New Habits

I read an article at Edutopia about keeping record of your teaching. I have always wanted to do that.  I'm in a unique place this school year. I'm teaching at two schools. One in Baltimore city and one in the county. 
I teach high school students digital photography and graphic design in a large private school and middle school art in a small private school.
I have been teaching art for about 20 years so I have seen the change in the way kids process information as well as what they are willing to give you in respect to thier time. Attention span has reduced dramatically, especially for art class. Enough boring stuff!
PAPER MACHE
This week at my Middle School I started a paper mache project for 7th and 8th grade.
The kids love this. With minimal instruction and Google/Pinterest searches they are off and running, balling up newspaper and taping heads to bodies and asking me how to make a wrapped candy or other fun idea.  I don't tell them what to make. I only give them size restrictions. Storing all 60 projects while we are in process will be a challenge in my tiny room.
LINE DRAWING
The sixth grade has started pencil and line. I had them try some blind contour drawing. This is where you look only at the subject you are drawing and not a the paper. Only a couple of students were able to understand and do this correctly. We will try again this Friday.
​POSTER PROJECT
At my high school, graphic design students are working on a poster project to teach them some Graphic Arts history .  They will do do three things in this project.

• Choose a movement that interests them and write a one page paper describing the movement, a prominient artist and two works that the artist created.
• Choose a social issue 
• Create a poster to raise awareness for the social issue in the style of the movement that they have chosen.  
  I begin with a power point and and a handout with a list issues to help them pick a social issue that resonates with them.

One thing that I was hoping for was a greater variety of social issues. Most kids chose pollultion, which is worthy, however we have many more issues facing us today.
CYANOTYPE
In Digital Photo students are creating cyanotypes.  I begin with a power point that covers some film developing basics and then goes into how to create a cyanotype and who first developed and used this photo process.
We have printed the negatives and I am hoping to paint the paper and do some prints. It's only going to be a high of 39 today. This is not exactly the weather for an outdoor activity.  With cyanotype you develop in sunlight or a UV light, which I have. Maybe I will go that route.

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