Standard 8 - Collaborative Relationships:
The competent teacher builds and maintains collaborative relationships to foster cognitive, linguistic, physical, and social and emotional development. This teacher works as a team member with professional colleagues, students, parents or guardians, and community members.
Simmons Middle School recently opened up a brand new Fine Arts department that I got to experience during my student teaching there. I got to partake in building a mosaic tile (four actually) that got placed on the Legacy Wall that is currently in the Art room that my co-op will continue to build over time.
I also got to help experiment with the new Kiln that they bought for the new art room and managed to make a little cute vessel called "Stumpy" which turned out exactly how I wanted him to look. It was fun collaborating and helping the Fine Arts department during my student teaching time.
I made four little tiles out of clay and made a lotus flower on each tile with my last name stenciled in. I love lotus flowers and thought that this would be a symbolic piece to add to the legacy wall. The reason why I did four pieces was because I demoed my tiles in front of four different classes that got to create a tile for the legacy wall. I kept the same design for each class just to make it a little easy on me.
This is part of the Legacy Wall that is currently hanging above the sinks in the new art room. My co-op chose to do this simply for a backsplash for the sink area in her classroom. Students got to choose what color glaze they wanted for their piece.
This was a small vessel that I experimented with my co-op to test out the new kiln. This was also an experiment to see if this is what my co-op wanted to do for our clay project. Even though we did something different, she ultimately made this project an Art Club project later on in the year.
I created a small vessel out of clay and molded it into a little creature that is in the shape of a tree stump, hence the name "Stumpy". I later glazed him with a few different colors as well as experiemented with mixing glazes to get the brown color. Both me and my co-op were completely stunned that this turned out exactly how I vision it. Stumpy is currently sitting on my desk at home, holding a few pens and pencils. He will be coming with me when I am in my first ever classroom.
After experimenting with the new Kiln, we had the class attempt their first vessel project, along with glazing. Only one out of 100+ students had their vessel explode, and don't worry. We had a replacement for theirs because I gave away my demo vessels to those who needed one. They turned out excellant!
Art Club got an opportunity to paint some of the sets for the school's winter play, Once Upon A Crime. However, the pieces were messed up in a small way and I was asked to help touch up the bedroom piece. I fixed some of the outlines that got faded away with the colors. I fixed some of the areas where there were paint streaks coming down. I also touched up on making shadows appear on the bed to make it more realistic looking.
My last week of student teaching, I got to experience the elementary schools around the middle school. I visited each of the four, Kolb, Harnew, Columbus Manor, and Lieb Elementary. These were fun experiences and I got to see how the elementary schools did their art classes throughout the day and how they set up and prepare themselves. It was definitely a fun time visiting with these classes and got to meet some wonderful art teachers that works with the little ones. They gave me great advice as well as listened to what I had to say about my experince so far with past jobs and current student teaching life. I definitely will be keeping in touch with majority of these wonderful teachers to help each other along the way with our careers.