Finishing up the sculptures from the last class, starting a new lesson making a monster painting, and working on the photoshop with the students who missed the lesson, it was a busy day for the teachers and the students. I had to run upstairs and downstairs to see how each student was doing, and with the many lessons mixed up in one class period, I was first worried that students won't know what to do. However, I was surprised to see how they found exciting things to work on by themselves, although some kids were not working on what the teachers prepared for them to do.
From today's lesson, there was one incident which I thought was important to think about. Brendan and Jenna had to finish up their sculpture to work on the next lesson, and Sean and Henry wanted to help them paint. I was happy at first because Sean and Henry wanted to help and work with other students. However, after a while, I saw how Brendan was the only one left working on the project because other kids decided to work on the monster painting. When I went up to him and asked what he wants to do more with the sculpture, he pointed at the trash can. He did not like the finished work of art and wanted to throw it away. I started to talk about what he can do more to it to fix what he didn't like about the sculpture, but I saw how Brendan didn't want to. I right away said, "I am not throwing it away!" but I didn't know what to say after that. The project was to make an abstract sculpture, and I now regret not explaining about how well they depicted the abstraction through the sculpture.
Sometimes, I could see how students feel bad about their artwork and want to throw it away. I think it is an important role of the teacher to lead the students not to get discouraged about their works, but to explore more with their artwork and challenge.
This is an important incident to think about and learn from. There could have been several things happening with Brendan: Maybe just the fact that the other kids had wandered off to do other things (while he felt obligated to continue to work on the sculpture), or possibly that he really had envisioned something very different when he started working on the sculpture. What could you have suggested that would have helped restore his interest in the work? What could you do to reassure him that he was heading in the right direction? Would a new material or finish offer new possibilities?
ReplyDeleteI think I could talk to him to bring back what his first ideas were. I would ask him and suggest him with more ideas to finish the sculptures as the thing that he wanted to make. I hope Brendan and other kids learn to finish the artworks they started to make. I think I should talk to him this week.
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