Pre-Teaching Art Walk

What better way to start out then school year than to take a walk of inspiration though the Detroit Institute of Arts.

I'm sharing some of my inspirations with you.

This is a great conversation piece and I love the quote by the sculptor Barry Flanagan.  I am going to post that in my classroom.  

My students are urban students and many may see a lot of the materials that I took photos of before.  

Some of these works using familiar materials may both speak to the students about art and also repel them.  That to me leads to a great discussion.  

 Using materials that are found or discarded is a way to make art wherever you are and whatever your budget. My professor John Rush told me to "make art with whatever I had." This also is what drives my art inspirations sometimes and I think that students can relate to that. 

This enormous piece of art is made entirely of cardboard.

My students are all students of color, so this work is a great way to get them to think about great works and how it can relate to people in any context.  

I think that this is a great way to start out every year, and hopefully the art department will make it a tradition!

Classroom Prep DIY

I am the first Art teacher that my school has EVER had.  There is a new management company here, so they are bringing in all of the arts to enrich the program and develop well rounded students.

My school is an urban school in Detroit, and I don't have a budget to get supplies and things ready for my art room. I originally was given a room with no sink, so I got lucky with these desks that are supposed to be for a science classroom. 

  I had to scavenge in the school for places to put materials and things that were for using in the classroom. I still wanted it to look fresh and inviting, even though there are no art material yet (except for some amazing friends that donated things!) I found lots of milk crates and some bread crates in the kitchen and used them to store supplies.  

I decided to buy some duct tape to make it look like my materials were nice and new.

 

Looks so much better, so I started to add it everywhere that looked like it was a reused material.

I even covered the bread racks (that I will used to dry artwork) to make them look nice. I also added some of the artwork that my students at my last school left for me.  

~AFTER PHOTOS COMING SOON~

Help me with my Amazon Wish List! Or you can search: University YES art department 

Selfies for Art Assessment

I'm starting my year teaching and I want to share all of the great things that I am working on.  Sharing things with other teachers makes such a big difference and only benefits the students, so I want to share many of my ideas, resources and printables that I am creating for school.

I am teaching at a school in Detroit that has never had any art classes.  I want to be able to assess what my students know instinctively or have been taught about drawing.  A fun simple way to be able to assess their learning without giving them a worksheet with questions, is to give them something to let loose.  A self portrait can also share with me ways that students feel about themselves personally.  I can keep in in their file and refer back to it to see how much a student has grown  with their skills in the course.  

Using the Selfie, a pop culture reference that they all know is a sneaky way to get them to draw a self portrait.  If I said to them that it will be a "seIf portrait", it may sound scary.  don't know what to assume that they know or don't know, so it will be fun to watch them go without giving any instructions on how to draw a face.  

I also have an image of a polaroid frame to surround their selfie.  I don't know if any of them have seen a real polaroid, so it is something to tell the student about myself and use it to show some pictures of me and my family.

It would be fun to bring one in as a follow up lesson or as a special treat!

An essential question for your project:

What can artworks tell us about a culture or society?