We’ve doubled in size for our second year, with two classes of teens running concurrently. One group will be exploring different facets of the idea “Risk,” while the other one will be exploring the idea of “Balance.” Graduate students have already begun planning and teaching lessons that encourage teens to explore these big ideas in their art-making.

On the first day of class, over 30 teens from all over New York City joined 10 CCNY Art Education grad students, Dr. Marit Dewhurst, Jill Kirschen (a grad veteran from last year’s City Art Lab), and CAW’s Associate, Lauren Jobson. Everyone had a wonderful time learning each other’s names, interests, quirks, and hopes for the course with snowball fights, collaborative collage, and a walking gallery tour of their work, which explored each classes’ themes.

Every three weeks, two different graduate students will conduct their group in a collaborative art project revolving around themes of risk and balance. Each group, and each rotation of grad students will have something completely different to give to teens to engage in, so stay tuned.  We can’t wait to show you what works our students will create next week.

For more photos, check out our flickr & facebook!

Principals Panel: Interviewing Skills for
Teaching and Leadership Positions

Thursday, March 22 4:30-7:00 p.m.

The City College Education Alumni and the School of Education are co-sponsoring a “repeat” of last semester’s outstanding Principals’ Panel event on March 22, 2012 from 4:30 PM – 7:00 PM in the NAC (3rd Floor, Faculty Dining Room). The principals will be addressing the typical interview questions that applicants will be facing and expectations for commendable responses. There will be a Q & A session as well as an opportunity to meet in small groups for role playing. You do not want to miss this one if you are, or plan to be, involved in any interviews for upcoming teaching or leadership positions. The Principals Panel will be held on the 3rd floor of the NAC Building in the Faculty Dining Room.

Immediately students began designing their mini-architecture, and the final projects were 6 marshmallow towers with one final winner at 20 inches. During reflection, students expressed that this project not only fostered their creativity, but also encouraged them to problem solve as a team – an important lesson taught through the Arts.

By Brenda Zamora
CCNY Adjunct Lecturer

Animator Aardman created this short video of artists trying to answer the question “What is art?”  Could be a great resource to get the conversation going in your class.

At the beginning of the school year I always address the four major points of the critique process (describe, analyze, interpret, judge) and my students look at famous artworks individually, in small groups, and as a class.  Students learn to critique advertisements and other images in popular media.  We’re about half way through this process when Brittany loudly asks in a complaining voice, “Why are we writing in art class, can’t we make stuff instead?“

I gently remind her to raise her hand and wait for me to call on her and then continue, “That’s a very good question.  Does anyone think they know an answer?” I pause and listen to the crickets and shuffling papers.  ”Well, there are many reasons why it is important to write in art class, but for our purposes I’ll just name a few:

Check out Ms. Curtis' great critique worksheet.

One reason is that as artists, it is important for us to be able to articulate our creative process and explain our work to viewers.  It is also important for us to be self-reflective learners so that we know our weaknesses and strengths and can address them more directly.  Furthermore, we can apply the skills we are learning throughout the critique process to other areas of our academic and personal lives.  Last but not least, many of us in this class have not gotten 4′s on our ELA State Test and so we can use all the practice we can get. Any more questions?”

The way I see it, they may loathe the process now, but they’ll at least know a little more about themselves and maybe if I’m lucky, they’ll thank me for it later.

This was the first visit to the Guggenheim for many of the students, so we initially explored the architecture of the museum as well as its permanent collection.  We also viewed some contemporary pieces:  an installation of 100,000 dollar bills by Hans-Peter Feldmann, and work by artist Lee Ufan.

I asked the students to team up in groups of three and select art to discuss.  Each group had to prepare three questions about the artwork and begin a dialogue with the class.

Creating ideal questions can be challenging. We discovered that open-ended questions spark the best conversations: those are questions that don’t have a right or wrong answer but instead require close-looking or personal interpretation.  We also talked about how asking one good open-ended question can lead to more questions and a richer conversation.  Alyson Luck from the Education Department at the Guggenheim joined us and gave the class feedback on the questions that they presented.

Our class selected a variety of artwork about which to talk.  Some focused on paintings and others focused on sculpture or installations.  We tried to create questions that we would ask to a class of young students. Our questions often required students to think about details in an image and choices that the artist made:

What do you think this man might be looking at?

Where might this man be?

How do you think the man is feeling?  What details in the painting tell you that?

One of most successful inquiry discussions came from looking at a piece by Lee Ufan.  A team of students asked a series of questions about the work – a stone and piece of metal with a cracked piece of glass – to spark a dialogue.  We found that one particular question made us all think more closely about the piece and its layers of meaning:

“Which of the elements – glass, stone, or metal – is most like you?  Why?”

Great question.  I’m still thinking about my answer to that one…

Jeff Hopkins, Adjunct Lecturer

Creating positive language in the classroom can be quite the challenge, particularly when students are accustomed to street vernacular.  Helping students learn to ‘code switch’ is an important step in their learning process as well as a necessary step to creating a positive classroom environment.

Think about how you would address the following situation:  Taia, a fashionable and opinionated 6th grader tells another student to ‘shut-up’. I remind her to please use, “helpful and not hurtful language”.  She responds, “Everyone says it and it’s not your job to teach me how to talk, I can talk however I want.”

I think for a moment and then respond, “You are absolutely right that you can talk however you want, however, if you don’t learn to code switch it’s going to be very difficult for you to succeed in most academic and job settings.  I believe it is my job to help you work through language and I also strongly believe in creating a safe space for students to create art and we need positive language for that,” I pause slightly, ” I can keep going if you like?”  Taia smiles and shakes her head, no.  By this time the class had quieted down and my point is crystal clear.

Want more resources? Check out Teaching Tolerance for great free educator tools for creating safe spaces in schools.