along with controlling your consumer habits, you are being resourceful. Every day we use products that come in packaging such as cardboard boxes and plastic bags. Along with that we have all the leftovers of eating and drinking when using plastic utensils, napkins, carryout bags, plastic cups, straws, etc. Often, these items are used for their initial task then thrown away. My goal for this section of work is to encourage students to think critically about the footprint they are leaving on the world and what kind of impact they are having. Though it may seem small and useless as one person, using less of these items or at least repurposing them will have a large positive effect on our planet. The subthemes within the main theme are reducing, reusing, recycling, making do, repurposing, repairing, imaginative problem solving, and thinking outside the norm.  

 

Essential Questions:

1) How much trash does one person use in a day? (Ex: wrappers, bottles, plastics, products themselves) 

2) What happens when individuals reuse items?  

3) How can we recycle/up-cycle to help the environment? 

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General Objectives: 

The students will understand that art can be made for varying reasons in diverse forms. This can be separated from its initial timely use such as when one repurposes materials. (Va: Cn10.1la) 

The students will demonstrate safe practices and skills using materials, tools, and equipment while making up-cycled art. They will not be wasteful of materials and work in a clean manner. (Va: Cr2.1.1a) 

The students will select and describe works of art that illustrate the experiences of oneself and artists. This will be used as an activity to reflect and analyze the materials used and how they were reused. (Va: Re.7.1.1a) 

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Development Level of Learners: 

The topic relates to real world issues that even adults and the planet are struggling with. Students usually enjoy being informed about what they consider adult topics about real world situations. This age group of seven to nine is the schematic stage and will have lots of variety in the outcome but often repetition within a student. The space schema is introduced, and it is important for them to think three-dimensionally for this work. Note that the younger students could be in the pre-schematic stage and struggle more with the idea of space.  

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Lesson #1-Resourceful Creatures

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Materials:  

• Have students bring in one piece of trash to use as the body of the project (ex: water bottle, milk carton, box, takeout bag, etc.) 

• These are catch-all materials for the classroom, so use anything extra hidden away in your supplies! (Ex: paper scraps, materials scraps, buttons, straws, pipe cleaners, string, googly eyes, caps, etc.) 

• Extra decorating materials that are optional: paint, markers, colored pencils  

• *BIGGEST NEED* glue sticks and tacky glue (hot glue guns helpful if there’s other adult help) 

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Vocab: 

• Consumer, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repurposing, Experimenting, Trash Art 

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Prep: 

• This art activity will take two or three weeks for first through third graders.  

• You will need to: introduce the project, show them how to develop a sketch and create their desired form. 

• Gather materials beforehand that are items that are typically thrown are after use or scraps from around the art room from other projects. Also, encourage them to bring one piece of their own trash to use for the second week of work. 

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Motivation (10 min):

This project overall will be a big visual and experimental experience. Mentally they will think about their own consumer habits then use their own waste combined with classroom scraps to physically make up their animal’s figure. Through experimenting with varied materials, they will discover what pieces work together and what ones do not. Due to this, it is both an aesthetic experience and an aesthetic inquiry. Using an animal sets boundaries while also allowing them to use a figure rather than struggling to think about an abstract form. Instead, they must investigate how the materials can abstractly come together as a whole to form something new.  

*Explained in PPT in a more scripted version in which you will introduce the project with PowerPoint slideshow talking about:  

Resourceful Animals.pptx 

• The big idea, themes, other artists work, process, and vocab terms. 

• Giving a demonstration of how to go about their initial sketch and list of items they could use for the various parts. 

• Going over some problems they could run into before sketching and building occur 

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Art Activity:

1. Allow one class for sketch time and approval of them.  

2. Second week, give a demonstration on attaching materials using glue (only teacher use hot glue gun.  

3. Afterwards, they will start building the final forms and continue through week three. Encourage them to leave week three for small additions.  

4. While they are working, it will be important to walk around to give suggestions, help secure pieces, and make sure nobody is getting stuck. 

5. Use week 3 for final details and decorating time to finalize the work.  

6. Do a quick show and tell of the animals before starting the next project.  

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Clean-up:

• Explain that reusable items or their scraps will be returned to a separate scrap area, preferably an organized table.  

• Glue and other coloring supplies will be put back on a separate table. 

• The rest is to be thrown away and followed by wiping down the table.  

• Lastly, place projects on the designated class shelf.  

 

Critique and Assessment of Lesson- Group Lead Reflection:

Have a walk around exhibit of the animals by having each student put theirs on the table in the workspace. Take about five minutes to let them go around and look at one another's work. Then as a group, ask them one, what animals they liked and why and two, if there was anything they struggled with for the project.  

Student Lead Self-Reflection 

• On a piece of paper have the students reflect on their own work by answering the following.  

•  Questions: 

1. Did you enjoy working with this medium and materials? 

2. Are you happy with how it turned out? 

3. Is there anything you would change, why or why not? 

4. What did you learn from this project?  

5. Explain what grade you think matches your final work.  

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References:

Engineering, I. (2019, December 10). Bordalo ii: Turning trash into stunning animal art sculptures. Interesting Engineering. Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://interestingengineering.com/bordalo-ii-turning-trash-into-stunning-animal-art-pieces. 

Vision, T. (2000, October 19). Recycled art: Lesson Plan (grades K-5). TeacherVision. Retrieved October 26, 2021, from https://www.teachervision.com/recycling/recycled-art. 

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STUDENT EXAMPLES!

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Reflection: 

• I taught the students about what it means to be consumer and how we can limit our trash to help our environment. The objectives focus on repurposing materials, making upcycled art in an unwasteful manner, and focus on reflection of how the materials were used at the end of the lesson.  

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• To start the class out on a positive note on the first day, I made sure we spent enough time to start feeling comfortable and the class and getting to know one another. We did introductions which I also participated in and how talked about why we love art. I demonstrated a mutual respect for students when making the rules of our classroom and elaborating on the fact that we are all one team of artmakers. In creating rapport with the students, I spent time individually checking on each of them in the making process and made sure to listen then provide help when needed. To be responsive to their varied needs and backgrounds, I had to recognize who might need a little more help or guidance. Once recognized, I then went back over information when needed, explained it in a way that they would better understand it, and work with them in their next steps. The biggest challenge at first was getting the students to respect one another as a whole because there were already previous friendships coming in. By the second class, they were already making new friendships, and nobody was singled out, which was joyful to see. Once there was that mutual respect, they engaged in the learning more because I like to lead lessons with lots of group discussions.  

   

• I do believe that my lesson engaged students to create interest and meaning. This is directly reflected in the work they produced since this is such a creative-led project. I give them the lesson and background, but the building is essentially all made-up of their own choices. After I showed them how they could attach different forms and what materials were available to them, they had to interpret what could go together to make the form from their initial sketch. Meaning was created through them doing that as well as reusing materials in a new way. There was trial and error in this since this three-dimensional building seemed to be a new way of artmaking for many of them but once they got the hang of it, they were rolling. 

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• I elicited student responses heavily in the beginning of the lesson. I spent lots of time giving each student time to reflect on their own consumerism and ways they could help the environment. I felt that this is especially important because even as kids, they are all going to have different experiences with consumerism. By doing this deep dive first, they had a better understanding of relating the artwork they were about to make to the real world. They were able to connect the dots in what they were doing and why it was important. My keeping the initial questions more open-ended and not having one right answer, helped flower their creativity into their sketch and final creation.  

• I already touched on this last part, but the creature they were making was up to them. It could be a real animal (alive or extinct), a creature that exists in real-life or not, and it could also be something they totally make up that is a combination of ten different existing or non-existing creatures. They were technically limited to the additions and decorative art supplies I provided however, they could bring in any vessel they wanted to use for the main body part and attachments. This deepened the lesson for them since they one had so much freedom and two, were using their own/family’s own waste.  

 

• In my initial instruction, I called this lesson Resourceful Animals, but I am going to change it to Resourceful Creatures. This eliminates the idea that it must be pre-existing, which is not part of the requirements. I need to play around with the specifics, but I also need to implement a size requirement. When they are smaller, it is hard to add lots of detail, but then when they are too big, it becomes a lot to get detailed. An experiment I would like to try with this project is doing grouped tables instead of individual desks and seeing how that changes the final products. There was a great grasp on the central focus as for as student learning, I think I will redo my PowerPoint to make it even more kid friendly. I wanted it to be structured for the sake of myself, but I need to mess around with the formatting. One big, missed opportunity that I will take advantage of next time is showing different students' strategies to the whole class. With the way I spaced them out individually within the circle shape, I did this to give them room, but I think being grouped along with showing varied approaches throughout will help with any of the students that felt stuck at different points in the process of building and creating. This would help visual learners physically see how different attachment and decorative processes would look. I could also add onto this by putting a few examples up on the board, I am just hesitant to do this because I want them to have full freedom in their mind of their creation instead of thinking their work needs to look like what is presented. I could meet in the middle and show them but not keep them up.