Practicum Teaching

Practicum Teaching Experience

Along with a group of four other student teachers, I helped create an eight week curriculum in an online format for Stratton Elementary students age 6-9. We met with the students for one hour twice a week after school and taught them to use a variety of art materials and vocabulary. Our curriculum focused on the concepts of identity and inspiration.

Click any of these to find full lessons from our curriculum

Full Teaching Philosophy

I believe that art education is essential to fostering creativity in students and instilling a sense of curiosity and willingness to experiment. These are skills that can be carried over to all aspects of education and subsequently to all aspects of life. Art gives students an opportunity to express themselves and showcase the things that they care about to their peers through conventional and unconventional means. Art promotes collaboration and communication skills, allowing students to gain new perspectives and share new outlooks on the world. In an art class, students are able to not only improve their technical skills but also grow their ability to give constructive feedback as well as take it.

My goal as a teacher is to provide my students with safe space for self expression. I am committed to caring for my students' individual needs and helping them improve their skills regardless of their abilities going in. I aspire to incorporate diverse source materials as well as physical materials into my lesson planning to best represent all student experiences. Through effective communication with students and being mindful of my words and actions, I hope to maintain a positive environment where students can feel comfortable bringing their concerns to me.

My goal for my students is that they are able to find a creative outlet through my class. I hope that my students will grow their passion for art while also developing skills that they can use outside of the art classroom. I want them to feel comfortable sharing ideas and offering criticism to their peers in a respectful way through encouraging discussion throughout the art making process. I also hope that my students feel confident that they are improving their technical abilities. I aim to utilize self evaluations and progress check ins so that students can visualize their progress and notice where changes should be made. By the end of my class, I aspire that my students have broadened their definition of what art can be and grown their critical thinking skills through thoughtful conversations about art as well as formal and informal critiques.

Art is extremely subjective and therefore evaluating student work in a subject like art needs to be carefully thought out. In my classroom I plan on utilizing rubrics that very clearly explain the objectives of the assignment. These objectives will be both technical, lesson concept based, and effort based. This way, regardless of skill level, students who have shown me that they have completed all requirements will be able to get as good of a grade as possible. I also want to incorporate critique into my classroom because I believe that it helps students learn to talk about their art in a meaningful way as well as encourages them to develop a thick skin. Sharing ideas about each other's art offers students the opportunity to think more critically about their own art practice and use the suggestions from class to develop future pieces more thoroughly.

Students should gain an understanding of how to communicate and express themselves through art. They should find that what they are learning in art class is applicable to all of their other classes as well as situations in their lives outside of school. Through incorporating aspects of other academic subjects into my art curriculum, I can show students that the skills they are developing in art class can be applied to any future career, in or out of the art world.

I plan to use documentation of student work along with grading rubrics and participation during critique to not only evaluate students in the moment, but also to grow my understanding of how best to teach in order for students to show the most understanding and improvement. I hope to learn from my students by taking into account what they enjoy or do not enjoy about my class as well as how they are interpreting my instruction. I will use these observations to tweak future lessons and grading criteria so that my students will gain as much as they can from my class.