Highlight 2: Online Instruction

The shake up

While student-teaching at Hall-Dale High School, in Farmington, Maine, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. After only three weeks with my classes, Friday, March 13, would be my last day seeing students in the art room. My eight classes were in the middle of several projects. Now they were sent home where there was no guarantee of art supplies, space or communication (Std. 2 ). I had to refigure out lessons that would be very flexible yet still meet the class's objectives.

My mentor, Jennifer Paisley, already had a website started for people to see Hall-Dale artwork. Now it was to become the home base for art class (Std. 3, 5, 7 , 8). First thing was to set up the website so students could find their lessons on a platform that was welcoming, pleasing to look at, engaging, and offered all the supporting documents. Next, the lessons were reworked to accommodate for a wide variety of materials. Emails and notices were sent out to students where to find their lessons. Then online classes where booked. From there, more emails for the questions, one-on-one instruction to help for misunderstandings and clarifications (Std. 1), and figuring out how to make a project with a student's limited supply of ...anything. The lesson's criteria was stretched to accommodate every students possibly limited access.

I regular asked my students what I could do and change to help in their learning. Did it make sense, was everything accessible, what should I change (Std. 8 ,9)?

(Std. 6) I kept a meticulous Hall-Dale Art All-Student Log documenting every correspondence. This helped tremendously while collaborating with my mentor (Std. 10). In assessing their work, I'd collect brainstorming worksheets, host casual crits, and send out forms to critique each others' work (Std. 6).

In my recorded slide shows I'd include art history, its tie-in the assignment, and what was expected for the assignment, as well as multiple provoking images (Std. 4). This would sometimes be reviewed in my how-to videos, too. All these, plus vocabulary, learning objectives, rubrics, supporting links from outside sources were posted on the lessons' webpage. When sending out an invite for an online class on Google Meet, students were given the agenda and links to review and have on the ready at class time (Std. 11).

As frustrating as this always, I am proud of what I and my mentor put together (Std. 10). There was a lot of refining, and it's still going on (Std. 9), much like anything you learn in life.