Students Want Excellent Results

       Students love to see excellent results! Sometimes this is more important to them than anyone else. They are their own worst critics. Frustration and impatience are the constant companions of young artists. I often find myself lecturing and correcting bad attitudes in my classrooms. It takes time for students to mature in the arts and it is important for their caregivers, peers and teachers to nurture and protect them from low self-esteem. I often try to choose lessons that I know my students will achieve some measure of success in the process of doing them. This builds the confidence they will need in the future to attempt harder assignments. Students must learn to see results in their own work even though they are working in a classroom full of their peers who are all progressing on different levels. How does this happen?

      I’ve included below a sample of a reflection I wrote during my art internship. This observation is typical of young student behaviors inside of an art classroom. One of the chief characteristics of immature art students is that they adopt their comprehensive views of their progress from their teacher. As students age, this changes radically; results must happen in accordance to their own estimations after eighteen or nineteen years of age. This student is no longer as trusting of opinions they cannot justify for themselves. In order to teach older students you must appeal to their own individualistic views of how they formulate success.

Seventh Journal Entry

      Ray Armstead and I are partnered teaching 4^th and 5^th graders art at Union Elementary, Belleville Illinois. Our lessons are based upon how community shapes the art that people make. We have completed four lessons thus far.

      During week four, I decided to focus on the various levels of performance skills among the fifth and fourth graders at the school. I needed to analyze what their individual needs were while working on the drawing assignment and I also needed to determine if some of the students shared particular performance skills in common. If I could draw these kinds of conclusions accurately, then perhaps I could conduct my instructions more efficiently overall throughout the day.

      The high performing students in the fourth and fifth grade classrooms shared many common attributes. They appeared enthusiastic about their successes, determined to correct their mistakes and they asked for more help than I anticipated. Sometimes these performers started their drawings over or asked for new sheets of paper. They often engaged in conversation with me deliberately, while making good eye contact with me.

      At first, I was enthusiastic about their behavior. Then, I became worried about having enough time to work with other students in the room. I began to listen to their stories about progress and nodded recognizing quickly their accomplishments in order to give other students time to speak with me as well. I found that giving them more ideas about what they could put into their drawings, was helpful to them and it allowed me to move on to other student’s needs in the classroom.

      There were many low performers in the fifth and fourth grade classrooms at Union Elementary. These students whined about the project being too difficult, were very verbal about their inability to accomplish simple tasks and they gave up quickly on the drawing projects. They frequently kept asking me to do the work for them.

      My first reaction was to feel concerned that I might have chosen an art project that was too demanding for these students. I made a couple of immediate adaptations to the lessons as I progressed through the day with these students. After the first hour I lectured the students briefly about how they should battle their fear of drawing. Then I began to illustrate steps for constructing a drawing onto the blackboard for students that did not seem to know how to begin their drawings.

      I observed also, that many students in my fourth and fifth grade classes were cooperative and undemanding. These kids raised their hands to speak, seemed to conduct themselves according to ‘unwritten’ class rules and hesitated a little before doing the work. They took time to think about the project and then warmed up to it after starting slowly.

      In the beginning, I had a tendency to pay more attention to the high and low performers in the room and let the average performers be. I seemed to take their behavior for granted. However, as the day progressed I began to express their opinions openly after speaking with them one on one. I gave them credit for sensible questions and observations in a loud audible voice to the rest of the classroom. This kind of recognition for their opinions seemed to generate between the students a kind of special regard, an affirmation of their discoveries and concerns.

      I believe that if I can successfully determine patterns of behavior among different groups of performers in my future classrooms, I will become a better teacher and disciplinarian. It is not my intent to ‘stereo-type’ these students, but to provide accurate analysis of human behaviors.  When opportunities present themselves, I want to be able to teach to the particular needs of many students, not just a few.

all articles, photographs and lesson plans are copyrighted 2011 by Grimm

Classroom Motivation and Management

"Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now, With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful." Mark Victor Hansen 

      Artifacts under this MoStep also demonstrate how the appropriate application of behavior management directly influences the environment of the art classroom and the general attitudes students have towards authority figures. Teachers who consistently use appropriate communication skills and affective disciplinary tactics can influence students' intellectual, social, and personal development for many years after they graduate. I have listed below nine positive motivational tactics and one negative motivational tactic that help me manage my classroom. This is because I believe children are best shaped through preventative measures not punitive ones.

1. Choices motivate art students; they need to feel as though they are directing some of their own education. The choice should be about subjects that the students enjoy or subjects that they assign special significance to. I've included here an art survey that helps me to collect data from my students. Surveys can be a rich resource for determining "how" to make choices about lesson plans and also classroom environment.
   
2. Students are motivated when teachers give them some power/responsibility. Assign and rotate classroom responsibilities; this will teach students to value the maintenance of the facilities and resources. Connections between authority and care must be established early in a child's life otherwise, students will associate power with bullying. Bullies want all of the privileges that come with power but none of the responsibility. This is why they enjoy degrading and wounding those they can control.
3. Skill and age appropriate challenges motivate art students. Teachers must know what most students in certain age groups are capable of learning before they introduce materials to them. Evaluate your students' skills before assigning a project. Make sure students can do some of the assignment on their own. Choose to give new challenges along with familiar ones at the same time. Expanding old skills while introducing new ones will nurture confidence in young artists. Young people can be made to feel as though they are being disrespected when educators "baby" them too much. Never dumb down the materials. If students have difficulty with the assignment, simply break it down into more manageable pieces for them to study.
4. Most students love to interact with and engage their peers during art class. As long as they can keep their socializing to an acceptable volume and keep their minds on the work, I let them speak freely with each other during art class. Art, like music and sports should have a different set of demands from other academic pursuits. People are not like robots! They need a variety of activities to stimulate their curiosity. They need to be seen for what they can create, not just for what they can conform to twenty-four-seven. Creativity happens when children are given some measure of independence without always worrying about too many rules and restrictive disciplinary tactics. The art room is a natural "safe haven" for this kind of exploration.
5. If students give meaning or assign purposes for creating art themselves, they will feel more inclined to persevere with their assignments. There should be a balance between my opinions and those ideas my students have about the creative process. Because my students have many experiences and beliefs of their own, it is by far more advantageous for me to design lessons that give them license for broader interpretations. I never hesitate to superimpose an academic perspective of issues when their education is at stake, however, I do try to make room for their personal opinions as well.
6. Students love to see excellent results! Sometimes this is more important to them than anyone else. They are their own worst critics. Frustration and impatience are the constant companions of young artists. I often find myself lecturing and correcting bad attitudes in my classrooms. It takes time for students to mature in the arts and it is important for their caregivers, peers and teachers to nurture and protect them from low self-esteem. I often try to choose lessons that I know my students will achieve some measure of success in the process of doing them. This builds the confidence they will need in the future to attempt harder assignments.
7. Cultural influences and practices will sometimes motivate student enrichment more than anything else. These are similar to those intimate choices students apply to their work. However, they are also different from personal motivations. This is because there is a period of time in which young people must walk apart from the things they have been taught in order to examine and appreciate "what" they have been taught. This is a natural transition into adulthood. If the parents/teachers have taught valuable lessons based in truth, their adult children will then return to important traditions and unique culture or at the very least be appreciative of their community's culture. Every adult will eventually accept or reject lessons taught in childhood on the basis of their own personal experiences. Children will accept their parents culture and value systems with fewer conditions because they are more dependent on their parents for physical, mental and emotional preservation.
8. Students are motivated when they feel safe and accepted in the classroom. No student ever enjoys feeling or actually being ostracized by peers and or teachers. I strive for this emotional safety factor in my art classroom. Students need to know that even if their opinions or ideas don't seem to be similar to their peers, they will be kindly welcomed and listened to during lessons in my classroom.
9. Students are more motivated when they understand the behaviors that are expected of them. The discipline must seem fair and the punishment must fit the crime. In this short but concise paper I describe my classroom policies concerning inappropriate behaviors.
10. Last but not in the least bit least, students are motivated by enjoyment. Most students are required studies in subjects that are not always fun to learn. But, art should be different. Most students believe that there is simply no reason to create art if it can not be an enjoyable prospect. Even art that is about serious topics should be somewhat pleasurable to produce in the eyes of a young person. This simple fact needs to be taken into consideration when teaching art to the masses. 

 

 all articles, photographs and lesson plans are copyrighted 2011 by Grimm

Curriculum and Planning

3D poster about local architecture created by D. K. Grimm in "Art At The Museum" This poster also comes with a hidden compartment containing Art Card Games about architectural elements and their definitions. Photography by Grimm.

"Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up." A. A. Milne 

      Effective instruction is sometimes dependent upon the way in which curriculum is communicated. Individual needs of diverse learners can be addressed through the following variety of traditional lesson plan models. Each of these lesson plan models encourages the growth of particular content knowledge standards. I will include a link to both a lesson plan prototype and an example of how I used the prototype in my own pre-service experience.

1. The cooperative Learning lesson plan emphasizes the importance of group activities. Students must, in fact, work in a group in order to complete the task given them. Ideally, students will not be able to complete the lesson unless every student does his or her part. Cooperative projects are very challenging for teachers and students because the teacher needs to develop aspects of a cooperative project so that one person does not do the work of many and also so that the excellence of one individual is not “down graded” because of team members who refuse to participate. My ATC lesson plan is developed especially for the purpose of supporting a community effort among my art students but, it also flatters the talents of uniquely talented individuals. I will link to it here in the near future.

2. A direct instruction lesson plan is developed for the primary purpose of teaching a skill-set. I've included under this category a lesson plan about slab construction in ceramics. Art teachers develop specific demonstrations for the introductory activity instead of using a lecture. In contrast, direct instruction lessons do not use inquiry-based learning until after students observe and discuss the formal demonstration. 
This lesson plan type is a kind of  "methods" lesson plan.

3. Presentation lesson plans showcase the practice of informing, persuading and encouraging students to establish a form of trust in the instructor. Presentations may be delivered as interviews, reports, encounters, training sessions, and my favorite, storytelling. The teacher has many possible scenarios to choose from in order to develop this kind of a lesson. The presentation artifact that I will include here in the future is based upon my reading of "The Village Basket Weaver."

4. While developing concept lesson plans, I wrote a lesson about abstract and realistic portraiture. I had to provide examples of portraiture, urge my students to ask themselves questions about those examples, teach them to define images by sets of ideas, compare other sample artworks to those they understood already, and then help them to assess their own learning process. All of these processes will in time develop the higher-order-thinking skills that the state of Missouri requires it’s teachers to cultivate in the minds of their students.

5. In the writing of sample discussion based lesson plans, I learned how to share objectives about the story with attention gaining methods and how to prepare students to participate in both small and large groups. In “” I wrote questions that would help students to describe the legend and lay a foundation of literary observations around inquiries about Native American folklore. I also described how I would monitor the student interactions, keep records of their participation and enforce ground rules when conducting the discussion. I also had to describe how I would summarize the discussion at the end of the session. Questions about limiting negative responses from inappropriate remarks were also included along with even more class discussion based upon each student’s individual examination of the materials.

6. In the sample problem-based lesson plan,”” I learned to provide materials to my students that would help them accomplish research using both technology and cooperative small groups. Advanced planning was necessary in order to teach the materials and methods that each group of students would need to research in order to make presentations of the topics assigned to them. The methods of research and the content of those presentations are both important to the growth and development of art students. The greater the ability a student has in discovery and problem solving, the more likely he is to produce artworks that are both meaningful and relevant to his own culture and time period.

7.  In my Theory To Practice, I learned how to develop lessons around objects, themes and visual culture. The lesson called "" is my example of a typical object based lesson plan.  It is important for art students to be inclined by natural curiosity in order for their enthusiasm to feed art in practice.  By selecting an object that is a toy, I automatically establish a common interest between two groups of children who live half a world apart. I believe that teaching art many times is more successful when educators lean towards subjects that are naturally pleasing to their young students.

8. Thematic lesson plans are constructed around a central idea or message. The message could be about society, human nature, or important life topics. These ideas/messages are usually implied rather than stated in an obvious fashion. The theme that I chose to build a lesson around was recycling product and conservation.  The aim of the lesson is to teach students to portray the environment (a landscape) with the very material that would normally be disposed of in the environment. 

9. Visual culture lessons usually include a combination of several academic subjects such as: cultural studies, art history, critical theory, anthropology and/or philosophy. All of these subjects are somehow related to visual images that are consequently explored, analyzed, and manipulated by the students who study the significance of a people's particular attachment to the visual images being studied. I include in this set of artifacts a visual culture lesson called, "." I later taught the lesson at a state high school when my cooperating teacher asked that I include a lesson based upon film. The lesson connects the interplay of satire/parody in our contemporary American teen films.

10. "American Children of The Great Depression" is a collection of sample lesson plans I developed for elementary students integrating American history with fine arts. In integrated studies, teachers design lesson plans that combine two or more subject areas. This kind of formulation uses art to reinforce memory, knowledge, and comprehension skills by more than one method. Students learn a broader spectrum of information about a particular time period in history as well. Integrated studies lessons are among the very latest innovations being introduced to American public education programs today.

11. The studio methods lesson plan focuses primarily on studio processes. Unlike direct instruction lessons, these are not based upon a teacher’s demonstration but upon the principles of constructivist practice. Although, the teacher may ask questions of very young students in order to stimulate their curiosity in some cases. This kind of lesson focuses on self-teaching activities and small group explorations. Teachers guide the learning experience but do not dictate to their students “how” the end product should look. The teacher may apply an underlying theme but he or she does not insist that students should look at a teacher sample and develop a similar product.

12. Lesson plans emphasizing principles and elements of design are used to teach specific singular practices used in the manipulation of materials. As student artists mature, more than one principle is combined together to enhance the quality of the art assignment. This is also a kind of  "methods" lesson plan.

        Art classes that are subject specific and designed for entire semesters need also to include a class syllabus that includes an introduction to the course. Goals, objectives, an outline and project descriptions should also be a part of an attached schedule. I also include information about the books that are used in my courses, e-mail contacts, disciplinary measures for tardy work, and point values for papers, tests, sketchbook and art project assignments in the artifact demonstrating all of these specifics for a fashion design course that I wrote during my Fall Semester at UMSL in 2010, a curriculum unit that may be viewed through my private livetext account. This kind of information will keep students on task and help eliminate confusion.      

      Tactile and visual information to be produced by art students is taught through teacher demonstrations and by observations of those materials and teacher samples made available in the art classroom. Below, I have included many photographs of my teacher samples that demonstrate my interests in including many visual and tactile references in the art classroom.

      Curriculum resources like slide shows/power points, films, art reproductions, time lines, art posters, bulletin boards and classroom literacy center displays are a big part of the visual curriculum that I develop for my classroom too. Above, I have included a architectural elements poster that I designed for my "Art At The Museum" course in the Fall Semester of 2010. I have included many more photos and descriptions of these curriculum resources throughout this portfolio as well.

Red felted wool sample, simple loom weave for young students

Blue abstract artist quilt with butterflies and hand-dyed fabrics

Fancy paper mache' bowls for high school textile course

Sample of portrait drawn with a #2 pencil

Teacher sample drawing of hands, #2 pencil

Teacher sample of colored pencil technique for the classroom

all articles, photographs and lesson plans are copyrighted 2011 by Grimm

Instructional Technologies

My young students work with computer programs to design pattern

One young girl in my classroom uses her free time to study a drawing process

A kindergartener learns to divided his clay evenly

5th graders watch us demonstrate how to build a simple armature. All photos above show technology in the classroom.

"Many people see technology as the problem behind the so-called digital divide. Others see it as the solution. Technology is neither. It must operate in conjuction with business, economic, political and social system." Carly Fiorina 

      The government is anxious for our nation's teachers to include learning environments and experiences supported by informational and instructional technology in our classrooms. "Today we live in a technology-driven global marketplace where ideas and innovation outperform muscle and machine. In an age of digital content and global communications, we must build an education system that meets the new demands of our time. Technology can help us create schools where every child has the opportunity to succeed, while we work to close the achievement gap and address the economic and workforce needs of the future." www2.ed.gov. I am not at all opposed to these concepts. In fact, I have spent the last eight years of my career working online with the Adobe Creative Suite and using Office Word programs on a daily basis. One might even say on an hourly basis! However there are obvious ethical and practical considerations to be made by individual teachers, department heads and administrators when selecting to include technology in the classrooms of America.

      Not every school district can afford expensive software programs and computers for their classrooms. An art teacher must know enough about the use of computer-generated imagery to adapt his or her students’ skill base to those future demands of the market place. Sometimes teachers also need to adapt their lessons to older technology made available by a less than adequate budget of their district. Many art teachers do not even know the first thing about “how” to teach this kind of technology without advanced equipment because the more user friendly software becomes, the less the artist must know about how it actually works. Hence, the necessity of superior knowledge, if the equipment is inferior.

      There is also an obvious age gap between those students who live with computer technology and those who teach these students in an educational environment. Time and time again I have observed a proud resistance to the use of simple technologies in the classroom by older teachers. I myself am not a young educator, but I have managed to keep up with the pace of technology because of necessity and I have learned to enjoy it in spite of my age.

       Use of technology demands detailed training but not necessarily creative thinking. Technological advancements in our culture were and still are achieved by very creative thinkers not computer addicts. A computer can only operate as it is programmed to; it cannot assimilate information by its own direction. This concept is science fiction. Those who are successfully proficient in technology understand that their performance is still driven by human intelligence, not just the mindless application of program use. When teachers become preoccupied with teaching the process of technology over the reasons for technology, they end up exchanging necessary academic information for the skill based practices of communications. There must be a balance of information taught in our classrooms in order for our country to take a prominent position in the global economy as is stated in the national governments' agenda here, "The goal is to explore specific actions to improve education outcomes through targeted applications of technology and to find a renewed perspective on the role of technology in education reform." www2.ed.gov.

      Another very important part of childhood development has to do with human interaction and contact. To deny this obvious truth would be a disaster on our part as educators. Emotionally well-balanced human beings absorb and process information better than those people who live for their immersion in cyberspace. I have experienced first hand the differences between these two perspectives because I have worked online for eight years. Advanced technologies should be taught but not allowed to replace the personal exchange of information between an empathetic, companionable, and well educated teacher and her students. It is possible for students to actually become over-occupied with technology. They can destroy very necessary intimate relationships with family and friends in the process of their addictions. As a nation of privilege we must strive to understand the difference between mindless profit driven technologies and those technologies that are necessary for an advantageous global economy. Otherwise, we will risk becoming a country of people who are controlled by technology, not a people who can produce students who are creative/innovative enough to dictate technological advancement.

      I use technology to enhance my personal productivity and professional practice everyday, both as a website owner, a freelance digital illustrator and as a pre-service teacher at UMSL. Many people who are familiar with my work are surprised to hear this because I have also pursued a fine arts career as a professional painter for over thirty years. But in this fast paced culture we live in, artists must learn to adapt to the demands of their employers in order to feed their families and I have certainly done my share of accommodating this obvious fact.

      I can apply computer technology to facilitate a variety of effective assessment and evaluation strategies through the daily use of online grade books, web journals, productive searches, and graphic technology software programs such as:

1. Productive Searches:

      Art educators should use online resources to supplement their own research. While attending a class called, “Art At The Museum,” I wrote lesson plans based upon internet research/resources. I frequently include web bibliographies with my lesson plans. The lesson plan included in this artifact accompanies an extensive web listing of interactive museum sites for young students. Sites such as these bring technology into the classroom that educates while it entertains.

2. Online Web Journals:

      I publish many online journals for education purposes. I developed a new web journal just for the purpose of communicating with my future students. This journal may be accessed at http://www.arteducationdaily.blogspot.com 

3. Graphic Technology Software Programs:

       I also share my graphic resources online with thousands of educators daily! These resources are made with the Adobe Creative Suite software programs. I am proficient with all of these technologies and can use them liberally inside of a art classroom.

4. Publishing Software Programs:

      During my art internship I also used a publishing type of software typical those programs used in a yearbook course or also in the publishing of special bound editions of student work.

      I've included a sample newsletter that demonstrates my ability to communicate with parents and students with simple software publishing programs. I wrote this particular newsletter to accompany a set of lesson plans for the study of the depression era.

      Technology, however, is not only defined by computer software systems inside of an art classroom. Technology essentially involves the manual use of a wide variety of tools. In art we refer to this skill as “low tech.” As an art educator, I spend much of my time teaching students the fundamental practices used in manual technologies. These methods involve drawing, painting, sculpting, and even sewing. I have had professional success manipulating all kinds of materials such as: oil paints, acrylic paints, watercolors, pastels, clays, and a wide range of textile media. However, there were still some areas of expertise I had yet to develop. I needed further training in ceramics and voiced my concerns to my cooperating teacher during the later half of my state internship. Mrs. Pfeifer happens to be an expert at teaching ceramics to children. She happily agreed to teach me from her vast experience while I was under her supervision. Included here is a collection of ceramics lesson plans that I wrote during my state internship. She also made certain that I could run and maintain a kiln properly. Her devotion to my learning experiences far exceeded my expectations. I chose to remain with her till the end of the school year (two additional weeks) in order to ensure my training to be thorough.

all articles, photographs and lesson plans are copyrighted 2011 by Grimm 

Mende Artifact Clipart

        The Mende are one of the two largest ethnic groups in Sierra Leone; their neighbors, the Temne people, constitute the largest ethnic group at 35.5% of the total population, which is slightly larger than the Mende at 31.2%. The Mende are predominantly found in the Southern Province and the Eastern Province, while the Temne are found primarily in the Northern Province and the Western Area, including the capital city of Freetown. Some of the major cities with significant Mende populations include Bo, Kenema, Kailahun, and Moyamba. Read more...

Read more about the art history card game that uses this clip art here.

Angola Artifact Clipart

       Angola officially the Republic of Angola (Portuguese: República de Angola), is a country located on the west coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) country in both total area and population (behind Brazil in both cases), and is the seventh-largest country in Africa. It is bordered by Namibia to the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Zambia to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Angola has an exclave province, the province of Cabinda, that borders the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The capital and most populous city is Luanda. Read more...

• The People of The Fog 

Read more about the art history card game that uses this clip art here.

Mali Artifact Clipart

       Mali officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali is the eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over 1,240,000 square kilometres (480,000 sq mi). The population of Mali is 21.9 million. 67% of its population was estimated to be under the age of 25 in 2017. Its capital and largest city is Bamako. The sovereign state of Mali consists of eight regions and its borders on the north reach deep into the middle of the Sahara Desert. The country's southern part is in the Sudanian savanna, where the majority of inhabitants live, and both the Niger and Senegal rivers pass through. The country's economy centers on agriculture and mining. One of Mali's most prominent natural resources is gold, and the country is the third largest producer of gold on the African continent. It also exports salt. Read more...

• The People of The Veil...

Read more about the art history card game that uses this clip art here.