Spring 2013 Journal Entries

Select excerpts of CVA student journals are posted weekly to share with CVA Teaching Artist student and participants and mentors at Practicum sites. See requirements for journal entries in the right column. View cumulative Practicum hours here.

Select a number to view the journals for the week:

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Sample Journal Entry
Shadowing Mississippi Creative Arts Magnet - Marie Olosfdotter - 6 hours
This week I completed my shadowing with Marie Olofsdotter. Having missed the two days when the students actually constructed their masks, it was exciting to see the finished product. The three days I was present were spent rehearsing the story that the students had written together, which they were preparing to act out in a play. Each class was separated into one of 5 different characters, and each group of characters was split in half, allowing each student to have a larger role in the play.

I believe that the students were learning how important each of their roles is in the larger scheme of the play. They were reminded that if they did not participate in saying the lines or doing their actions, that the play would not make sense for the audience. They were learning the importance of being attentive to the play, to be able to join in with saying the lines and to now miss their cues. They also were learning how to stage play very professionally, as their audience on Friday is a classroom of kindergartners.

Some of the students were quite shy about acting out the play, and some were more extroverted. It was apparent that rehearsing many times helped them become more comfortable. The teachers and other students were openly laughing and enjoying their play, and this seemed to help them enjoy it too. The students at this school have experience in dance, music and theater already, but I wondered if there were any other ways that might help certain students break out of their shell even more and really enjoy the experience.

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• Jeremy Anderson
  Randy Shutt, Michelle Gholl - Creative Arts High School, Jackson Elementary - 1 +, 9-12 grade - 14 hours
  


This last week was a very busy week. First I went back to Jackson Elementary to help with their Culture Week. This is where each class is assigned a country and they research it and prepare some stuff and then on a specific day classes take turns visiting other classes and learning about what country they had. We had Burma (Myanmar). This was particularly enjoyable for me because I really had a lot of chances and time to prep for classes, come up with a bunch of mini lessons and projects, and then facilitate the process and construction. We made three posters, origami gems, fish, and butterflies, decorated elephants for the elephant dance, and created a jungle scene.

One of the most encouraging things I got to teach was an improv lesson where I touched on foreground, mid-ground, background, and horizon line. In this lesson I showed the kids some tricks like turning a mistake into something “intentional” (so it doesn’t look like a mistake), I talked about placing creature closer and farther in the plane (fore/mid/background), and I showed them easy ways to portray deep space where we created tree top line to suggest a heavily forested background. If you look at the pictures on the Teaching Artist page this might make more sense. The point is I taught this lesson that I knew would be a challenge for the kids but I thought it would still be entirely possible for them to have success in since I was drawing with them and explaining everything I was doing.

Afterwards the teachers were impressed and said to me, “You know, I’m really impressed that was a challenge for the kids but none of them said, ‘This is boring,’ or ‘This is too hard,’ or ‘I don’t like this’, or anything!”

And another said, “Jeremy, that was good. If I had had a real artist to teach me I when I was younger think I could have really been pretty good at drawing!” Success! And it’s not too late!

I also again had a picture for the best-behaved TABLE of kids this time, which they still loved.

Also one student who never listens or follows along or does any of his work was totally engaged for the entire time through, and this is really big news for the teachers. Afterwards he ran to one of the Teacher’s Aid and held up his picture and excitedly said, “Hey I am good at this!” Wow, well I couldn’t have heard anything to make me feel better on my last day at Jackson.

The rest of the (7 hour) day I pretty much led the class structuring painting, crafts, origami, and coloring and drawing. The presentation is this Friday. I’m excited.

At Creative Arts I attended the painting class and the comics class. The painting class I just helped Randy clean, and the comics class I talked and rambled a bit for about 30 minutes on comic techniques, strategies, methods, construction, execution, and planning/sketching and how to make a dummy book so you know how to print it when you are done. Only two students listened the whole time, but they were into it and that was good enough for me! So I answered what they asked and showed them examples and a comic I’m nearly done with and they both said they learn a lot! So that was really encouraging too.

My last week at Creative Arts High School I have finally remembered and realized what art classes were/are like! You get a direction and suggested materials and methods, but really as long as you’re into it and working and making something you’re proud of the class does what they will! …It’s sort of sad it took me this long to fully remember this. I was kind of thinking for a while that the class was a bit of a mess…but they are all making things they like so that’s what’s important. I just wish they’d want help more often cause I want to give suggestions and work through stuff! Well, the two who want help have been getting plenty, and I’m really happy to give what I have, very satisfying. On Tuesday I’m going to talk about some watercolor/ink techniques and show some examples and then, again, the students will then work on this new idea, but will actually probably just do what they want until they are happy with a result. So it goes.

Lesson from the week? Good work pays off someplace and high school is waaaayy different than 1st grade.


• Adam Fuchs
  Jackson Elementary - Christopher Nelson - 5th grade - 3 hours
  

This will be my last journal. We have come to the end. The project is over, hours are complete, CVA is closing and it’s going to be snowing in May. I will be staying on at Jackson until the end of their school year because I now feel ownership for my students, and want to see them to the end of their time at Jackson. It will also take me almost that long to completely my online portion of their project. While I won’t be teaching drawing or watercolor anymore, I will be teaching a t-shirt making class in a few weeks.The students are going to get blank t-shirts and will create their own Jackson elementary shirts using t-shirt paint and markers. Should be fun!

This week in Jackson saw the end of the student’s portion of the final project. All except for five students finished the final, and those five have been working in color pencil so they can turn it in to me on Monday. I was amazed (again) at the quality, dedication, and enthusiasm the students have had for this project. They are starved for art.

To help with that need to create after their time at Jackson ends, I started an art supply drive to see that each student has a mini studio pack when they leave in June. Thanks to the wonderful CVA community, I am going to be able to outfit all 29 students with a kit that contains a sketchbook, watercolor set, color pencils, watercolor paper, drawing pencils, a pencil sharpener, art gum eraser and various other odds and ends. 5 students who have shown exemplary passion, drive, and commitment to improvement and art will receive a kit with professional quality supplies that also includes charcoal and pastels. Thanks to everyone who helped make that possible.

It has been an honor and privilege to help these kids find their creative voice. I look forward to being able to help as many students as I can in the future.


• Carlen Goldhorn
  Carlen is finished with Practicum hours.
  
  
• Bill Lindau
  Bill is finished with Practicum hours.
  
  
• Chuck Miller
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  
  
• Chloe Russell
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  


• Jenny Stice
  Great River and Free Arts Minnesota - Sam O'Brien - 9th-12th grade - 7.5hours
  

• Jeremy Anderson
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Adam Fuchs
  Jackson Elementary - Christopher Nelson - 5th grade - 10 hours
  



A typical week at Jackson, although the contrast in student attitudes between Monday and Friday was interesting. Jackson is in the midst of MCA testing, and all day Monday (with the exception of my art lesson) was spent in preparation for the MCA science testing, which happened all day Tuesday and Wednesday. The kids have known about and been studying for this test for so long, that there was a lot of trepidation before the left on Monday. The test really gets built up in their minds. You could tell that kids were nervous, and distracted even though they concentrated as best they could on the art lesson, there wasn’t as much enthusiasm as normal. Friday was a 180 degree change. Kids were excited, not thinking about the test from the week past, or the ones coming up next week, but just living in the moment. It was great.

Each student is at a different point in their final project. 8 of them finished on Friday, with the 21 strung out from just started to almost done. I would guess that the vast majority will finish on Monday. Mr. Nelson and I did inform them that Monday would be their last “art lesson” time to work on it, and that they should all strive to finish. Deadlines are something that kids have been working on all year, but they were still nervous that they wouldn’t get done in time to hand it in and have it go on the website. Mr. Nelson and decided that students will work still left to do on Monday could finish up on days they have free time by using color pencil instead of watercolor, or they could have their name and their memory paragraph on the site, but not a picture. We’ll have to play it by ear to see how it actually goes, but I’m hopeful about getting every student’s work represented.

I’ve started the photoshop process on the 8 I have already handed in (the kids got a kick of putting their artwork in the portfolio case that I brought on Friday), and it’s taking less time then I thought, so hopefully in 2-3 weeks, we’ll have the site finished.

• Carlen Goldhorn
  Perpich Center for Arts Education - Karen Monson - 11th-12th grade - 9 hours
  



Tuesday was my last day on site. The day went as usual with the senior students, we had a group critique on their progress, with every student I gave them an artist to look at. For me it is always helpful to see how other artists have solved similar problems. At the end of critique Karen brought up an incident of a student fainting in the studio over the lunch period, because of this incident the students are no longer allowed to work in the studio without a visual arts faculty present. This will be a problem some students will have to overcome while working on their grant project. At the end of the year the grant students will be having a show of their work and I was invited back to see the show at the end of May. I am very excited to see the final product of all of their hard work.

The Junior class started off with a critique of their drawings from the previous class where they drew objects from life and arranged them on the page the best they felt fit. I tried to fit in a positive aspect of each students work that we talked about. The critique took up the majority of the class period from there the students practiced drawing each other to prepare for their student model they were having wednesday.

After the classes were over Karen and I had a great talk about creative learning strategies and life as an artist. I am so very glad I have spent my 90 hours with Karen at Perpich, I have learned so much about learning!


• Bill Lindau
  Bill has finished his Practicum.



• Chuck Miller
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Chloe Russell
  Totino Grace - Pat Benincasa - 9th-12th grade - 14 hours
  
  Day 1. I got to spend a whole day (or three class periods) at Totino Grace presenting my portfolio and talking about the work I do at CVA. It was a rewarding experience for me as much as interesting, I think, for the students.
  
  I showed all of the pieces of work I would generally keep in my portfolio at this point, but I also included a lot of work that I wouldn't necessarily show another professional- I wanted to represent the wide variety of things you can do with art, aside from illustration, which is all I had talked about so far. I showed printmaking pieces, many different digital pieces that I'm not particularly fond of, but I thought the assignment behind them would be interesting to the students- and it was! They for the most part, were quite shocked that an artist can also have a hand in making products that you see in Target, and most didn't even know that Target is a Minnesotan franchise. It was really cool to see the wheels turning when they realized the wide array of career options a BFA can really adapt to.
  
  I talked the entire hour each time, so my interaction was a bit lacking this week.
  
  I was surprised at the amount of interest I got from the students- first hour asked lots of questions about process, sizing work, what a typical assignment was like. Second hour was more disinterested, but I was expecting that. I guess the exercise was as good for me as it was for them because I had to talk cohesively for the class period, and repeat the information over and over with out leaving something out or sounding bored because I'd presented just before (and I didn't get bored- I like to talk!) I left with good a good feeling about it, I think most of them did as well.

  Day 2. This week the 2 D class started studies with acrylic paint similar to those of the color theory class we take at CVA. They had to start with the deepest shade and add steps until they reached the lightest shade of three color strips. The students did a lot of experimenting with gradation, adding complements to the backgrounds or painting the background a flat color, or leaving it flat. One student wanted to add the gradient effect to her color strips, but was struggling. When we examined her painting, I talked about how acrylic dries so quickly that you have to make really premeditated decisions for your painting. She would have to probably start over and blend very quickly in order to get the smooth effect she wanted- and she did achieve that.
  
  During 3D they were introduced to their clay project. They will be making a pottery piece of their choice that will be glazed and fired in a kiln- I love working with clay and was very excited to help with this project. We spent the rest of both class hours after the introduction just cutting and distributing chunks of clay. Kids started slamming their clay on the table to get the air bubbles out- it was really funny to watch it, almost seemed like stress relief.
  
  Pat had a check-in with me before class and asked me to give a brief overview of my experience at TG by picking words that came to mind. I chose the words: Interaction, Investment. In the way of interaction, I talked about how I felt the interactions were developing. Students come up to me and ask me questions more often- especially after they saw the work I do and know that I am a competent artist, I think. I also think that the more I interact with students here, the more I am able to express an idea I am thinking (I stumble on words a lot), and I am able to help them come to their own conclusions with out much influence.
  
  When I say the word Investment, I mean student confidence, along with how much they care for the class really influences the work they do. There are a lot of shy kids who I think have a lot of creativity, it really helps I think to have an instructor who is also invested in success of the department and the student (like Pat!).
  
  I don't know if anyone agrees or disagrees, or has any words of their own to add to the list. It was interesting to do on the spot.

• Jenny Stice
  Great River - Sam O'Brien - 9th-12 grade - 3 hours
  Free Arts - 4.5 hours
  
  

  On Tuesday this week the IB Art class was introduced to a new project. This is going to be a project for both the 11th and 12th graders. The students will be using monotype techniques to create a propaganda poster of some theme. During this introduction Max talked about some of the different types of propaganda and how they could be defined. They also looked at multiple examples of propaganda, talking about which type of propaganda each poster might be. One of the students in the class has researched propaganda to some depth for another class, so Max gave her the chance at times to step in and talk about the different types propaganda.
  
  The students were given until the end of class on Thursday to finish writing their proposals. Before class started I had a conversation with a student who has been struggling with deciding where she will be going to college next year, due to financial aid issues. From talking to her I know that she is working mostly on her own to figure out how she’s going to pay for college and if the huge debt she’d end up graduating with would be worth the education. Somehow Anna has decided that I am the person to talk to about this matter, being the wise college student that I am. Honestly its been slightly frightening to be one of her main sources of information for all things college, and as it turns out I now have knowledge about transferring colleges, which Anna is thinking about doing after her freshman year. .
  
  In ceramics on Tuesday the students were working on various projects and was somewhat of a transition day until their new project was introduced. On Thursday I was only on site for the ceramics class because of a previously scheduled meeting at 2:00pm that day. During this class the students were introduced to their new ceramics project. They are being tasked with creating a series of 3 tiles that tell a story or sequence. They will have to make two editions of these three tiles. Most of the class was spent with the students drawing out their ideas and talking about what to make their stories imagery consist of. .
  
  We were on site Wednesday night and Saturday morning. Wednesday night we were at St. Joes Theresa unit. Theresa is their shelter unit and one of St. Joes more transitional units, the students are not checked into the treatment program but are more staying at St. Joes because they have no where else to live at that particular moment. Because of the nature of this unit, the mentors do not always have the same students from week to week, believe it or not this unit is even more irregular in attending Free Arts then the rest of those at St. Joes! On Wednesday night we had three students attend from the unit. Even though this does not seem like a great number of students, it was wonderful to have students participating in the program. We have sadly spent many evenings without any students to participate in the program. The three students we had Wednesday night were teenage boys. It has been interesting to watch the older male students interact with the clay projects and how they handle the different themes. We were making the affirmation/positive thought cups that night. This has been one of the main projects which older male students handle differently. Usually they end up translating affirmation/ positive thought into ‘what makes me happy’ cup. This has translated into the students creating cups or mugs that are themed off of objects or favorite pass times. One of my favorite mugs was created by a younger male student who put a rocket ship and the words rocket ship on his mug ‘because rocket ships made him happy’. .
  
  On Saturday we are working with the boys group at Omegon, this was our third session with them. This has been a different session because Chris from the Northern Clay Center is the instructor for the Omegon boys sessions. This has been wonderful because its been one more opportunity to learn from another teaching artist.
  

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Week 12 – CVA Student Journal entries from April 8-12

• Jeremy Anderson
  Creative Arts High - Randy Shutte - 9-12 grade - 7.0 hours
  
  This week I was on site at the high school only on Tuesday. Randy was gone on Thursday and Friday so I decided to not go those days. This day, which now seems like a while ago, was a good productive day. I helped Randy rearrange much of his room. I painted a stand, put together a flat file, moved a cabinet, planned for a new cabinet, and cleaned some stuff. Also Chuck showed up towards the end and he helped with stuff too! Wasn’t expecting that. Randy was really thankful for our help, teachers are busy people!
  
  I also learned some basic pottery wheel techniques, which was a lot of fun. I have very little experience in ceramics and I happened to be there for two ceramics classes so I thought I might as well become a student for a bit since I wasn’t going to be a ton of help there. In the painting class I walked about and helped a few people with some minor things like brainstorming and application and a bit painting technique.
  
  In the comics class I was able to teach a little bit which was fun and very improvisational. I was walking around seeing what people were working on and noticed a few things that would really help them and so I spoke to Randy quick and he had anyone who was interested come over and I talked and demonstrated about panel gutters and how the size and shape of panels and compositional elements in the frame can guide and manipulate the viewers eyes often without them realizing it! Whether it’s to rush through the panels or stay on one frame and explore it. Simple things you don’t think about. It’s cool to manipulate! Sometimes.
  
  I only talked for about 10-15 minutes and then they went back to what they were doing. And I was left wondering whether any of that had helped anything. I began to think about how art school is all about critiques and reactions and feedback! And when you’re teaching…you often get zero feedback! And are left wondering how impactful what you said really was sometimes. I began to think about how I really wished they had said thanks this makes sense or I don’t get this etc. And then I realized my teachers for the last 24 years must have wanted this feedback themselves and I reheard in my head, “sometimes you won’t know you’ve made an impact but you have,” which I have heard many times. And how my mom has told me to, suggested (strongly) me to contact teachers somehow and thank them.
  
  Well it wasn’t so bad for me because as I was walking around I saw many of them employing just what I had spoken about. And then even better, Randy at the end of class asked who had learned something from Jeremy today and several of them raised their hands. The rest just kept working. I’ll pretend they were just too busy to raise their hands.
  
  
• Adam Fuchs
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Carlen Goldhorn
  Perpich Arts High School - Karen Munson - 11-12 grade - 5.0 hours
  

I was only on site Tuesday due to Perpich’s snow half day on Thursday, this coming Tuesday Is my last day. During the senior class the students had another day of a in progress critique, each of them went around the room and showed what they have accomplished thus far. Some of the students were steadily working towards their end goal with no problem. However a few of the students were running into unforeseen problems with their pieces. When they stated in the critique the students, Karen and I problem solved as a group. It was really great to see the students want to help each other succeed. It is so important for these students, and artists in general, to have a supportive backbone.

The juniors were continuing with their contour line drawings, however for this class Karen had the students work on a large sheet of paper. When she brought out the paper the class as a whole was extremely intimidated, I am guessing that the majority of the students have never worked this large before. Karen also had the students create their line drawings with a black marker so that erasing was not a possibility. She then pared the students off so that they could draw each other. They were allowed to go anywhere in the school to draw, most went in the gallery space but a few stuck around the classroom. I was worried that the students who left the classroom would not be using this time for drawing but, when Karen and I walked around to check on the students all of them were quietly working and a few of them were starting on a second drawing. It was really nice seeing these students great work ethics, it is always easier to work with students who want to learn.



• Bill Lindau
  Bill has finished his Practicum hours.
  
  
  
• Chuck Miller
  Creative Arts High - Randy Shutte - 9-12 grade - 8.0 hours
  

Week of 4/7 Creative Arts High – 2 hours. I’ve finally made it back to CAHS. I’ve reconnected with Randy about what’s going on. I was a bit out of the mood for some time but finally getting my butt to the building has really changed my mood. The kids are starting a new quarter so I feel like I’m starting fresh a little bit and Randy is really happy to see me, which makes me feel great. He said actually that the last week of last quarter was so crazy that it was probably a good thing that I wasn’t there. So the students are going to be starting new projects in painting involving atmospheric washes and dark motifs. It seems really interesting actually. Comic book class is still working away on their comics, which don’t seem to be all that exciting for them. In fact, it seems to be dragging for both students and Randy. He’s made this well known. I was considering trying out a new placement to see if that would liven things up, but now that my perspective has been rearranged, I think I will stick this out to the end. And I’m very sure that I will be here after CVA lets out.

Week of 4/14 Creative Arts High – 6 hours. A new semester and new challenges. Exciting challenges though. I have a couple projects (and I’m going to try to think of more!) First of all, Randy wants to put together a storage unit for canvases, matt board and the like, similar to the giant shelving that is in the painting rooms at Grotto. So I’m putting the specs together and making a shopping list for Randy and putting it all together. I’m excited to make something. The second project I have is my lesson. I introduced the wheat paste lesson to Randy who thought it was really neat, and he laughed at the idea of showing high school students how to do graffiti. However, I assured him that it was washable graffiti. He has agreed to give me some space on the school walls as well. In painting students have started there washes and it’s fun to see what they’re making but it’s mostly just playing around right now. I want to think of some fun new things for the comic book class. I’m not sure, but Randy, the students, and I just aren’t enjoying so it keeps on dragging. I’m wondering about making some sort of art game so that we are still creating things but the class might be a bit more active. I will look into this further with Randy.


• Chloe Russell
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Jenny Stice
  Great River - Sam O'Brien - 9-12 grade - 2.50 hours
  

I was only at Great River on Tuesday this week. They didn’t have school on Thursday/Friday because of conferences. It was a fairly slow paced day on Tuesday. The ceramics class was putting the final touches on their handmade box project. This was their final day to work on it before it was due Monday of the next week. Most of the students were in pretty good shape for having it done at the end of the class period, but as usual we had a couple who were behind on finishing the project. We had two students who were very behind in creating the box. One was behind because she had been working on other things during ceramics class, usually she was working on homework from another class, so beyond reminding her that the deadline for the box project was getting closer it was hard to tell her not to work on her homework (Especially when this student in particular has difficulty sitting down and concentrating on doing her projects). The other student who was behind in finishing the box project was having trouble creating the slabs for the box. I think it was a mix between lack of time and understanding of the materials that led to his frustrations with the project. This is one of the places that I’ve noticed a poor transition between Sam leaving the classroom and Max entering it. Max does not always know what knowledge the students have about clay and its materials, so it is difficult for some of the students who don’t have any previous experience working with clay to accurately use the tools and materials in the classroom.

In the IB Art class the Juniors were critiquing their plexi glass plate prints. Instead of participating in the critique I chose to sit down and talk with some of the seniors who were having a conversation about college and student loans. There were only 3 seniors in the classroom, the rest I’m hoping were working on projects elsewhere but I’ve noticed since the IB Art portfolios have been turned in there is a lack of activity amongst the seniors.

I had three site visits this week with Free Arts. We finished up our sessions with the Isaiah Unit and started our sessions with the Theresa unit. Isaiah has been one of our most consistent sites at St. Joes, its also been one of our largest groups. We usually had 8-10 tenants attend the session. For this final session the students were making clay leaves for the group installation project. For this project I was working closely with one of the female students, who is the past has wanted assistance from one of the free arts mentors, Angie, or myself. This is the first time that I’ve helped her complete the full session, and I quite enjoyed talking with her and working through completing her project. This is the same student that I wrote previously about her interaction with 2 other students, and them using ‘fetal alcohol syndrome’ as a derogatory description of a painting. In the interaction she told them it was not ok to say that and admitted to having fetal alcohol syndrome herself. This student has an absolutely amazing personality, but she does have some difficulty working with the clay and being positive about her project. Usually she will try to get whomever is helping her to make her project for her, so its mostly a game of give and take while helping her. “If you complete this part of the project I’ll work on this portion” or “Can you try to paint the leaf first, then we can work together to paint the letters”. Even though she at times got negative about the letters and how well they read, she had a wonderful attitude about completing her design for the leaf. It was also interesting to talk with her about why the clay was bothering her hands, she got upset when the clay got under her nails. I said that she could go and wash her hands if she wanted and then we can finish, but she said she would rather just finish making the leaf, and then wash her hands. She went on to tell me that she has Sensory Integration Disorder, and thats why the clay bothers her hands. This was not said as an excuse, just a fact that she wanted me to know. Working with this student emphasized my previous knowledge of how rewarding being a mentor at such a facility as St. Joes can be.

• Jeremy Anderson
  Creative Arts High- Randy Shutte - 9-12 grade -7.0 hours
  

Last Friday I had my first day at Creative Arts High School. I was previously at Jackson Elementary, but now I have switched. I was really excited to jump so many years ahead and to be able to work with people who are farther along in their lives, people who already know how to read and write, and especially people who want to invest in art and already have a good idea of what they like and even how they like to do it!

When I first entered the classroom the class had already begun. My first day was the students last day of the quarter, so everything was really relaxed and focused on finishing up any loose ends or missing assignments before the end of the day. I began in the Tai Chi class (this was the first class of the day for Randy). I learned that they were just introducing a new form, and since this isn’t really a class I’ll be able to help with a ton, I found that I can just do some forms with them! Which will be fun. Later throughout the day I went to 2 pottery classes, a painting class, drawing class, and a comic book class. I got along really easily with Randy, he’s a really great teacher who graduated from CVA. Some of his former classmates are now part of the CVA Action team. Which is cool.

So far on the first day I really just got to know a lot of the students. I was given some homework from some of the students, they wanted me to draw…just anything. So I made them a simple six from comic. They all liked it. One girl said it gave her, “a happy feeling,” so I think that’s good. In high school my pictures aren’t amazing and there isn’t a huge crowd that gathers every time I lay a pencil on paper. They aren’t in awe of me. They aren’t in first grade. They are interested and want to ask me about Illustration and are open and willing to receive comments and mini critiques on their work, but they didn’t ask for it nonstop like the first graders did.

Besides getting to know the different people I helped clean a bunch of pottery stuff with Randy, I graded some packets, and I reviewed a few comic strips they were working on. I also helped/critiqued/suggested some ideas on the aesthetic design of a large pottery vase someone was working on. And I helped Randy pick out some final pictures for an art contest . And I taught a girl about one and two point perspective. Easy and fun. And she got it too. I also was reminded of the different cliques and social groups of high school. The kids were very open and cool and willing to accept me right away and talk about and receive feedback on their work.

Based off of my first day I think I will really enjoy being here. I can see right away that I can contribute much to the comic class in particular. I’m excited to expose them to some really high quality comics (“graphic novels”) by some brilliant artists and writers, enough of this superman x-men poorly written, can’t tell where my eyes are supposed to go next floppy crappy comic things. I already talked about a few things I can show or teach or lead in those classes and Randy was cool with it, he seemed excited. He’s open to me teaching almost anything! So that’s really cool I’m really excited to see how interested these kids will be once they are shown actual quality, beautiful deep conceptual comics, I am assuming most of them don’t know about comics outside of dc and marvel, which mainly pumps out a bunch of nothing.

Okay. First day, lots of people, lots of stuff going on, my thoughts are excited and bouncing all over. I think the painting drawing and comics classes will be the ones that I will be able to help with a lot. The pottery I can critique but I don’t know the technique, and the Tai Chi I can be a good participatory example. I also am going to show them Capoeira Angola. Randy’s idea. Exciting.


• Adam Fuchs
  Jackson Preparatory Magnet - Christopher Nelson - 5th grade - 7.0 hours
  
  Friday was the big day they’ve all been looking forward to—watercolor. The kids always like doing the art lessons, but the past few times I’ve been there, I’ve been asked numerous times, “When are we gonna paint?” After over a month of drawing lessons, color has been long anticipated. This was also the class that Lynda sat in on to observe.
  
  I began with a demo on watercolor techniques, emphasizing the need for lots of water and light, feathery strokes. I taught the kids to build their paintings from shapes, rather than trying to paint outlines that they then filled in. I taught them how colors would run together if mixed wet, and how when laying colors next to each other, they need to let the first one dry before adding the second. They learned about using a dry brush to reduce the amount of color and water after laying it down—generic watercolor erasing. They learned a lot. In fact, the demo was probably a bit too long. Finally, they got to paint.
  
  Surprisingly, the lessons I had demonstrated sank in. Walking around the class during work time, I noticed most kids using the strategies I suggested. Since this painting session was just to get them used to the medium before painting their final drawings, they could paint whatever they wanted. Even while letting their imaginations roam, I noticed a lot of kids explore using the tools I had given them. It was great!
  
  At the end of the day, even those these were just “sketches” and “explorations”, the kids were to bring them home to share. Lynda, Mr. Nelson, and I couldl tell that the painting was a huge hit. The art lessons in general have been wildly popular, but the painting was especially well received. So much so that Mr. Nelson set aside some thick scratch paper to allow kids to paint even when I’m not able to be there.
  
  Even though my time at Jackson still has a long way to go (5 lessons, plus 2-3 weeks to e website before presenting it), the way kids faces light up when I walk in on Monday and Fridays, makes me not want it to end. The kids have given me such a great experience that I’ve decided to give a little something extra back. After talking with Mr. Nelson, I’ve decided to donate 3 art packs that include new, high quality versions of all the supplies the students have used in the lessons I’ve taught this semester. Some of the kids have no access to things like this at home, and while getting supplies for everyone is not possible, 3 kids at least will be able to extend outside the classroom.
  
  Mr. Nelson and are brainstorming ways of giving these packs away (having your name entered into a drawing by meeting certain goals, straight everyone entered drawing, three highest scores in something, etc). Any thoughts on interesting and academic ways to hand these out?
  
  
• Carlen Goldhorn
  Perpich Arts High School - Karen Munson -11-12 grade -9.0 hours
  

Tuesday was the start of new classes for the students, so I met a handful of new students, some of the seniors were in the previous classes. The senior class is all of the students who got the grant they applied for the previous trimester. When class started Karen had the students go around and introduce themselves and the project they will be working on for the next 8 weeks. It was really great to hear all of the student’s ideas, each of them had a strong unique plan. For the course the students have a weekly critique where they share with Karen and the other students their progress. Part of the critique they have to fill out a sheet that states their goals for each week, their struggles, successes and how many hours they spent working on their piece, they also grade themselves on how much effort they put in. I found this idea really successful, Its teaching these students that when they leave Perpich they must hold themselves responsible for making work.

On Thursday these students had a critique meeting, since it was the first week many didn't have much progress in their piece, mostly research and gathering of materials. That being said, a few of the students have made great strides with their work.

The Junior class is the same as last trimester, a drawing and painting class. It was interesting to see how Karen introduced the class and what she expects of the students. I have not had the chance to see her do this yet, she started introducing the class stating that the students were there to learn and make art, not to socialize (this was a problem with the last class). She then had the students go around and say what they wanted to take away from this class. After that, she introduced the assignment that would be due the next day (wednesday) they had to draw their hand, a chair, a figure from life and a figure from their imagination. When I came into class the drawings were still hanging on the wall and the class had a range of skill so it will be interesting to see how they improve throughout the class. Thursday’s class was spent drawing blind contour line drawings. Karen had the students poke their pencil through the middle of a piece of paper (so they can’t cheat). The students drew their hands for three, one minute intervals. They then drew the person in front of them for two, ten minute intervals. Every time the short drawing session was over the students would look at their paper and laugh, Karen walked around the room and pointed out strengths in everyone’s drawing. I was surprised by the focus the group had a whole, Karen said that in the past drawing and painting class they could not hold focus for the whole ten minutes. It was really helpful to see how different groups of students have different personalities and needs.


• Bill Lindau
  Bill had finished his practicum experience.
  



• Chuck Miller
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Chloe Russell
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Jenny Stice
  Great River - Sam O'Brien - 9-12 grade - 4.5 hours
  
  I was at GR for the first time since my spring break and then their spring break. It was great to be back in the classroom, if not a little disorienting because I had to catch up on what the students were working on. The ceramics class has begun working on a hand made box. They first created the box out of paper, and then had to create slabs of clay to cut their box pieces from. This project is meant to have the students become aware of the inside and outside of a piece of pottery.
  
  The students are tasked with putting images on the outside and inside of the box, the images must relate or play off of each other in some way. Max has said that his main thought in having them do this project is so they can learn the importance of creating a model (out of paper for this project) and then turning it into an actual piece. There are one or two of the students who have started to grasp this concept, but most have just been frustrated by the constraints of having to create something with specific measurements, even if they came up with the measurements themselves. A specific problem the students have had with creating the boxes is allotting for the measurement differences depending on the width of their slabs. Both Max and I mentioned this to the students on different occasions, but it didn’t seem to stick. I could tell they possibly needed a more visual example of why their measurements might change. I wasn’t there for the introduction of the project so I don’t know if Max has given them a visual example or not.
  
  In the IB Art class the 11th graders are working on a plexiglass plate etching. Most of them have gotten to the point of printing their plates, and were doing this in class on Tuesday and Thursday. The 12th graders are working on turning in their IB Art portfolios and recording their interviews. From what I can their portfolios and interviews were due by the end of last week so that Max could email them before the deadline. Now that the students have finished their IB requirements, most of them are faced with having to decide what they are going to work on for the rest of the school year. The only suggestion I’ve heard so far has been a part joking one, coming from one student who would like to do paper mache. (I believe this is stemming from Randi’s art class doing paper mache in the art room). I’m sure Max has a project for the 12th graders to do over the remaining time, but if some of them are convinced to do paper mache I think it would be interesting to have them do a sculpture project using paper mache as a medium.
  
  --I did not have any Free Arts hours this week. Angie had the week off, and I was out of town for the Saturday site visit.
  
  

• Jeremy Anderson
  Jackson Elementary - Michelle Gholl - 1st grade - 7.0 hours
  

So I have now finished at Jackson Elementary for a while. I will be returning to help with a mural painting day in the end of April, but officially my last day has come and gone! And it was a lovely time.

As I had mentioned before, every class I had been drawing a picture for one kid, sometimes two. I would draw these for kids who had shown an admirable and commendable something during that day, then I would talk about what I had noticed, why it was good, and then award them with a picture. The only problem with this was that I really wanted to give every kid a picture, and once I’d give one a picture there was often times when a kid would look sadly at me and ask why they didn’t get one, and I’d have to explain about how I can only give one away per day and that I give them away when I notice good things they are doing, and that was how you would get them etc. But I always felt bad anyway during these talks.

So.

For my final day I decided to draw a packet of pictures for each of the kids. Based off of the most popular requests for things to draw, I made four pictures and copied them. I didn’t want to be gender stereotyping the kids, they get enough of that already, so I gave all four of the pictures to all the kids. Spiderman, Captain America, a cute baby fox, and an anime style girl riding a crane! That last one may have been a little random. None of these pictures were done in the style that I have been developing really; they were made for the kids! After I had made these and passed them out and said goodbye and watched the kids love them, I stayed after and was talking to Michelle Gholl and the Student teachers, and teacher’s aid. They were looking at the pictures, all of which I had spent about 10-15 minutes on. All of us artists know this is not a long time to spend on a picture.

The teachers from Jackson were all commenting on how amazing and great the pictures were, while I was standing there feeling a bit embarrassed for these pictures that were now going to be associated with me, which really had nothing to do with my normal work. They were for the kids and what the kids were interested in.
Then I began to think a lot about one of the biggest assets a teaching artist has, the reason they/us can be so valued. I think it’s this same ability I unknowingly showed…at a very small scale. It’s the adaptability an artist can hold to be able to work with different ideas, styles, and mediums.


• Adam Fuchs
  Springbreak St Paul.
  



• Carlen Goldhorn
  Springbreak Perpich.
  
  
  
• Bill Lindau
  Bill has finished his Practicum hours.



• Chuck Miller
  Springbreak St Paul.
  



• Chloe Russell
  Springbreak.
  



• Jenny Stice
  Free Arts - Northern Clay - multi - 3.0 hours
  
  This week I had two site visits with Free Arts, on Tuesday night and Saturday morning. The Tuesday night visit was our third time with this group at St. Joes and it went much like the previous visits have. On Tuesday night Angie and I had a discussion about ways the final project could be made more intriguing for the students. The final project is a collaborative project that will be installed and stay at the sites. Each student is tasked with creating one or two leaves with a positive or affirming word on it. These leaves are then going to be placed on a tree that the site mentors are tasked with creating on a wall or in an area of their site. We did this project twice already and had some issues with the students not being engaged with creating their projects. After talking it over, Angie mentioned she thought having examples of larger leaves would be helpful and possibly urging the students to put healing phrases or quotes on their leaves instead of just words.

Saturday was our last session with the girls at Omegon. We were creating the leaf project with them for this session. At Omegon we are set up in the cafeteria for these clay sessions because it is on the first floor and does not require carrying clay up stairs, but because we are in this room the set up is slightly awkward for housing a group.

To have all the students and Omegon staff sit at a table with at least one mentor it leaves the other mentors to either hover over the students or sit at a separate table. We asked the students to even out at the tables so that it would be split up evenly between mentors and students. But we only had one student move to the other table, Angie went to press the subject of other students moving over to the second table but the Omegon staff accepted this as if it was fine and told Angie it was fine to start. Seated at the second table was one student, a mentor and myself. From the start of the session I could tell that the student was not happy to be at Free Arts, and this was most likely stemming from an unhappiness with being at Omegon. While creating the project she expressed the want to put something negative on her project, but then stated that she couldn’t because it was a negative statement. I encouraged her to create her project base first and then think about what she was going to write on it. Most of the session went like this, where the other mentor and I talked with this student (at least tried too, seeing as I did most of the talking. Both the mentor and student were very quiet.) I did find some common ground with the student when talking about my trip to France, as she had taken 2 years of french in school.

After our session was over I was very sad to leave knowing this was our last session. Omegon has been one of the first sites where I have liked both the students, site staff and mentors. At Omegon I have also felt they have the need for more ‘Art’ oriented projects. The students did amazingly well with the clay and happily surprised us with their creativity. This is absolutely a site that I will keep in mind for the future, either volunteering with Free Arts or as a teaching artist. In this coming week Angie will be on break, so I won’t have any Free Arts hours.

For improving the critical response there are several items which I might change or try differently in the future. - First off I would like to be more prepared for teaching the lesson. I feel like I could have done more research into Guernica and Pablo Picasso, instead of just relying on the information that I already had from previous times studying the painting. - One item which I have been thinking about is how to address students. I usually slip into a more informal way of speaking to students, this is something that I’ll need to keep in mind when continuing to teach. Learning phrases to use with the students that are formal but still personal. - I also think having the protocol displayed for the students would help them work through the lesson.

• Jeremy Anderson
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Adam Fuchs
  Jackson Elementary - Christopher Nelson - 5th grade - 16.0 hours
  
  I was able to make it in to Jackson on three days this week instead of the normal two—which was a nice treat. I only taught on two on Monday and Wednesday because Thursday the kids were treated to a pizza party for winning the Pennies For Patients fundraising competition that goes on at Jackson every February. I was surprised how disciplined the students were on Thursday. I was there from 12-3, and Thursday was their last day of school before conferences and spring break. They also had a pizza party planned for 2:00, but the kids went about the day as if it were a normal day. I was very impressed by their discipline and maturity.
  
  We spent this week at practicing drawing bodies, both at rest and in motion. I introduced the kids to Gesture drawings to illustrate how to capture an action. Since we will be drawing their memories as final drawings, most of the students will be drawing some sort of event or movement and I thought it would be good to practice how the body looks while in motion. I lead them through some 30-second gestures, and then illustrated how the gestures could tie into more realistic drawings by transitioning through stick figures. Stick figures become the bones of our body drawings because the kids are familiar with and unafraid of stick people. I showed them how proportions worked, and then demonstrated how skin and clothes hang on the bones of the figure. We did not do realistic drawings due to the nature of caricature, but by building up from stick people, the students were able to grasp how to get started drawing a body, and how the parts relate to each other. Several students commented on how much easier it was than just trying to draw arms and legs from scratch.
  
  I also taught them what I call the “Shape Rule” as an alternate method to figure drawing. I illustrated how the body is made of different shapes, and how you can arrange the parts and control the proportions of your drawing through those shapes. After everything is arranged, you can refine those shapes into their respective parts. This lesson was on Friday and actually dovetailed very nicely with the math lesson for the day. The students do math from 12:20-1:10 and I teach from 2:00-2:45. They are just starting to get into area and volume of shapes- the “Shape Rule” was a good translator for many students.
  
  
• Carlen Goldhorn
  Perpich Center for Arts Education - Karen Monson - 11th and 12th Grade - 9.0 hours
  

On Tuesday the students were making their finishing touches on the paintings they were working on. Everything had to be finished by Friday as it was the last day of their semester. After classes Karen approached me and noted that she sensed I had made a strong connection with one of the students. Karen said this happens to her about once a school year, where she and a student really meld and the student comes to her with any questions or problems. This was really neat she noticed this because I have also a certain student in particular comes to me instead of Karen with problems and advice considering her work.

Thursday was my last day with this particular group of students. The senior oil painting class had the guest artist come and critique their final paintings and afterwards cleaned up the classroom. A few of the seniors, after class approached me about problems and anxiety they have had about going to an arts college and I answered all of their questions as best as I could. For the junior class, I brought cookies for the students, this was kind of the wrap, free day to work on what you wanted. Karen and the students got me a gift, which was really nice. They got me a pair of fairy wings with a note that said “you earned these” and I wore them the rest of the day. Karen also gave me a thank you note and offered to write me a letter of recommendation. I am sad to see these students move on to a different class but excited to meet the next group. This coming week the students are on spring break so I will not be attending.


• Maddie Harr
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Bill Lindau
  Bill has finished his Practicum hours.
  



• Chuck Miller
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Chloe Russell
  Totino Grace - Pat Benincasa - 9th-12th grade - 3.0 hours
  

I accidentally came to Totino Grace on the first tuesday of spring break- Pat wasn't expecting me because I was of course, on spring break. She let me stay and watch the beginnings of new assignments in both classes.

In 2D they were making scratch paper pieces. They first had to draw out a concept on 8x11 paper in pencil, and then practice on a very small black scratch paper square. After that they could move on to make their final scratch pieces- which I was not there to see. I had a lot of great interactions while students were conceptualizing their content though. There was a student who wanted to draw a pair of hands and was tracing her actual hand in order to get the shape. When I walked past she asked me for assistance because it wasn't looking realistic even though she was crafting it using her own hand. We talked about the how the shape she was using was pretty static- she could make a hand that looked more lively and in movement. We broke down the shapes you find within a hand by looking at our own hands- the large area in the center, the shape of fingers and position of fingers. She ended up with a really successful hand drawing by the time class was through, and she seemed pleased with it.

Another memorable interaction was with a girl who sits at a table full of outspoken friends in the 2D class. She was trying to draw a butterfly for her scratch art page- but she was struggling with getting the right shape- when I asked how it was going she expressed that concern. We looked at the drawing and I asked her if she could think of what the actual body of a butterfly looks like. I call what she was drawing a “hot dog butterfly”, a hot dog sandwiched between two bun like wings. It's what we draw when we are thinking of a butterfly from memory, but not what an actual butterfly looks like. We looked up images of an actual butterfly and noted the tapered shape of the body, the more detailed shapes of the wings. She also noticed that she could really take advantage of the linework found within the butterfly wings for this particular medium- a great observation! Connecting what medium she was working with to how she could work best with her overall concept. I didn't get to see her end product, but I was really impressed with her thought process.

In 3D they were beginning a “Found Object” project, in which they represent a memory with found objects. Unfortunately, since it was in the beginning stages, very few students brought supplies. It turns out it's kind of difficult to get students to gather supplies from home. Most ended up painting the bases for their projects or doing other homework during 3D class time.


• Jenny Stice
  No hours this week.
  

• Jeremy Anderson
  Jackson Elementary - Michelle Gholl - 1st grade - 7.0 hours
  
  Usually when I am on site I follow the kids at Jackson Elementary throughout all of their classes: where they go Jeremy goes. Today however, I decided to stick with the teachers to observe their normal interaction. I am only at Jackson on Fridays so I am (of course) catching the very end of the week, which is when they are most likely to be the most worn down. We had some interesting conversation about the level of presentation/terms/concepts that had been presented earlier in the day during a field trip to the Como Elementary Planetarium. Which was really cool by the way. Talking about this was specifically interesting to me because while teaching at Arts Us I constantly had problems delivering concepts that were a bit too advanced for some of the kids. I think this has been my greatest challenge so far.
  
  We also talked about different methods of keeping control during our crazy energetic classroom, which I had an inside view on because I had previously attended classes outside of the homeroom. It was entertaining to have this inside view to share that I hadn’t realized I was the only one who had had it. It made me realize about the different tendencies and teaching styles and tricks each educator holds, and how even while we share our methods, we still have little tricks and ideas that we forget about or don’t think to spread to others that may have great value to another. I suppose that is one big reason why we write these journals.
  
  Then at the end of the day there was another outburst of chaos from one child, which is almost expected now unfortunately. I talked to the child and got him to calm down a little bit and reason with me. I am really glad I had this moment without intervention or discipline. I knew the child already knew he was being bad and disobeying rules and with only a few minutes before the busses arrived I didn’t feel it was a good time to wag my finger at him and tell him why he was being bad, instead I was able to listen to him a bit, which I think is really what he needs.
  
  I only have a few days left at Jackson and I really hope I will be able to talk to this child again and be able to have time to listen to him again…because I think this is really what he needs now. He knows what’s right and wrong according to the rules of the school. I suspect that this frustration is stemming from something else and he’s too busy being reprimanded to have time to explain why he’s so frustrated and constantly crying for attention! Next week, I hope, will hold part two of this journal.
  
  
• Adam Fuchs
  Jackson Elementary - Christopher Nelson - 5th grade - 10.0 hours
  
  This week at Jackson, we moved a bit further into the caricature yearbook lesson. On Monday, the students practiced drawing each other by pairing together with another student at their table. I started the lesson by drawing two volunteer students and emphasizing the fact that caricatures are meant to be fun drawings of someone—not drawings to make fun of someone. I think it was important to get students to realize that it is very easy to make a hurtful drawing when exaggerating a person’s features. Even if you don’t intend to be hurtful, you can never know what people are sensitive about when it comes to looks, and therefore must be truthful and playful and yet careful not to go too far. When the students practiced their drawings of each other, using the expressions and facial feature knowledge gained in previous lessons, I was pleased to see that they did so in a respectful manner and with the best of intentions. I think that treating them like adults and addressing the problem before it even had a chance to occur, while talking them through how to look at someone and kindly exaggerate their features, went a long way in fostering a classroom atmosphere of respectfulness and fun.
  
  On Friday, students practiced drawing themselves using mirrors. I fashioned 29 mirror stands out of foam core and used 2”x3” safety mirrors found at Axe Man. For the most part, kids jumped into the lesson. There were some fears at the start because now they were drawing themselves and realizing how tough it is to face your own self-images when exaggerating your own features. Both Mr. Nelson and circulated the class room for a bit helping to point out features to exaggerate for different students, assuring them that whatever feature their were exaggerating was good because it makes them unique and special. I was glad to see that students also pointed out features to each other and helped each other through the drawings. The small-group table set up in Mr. Nelson’s class is ideal for drawing lessons, and for almost all of the lessons that I’ve seen. I remember my own elementary school rooms with the lines of desks that had every student facing the front in orderly rows, and I wish that I had been able to take part in the social learning that goes on at Jackson Elementary. I don’t know if the school has always been set-up in the table arrangement or if it is a new educational strategy, but I’m glad that they are.
  
  
• Carlen Goldhorn
  Perpich Center for Arts Education - Karen Monson - 11th and 12th Grade - 6.5 hours
  

On Tuesday the students were busy working through their paintings, the juniors were preparing for their reviews by Karen on Thursday. They were taking a lot of time with their paintings as to make them absolutely perfect and I could see the students who weren't done start to panic. One students in particular was painting a picture of her hands and was obviously very frustrated and stressed about the deadline. So I approached her and asked if there was anything I could do to help her. She didn't seem to know what to do and so I told her to mix three general colors and apply them everywhere she saw them. She didn't seem to understand so I asked her if I could paint on her painting for her as an example. This was really hard for me to do because I didn't know how much to paint to show her an example without doing it for her. So I only applied the paint is about three places and handed the brush back to her. After seeing her painting the next coming Tuesday I was pleasantly surprised, it turned out really well. After class Karen gave me some books to help in lesson planning, I will bring those to our meeting.

On Thursday I met with Ilene at the Walker Arts Center for lunch, she came with a list of things to know as a teaching artist and we had great conversation. She answered a lot of my questions considering furthering my education and where to find jobs etc. After lunch we wandered around the Walker and she showed me how she would talk to a class about the work. This was a great learning experience and I hope to be working with her in the near future.


• Maddie Harr
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Bill Lindau
  Bill is finished with his hours.
  



• Chuck Miller
  Creative Arts High School - Randy Schutt - 9-12 grade - 2.0 hours
  

I have been inexorably ill recently. I knew that my sickness was contagious as well so I didn’t go to my internship this week. I did, however, manage to make my way to the Walker with the students. This was an exciting event. While I wasn’t crazy about the art in the exhibit, it was very fun to see the reaction of the students as the discovered the very unusual painting methods. We toured the rest of the walker as well, which didn’t show much except for the Midnight Party exhibit. It was new for the students and they enjoyed it, but it was old news for me. We didn’t have long to spend there but the kids seemed happy. It was apparent to me though that I still haven’t discovered the reason for my loss of excitement. I realized as I was talking to one particular student that I sounded downright boring and awkward. Something has to change if I want to teach this class something. Anyways, next week is my spring break and the spring break for CAHS is right after that. I realize that I am far behind on my hours. I will have to make a schedule for my future trips to CAHS to make my hours work. Randy has proposed a printmaking lesson for me to do as well, so I will work on that over break. I also was not able to attend my MMAA event this week due to my illness so I will have to rely on my research for those hours. I don’t have much done with the exception of a basic list of ideas. I will work on this more fervently to help fill my hours.


• Chloe Russell
  Totino Gracel - Pat Benincasa - 9-12 grade - 8.0hours
  

I didn't get to see students finishing up their printmaking projects at Totino Grace in the 2D class, but was glad that they were posted on the walls so I could take pictures of them to show you all. They matted them on paper lined with graph marks, signed and editioned each print in pencil.

During 3D, the masks were being turned in, but I noticed one of the students from the prior class period examining a mask in a skeptical way. It turned out the mask was one that could be construed as pretty racially insensitive: dark brown paint, large ears attached, bright red lips. The student who made it said that it was supposed to be Barack Obama, not a tribal mask. This sort of pushed the level of insensitivity and Pat asked that the student actually paste a picture of Obama over the mask to hide the features he'd put on there. Pat didn't hide the fact that she was making him fix the project in front of other students- but she didn't call him out on it in front of the students either. I think his friends at the table noticed and realized that it wasn't funny anymore now that he was being recognized for the mask- they definitely thought it was a funny joke to begin with though. Hopefully because of that they won't make the mistake of turning in something like that again. The student who made the racially insensitive mask of “Barack Obama” was talked to by the dean of the school, and made to re-do the assignment after all. It became pretty clear that he was just trying to make a mean joke mask instead of the benefit of the doubt that he might've been unaware of the racial implications. The day was quite slow because the students were finishing up their projects and doing homework if they didn't have anything left to do in class. On both counts most students did homework.

I did get to see a great independent study project from a student who has her classtime during second hour. She likes to work with photography. For her most recent project, she took some photos outside and built them up three dimensionally. She had a picture of a fence and a pathway that she added wood and hemp-like material to so that it was tactile. It was much more interesting to look at with the extra materials on it. Another girl during 3rd hour does her independent study. She is making this huge, probably 5x5 ft acrylic painting of a waterlily in a pond. She's quite good, and asked for opinions after a few weeks of working at it on her own. She wanted to know how she could unify the pond with the sky, because the quality of the painting changed between those areas. We talked about using colors from the main focus of the painting and adding them to the other areas to create unity with color, and looking at a picture of a landscape so she could see how water realistically ends with land. I will get a picture of it next week, it's hanging in the front of the school now.


• Jenny Stice
  Great River - Sam O'Brien - 11th + 12th grade - 3.25 hours
  Free Arts Minnesota - Northern Clay - varied age - 2.0 hours
  

On Tuesday last week I taught a critical response for the 12th graders at Great River. The lesson itself went very much like the previous lesson I taught for the 11th graders. I am continuously amazed by the knowledge of the students at GR, and this critical response was another great example of this. I was very happy with how well both of the lessons went, but of course there are items that I can improve on. After teaching a lesson and evaluating it afterwords, its much easier to see where improvements can be had.

Great River. On Thursday at GR I arrived to ceramics class to find that it was pi day, and the students would be leaving class 10 minutes early to attend a pi day assembly. During this assembly the students would have the chance to get up and recite pi to as many digits as they could remember, any student that got up and attempted to recite pi would receive a slice of pie. Because of this assembly there would be no IB Art class. It gave me something to think about, since IB Art is technically a elective class, it was considered fine that it was canceled for the day (and I’m sure that the teachers are aware and prepare for this missing class period). But it seemed slightly strange to me that the school was cutting out a whole class period and part of the previous one for this assembly, and from what I could tell from talking to students it might have been optional attendance.

Free Arts. I was only at Free Arts for Tuesday night, because of my spring break plans I missed our Saturday session. On Tuesday nights we are now working with an older group of teens at St. Josephs. This group is much louder then previous groups we have had, it has been a great example of how students can feed off of each other. We have one main instigator in the group, who talks over anyone talking and at times interrupts Angie when she is giving directions. Its at this time when working with students who have traumatized backgrounds, and keeping this in mind while handling discipline. A main issue that we have run into with this group is that the staff from the site are more concerned with returning the students to the unit after they are finished with their projects. From what I have witnessed during the session is the students rushing to complete their projects because they know they’ll be going back to their unit after they finish.

• Jeremy Anderson
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  
  
• Adam Fuchs
  Jackson Elementary - Christopher Nelson - 5th grade - 3.0 hours
  

It was a short week this week at Jackson due to in-service day on Friday in preparation for parent teacher conferences and spring break. We reviewed the expressions that the students had practiced the week before to refresh them and relax them by drawing something they already had practice with. After a few minutes of review we moved on to the next lesson- adding the likeness of a person to the expression. I introduced hair, jaws, and ears to the students and gave them examples of some common cartoon versions. I also demonstrated how the expressions (eyes, nose, mouth) that they had been practicing could be coupled with hair, jaw, and ears to make a whole face. After about 10 minutes of demonstration, the kids spent the next 20 minutes practicing hair, jaws, ears and whole heads.

During the 1hr prep time that Mr. Nelson and I get in the afternoons while the students are in science or the computer lab, I usually look through the process folders where the kids store all of the their drawings and assignments for this project. I have been pleased to note with a few exceptions (due to absence or whatnot) the kids practice what I’ve showed them throughout the week when I’m not there. They are definitely learning from what I have been showing them, and what they have discovered on their own. The method of assessment for this project will be substantial progress shown through process work for the entirety of the project— most of the students are nailing it.

I do wonder if there is something I can do other than repetition and warm feedback that will ease the fears of those who still they “can’t draw”. There is a lot of comparing between students during the drawing sessions and no matter how much you reinforce that there are no right or wrong drawings, and no bad drawings, I can tell there are still some students who feel they can’t do it.


• Carlen Goldhorn
  Perpich Center for Arts Education - Karen Monson - 11th+12th grade - 4.0 hours
  
  I was not able to make it into Perpich on Tuesday due to the snow storm. When I walked in today everyone was happy to see me as I have not been in for my last two planned visits for un-expected reasons. The senior oil painting class is really making progress on their work. Today was a work day so the class sat quietly at their easels and painted, they really have a nice sense of work ethic. Occasionally I had students approach me and Karen with questions but these students really have a nice idea of where their work is headed.
  
  The junior class has finished their Van Gogh paintings and they really turned out well. Now they are working on independent paintings, the students are working with acrylics and are painting from a reference photo. They are also moving along really well but they have more questions about starting the painting and need a little bit more prodding then the seniors. This class is really starting to like my presence in the classroom and take to heart the feedback i’m giving them.
  
  After classes were over Karen and I went into the break room to get a cup of coffee and really had a nice talk. Before I knew it we had been talking for about an hour. She let me know that the junior students asked if I could come into the classroom more then twice a week, which really made me smile. Its great working with a group of students that want you there just as much as you do. We also talked about the strengths and the weaknesses of the class and we came up with some really great ideas on how to get the students to talk about their work during critique. Karen commented on the different ideas that we both bring to the classroom and how it gives the students different options on how to solve a problem. We talked about the difficultly in working with an administrator who does not have an arts background in an arts high school, the current administrator wants to make a universal grading system for the school and the arts cannot be graded the same as math or other classes. I really enjoyed this time sharing ideas with Karen and learning what it is like working within the high school setting. I have had an option to attend another school during the semester but my time at Perpich is going so well, I really don't want to leave. Considering all of the panic and anxiety I first encountered at the beginning of the semester, this experience is going much better then planned or expected. Like I have said many times before it is going to be really hard to leave Karen and the students once my time there is finished, I might have to come and pay a visit every once and a while.
  
  
• Maddie Harr
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Bill Lindau
  Finished with Practicum Hours
  



• Chuck Miller
  Creative Arts High School - Randy Shcutt - 9-12 grade - 6.0 hours
  


This week was the deadline for the contest “The Best 100.” Randy was very busy trying to get his students to finish up projects to use as entries. It seemed very exciting and I had a good conversation with Randy about all the different community events that CAHS participates in. It seems that the school has a large presence in the art crawl that happens bi-annually. Randy has also organized a field trip to the walker next week to see the painter-painter exhibit. He’s asked me to be there as a chaperone. It’s hard to think of myself as a chaperone. I’m excited to go but I don’t think my enthusiasm is very external. I think one of my problems with the lack of connection in the classroom is a general lack of enthusiasm. I don’t have any energy when I’m in the classroom (or anywhere for that matter.) I don’t know where it went, but I am determined to get it back. Randy has introduced some neat things. The new painting project is a step in the opposite direction as far as technique. Instead of smooth flat lines they are making short strokes. The comic book class has been introduced to the Hero’s Journey, a new concept for me as well, which sounds fascinating. I’m not sure where the students will go with it but I’m excited to see.


• Chloe Russell
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Jenny Stice
  Great River - Same O'Brien - 9-12th grade - 2.5 hours
  Free Arts - Shadowing North Clay Artist - 3.0 hours
  

Great River Charter. I was supposed to teach on Tuesday but because of the snow day I ended up teaching on Thursday. I showed up to GR on Thursday to find that Sam was not there because his partner had gone into labor. The amusement of Sam missing my lesson by a snow day wasn’t lost on me! Thankfully I was able to have a little bit of a discussion with Max, the substitute from GR who will be filling in for Sam, about what my role has been in the classroom over the past couple months and our plans were for me to teach. The lesson went very smoothly, I led a critical response for the 11th graders during class and will be teaching the 12th graders on Tuesday this coming week. I chose to have the students do a critical esponse on Picasso’s painting Guernica, by Lynda’s suggestion that it was a good cubist painting to respond on because of its content. Most of the students were not familiar with the painting and had no knowledge of its content so it was pretty much a blind reading for them. I was completely impressed with the students ability to talk about a piece of artwork and as a group figure out what the content revolved around. I’m looking forward to leading a response for the 12th graders on Tuesday, but still have to choose a new piece of artwork for them to look at.

I’ll be interested to see what projects the students will be creating over the next couple months. They will be starting a new lesson now that Max is in charge of the classroom. I’m also excited to be in a classroom with another teacher and to learn about his teaching style.

Free Arts Minnesota. On Monday night we had our last site visit with Eldred unit at St. Joes. For this project we were making clay leaves, on the leaves words associated with healing were supposed to be attached. These leaves are going to be used for an installation at St. Joes. For this site visit we were lucky to have Esther, Free Arts MN Senior Program Coordinator, as the staff representative from Free Arts. From my interactions with Esther I know that she’s an inspirational individual who has an energetic and full personality. It was interesting to have her at the site visit because of her experience with St. Joes and higher status of knowledge for the workings of Free Arts and St. Joes. We ended up having one student come down from the Eldred unit. Daekwon is a regular at Free Arts, from the mentors I’ve learned that he enjoys drawing and free styling while he creates projects. This is the second time that he’s participated in one of the clay projects. Although he enjoys working with the clay and does have talent for handling it, he doesn’t seem to have any attachment to the clay pieces he creates. After the site visit was over Esther broached the subject of this interaction of staff members in the classes. Esther talked to the site mentors about how they might handle this in the future, and that she would be contacting the St. Joes.

We were supposed to start our site visits with the Isaiah unit at St. Joes on Tuesday but because of the snow Angie cancelled and rescheduled the sites to start this coming week.

On Saturday we started our site visits at Omegon in Minnetonka. This is another residential center for youth. We are first working with the girls unit at Omegon, on Saturday we had two girls attend the project, Amy and Kira. Having been to three different sites now it has been interesting to notice the slight difference in atmosphere at these sites. I don’t know if I can necessarily define it, but it is something that can be felt while visiting them. Not to say that the atmosphere is bad at any of the sites, but there is a difference in the sites and behavior of the staff and youth.

• Jeremy Anderson
  No hours this week.
  
  
  
• Adam Fuchs
  Jackson Elementary - Christopher Nelson - 5th grade - 10 hours
  
  It was a great week at Jackson. On Monday, I introduced the written portion of the project. Kids had to write 4-5 detailed sentences about 2 memories they had from the school year. I was surprised how detailed a lot of the kids got. I tried to emphasize that they needed paragraphs that would paint a picture of their memory in their heads, and I think that helped a lot of the kids produce rich, detailed narratives. We will be polishing their narratives as we get closer and closer to drawing the illustrations for them, but the students definitely have a great start. Mid-week was spent in a multi-day marathon of creating a demo of the final product. I did 3 caricatures of my roommates and I, painted them in watercolor, and built a short parallax scrolling website that tells the narrative.
  
  http://www.mynelsonyearbook.us/
  
  I presented the overview of the lesson with examples and the demo website on Friday during a 45min teaching sessions after lunch. The students were very enthusiastic. I think actually seeing the final product on the web, and knowing that they will have their very own website with their artwork raised the excitement levels to the moon. Kids couldn’t wait to start drawing. I broke down the six parts of a caricature portrait: eyes, nose, mouth, hair, ears, and jaw; and set them to practicing the first 3 parts. I also posted some examples on the website to get them used to interacting with it, and to give them something to draw from over the weekend.
  
  Breaking down the drawing process is essential to taking the fear out the project. Since explaining the project, I’ve had a lot of students tell me that they are not good at drawing—basically they are scared of it, and don’t know where to start. Showing them that all drawings start with a single line, and if they go slow, and think about what they are drawing and why, the process becomes much easier did a lot to alleviate anxiety on Friday, and everyone produced quality work when practicing faces. I also showed examples of different types of drawings and stressed that there are no “good” or “bad” drawings, and that there are no right or wrong answers in art. Making it fun, and taking off the pressure opened a lot of the students up and got them eager to try more drawing on Monday.
  
  On Monday, we’ll have another 1/2hr block of time to refresh drawing skills on eyes, nose, and mouth; and to introduce the next 3 features and practice them. The students will given examples of different hairstyles, jaw lines, and ears, and shown how to break those examples down into manageable drawings. After the practice on Friday, it should go very smoothly.
  
  Actually teaching the artistic process to the kids has also opened the floodgates to questions during the rest of the day. In the past, kids have been kind of reticent in asking for help in math, reading, science, and other academic lessons; but during the last week, questions are now flying equally to Mr. Nelson and myself. It’s great to have more interaction with the students, but I’m finding that I have to brush on mixed fractions and things that you just don’t really use as an adult. All-in-all, a great week.
  
  
• Carlen Goldhorn
  Perpich Center for Arts Education - Karen Monson - 11th and 12th grade - 5 hours
  

I was only at Perpich on Tuesday because I was sick on Thursday, so I only spent five hours there this week. In the senior oil painting class the visiting artist was there, she was selecting work from students that she thought would sell for the art for shelter fund raiser. She had this certain idea of what would sell at the show, but she wasn't sharing this idea with that class which I think was a missed learning opportunity. She would ask the students what they thought would sell and deny their answer with out giving reason. One thing I have noticed spending time at Perpich is how greatly learning styles and ideas differ from one art instructor to another. The difficult thing with teaching students how to make art is that there is not one solid answer to a question or one specific way to do something. However, I feel as though the instructors are pressured into teaching this way, because this is how classes are taught in high school. This can be extremely difficult when there are multiple instructors working within the classroom. Karen and the guest artist have taught the children a very regimented way to mix color, the teach students that the only way one could achieve the color they want is to mix specific colors together in a specific order. I was never taught to mix color this way, I learned how to mix color by “playing” or experimenting with the colors. So this can become very frustrating when a student asks me how to mix a color and I reply “What do you think would make this color?” or “What if you mixed X and Y?” and Karen or the visiting artist would come up to the students and tell them X+Y=A. In both situations the students reach the expected outcome, just take very different paths to get there.

The junior drawing class is still working on their Van Gogh look-a-likes and I am extremely impressed, as always. I was very honored when one of the students approached me to help her put together a portfolio for a summer program at MIAD. Karen allowed us to go out into the hall and look at all of her work from the past year and put together a wide variety of strong work. I would point to work that I thought was strong and would be a good portfolio piece and I explained to her why I thought this. In my opinion, it is very important for an instructor and artist to be able to explain why they do or do not like something. If you tell a student that they shouldn't put a piece into their portfolio, you need to explain why you think that so they can keep this in mind for future portfolio decisions. I am certainly learning a lot on how to talk to students and how to explain ideas or concepts (which believe it or not is a lot harder then you think).


• Maddie Harr
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Bill Lindau
  Bill's Practicum hours are finished.
  



• Chuck Miller
  Creative Arts High School - Randy Schutt - 9-12 grade - 6.0 hours
  
  I feel awkward in the classroom. I have tried getting to know some of the students, but just like it was when I was in school, teenagers can be very closed off. I don’t take this personal, but it does seem a little frustrating. But then there are a few students that do seem to be very nice and are receptive when I talk to them. The drawing class is making a lot more sense to me. Randy’s lessons seemed to be sporadic to me, not knowing what the next lesson was going to be, which reminds me of my high school art teacher. Now I see that he has been teaching them the foundations of composition drawing. I’m not sure the students see the bigger picture though. During class the students are given so much time to work as well. It makes my time there not so hands on and more supervising. I spend a lot of time walking around and giving advice to the students. I enjoy this, it’s much more relaxing, but sometimes I wish I had more interaction with the students than just watching them which seems to be much of Randy’s relationship with the students.
  
  
• Chloe Russell
  Wilder - Sandra Menefee Taylor - adult - 6 hours
  Totino Grace - Pat Bennincasa - 9-12 grade - 14 hours
  
  In the last two weeks at Wilder we focused on continuation projects. The projects leaned both quite crafty- Sandra works very hard to balance the wants of the organization (items for display) and teaching art fundamentals and art focused lessons. Right at this time, the organization was requesting projects be made specifically for display, so she had to work out something quick to do, and visually pleasing. With the group of dementia affected individuals we traced bird shapes within a box that was printed on paper. The birds were slightly too big for the box, so that the students could work on breaking the idea that everything has to perfectly fit. The tracing took a long time the first week, the second week it went much quicker. Muscle memory? The class had little recollection of doing this project twice. The first week they only got around to painting some of the birds. There is a man in class who is newer and not used to being away from home. He was agitated at the beginning, refusing to add anything to his page and ended up leaving class early. The next week he was much more acclimated to the setting and stayed quite a bit longer, painting some of his page. He did end up leaving early again. I asked Sandra about it, she told me it would just take some time to get used to being in settings like this for him and eventually he would probably have more fun, or find a class he liked better. The second week of the bird project lent itself to much creativity- a woman set up an entire scene of birds being fed from a window (cheerios!). Another man added a necklace to the bird- on closer inspection the necklace “charm” said “CEMENT”- oops, it definitely looked like it was plummeting from the air! He's got quite a sense of humor. Many students added borders, detail to their birds. This project was meant at first to help the organization for something to hang up in the halls, so it was quite simple with no real restrictions.
  
  The second group began the first week making still lifes of vases. They worked with scale, shrinking the vases down and lining them up on a long horizontal piece of paper. One student wanted to work vertically and resisted the horizontal format. His work is very precise, he just knows exactly how he wants to go about something. Because of the composition, the drawing part of the class took a long time and painting time shorter. These were meant to be used as the display pieces to be cut up, but Sandra thought they were nice she couldn't bring herself to separate them and worked with older works for the hallway displays (they want a display that is cut up and rearranged so that it can be foldable- not just a hanging wall piece). The following week we worked on the vases again- but only three per page this time. That way the class could focus on painting it really well and not spend as much time working on drawing. There was a person who did get very frustrated- she was convinced she couldn't draw or paint a straight line. She ended up with one of the most beautiful line up of vases but was really displeased with it. Sandra worked with her one on one a lot to help her feel better about her picture, but she ended up handing it off to me at the end of class, not wanting to look at it anymore. It's really hard to break that insecurity that you build as an adult.
  
  At Totino Grace, I was finally able to see the beginning of a project in BOTH 2D and 3D classes! In 2D they are designing, carving, and printing linoleum prints. The students had been briefed and were working on designing what they would carve. There was a lot for me to help out with that day- the main part being helping students note the difference between drawing for something that is to be carved and printed. I recommended they color the area they would be carving in with their pencils so they could see what it would look like with a value difference instead of just linework. Many students got the idea right away, a lot of students had incredibly complex linework that I suggested simplifying so that they weren't carving forever. It's difficult to begin thinking graphically. When I came back the following week, they were already printing- mostly just proofs. There were all kinds of different designs, I'll be sure to photograph them once they're finished. The proofing process was fun to watch because I noticed a lot of students proofing, and then deciding they need to carve more or fix something- so they went to wash off and adjust their block.
  
  The second week that I was there, a lot of students were absent because of a wrestling meet- this was advantageous for me because I got to talk to the students who usually kind of brush me off and engage with their friends. With the majority his table gone, I was able to talk with a boy who made a Nike symbol and wrote the word “NIKE” on his linoleum backwards. It's hard to dissuade some students from using brands and things that are already a design sometimes- this was one of those times. We talked about how well he carved his type, especially backwards. I made him show me his proofs and we talked about what colors were working and what needed to be refined. Hopefully he will be more receptive to my presence in the future once his table returns.
  
  The 3D class is making plaster masks. The second class period and third class period are the classes that are drastically different in personality- it shows a LOT in this project. The second class used a mold to cast the mask shape and the third class casted them mostly on their own faces! I will say that I am pleasantly surprised at the amount of variation and creativity popping up in second class. The third class is of course, going leaps and bounds beyond the requirements of the project. One student was wondering how he could attach a rhinoceros horn to his mask. Pat discussed with him lots of different ways he could do it but made sure to note she is very 3D minded- but had never tried to do that before so it's all experimenting until something works. That kid is super creative and inquisitive. We all talked about the different careers you can use creativity in now-a-days including biology, which he was interested in. I keep seeing this- students want to talk about their futures and Pat always discusses that kind of stuff with them, whether or not it has anything to do with the art world. It's cool to watch the wheels turn and remember being in that place when I was in high school. I think these students are much more motivated than students I knew when I was younger- I'm not sure if it's the difference in environment or generation.
  
  I was glad Pat challenged me to assert myself more in both classes as more than a lurker and note taker because wrestling event and the smaller classes. The instance I mentioned before with the Nike boy was the most notable interaction I had, but I overall got to talk a lot more with students about process and ask them to explain themselves to me so that they could work out vocally what they were doing and why they made their artistic choices. Next week I will be at TG twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and no longer at Wilder.
  
  
• Jenny Stice
  Free Arts Minnesota/Northern Clay - Camp St. Croix - 7 hours
  Great River - Sam O'brien - 9-12 grade - 4.5 hours
  

Camp St. Croix. This week was a little unusual in that I spent Saturday morning at Camp St. Croix (where I work during the summer) as a volunteer for their Camp Rally Day. I was there doing a small craft project with any children who came, while their parents registered them for various camps and asked questions about the YMCA’s summer programs/camps. We were doing quite simple crafts that morning because most of the youth coming in were fairly young, the oldest probably being 8. The youth had a option between creating a braided bracelet, drawing a picture, or making a flower out of coffee filters. It was a great in action experience for me, this is the first time I have taught students on my own since starting my internship. I was amazed to notice a change in my way of speaking to the students and my ability to keep them occupied. At one point I had 3 young girls participating in crafts while their mom and dad looked filled out paper work for their oldest daughter to attend day camp. I got the girls set up at a table, oldest sister (possibly around 6-7) wanted to make a bracelet and did this while talking to her mom about which type of day camp she’d like to attend, a pretty hard choice when you have to choose between fairytale princess, cheer leader or arts & crafts camp. The middle aged girl wanted to do some drawing and was content for awhile to sit and draw. The youngest sister was not showing interest in anything, except the kiddy scissors that were on the table. After asking if she would like to put down the scissors and do some drawing ( all I got in response was a giggle and continued playing with the scissors), because her mom wasn’t concerned with her having the scissors in general I decided to show her how to make cut paper snowflakes. This did the trick, she was absolutely thrilled with her new paper cutting skill. This inspired her older sister to make a snowflake as well, but she got a little experimental with her snowflake and attached a pipe cleaner to the middle of the paper. While working with these girls I was also answering questions from their mom about day camp, and what kind of activities they participate in during the day. I also had a very delightful conversation with two friends, a pair of young girls who must have been around 5 years old, Ella and Ava. This would be there first time at day camp and their moms had many questions, so while they were in the other room talking with CSC full time staff, I sat down and did a couple crafts with them. The girls were truly wonderful, talking with them and listening to Ella explain why she made the grass in her picture pink was the greatest reminder of why I love teaching.

FreeArts Minnesota. I also spent my usual time with free arts this week. Our visit to St. Joes was uneventful in many ways. We once again did not have any youth from the Eldred unit attend our site, 15 minutes into our start time two of the mentors went up to the unit door and not finding anyone there went looking for any kids to participate in the projects. In the end we did have two youth come down 20 or so minutes into the visit. Angie, Jamie and I talked about this situation of never knowing if we will have students to participate or not. Angie expressed the need for Free Arts to make contact with the site beforehand to see if any students would be attending, because so much of the program is based off of a progression through each project it makes sense that the program should be with as consistent of a group as possible. We have also had communication issues with the CRTC. It was impressive listening to Angie request this need for information from Free Arts and the sites. Even though we are teaching artists and most of the time are outsiders coming into organizations, there is information that we have rights to request. I think this has been a good experience for me to witness and can later use it as a scale for what is reasonable information to request from the organization I’m working with. This was my last week being at the Children’s Residential Treatment Center, we will not be there next Saturday and I will be in Paris for the last site visit during CVA’s spring break. Several of the students had trouble creating their clay boxes and expressed frustrations with using the clay. Angie worked closely with one student who had stopped making her box and asked to leave the art room, she sat down and helped the student to turn the mug into what she wanted it to be, but I think the student might have been more concerned with getting her clothes dirty and once she had an art shirt on she was a little more relaxed. During this visit the students also got back their animal rattles from the first project. They were very happy to receive their projects, but it also brought up a slightly negative note for some of them because they are not allowed to have breakable objects in their rooms. Most of the students said that they would be sending their rattles home with family members later that day or when they visited next. It is hard for me to grasp the idea that these students are creating projects out of a material that is itself calming to work with (clay), but cannot take full advantage of the finished product because of the materials that it is made out of (fired clay).
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Great River. On Tuesday Sam and I talked about the lesson which I would be teaching, we decided on me running a critical response for the students in the IB Art class. They have been reading a couple chapters from Gardners Art through the Ages, the section on modern art. I will be doing a critical response from an art movement that they’ve already studied, and possibly in the future I will be doing another critical response about a art movement that they’ll be studying soon. Currently the students have been working on creating a poster that talks about and shows examples of certain art movements.

On Tuesday this week the ceramics class was working on their handmade cups/mug again. Before this class started Sam and I talked about the students attitudes in the class. I know Sam talked with most of the students about their behavior and class dynamic, I can’t say that I noticed much difference in their attitudes during class, but things were a little more reserved. During the IB Art class on Tuesday the students were working on their art movement posters, the students are working in pairs to complete this project. Sam and I had a interesting conversation about this project, along with the art movement poster the students had to complete a worksheet. Completing worksheets is not a normal Montessori manner of doing projects, but during this project the students have been the most motivated to complete and actually work on their projects. This has just re-enforced with me the knowledge that you need to use more then one way of teaching students.

On Thursday I showed up to the classroom to find Randi in charge of the class, she informed me that Sam would be gone for the first 20 minutes of the ceramics class, and that he had a meeting. It sounded like Sam was having quite a busy week, having to sub for another teacher at GR, acting as advisor to the students and handling his usual responsibilities. For the ceramics class we were missing several students, 2 of which came in about 15 minutes late and 1 whom came in and told Randi that they would not be in class attending ceramics because of having to fill out a college application. This left 7 or so students working on their mugs/cups during the class period. One of these students got permission from Randi to work on a still life painting she was completing for her MCAD portfolio. I assisted her and the other students throughout the class, but it was a fairly calm class period.

• Chuck Miller
  Creative Arts High - Randy Schutte - 9th -12th grade - 4.0 hours
  
  It was great to be back here after Valentine’s week. All of the kids remembered me and asked me questions about my absence, which was really nice. They had all been working hard on their projects and it was nice to see the fruits of their labor. I was sad that I missed the first painting critique due to class but Randy assured me that the first one is always unenthusiastic since it’s mostly a technique project. Randy is letting me be in a bit more control of the comic book class. We were working on some figure drawing as a bit of final prep for the actual comic books. I chose a lot of great fun things like gesture drawings and contour and drawing with your wrong hand. I know it made a lot of the kids uncomfortable a little, but they all seemed to be enjoying themselves a lot and time went by really quickly because of it. In fact, it seems like that everyday. Time just keeps zipping by. Since I have some more time on Tuesdays and Thursdays Randy is going to let me come spend a few full days at the school to get the full experience. I’m excited to see what else goes on at CAHS and selfishly I’m excited to see what Randy’s Tai Chi class is all about.
  
  There was a bit of excitement on Wednesday this week were a near full on fight broke out between two girls. Randy and I both were really shocked because we had no clue where any of it came from. Higher administration had to take care of the issue in the end. It was a surprising conflict, but as Randy mentioned that day, the other students did a great job of not antagonizing the event and kept working diligently. I’m truly amazed by the maturity of these students. I’m really falling in love with CAHS the more I spend time there and I definitely see teaching as a viable option for my post-education career.



• Chloe Russell
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Jenny Stice
  Great River - Sam O'Brien - 9th -12th grade - 4.5 hours
  Free Arts - Northern Clay - 3.5
  

Great River - On Tuesday I showed up to GR and found out that Sam was sick and there would be a substitute in the classroom. After the substitute and I had introduced ourselves, she first mistook me for a student but seemed relieved to find out that I was interning with Sam as a teaching artist. Sam had of course left instructions for the students follow during the class period. In Ceramics the students were working on finishing a front and side drawing of their mugs/cups, several of the students who were done with their drawings were tasked with creating models of the mug/cup out of paper. During this class period we gained another new student, this is the second student who has transferred into the ceramics class since the start of the semester. The first student who transferred into the class did it within the first couple weeks but still missed the first project and construction of the foam core table and chairs, the second student has missed both that project and the explanation of why they are making the drawings of a mug/cup. I think this has been a good lesson in the difficulties a teacher faces new students entering the classroom at such a late date. The students not only have to be caught up on the current project, but the teacher also has to decide what is necessary for the students to know from previous information presented in class. Because Sam was sick on Tuesday I had the task of updating Soren to what we were working on in class and what was happening in general.

On Thursday during the Ceramics class we started hand building the clay mugs/cups. Sam went through how to create a slab, attach the clay and create the mug/cup. One thing which has equally frustrated me and been something which I’ve enjoyed about the classes at GR is the amount of talking which takes place during class. I’ve noticed that sometimes barely any work gets done during the class period, I can see why Sam allows the students to keep up this free flowing and talkative atmosphere but it also frustrates me to see the students talking more during class then working on their projects. From talking with Sam I know some of this loose structure is a part of Great Rivers ideals.

On Tuesday during the IB Art class the 11th graders were tasked with finishing up their journals which would be due at the end of the week. The 12th graders were supposed to be critiquing their projects that day, but were getting an extension until Thursday. This was quite fortunate on their parts since NONE of the 12th graders had brought in their projects, it was almost as if they had all got together and decided if they didn’t have their projects then they wouldn’t be due. I spent most of the class merely trying to get the 12th graders to work on some sort of homework, I can’t say much work was completed but I did have several good art related conversations with different groups of students. One very amusing moment of the class period was when several students proclaimed I had taught them more about art in the 30 minutes I had read ‘Art and Fear’ with them, then Sam had in the whole semester. This made me laugh and in response I told them thank you, but that I had witnessed Sam teaching them plenty about art in the short time I had been there. The group of students who I was talking with happens to be some of the more sarcastic students in the IB Art class, and I could tell their gibes towards Sam were not meant to be hurtful, but was merely a couple 17 & 18 year olds trying to convey their disgruntlement and frustrations about class with the Teaching Artist. Unfortunately because of Sam being sick on Tuesday and lack of time on Thursday, we were not able to discuss the lesson I’ll be teaching. I’ve decided to send Sam a email describing what I would like to teach and then we can discuss it Tuesday before class.

Free Arts - On Monday night we visited St. Josephs Home -Eldred Unit, for our second project in the Northern Clay series. Angie and I were there quite early and since neither of us know the code to get into the facility, we had some time to talk about the projects and ourselves. It turned out that none of the students from Eldred would be coming down to participate in the project that night. We were just going to do the project ourselves and then leave, but one of the St. Joes staff members happened to walk by the art room and see that we had no students attending. She ended up bringing down three students to participate in the project. Two teenage girls from the Isaiah unit and one younger boy who was there temporarily, possibly apart of St. Joes’s Central intake or Emergency Shelter. There was also one other teenage girl who came down but after seeing we were working with clay, decided to leave because she didn’t want to get dirty. For this project we were making Affirmation Mugs/Tumblers. They are a little tricky to construct but the students picked up on the construction pretty quickly. I was sitting next to the younger boy, because he was working very carefully on his mug, he was a step or two behind the directions that Angie was giving. He was very quiet and instead of asking questions once he had finished steps, he would sit and wait for Angie or one of us to show him the next step. Many times though he would pick up on the next step by watching what everyone else was doing. Something truly amazing about working with these three students was the way they lit up and smiled once someone complimented their mug/tumbler. During this session I also had the pleasure of meeting a St. Joe’s staff member who had been working there for 20+ years, it was lovely to hear what she had to say about the Free Arts MN program and how the art projects had been so wonderful for the kids at St. Joe’s.

On Saturday we were at the CRTC doing the same project. Around 20 minutes into the project several students had to leave for an activity, at the table of students I was helping one of the youth asked me if I would finish her mug for her. Normally I wouldn’t agree to finishing a students project, but because of the nature of the CRTC and how important this mug might be to her, I agreed. After confirming what she wanted written on the mug and the colors she wanted it painted I was able to sit down at the table with the remaining youth and finish the mug. It was great to sit down and have a conversation with the youth, there was four youth and one staff member at the table I was seated at. The youth at CRTC are housed in two different groups, unit A and unit B. I am not completely certain of the difference between the two units, but I’m guessing one is for students who are deemed ‘higher risk’ and the other for students who are deemed ‘lower risk’. (I could also be wrong about this, its merely a conclusion I’ve made from observations). From this experience of sitting with the youth and creating a project myself, I learned a lot about talking to the youth and helping them with their projects by making it a part of the conversation. This site has easily become one of the best parts of my week, and I’m sad to know that it only lasts for 4 weekends. I have very mixed feelings about missing one of these sessions, especially since it is during our spring break and I’ll be in Paris. If it was anything else keeping me from attending and I would most likely cancel.

• Maddie Harr
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Bill Lindau
  Bryn Mawr Elementary School - Margo McCreary - 2nd grade - 3.0 hours
  
  This was an incredibly short week. Margo had to cancel her time at Bryn Mawr on Monday due to personal reasons, and because of conferences, there was no school for Avalon on Friday. And I must say, the one day I spent on site this week was relatively uneventful.
  
  Wednesday was the day the students at Bryn Mawr would rehearse their puppet shows, and rehearse they did. Margo and I spent an hour in two classes that day, instead of the usual two per class. The first twenty minutes, or so, of the class was given to the students as an opportunity to review their plays. Margo walked from each group of students to the next, and I was asked to sit in and help one group in the first class that was having some trouble.
  
  I sat down with the five kids and realized why they were having trouble. All of them began telling me about their play at once and correcting one another on the events which take place in it. They were all super heroes, and were aboard a plane that would crash, that much they agreed on, but none of them could agree why the plane was crashing or what caused it. None of them could agree on who was in the plane and who wasn’t. And none of them could agree on how to end the play either. I realized that I needed to get everyone to settle down so I spoke up and asked everyone to please quiet down and that I couldn’t help with everyone talking at the same time. The students all sat back down in our circle and fell silent. Then I asked if someone could tell me from the beginning what their play was about. That didn’t work. They all erupted in speech and we were right back where we started. I tried to think of something to do, when one of the students, who undoubtedly realized my struggle starting demanding that the other kids be quite and talk one at a time. This didn’t help matters in the least, and the commotion grew. After a few more moments of this, I realized something, and spoke up: “Hey, guys,” I began, “I really like how Nakayla is sitting quietly with her hand raised.”
  
  Sure enough, Nakayla was sitting quietly and patiently with her hand raised waiting for me to acknowledge her. The other students immediately settled down and turned to her. “Nakayla,” I said, “since you’re doing such a good job of waiting your turn to speak, I think that I’ll ask you what your play is about.”
  
  Nakayla told me what it was about, but she was interrupted by another students on several occasions. I politely asked him to wait his turn to talk and that we would listen to him when he did. Soon the plot of the play was decided upon by all parties, by my enforcing the group with this method of positive discipline (I love the stuff).
  
  From there, Margo and I erected the cardboard stage, and each group came up to perform their plays. Margo directed them as they went, giving them ideas and tips on how to successfully operate a puppet.
  
  The second class was in a much better spot than the first. Margo and I found out that this class’s teacher had the students work on their play and write down their beginning, middle, and end when Margo wasn’t there. This was something the first class did not do. So, needless to say, this class was much more prepared than the last. Instead of being assigned to work with one group, I, like Margo, walked around the room and checked in with each group. I asked them about their plays and gave them some advice here and there. We all watched their plays at the end and then it was time for lunch. The day ended with Margo and I deciding to stay in touch. Margo is also going to let me know when she has any other residencies, and if scheduling permits, I am allowed to assist her again to help build my resume before COMPAS applications are due.
  
  
• Chuck Miller
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  

No hours on site this week.


• Chloe Russell
  Wilder - Sandra Menefee Taylor / Tontino Grade - Pat Bennincas - 8 hours total
  

t Wilder, we made portraits of a tulip arrangement that someone had given the artroom. Sandra decided to let that be our drawing inspiration, and the residents love flowers. She let me lead the drawing tutorial. I stood in front of the class and talked about noticing how long the stems of the flowers were compared to the height of the pot (flowers were as tall as the pot) and marked it on my paper. Then I drew in the pot, because it was the biggest shape, followed by stems, and added flowers on top. I felt very Bob Ross. My mistake was, because I was using a large pad of paper with other spots of paint on it, I drew a square to “contain” my image- a lot of residents added the square within their own sheet of people. I have to remember to speak literally when I am with them. This was not the memory loss group. During the drawing session, there was very little chatter. I've noticed this is usually a good sign, a lot of very intent painting was happening. This was a great lesson for this group. Everyone took creative liberty- one woman commented at the end “I didn't know I liked painting!”. She is usually quite critical of herself, but was very focused and worked it out this time around. Another woman finished hers very early, and I asked her if we could add some three dimensional elements since she had gotten the hang of painting 2 d so quickly. She added the “shine” on the ripples of the vase after I called her attention to them. It is difficult to get some of these people to acknowledge 3D elements, simply because they tire more quickly, the class is very short, they're critical of themselves and their skills- so I was excited when I saw the opportunity.

The next day, with the memory loss group was 2/13, so we had plans to make lace rubbings and draw hearts for valentines- however the group of people was not the one that Sandra had expected and tailored the lesson for. She didn't think this group would like an abstract notion like making an impression of lace because it's so multifaceted- you have a lot of steps to get your picture- and the group was a more developed group of memory loss individuals. She had to change the lesson on the fly- we ended up making hearts with red paint. Very simple, even the resident who usually draws ONLY pencil portraits used the paint. He did end up making a heart, but it eventually evolved into an elaborate heart face. Another resident was overwhelmed with the process of painting hearts. I approached him and asked how I could help- then started trying to explain what we were doing again, and he just shut down. I recognized this from working as a personal care assistant- I had given him too much information too quickly and wasn't really taking in that he was trying to tell me he couldn't do it. He ended up explaining to me that his disease (his wording) was keeping him from relating what he wants to draw with his ability to draw it. We scrapped the project, and just decided to focus our attention on mixing some paint colors other than that red. This helped move his attention toward something he had more control over. He picked a color and I mixed until he told me it was right. When he was calmed down, I told him I wanted him to not think of any kind of subject matter- just move his brush the way his instincts are telling him. Jazz music was playing, I asked him to focus on the music and not a subject. I left him alone for a few minutes and returned to hold the painting up and ask what he thought. He told me he liked it, but wasn't sure why. We talked about all the things that were working in the painting, and how abstract painting through emotion is just as beautiful as painting a heart or flowers. He probably won't be back again for art time, but that was my favorite interaction so far.

At Totino Grace, I was able to witness my first critique. The 2D group was critiquing their spacial drawings. Critique in high school is much different from college in that at first, there is no constructive negative feedback. High school students have very fragile egos and saying something wasn't working during the beginning of their crit process would discourage them from participating in the future. I agree with all of that. These kids were super sharp, though. They each had to choose a piece they liked and explain why. Then, one by one at the end of the crit they had to state what they learned from the assignment. I heard a lot of great replies- one of my favorites being “I learned backgrounds are just as important as the subject for the piece to look complete”. TOTALLY. That is something I would have never thought of in high school. In the 3D classes, students were finishing up their bridges. These bridges are balsa wood, they don't have to be like a traditional bridge- and they were super cool. The second hour had some very traditional looking, very practical bridges. This is the quiet group, and their studious personalities reflected in their bridges. Very useable and well thought out. The 3rd hour group is very outspoken and wildly creative with their bridges. Lots of color, lots of interesting topics being applied. A lot of people brought extra pieces from home like twigs, wire, tubing, etc. Almost all of the bridges were painted bright colors. It's interesting to see the personalities of all the students reflected on their work. They really express themselves in art class, no matter what their interests are outside of that class.


• Jenny Stice
  Free Arts Minnesota - Angie Renee - teens - 3.5 hours
  Great River School - Sam O’Brien 11th-12th grade - 2,5 hours
  
  Great River -
I met with Sam this Tuesday before class to discuss the lesson which I will be teaching to the students at GR. There is the possibility that Sam will be leaving for Paternity leave soon’ish and he has expressed the want to be there for the class which I teach. So we are working to find a lesson and time that I can teach sooner rather then later. I am interested in teaching a bookmaking lesson to the students, and Sam said that bookmaking would be a great outlet for integrating a lesson about one of the subjects he has been interested in teaching the students. There are three different art related subjects that Sam is excited about the students learning while he is away, and is offering up one of them for me to integrate into my lesson.

The first of these subjects is more of an ‘idea’ that he wants the students to become familiar with. The idea of creating artwork that does not serve up the artists concept to the viewer but instead creating artwork that makes the audience think about their concept, without having the concept plain and simple. The second subject that Sam and I talked about is the idea of propaganda in art. While the substitute is with Sam’s class I believe they will be creating a propaganda project using printmaking skills. One point that Sam talked about wanting the students to learn is the knowledge of good willed and bad willed propaganda. Also how propaganda functioned in the past versus how it functions in current culture and what kind of forms/medias that propaganda takes. The third subject is the idea of appropriation. As a part of the students curriculum they are supposed to create a project somehow appropriating another cultures style of artwork. I’m looking forward to discussing the lesson I will be teaching with Lynda this week.

I was only at GR on Tuesday this week because there was a teachers retreat on Thursday. Tuesday was a fairly uneventful day, the students in Ceramics are finishing up their furniture drawings and creations of 3-d foam chair and table. The students who have finished this are moving on to creating 2 drawings of a tea cup, each drawing showing a different angle of the tea cup. The students are using a type of graph paper to create these drawings. Part of the reason for this is so that they can learn how to use graph paper as a measuring tool, and can be used to replicate angles throughout a drawing. Some of the students have grasped this concept better then others, several in particular have struggled with the idea of having to make a drawing of a piece of pottery before creating it at all.

In the IB Art class the students have been working on their own personal projects. Most of the students are quite good about doing their work during class, but their are a lot of students who just spend the whole class pretending to work or drawing ‘ideas’ in their sketchbooks. Sam has talked to me about several of these students and how I could possibly help them with their projects or with inspiration. It has been an interesting experience to ‘infiltrate’ these smaller groups of students and then work my way around to discussing their artwork. After a few of these conversations with the students I quickly realized that the students weren’t asking for me to help them with their projects, but to help them with being an artist. A hard topic to figure out and something that I’m still trying to figure out how to help the students figure out for themselves.

Free Arts - This week we started the Northern Clay partnership with Free Arts MN Sites. After having merely 2 site visits I can already tell that I am incredibly lucky to have opportunity to learn from some truly spectacular leaders. Beyond the two staff members whom I will be working with at each site, I will working with a different group of mentors at each site and the on site staff from the facility, and of course at each site there will be the youth who I will be helping to teach the projects to.

The instructor who is teaching the workshop from Northern Clay is Angie Renee, already I can tell that I will learn a lot from her. She is a clay artist and teaches classes at Northern Clay as well as other locations. From talking with her I have gained that she does mostly work with special populations, recently she has been working with the 55+ population, but she has also done work with disadvantaged youth through multiple programs. On Monday night we were at St. Joe’s in the Eldred unit (age: teen) we will be with this unit for the next three mondays. Saturday we were at the Children’s Residential Treatment Center ( age: teen), we will also be there for the next three saturdays. At both of these sites we were teaching the youth how to create healing rattles. It has been interesting to evaluate what the youth are learning and taking away from the experience, compared with what a student in an art class at school might be tasked with learning the same project. Part of what I have been learning is that a lot of the focus is on the process of creating the project and not at all about the finished product.

Some of the observations that I have had over the two site visits are; Angie always makes time to get to know all of the staff on site, reaching out to the mentors and asking how long they’ve been with the Free Arts program / how they got involved with it. I have noticed that she also reaches out to the on site staff, making note to at least speak to them in some manner.

• Jeremy Anderson
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Adam Fuchs
  Jackson Elementary - Christopher Nelson - 5 grade - 7 hours
  Arts Us - 2nd Grade-7th Grade- 3 hrs

This week Jackson kids spent a large part of the day completing posters they had started on notable African American persons. The posters are to be presented on Monday to celebrate National African American Parent Involvement Day.

The class was split into teams of two earlier in the week. Each student was to read a book about a notable African American then create a poster design based on the book. The poster needed to include the name of their person, where they were born, what made them notable, an illustration of their state outline, and a portrait. After the kids had designed the posters on separate paper, they then transferred the design to large poster paper, and colored it using marker. Most kids were starting the transfer and marker process when I was in class on Friday.

Having the kids engaged in a rare art project gave me a chance to interact with using what they saw as my “professional” expertise. Mr. Nelson was excellent about reminding the kids that I go to an art college and did things like poster design and coloring every day. The kids were eager for the help, especially when it came to drawing the portraits in a size larger than what they had originally planned for. There was also a lot of consternation with the fact that markers couldn’t soak into the poster paper, and had to dry on top. A lot of children were frustrated by the amount of smudging and fingerprints that resulted from that.

The smudging gave me a perfect opportunity to help the kids find an artistic work around for a problem. After helping several pairs figure out why the markers were smudging, I suggested that there might be a way to use that to their advantage by deliberately smudging the markers and using them almost like finger paints. It was a hit. Not only did it make it easier for the kids to manipulate the amount of marker going to different spots, they loved the hands on mess. It also sped up the timeframe of the poster making, which was good because Friday was the last available workday.

One of the questions that I had regarding my planned lesson was answered due to Friday’s class. I had wondered how to regulate the amount of time kids would take in each step of the lesson without holding some kids back, or leaving some behind? The pairing of students into teams allowed them to help each other in the areas where they needed it. It also taught me that I should probably break the lesson up into even small segments taught over the course of several weeks, with reinforcement of each lesson given at the start of subsequent lessons. I think that the concepts involved will stick much better if repeated over time.

----------
Arts Us

This week, we used the paper mache forms that we made last time to create bowls. The forms were sawed into the proper shape, and kids were given the chance to paint the bowls. There were only five children this time, so things were a bit more manageable. The kids were also very well behaved due to strict admonishments beforehand about getting paint on the floor, and due to my insistence that I would be the only one who would squeeze paint out of the tubes into the egg-crate palettes that I fashioned beforehand.

I brought in finger paints for the lesson, figuring that the children’s propensity for messiness would make them eager to literally get their hands dirty, but surprisingly, most of the kids did not go for the finger aspect of the painting—opting instead to use brushes. I think the use of brushes helped to keep things a little less chaotic as well, simply because you can fit much less paint on a small brush tip than you can in your hand.

The kids enjoyed the painting and were definitely excited to have something tangible to bring home. Much of the conversation of the day surrounded what they would use the bowls for, and my insistence that eating out them would not be the smartest plan.

Over the course of the 9 hours of teaching at ArtsUs, I think that kids have responded very favorably toward the instruction provided and the opportunity to experiment with different media. There is real excitement shown when you walk in the door and start to set up the lesson. I do wish that I had had the time and the knowledge to set up a semester long curriculum before jumping into the class. I think having an overall plan with specific pre-planned lessons and material lists would have created a solid, lasting artistic for these children—one they might never have the chance to experience. Moving forward, it was an eye opening experience that I am very thankful to have been a part of.


• Carlen Goldhorn
  Perpich Center for Arts Education - Karen Monson - 11th and 12th Grade - 6 hours
  

Today the students were setting up their work in the gallery and helping other students set up work. This didn't start until about 2:30, I was supposed to teach my lesson at this time so my lesson had been post-poned until next Tuesday. The senior painting class still went on and every time I come to that class I get more and more impressed by the work they are making. The guest artist came in again today and went around the room and talked about each students work to the class. She had some really helpful things to say to the students but she was disappointed because today they had to have at least ten small scale paintings complete.

She divided the class into two, the students who had all ten paintings done went on one side of the room and those who were not finished went to another side of the room. The students whose paintings were not complete had to explain why they didn't have ten and how they were going to have ten by the next class. This seemed a little harsh to me but the students who were not finished seemed to really start turning out paintings the rest of the class period.

During the work time after the guest artist had left a student that had only two paintings done so far became emotional. Karen, myself and this student went into her office. Karen had a lot of great, encouraging words for this student and since artists are great problem solvers we came up with a solution to her problem. This particular student was making great work however, she is a slow painter in the regards of this assignment. Karen suggested that she time herself, 30 min. per painting, after the timer went off she had to stop the painting and move on to another. If she was unhappy with the way her images looked after the timed sessions she could work back into them later when she had time. What I think was so frustrating for this student was the fact that the guest artist was looking for both quality and quantity from the students in a short amount of time. For her, a painting up to her standards takes awhile and I'm guessing she was embarrassed of having a painting up for crit. under her standards. Hopefully this student tries out timing herself and I am hoping it works for her. This problem with the lesson is something I will take into consideration in future planning.

Perpich Center for Arts Education - Karen Monson - 11th and 12th Grade - 6 Hours

The opening of the student’s show was today. Before each studio art class the students all met together and problem solved to see what needed to be done before 5:30 (when the show opens). Students signed up to greet, make and get food, re-gesso the walls, play live music, hang up work and make tags. The students raised $200 for food, the work and heart that was put into the show was truly inspiring. I can see why so many students there wanted to go to CVA so bad, there is a feeling of family that mirrors Perpich.

Despite all of the excitement the students were hard at work in the senior painting class, I can see myself connecting with the students in both class. The work that is being made always surprises me, all of the students here are amazing artists.

To prepare for my tuesday lesson Karen has been having the students draw from life using harsh lighting. Since the blinds in the drawing room are not the greatest she had the students go into a conference room where the lighting she was looking for could be achieved. At Perpich the funding for models to draw from has been cut so Karen has students come in and pose for the class. So a student came in and sat on the conference table, Karen lit the student so a high contrast drawing could easily be achieved. The students were timed and made two, ten minute drawings. As soon as they started drawing I walked around the class watching the students and checking to see if they needed any tips, and as usual I was blown away. They were working so intuitively and everyone walked out of the conference room with amazing drawings. I was telling Karen how amazed I was of the students and she agreed, she said that a lot of the drawing students independently go to drawing co-ops at MCAD and other venus. To hear that the students do this really amazed me, It really shows dedication as an artist to take time to do something like this.

After the drawing session we critiqued the student’s positive negative space drawings, Karen and I led the critique but the students enthusiastically added input. With this class more then the painting class I am feeling way more comfortable and its natural for me to help lead critiques and talk to the students independently about their work. I am referring many of them artists that they should look at that would be relevant to their work, they write the names down and sincerely look into my suggestion. As the days go by I am dreading the day that I have to leave, I am really connected to the students and the work they are making. The first day I came, I dont think this would happen.

The drawing class ended at 4:30 and I wanted to go to the opening night of the show which started at 5:30. So Karen and I talked about artists that could help the students. We also talked about internal politics at the school regarding administration and what it is like to be an instructor. Before the show started we checked in with the students that were helping out to see if things were running smoothly. Karen is a great mentor and helper to the students, some day I hope to mimic this relationship with my own students. Once the show started Karen took me around to the pieces and explained to me what each assignment was (the ones that were done in her class) and the process conceptually and physically the students went through. It was great to put work with names and faces and I found myself constantly smiling the work they are making is so brilliant and I am so proud of them. While walking around with Karen and I met a few parents and other instructors which was neat. All of the students got dressed up for the show and brought guests with them. It was just exciting to see the students so “pumped up” they were about the work. I left today with a feeling that I might have found something that I could do that would give me as much satisfaction as making work. After only being at Perpich for five days, I feel like they have invited me into their “family”.


• Maddie Harr
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Bill Lindau
  Bryn Mawr Elementary School - Margo McCreary/Shadowing - 2nd grade - 9 hours
  

This was my first week assisting puppeteer, Margo McCreary, during a residency she has at Bryn Mawr Elementary. She is currently involved in a week and a half residency teaching several second grade classes. The lesson is for the students to make their own puppets and then write and perform a play based on fairytales the students have read in class. (Fairytales have been a running motif in my life lately.)

The first day offered me a nice does of culture shock: I have been dealing with high school students for so long that it was very strange to be working with young kids again. But I soon got swept up in the day and found my footing just fine. Margo’s lessons are fast paced and hands on, so before you know it, you’ve forgotten everything else but the task at hand.

When I arrived, I helped Margo mix clay and finish the final material preparations. Soon the students were flooding into the empty class room, bursting with excitement. They had been told that Margo and I would be there, but not what they were going to be doing. We were ready to go, and Margo called the students over to the front of the room and had them sit in a circle. I remembered how this was a technique many of us used in our peer lessons, and I took note of it. Margo began by producing an old puppet of her’s, Mr. Chubby-cheeks. She then proceeded to do a little performance of her own: interacting with Mr. Chubby-cheeks. She and her puppet had a conversation about various characteristics of the puppet, and by doing so introduced the students to the possibilities of their own puppets. For example, Margo pointed out to Mr. Chubby-cheeks that he was a green duck who wore glasses and a hat. The students thought that was hilarious, but Margo asked them why Mr. Chubby-cheeks was that way. One student offered that it was because Margo made him that way.

Margo answered: “Yes, I used my imagination. And you can use your imaginations too. Puppets don’t have to be real things.”

My explanation does not do it justice. She simply just entered into this silly, rambunctious skit. It actually took me a while to realize what she was doing, and she did it well.

On this first day the students were asked to do preparatory sketches of the puppet they would like to make, then they received their clay and sculpted the puppet’s head and one hand. Margo did this in steps. The students were had each step explained to them one at a time.

Each step was explained at the front of the classroom, in the circle, and then students were asked to sit back at their desks. It was only when they were seated that they would receive their materials. I took extra care to note this, as it was the downfall of my lesson at Jackson. This method proved much more effective. Breaking up the steps also helped the students grasp what they were doing and not experience and overflow of information. Doing so also made the process quite a bit simpler.

Margo ran the second day in much the same fashion. That day the students painted their puppets and made their costumes. Margo used the same model as she had the first day.

I’ll wrap up here, because I’m already over the 500 words. This week was so beneficial because I got to a teacher like Margo in action. I carefully watched her teaching methods and I am reflecting on them. I was also able to practice some positive discipline with the students. After sculpting the puppets’ heads, the students were asked to wash their hands and come back to sit down in the circle to hear about making their hands. Time was running short so Margo was trying to get the students to join the circle quickly so we could finish on time. Some of the students refused to sit down because their hands were dirty. I stepped in.

“Hey, can you guys come sit down in the circle,” I asked in a calm, soft, and friendly voice.

“No, we don’t want to; we need to wash our hands,” they answered.

“We’re going to miss what Ms. Margo is going to tell us, we better go sit in the circle.”

“No,” the students said.

Continuing in my calm, soft, and friendly voice I offered, “I know you guys really want to wash your hands, but it’s time to sit in the circle now. My hands are dirty too,”–I showed them my hands”–“Come on, guys we can wash our hands later. It’ll be okay.”

I got up to go to the circle and they came with me. By golly, it actually worked.



• Chuck Miller
  Creative Arts High School - Randy Shutte - grade - 2.5 hours
  
  
Due to some scheduling conflict Randy was out of school for most of my available time for CAHS this week so I was only able to stop in for one day this week. However, I count it as a very good day. Randy has encouraged me to do some of the projects with the students. I have taken him up on this offer and found that I enjoy doing his projects more than my own sometimes. I find this to be true for a few reasons. One, I know I’m not getting a grade for this. Two, Randy sets a phenomenal ambience for his classroom that relieves pressure. Three, the projects, which he collaborates on with another teacher, are boiled down to basic skillsets to focus on making it simple and easy to understand. On this day I also found that I’m starting to relate to the students more. I’ve had quite a few conversations with several of them. They seem to be more comfortable with asking me for advice and just small talk as well. Randy has been more proactive about asking me to help teach parts of lessons, for instance doing demonstrations and answering questions. I’ve been much more receptive of these opportunities as well, as nerve-racking as they may seem. Randy also pulled me aside to help him file a report on one of his more trouble seeking students. It had to do with cell phone usage. It was a more depressing part of his job but necessary. Randy did a good job of confronting the student in an adult like manner, requesting certain behavior that would solve the issue (leaving the phone on the desk at the beginning of each class.) Still, it can be uneasy addressing such issues, but I suppose it’s apparent that as much as I enjoy being in this classroom, all aspects are at some level “uneasy” to me.

I was supposed to also be part of a workshop at the MMAA this week. Due to unknown reasons, unfortunately, it was canceled. To add to this, the MMAA is going to be closed publically for a few weeks for annual business, so I will be spending this time doing independent research and possibly seeking contacts at other various education facilities.


• Chloe Russell
  Wilder - Sandra Menefee Taylor - Adults - 2. 0 hours
  tonino Grace High School - Pat Benincasa - 9-12 years - 5.0 hours
  

The last week at Wilder I came in again for both Tuesday and Wednesday. I like doing this because I get to see the able minded group back to back with the memory loss group. Last week especially was interesting because they both did the same project, so I could compare the process of teaching different groups with different capabilities.

We printed again, this time using tea pot carvings Sandra had made. The memory loss group was Tuesday, and they are definitely print-lovers. They took to it so readily, like it was a therapy session inside an art class. Some have to be coaxed to begin printing by being shown- that means Sandra would print on their page once and the resident would follow suit. Or, Sandra would take their hand with the print in hand and help them make the first mark. Usually this started a silent repetition. Of course, there are always a few that are reluctant to participate, or want to do their own thing. Sandra knows those people and accommodates by giving them supplies they are used to having- a pencil or some paint and paper.

The next day we had the able minded group (for lack of a better term right now), and there are a few differences I noted in how class ran. This group is much more talkative and engaging. They bounce ideas off of one another, compare work. They are also more stubborn about direction. I noticed a couple who revert to child-like responses to emotions to the point of not letting other residents receive praise. You have to praise them all. Very interesting to see grown adults feeling these things so openly and to respond in the way you would treat it most likely if a child were to act this way. Don't feed the feelings with extra attention, just feed her good behavior with extra attention.

Then, Thursday I spent class periods 1-3 with Totino Grace students. I noted that I was with their drawing class first period, but I misunderstood and it is definitely a 2D class similar to what we have at CVA. The students first period remembered me and were very receptive to my presence- a very comfortable beginning of the day with that group. There is one table of about 5 students who don't really acknowledge me or interact with me, but I just leave them to their work and walk around assisting other students with suggestions, questions, etc. The second period 3D class is just a very quiet group altogether. It's the most uncomfortable for me so far because I have no idea what to do with myself in a class of students who are so quiet, so I kind of follow Pat around and watch how she is interacting- which is giving them lots of space and answering questions when they ask her. She will walk around every once in a while but does not engage in the same way the other class does.

The last period I spoke with a girl about college plans. She is a Junior, I believe, and had plans on attending the Art Institute here with out having viewed any other art schools. This is going to be a story about a mistake I made:

She brought up AI- we all know it's a pretty bad school. I blurted out “Oh man, that's a horrible school.” and saw her face just drop. Apparently that was her choice for the time being, and I had just thoughtlessly shot it down. I tried to back track by saying that obviously my opinion isn't the only opinion, and there are lots of people that love the school, but asked her to consider touring many colleges physically before actually setting her mind on one. We talked at length about what she wanted out of the degree (She was independent study sitting in on the class) and she ended up speaking with Pat about college plans (students here are super motivated about college and all have future careers planned already- I do NOT remember having that stuff figured out as a junior). She and Pat resolved to research schools together, and she left the class feeling relieved, I think. I felt horrible for freaking her out like that, but when I talked with Pat about how I went about delivering that information, she said she had been working with that girl trying to disuade her from a school like AI, but can't flat out say “don't go there”. I wasn't in trouble by any means, but I will definitely need to remember that high school kids have a ton of pressure to figure out their lives, and to be more delicate with my opinion.


• Jenny Stice
  Great River School - Sam O’Brien 11th & 12th grade - 4.25 hours
  Free Arts Minnesota- Shadowing - 2.5 hours
  
  It was an interesting time at Great River this week, this week marked the start of a new semester. Which means that we have a new group of students for the ceramics class but the same group for the IB art class because that class spans the whole school year. About half of the Ceramics class consists of students from last semester whom I am starting to become familiar with and several new students whom I have started to get to know. We have started this semester by creating frontal and side view drawings of a chair and table. The students will then be creating this chair and table out of foam core. The students are designing and learning about the size of furniture to learn how designing an object is completed from start to finish. The students are also designing their own furniture to learn how a design of their own can function in three dimensional space.
  
  Sam has been teaching the students the fine art of measurement and how to use a ruler, down to measuring the 1/16th. We have been looking at real life examples of furniture in the classroom and talking about how every allowance needs to have a measurement, some for comfort of the person using the furniture and some for decoration.
  
  Some of the students have been cranky about not working with clay right away in the class, especially one student named Sean. He has a very sarcastic demeanor about mostly everything, and Sam is incredible with ‘rolling with the punches’ and dealing with Sean’s attitude. Most of the time throwing sarcasm and his own comments back at Sean, making lighter the negativity. One thing that I have noticed is even if Sam chooses to ignore the negative comments made by students, he says to the student that he will be ignoring that comment. It is amazing to see that Sam knows the students personality’s well enough to know which of the students this will work with, which of the students need their attitudes addressed and which ones need to just be left alone for the class period.
  
  This issue with attitudes of students was not necessarily a problem with the IB Art students this week, but it was evident enough that I noticed it clearly changing the atmosphere of the classroom. Some of the emotional warfare might have been cause of one of the students getting taken out of IB Art due to low grades in other classes. More of it I think is due to stress amongst the students, stress with not knowing what their going to work on for the rest of the school year, stress with applying to colleges and stress with Sam being gone from the classroom for such a long period while they will be working on their final projects.
  
  After this week I have absolutely learned what its like to be drained by the students you are teaching, and to then have to go home or to class and be drained by homework or classwork.
  
  Questions that I have after this class are mostly centered around how the class will function once Sam is gone and what will be my role in the classroom, and how it might change with the classroom substitute.
  
  ------
  Free Arts Minnesota

Today I attended a training at the Northern Clay Center for my Free Arts MN shadowing experience. I managed to make it over to Minneapolis during a mini blizzard, and was glad that I decided to risk the drive because I was able to meet the staff member from Free Arts who will be most of my sites and the staff member from Northern Clay who I will be assisting at every site.

I will be starting my shadowing experience tomorrow night at St. Josephs Home for Abused Children. I’m much clearer about what my responsibility will be while I’m at the sites after having a conversation via email with one of the Free Arts leads, but have been frustrated in the past couple weeks about the lack of communication from the staff members.

I’m very excited about the four projects we will be making with the youth, the first project will be a animal shaped healing rattle, the second a affirmation cup or mug, the third a positivity box, and the fourth project will collaboration amongst the students where each student will make a leaf and it the be placed at the site in a mosaic. At todays training we learned how to make the box, and general handling of clay. We were lucky to be able to actually make one of the projects and get to take it home with us, once of course Northern Clay has fired the pieces.

It will be interesting to experience working with the youth and the team members, I look forward to reporting on this next week!

This was my third day at Perpich and it seems to be going better each time I go. I now understand what is expected of the students and their work time. The way they run classes is very laid back, this works really well for some and not so much for others. The senior painting class is making amazing work. They are working from photos that they have taken and I am extremely impressed. A lot of the students really have and intuitive way of working with the paint. During this class I just like to walk around and observe the students working. I know it can be nerve racking to have someone linger behind you while you work so I try not to linger too long.

Today as I was observing I had several students ask me questions about color mixing, CVA and college in general. The students are finally starting to warm up to me being in their classroom. I enjoyed talking to the painting students about their work and when they asked me questions I tried to turn it around to see if they could solve the problem themselves. For example, students have not taken a color theory class so a lot of them needed help mixing color. I had one student point to a specific part of his photograph and asked me how to mix that color. I replied with “well what colors do you think make up this one?” he replied stating that he wasn't sure, so I looked at his palate at colors he had already mixed and pointed out a color he could start from. He seemed satisfied by my answer and I walked by a few minutes later to see how the mixing was going and he had mixed the color perfectly. These students have the knowledge and skill but I think most of them just need a little “push” to point them in the right direction.

The junior drawing class has really warmed up to me also. I put together the still life I am going to use on Tuesday’s lesson and a lot of them seemed really excited about it. While putting the still life together I asked the students what they thought of the objects I was using and where I was placing them, all of them replied positively. In class the students are making finishing touches on the pieces they are currently working on. What I found interesting is that when a student wants advice or feedback outside of critique they hang their work on the wall and students intuitively gather around. This was really encouraging considering a critique is part of my lesson plan. I even had a few students ask for my feedback and took it to heart. If the students were finished with their pieces they could make work for their college portfolio or work on their independent project. It was really neat to see what they are coming up with.

The more time I spend there the more comfortable I become interacting with the students and I’m sure they could say the same for me. Im both excited and nervous about Tuesday’s lesson. I know it wont be seamless but Im hoping for the best. If anything I will learn from my mistakes.


• Maddie Harr
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Bill Lindau
  Avalon Charter School- David Ball 9th- 12th Grade - 9 hours
  
  

Thus concludes another week at Avalon. Next week I’ll set out on another teaching adventure to Bryn Mawr School with Margo McCreary, then it’ll be back to Avalon for a short time.

Here is something interesting to report on: This week marked the arrival of another student teacher at Avalon. Monday a woman by the name of Jess started student teaching at Avalon as a part of Hamline University’s teaching program. She was partnered with Kevin, the other advisor David shares a space with, so we’ve been in close proximity this whole week. We spoke for a bit and she was very interested in the program CVA offers. She found it interesting that it wasn’t a certification program, but thought it was wonderful nonetheless– a program for artists to be both teachers and artists. What I took notice to, was how she reminded me of myself when I first began my practicum journey. Everything is awkward at first, you’re shy around the students and the students are shy around you. Then, slowly, you start to open up.

As my time has gone on, I’ve found it very interesting to be in between the dynamics of two class rooms. Everyday that I’m at Avalon, I’m stationed directly in the middle of the room, overseeing both Kevin and David’s interaction with their respective classrooms. What I’ve taken a particular notice to is their mannerisms in interaction with their students.

Kevin while a pretty big jokester himself, will ask a troublesome student to sit next to him at the table next to the desks. Kevin with lean in towards them and speak very softly and kindly about their behavior. He tells them what he notices, and what the student needs to do. He always offers them the alternative of their undesired behavior, but reveals to them the consequence. “Or you could not do your homework, but then you’ll fail the class.” He always maintains his tone: quiet, soft, and concerned. Since I’m more involved with David’s class, I don’t always see the effects of Kevin’s teaching styles. But I have noticed that Kevin has a full room of students.

Thinking about this brings me back to a article on discipline Lynda shared with me. (It can be found on a comment she made to one of my earlier journals.) My initial thought to it was, “this is great, but it’s gaged for young kids; will this work with high school students?” After seeing how Kevin interacts with students, I’m beginning to see that it does. I’d imagine that it would work with David’s more stubborn students, probably because they’ve never heard anything like it before.

• Chuck Miller
  Creative Arts High - Randy Schutt - 9-12 grade - 6 hours
  
  My previous goal to get to know the students in these classes has not been highly successful so far. A combination of doubt by them and nervousness by me has put a roadblock in my plan. I have had some conversations with a few about their current projects and I had one deeper conversation with one kid, Asher, who is currently applying for colleges. Randy has encouraged me to keep trying and to not worry about embarrassing myself. He says that it is an integral part of getting to know them. I realize that this “stage fright” of mine is an obstacle that is important to face for more than just my time at CAHS. I do love that Randy has a wonderful way of relating to virtually all of his students. He does a good job of directing disruptive energy into positive output and he is in tune with his student’s emotions which helps develop a relationship with them. For instance, one student who is not technically in his class comes in regularly and can be distracting. Randy does a great job of coaxing him out of this behavior without scolding him. Randy doesn’t quite understand what my job is at the school, as he still believes that I am a student teacher. He continually tries to get me to teach a lesson that I have had no preparation for and it frightens me so I always turn him down. Thursday, however, he threw me into the fire. He asked me again, with a little more force, if I would explain the lesson and the project to two new students in the class. As nervous as I was, I did my best and Randy said the students did a great job after my mini-lesson. It was a good experience and I’m glad that Randy pushed me into it. I will try to be more receptive to the teaching experience he offers me. I also want to start staying afterwards a few times to chat with Randy about class. He has a lot of good insight and I think I would gain some confidence if I could sit down and talk with him about the classes without students in the class.
  
  I did not spend anytime with MMAA this week but have made up a plan of action for researching for the summer program and I will be helping Jamie Vu with her lesson on Thursday.



• Chloe Russell
  Wilder Memory Care - Sandra Menefee Taylor - adults - 8.5 hours
  
  I'm finally at Wilder for regular intervals, after the week of TB testing and then the missed day for the school meeting. Sandra is allowing me to come tuesdays and wednesdays now because a space opened up in my week due to some schedule rearranging. Yesterday, Tuesday 1/29/13, I was able to shadow Sandra teaching a class of students with memory loss.
  
  The class period was a bit different than that with able minded people, but some of the differences were not what I expected. She begins each class, regardless of which students are present, by showing class work that was done recently. She will credit the present students with their paintings, and review lessons they went over. With the memory care group, Sandra asks enthusiastically “Do you remember doing this? This was made by you!” and for the most part the students were quite impressed with themselves.
  
  The lesson of the day was printing. Sandra got out some bird paintings the class had made previously (by using a bird template with adjustable wings- all paintings had different wing placements and lots of different colors) and suggested they print with some makeshift bird stamps she'd made earlier.
  
  The repetition of this assignment worked out really well with this group. I find that repetition lends itself really well to those suffering from memory loss from my experience, and also from watching this class. The same can be said for the repetitive nature of beats in music, etc.
  
  The group was much less competitive than the first group I shadowed. Very mild mannered, very focused on their tasks. One or two fell asleep every once in a while- painting is THAT therapeutic! There were a couple of students who strayed from their appointed task. It was not that they weren't interested in making art- both seemed to have artistic backgrounds and capability. One man who was very hard of hearing simply draws portraits in pencil each class. It is difficult to get an assignment across to him, and he is content to make his (very complex, emotive, and featuring motion) portraits- so that is what he does. Another person finished her printing very quickly so that she could get on to painting her own subject matter. She seemed to have quite a grasp on painting and mixing colors. I think she must have painted a lot in the past.
  
  Sandra walks around the room, asking what should be added to the painting, what colors should be used, etc. to get them thinking about decisions they're making in the paintings. Brushes and paint were given out to add weather to the pictures- some students filled in the gaps left from the prints with their brushes, some added rain drops and snow. Over all, the printing exercise worked out quite well for this group- but as the paintings of the birds from the prior class session proved, they are capable of painting more complex images too.
  
  The assignment was split into two class sessions because they only spend about an hour in the art room, and like to have complete work to display.
  
  Totino Grace - Pat Bennincasa - grades 9-12 - 3 hours
  
  My first day at Totino Grace started early last thursday morning. The school gets going pretty early and I am present during class periods 1-3. Pat was kind enough to let me arrive a bit earlier (and feed me coffee) so she could show me the lay of the land and explain how she runs classes, how the students would perceive me and act around me, what I should do and look out for. She told me they would be very watchful of me for the first few visits, trying to gauge whether or not I am “ok”. She also instructed me to take lots of notes and formulate several questions for her by the end of the time I was there. I had no trouble coming up with questions.
  
  The first period was definitely the most relaxed for me- the students for the most part were inquisitive toward me and open to conversing about college as an art student, their assignment at hand, advice on said assignment, etc. They are a drawing class that was focusing on showing several panels of different kinds of compositions. Content could be anything they chose. Lots of interesting stuff on those pages!
  
  The second and third periods were a 3D class- since Pat runs classes at the high school at a high caliber, the 3D classes are great prep for classes like the ones at CVA. Right now the classes were focusing on finishing up a project about using wire to make a “drawing” in space. The assignment was birds, there were several hand outs depicting birds, their basic shape, different poses, different species. They were very busy, and as such weren't as open to my table-to-table introduction that I'd tried the hour before. I chalked it up to that and will try again on Thursday to see if I can get to know some of them. Pat did tell me that each class period has its own kind of “personality”. I can definitely sense that already.
  
  In hour three I felt a mixture of the openness of the first class and the reservedness of the second class. After class some of the questions I asked Pat were
  
  1) A student finished an assignment several days before the due date, what does that student do next? (Try to work into the project more, if they don't want to they can move on to other homework)
  
  2) When students are reluctant to speak to me, should I continue pushing to get to know them? Should I leave them alone? This is probably something I'll figure out from being around them more. Pat did say that each class has its own personality, that could be another thing to think about.
  
  A student was doing an independent study (cool!) and messed up on her project. Pat put it up on the wall and had the student step back and talk about what was working and what was not. They deduced that it was an avenue of exploration that was not one to pursue, and that the student should try a different way of laying out her picture.
  
  There is definitely a lot going on at the art department of Totino Grace- I'm glad I took notes! I'm excited to continue my practicum there.
  
  
• Jenny Stice
  Great River School - Sam O’Brien - 11th & 12th grade - 4.25 hours
  

At Great River on Tuesday I had the chance to teach an impromptu lesson for the 12th graders in the IB art class. In last weeks ceramics class I had a conversation with two students about the struggles of creating artwork and how sometimes fear plays into that. I mentioned the book Art and Fear to them and said I would bring it into next weeks class. Sam noticed that I had brought the book in for Hattie and Matilda, after looking through the first couple chapters Sam asked if I would mind leading a discussion on them. While I lead this discussion Sam ran a critique for the 11th graders in the IB art class. I have never lead a discussion of this sorts before, were I was in charge of asking ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions as the students read through the chapters. I was an amazing learning experience and I now have a new respect any of my teachers who have done such a discussion where none of us students didn’t feel like answering.

I was quite impressed with some of the answers which the students came up with and the questions that they raised concerning the text. Thinking about this after I left for the day makes me wonder about doing a more theory based lesson and then a project based lesson for this class, assuming that there is the open time. Now that I have seen the students create and discuss artwork, I am surprised by how many of them don’t associate themselves with being artists or even wanting to become an artist. Some of them are simply content to be creating art as a pass time, and others are looking to pursue art into college. When Sam and I discussed this situation, he said that it was the first time in years that the classroom had been made up of so many students who didn’t associate themselves with being an artist.

On Thursday of this week I witnessed the first negative interaction between students, during the Ceramics class one student asked to use another students ‘slip’ for working with her clay piece. This interaction was fine until the student borrowing the slip put more water into the container and the owner of the slip protested the borrower doing so. The students worked it out amongst themselves, without any real argument, but it was one of those situations were I was not sure of my place in discipline because I have not witnessed Sam have to work out any real arguments. Unlike other tense situations that I have witnessed in other classrooms this one seemed to pass by rather quickly and the students were back to talking and joking by the end of class.

Again in the IB Art class Sam asked if I would mind taking the 12th graders to the common room while the 11th graders had critique. Sam explained to me that he was hesitant to have the 12th graders join in on the critique because he had the feeling that the 11th graders were slightly ‘fragile’ at that moment. I happily agreed, seeing no reason why I couldn’t take charge of the 12th graders for another class period. Sam asked if I would go over with the students, their IB tests that they had filled out with an artist statement and pictures of their work. Using the rubric and grading key for IB tests, and possibly writing up some goals for the rest of the school year. I can’t say that the goal writing was hugely successful but the students did get something out of the idea. We also have a really good discussion about what the students plans were their future. They were talking about colleges and had questions for me about college and art college. Most of the students haven’t heard back from the colleges they applied to, but one specific student did early admittance to pre-med school and a art college in Savannah. She has since decided to attend the pre-med school in Rochester MN, based on the idea that she could continue creating artwork even while attending pre-med and med school. The highlight of my week was that several students asked if I would attend their graduation at the end of this semester, and I hope that I will be able to.