Spring 2010 Journal Entries

Week 14 – CVA Student Journal entries from April 19–23

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Northside Community Center - Free Arts Minnesota - 3 hours
  
  This week at northside we brought a smorgasbord of supplies for the kids to create a 3-dimensional design with cardboard, feathers, glitter, tissue paper, and other supplies. It was interesting to watch the kids from afar in terms of how they interacted with the materials. It was also very enlightening to get down to their level and see how they proceeded when you created with them. One boy, mimicked me and the artistic decisions I made which was flattering. The outcome for most of the students was pretty successful but some of the kids lost interest.
  



• Rudy Arnold
  Rudy is finished with her Practicum.
  



• Cara Fazio
  Cara is finished with her Practicum.
  



• Christa Meyer
  Shadowing - Aki Shibata - 2 hours
  Perpich - Nancy Norwood - 11th and 12th Grade Photography - 7.5 hours
  

Christa Meyer Kenwood Shadowing. At Kenwood today we finished the photo series that I’ve been at this spring semester. The students were given an hour to photograph their different locations around the school property. Remembering to take the photos using perspective and composition. After the hour they went into the computer lab to download and edit their pictures to finish with 20 final photos.

Perpich. My final day at Perpich they were working on Polaroid transfers and as well as Polaroid lifts. To do these techniques you can take a color slide negative and create a Polaroid from a machine that exposes it to the film. For the lifts this was a little more scientific, by placing the picture in a heated pan of water and slowly take apart the emulsion of the image to place on a new piece of paper. By doing this process you can stretch out the image and had wrinkles in this see-through photograph. The students I think really enjoyed being able to experience more then just black and white film photography, they were able to expand the medium form by doing these alternative techniques.


• Katrina McMahon
  Bethesda Hospital – Erin McGee – Elderly – 6 hours
  

Last week at Bethesda we made larger clay bowls. Each week the teacher adds on to what they have learned the week before, and this time it was adding on to the pinch pots. This time the class made large bowls for cooking or baking in. The class had to take a large slab of clay and throw it on the table to keep making it stretch out. And then they had to use their pinch pot techniques to perfect and do the detailed areas of the bowl.

A new resident came in and joined this class as well. I noticed that she had more tremors than the others but her spirits were up high and she was ready to learn. Most of the time when the teacher demonstrates the students are likely to do something close to what her piece looks like. But I noticed that the new resident took it all on her own and decided to make two matching candy dished out of her huge slab instead of one big bowl and that was good to see all the variety they came up with.

This week at Bethesda the residents made slabs and decorated them however they liked. They had to look back to last week and stretch out the slabs to whatever size they wanted and then use the materials around them to do whatever they liked. Some residents used the newspaper and cut strips from it to use to cover the clay before it was painted. Then I also noticed that others started mixing the painting colors to come up with one that they liked. So they are becoming more comfortable with experimenting and seeing what will happen to the clay after it is fired.

I also noticed one man that started to have tremors that whenever this happened he would get up and look around and see what other people were doing so that he didn’t have to work on his piece while his hands were shaking. This same man also did something that he really liked and he said, “hey look what I did!” with a smile and we all noticed that he was letting loose and thinking outside the box too.



• Jaclyn Nelson
  Shadowing - Susan Armington - 2.5 hours
  

I went to Michael Dowling Elementary in Minneapolis on Friday to observe teaching artist Susan Armington once more. This residency was different because she taught three 3rd grade classrooms each day for one week. I went to the first two. She used a cart to travel her supplies from one classroom to another and she was in the students’ actual classroom instead of an abandoned darkroom.

For each class, I helped Susan set up a little and then watched her give a presentation on the final steps on making Map Boxes. She created a “bad example” and had the students observe and then tell her what makes it bad and what can she do to make it better. This gets the students to have a critical eye when it comes to editing/adding to their own work. She wrote down what needed to be done today in order of importance and let them go to work.

I was in charge of monitoring the hot glue station to make sure the students were being safe because it can get really hectic over there with lots of burns from people bumping into each other and other accidents. Susan lets the specific teacher decide if they want someone monitoring or not, but she prefers if someone could. The second class, Susan went around helping the students while the teacher, adult assistant and I were in charge of the hot glue station. With this particular classroom the teacher didn’t want the students using the hot glue guns at all because of an incident, so all three of us took hot glue instructions from the students.

It was exhausting just watching Susan jump from classroom to classroom, but she loved doing it! She has been working with this school for a few years now, so she is used to the teachers, the curriculum and how to get things rolling. I did have a conversation with her during the lunch period about what it was like to do this type of work and the like. The main thing I got out of it is that it’s exhausting but very rewarding! She gave me advice in order to get on a roster: create a project that is unique to you and that you designed, preferably with a theme. I also wondered what it was like to be with COMPAS and she had nothing but good things to say and how they work differently than other rosters by having certain regulations/rules that Susan is a fan of. For example, a teaching artist teaches no more than 4 class periods a day.

Overall, shadowing Susan Armington was a fulfilling experience. I learned a lot by observing her, asking her questions and hearing her elaborate answers and stories. When I become a teacher I would want to invite her to come do a residency in my classroom.



• Rachel Smith
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Crystal Tomczak
  
Free Arts Minnesota - Tubman 6pm - 2 hours
Shadowing - Emily Isenberg - 2 hours

Today at Tubman I came up with the art project we did. I got a bunch of empty toilet paper and paper towel rolls from Kevan at anoka, So I wanted to come up with something to do with them. I cut them into about 1" rolls and found online the idea to make napkin holders out of them by covering them with various things. I took construction paper, markers, colored pencils, scissors, glue, and various other things out of the supply closet closet at Tubman. Also, in the supply closet there were some wooden picture frames so I pulled them out as well and removed the backs to them so they could decorate them too. This way we could turn the napkin holders into a ring toss game by throwing them through the hole of the decorated picture frame. Surprisingly, the boys were not interested in this project. The ones that came left right away, but the girls seemed to enjoy this project.

Shadowing with Emily Isenberg at Pillsbury Elementary School with two 1st grade classes. Emily was teaching these first grade classes observational drawing. Each student got a tulip that they would be drawing today. Emily had them start out with a couple "scribble drawings", which are much like gestural drawings. She tells them that their eyes stay glued to the flower, their pencils stay stuck to the paper, and they move fast like a scribble. After a couple scribble drawings, they did line drawings. For line drawings, Emily talked to them about constantly looking back and forth from the paper to the flower, their pencil still stays stuck to the paper, and they move slow like a snail. Observing Emily, I noticed that she adapted the teachers method of getting the kids to quiet down and listen. If the students were having troubles with their drawings, Emily would help them by putting her hand over theirs and drawing with them.





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Week 13 – CVA Student Journal entries from April 12–April 16

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Harriet Tubman - Free Arts Minnesota -3 hours
  

This week at northside the kids did we decorated flowerpots and planted flowers for the kids to nurture. The kids seemed excited about the activity and the outcome for them was very personal as well as creative. We offered many different options for their creativity to be unleashed. Such as, colored cotton balls, colored paper, markers, fabric, and pipe cleaners. It was a positive lesson for all the children.


• Rudy Arnold
  Shadowing - Barry Klieder - grade - 5.5 hours
  

Today Barry taught two classes again. The first class he was teaching a group of students the same lesson plan as last week. He taught them how to puzzle piece their faces back together. This exercise was about self investigation and exploration, the students had time to really look at their faces on paper like a puzzle, they had some fun switching around pieces. However this lesson Barry made some changes to better suit the class, he brought out a hard surface for the kids to puzzle the pieces together on, and he also had the students glue the pieces onto a sheet of paper when they were done. He had made changes from the former lessons to adapt and improve the current lesson.

Today Barry taught two classes again. Today Barry was teaching about 2D and 3D. He showed the students a picture of a fork, and asked them what it was, when they said it was a fork, he started to pretend to eat with it. Barry then took out a real fork and did the same thing, he then began to explain the difference of 2D and 3D. I could tell this was a lesson Barry had done for a long time, because of how well prepared he was for almost any response the students said. Barry did this exercise with two classes.


• Cara Fazio
  All site work finished.
  



• Christa Meyer
  Barton Open School - Jane Spicer - 1st and 2nd grade - 10.5 hours
  

Barton. Still practicing the play with the costumes they painted, this Friday is this show. Went back to Barton on Friday for the play. I set up the backdrop they painted with the star sponges design. Their costumes that they painted were colorful and a fun way to dress as their planet or star.

Perpich. Today for class they learned about another alternative process and it was cyanotypes. So they whole class went outside and grabbed some nature leaves and flowers to make a photogram. After ten minutes we brought the photographs in to rinse and seeing the image turn blue. All of the cyanotypes were a huge success and the students loved this project.



• Katrina McMahon
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  



• Jaclyn Nelson
  All site work finished.
  



• Rachel Smith
  Barton Open School - Jaci Sullivan - 3rd and 4th grade - 4.5 hours
  

When working with this school I have learned and taken note of great many things.  This week I learned three very important ideas.  To believe in myself even when I am unsure.  What it means to honestly forgive someone.   I also learned the benefits of sharing.  

I was going around helping students with their math problems. This is an area I have always struggled with.  I was trying to help them multiply numbers in three and digits.  I cannot tell you how long it has been since I have done anything like this.   On top of it I was thrown threw another loop.  I had to teach the students a strategy I have never heard of before with only an example to work off of.   In the end I figured it out and taught the fourth grader at the same time as myself.  

The second and third lesson I learned one right after the other.  The boys in the class have a love of tin foil.  Mysteriously and routinely it finds its way out right after lunch and never any other time.  One boy was laboring over tinfoil mask.  He was laying in this fine texture when another boy snatched it away.  At first there was an uproar of disagreement but, after Jaci intervened the mood shifted.  The creator of the masque handed his friend the masque, and said, “Here it’s yours now.

A girl walked over and told the boy that it might be ruined if he gave it away. The boy told her that it was ok. It wasn't’t his anymore. The other boy could do with it what he wanted.


• Crystal Tomczak
  Free Arts MN - Harriet Tubman - 2 hours
  Anoka High School - Kevan Nitzberg - 7 hours
  

Free Arts Minnesota. Today at Tubman we made potato stamps. Me and one other volunteer were in charge of the knifes. We cut the potatoes in half so they had a flat surface, on which they could draw a shape or design and then one of us volunteers would cut out the area around what they drew. We put paint into bowls so that they could dip their potato in the paint, or brush it on, and then stamp it onto paper. Some of the kids just took the half of the potato and painted that.

Anoka High School. Video Computer Arts had a work day today. Everyone seemed to be working on different projects, but there is an obvious growth in their computer arts skills.

In Drawing II the majority of the time was spent on a critiquing exercise where the students put out one piece of their work on the table with a number next to it (instead of their name). Then they had a form they had to fill out asking them questions about the work they were looking at. The questions were about what was working and what wasn't, what elements and/or principles are apparent in the work and what could make it better? They had to fill out enough forms so that each piece had three. then the rest of the time was work time.

Drawing I had a work day. Some people were finishing their 3D negative space drawings, some were working on their 3D shapes still life drawing, and some were starting their 3D movement drawings. Midterm is around the corner so they all need to catch up before then. 



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Week 12 – CVA Student Journal entries from April 12–16

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Barton Open School - Meri Gauthier - 7th and 8th grade - 5 hours
  Harriet Tubman - 2 hours
  

This week I taught at Baton in Meri’s 7h and 8th graders doing a texturized painting lesson. The kids seemed very engaged in the lesson that I had planned for them and since it was “silent day” I believed it helped them focus on finding a way to create something that would be successful. This semester the 7th and 8th grade class has done color wheels and I challenged them to try and incorporate that into the work. I found they were very curious about the grout that we prepared the day before and they seemed quite introspective when creating the work. The outcome was very different for each person because the variety that was allowed in the perception of the work. I saw the kids exploring ways of looking at what truly makes artwork interesting and that was encouraging to me.

At Harriet Tubman this week I did a lesson for the kids creating a 3-dimentionl sculpture of a house. I found the kids really engaged with the project at least more so then I have seen them be throughout the semester. I thought the assignment though complicated in many different ways was broad enough that each child could alter the outcome in the way they saw fit and play with the idea of home. I saw kids being very aware of what kinds of materials they were given especially if it was lesser quality. I was very proud of the kids ability to focus and listen to instruction. I saw this lesson as a success.


• Rudy Arnold
  Shadowing - Barry Klieder - 6 hours
  PCAE - Nancy Norwood - 11th and 12th grade - 6 hours
  

Shadowing JJ Hill. Today Barry showed the students the camera obscure and taught the varying aged students about the invention of photography, and how it relates to your eye. I helped make the room light safe. Barry taught two different groups, he kept the students very engaged with his enthusiasm, he also did a lot of VTS strategy. I noticed that the first group was able to figure out that the image that Barry projected with the camera was coming from the fence outside quicker than the second group. I wonder if this has to do with the order in which Barry explained about the camera to the students.

Shadowing JJ Hill. Today Barry taught two classes, Barry was teaching the rule of thirds and self-analysis to the students. We cut up 8 by 6 photographs with their faces on it into 9 squares, the students were then asked to put the mini puzzles back together. They also swapped out ears and eyes from other students. The second class Barry taught the students about optical illusions, and color correction. Once again he used VTS quite well with the students. Barry had me photograph him as well.


• Cara Fazio
  Site visits finished.
  



• Christa Meyer
  Barton Open School - Jane Spicer - 1st and 2nd grade - 12 hours
  PCAE - Nancy Norwood - 112th and 12th grade - 2 hours
  
  Today at Barton, I did another painting project with the classroom. Last Friday, a few parents and myself had cut out the costumes for the solar system play. For today they painted them. So again I set up the room for them to paint their pieces. The students had a blast looking at pictures of their planets and trying to figure out how to paint that certain planet. I was able to see them try techniques out on their piece, and walking around they were asking me for help which was very nice to be able to help students one on one. It was a great painting day, and I am really enjoying begin in this classroom as always.
  
  On Friday we rehearsed the solar system play, the students are doing such a wonderful job, and next Friday is the play.
  
  Perpich. It was another workday at Perpich; the students are working on alternative processes. These techniques include hand coloring a black and white image. While half of the class was in the darkroom the other half was in the studio lighting their still life and taking photos using color slide film. Once developed, the students will then use it for Polaroid transfer.
  
  
• Katrina McMahon
  Ramsey International Fine Arts - Letty Vaughn - 1st grade - 6 hours
  Bethesda Hospital - Erin McGee - Adults - 2 hours
  

Ramsey Center of the Arts. I taught my lesson plan to the students this week. I think it went really well. The kids went around and read all of their words out loud and then drew them out on paper. I used the baby animal names because they are learning them in class. I also used words like jump and wiggle and I noticed that the kids acted the words out as well when they were saying them out loud. The first graders went a lot more smoothly than the second graders did. The second graders were a bit squirmy that day and Letty had stepped out of the room while I was teaching so it was hard to keep them on track and concentrated on what they should be doing. The first graders seemed to be more interested in drawing than the second graders did.

Bethesda Hospital. This week at Bethesda we made animals that had little tiny balls on the inside so that when they were fired in the kiln they will rattle. The animals were once again made by making a pinch pot first and then transforming it into a hallowed out ball. The residents used their skills they learned from the previous week and then I noticed that they were teaching the new people who joined the group and excited to show them how to move the clay with their hands. I also noticed that when the teacher showed her bird that she made they all decided to make birds out of their clay pots. They all did have different kinds of birds though.


• Jaclyn Nelson
  Shadowing - Susan Armington - 11th and 12th - 2 hours
  

This was my second week at Southwest High shadowing Susan Armington. I only came in on Friday since that was supposed to be the day they were going to present. Turns out they needed another work day in order to complete their suitcases. Susan is flexible with the time it takes to do the project, in fact she likes it when students take time and care into their work. Thankfully Casey’s budget was also flexible in order to keep Susan around a little bit longer.

Today I followed Susan around a little bit to listen to her talk to a couple students about their suitcases. One student said he was done with his suitcase and so Susan wanted to talk to him about it just to make sure he has made all the objects that represent answers to the questions. She would list one of the questions and he would tell her which object represents that particular question. Some of the objects didn't’t seem to tell much about his feelings towards them so she helped him think about ways to make the object feel a certain way. For example, the question is “What will you leave behind/What will you be glad to leave behind?” and the student made an object of his school. The school was just the school and she wanted him to show how he felt about some of the things about the school. He would miss his friends but be glad to leave the teachers/rules. Susan suggested to have the teachers/rules shown by having them inside the school (“caged”) and his friends outside the school but still close to the school in order to tell that the two objects are cohesive. She usually doesn’t like to “tell” the students what to do. She likes to get them thinking how to problem solve, but time was not on our side.

I went around after that and helped a girl get caught up with her suitcase. She had a bunch of objects already made but needed them represented together so I helped hot glue them together. For example, she had a platform yard, a house, popup trees, and pinecones to represent trees. She designed the layout and I hot glued where they were to go on the platform yard. It was nice to help her get caught up and I showed her how to make some doll clothing.

Since it was the last working day I helped Susan clean up, organize and pack all her supplies into her car. She taught me a tip on packing: always try to get things that will stack into each other to save space. That way you can bring a lot more with not taking up more space. For example, she has some plastic bins of fabric and she lays each one on top of each other squishing the fabric down instead of having lids on all of them. While packing up her car we talked about the project overall and I suggested that it seemed like having the students answer 5 questions seemed like a lot to do in just the couple weeks they had (they also had a lot of testing this week, so more like a week and a half to do this project). I told her that I would feel overwhelmed by having to answer all those questions and maybe only having to answer 3 of them would have been better. I was also not drawn to most of the questions and we noticed that some of the objects made by students weren’t as well thought out as others and we think it was because they didn’t feel as strong of a connection either to particular questions. Susan and I collaborated to figure out a way for everyone to possibly succeed: Have multiple questions that can be answered, but only have around 3 required so that the students can have more options and be passionate and spend more time on the objects. I think Susan will try that next time she does the project. You may think you have a lesson plan ready to go but it’s always in a constant state of change.


• Rachel Smith
  Barton Open School - Jacquelyn Sullivan - 3rd and 4th grade - 11.5 hours
  

I was in Jaci’s class for the very first time on Thursday. I was immediately confronted with lots of surprises. I walked into the office expecting some sort of sign in list to be in plain sight. There was nothing so asked someone in the office. She then informed me I didn’t have to sign in, ever. I asked her were jaci’s class was and she said well Jaci is right behind you! As we walked to class she explained to me that the class was made up of third and fourth graders. The fourth graders mentor the third graders. As the day went on we had math fallowed by presentations by the students about the body. After that they had recess and lunch. This process was new to me also. The students had lunch in the classroom, which was after recess. During lunch they were relaxed, clam and respectful. During lunch I think we all were treated to a surprise. One of the students walked in to the room just drained and sickly looking as could be. The courageous young girl just had her appendix removed. She showed us all her battled wounds while her and her mom told us about the rollercoaster of events she had just endured. This week was a blast and I cannot wait to continue on Monday!


• Crystal Tomczak
  Anoka HIgh School - Kevan Nitzberg - 10th, 11th,12th grade - 7 hours
  Harriet Tubman - Free Arts Minnesota - 2 hours
  Arts Student League - Kevan Nitzberg - 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th grade - 2.5 hours
  


Harriet Tubman. Today at Tubman Lydia lead a very interesting project. She brought in various pieces of cut up wood in different shapes and sizes. The kids got to pick out different pieces of the wood and with that construct a "house". They all had very unique interpretations of a house. None of the pieces created this week looked like traditional houses, which was really awesome to see how far they were willing to stretch their imaginations. I think this was a great opportunity for the kids, because this is not something that they get a chance to do very often, and can be proud of their creativity.

Anoka High School. Today in Video Computer Arts class began with a presentation on Art Primer Tools. It was an introduction on their next assignment, where they will have to find one word and its definition for every letter of the alphabet. All the words should be related in some way. Then it was work time for them to work on their Principles and Elements assignment, which is due next Friday.

Drawing II began with a presentation as well. This presentation was for the research portion of the class, where students will need to put together a collection of work on ArtsConnectEd.org that is relevant to their work. Then they had work time to work on their theme based drawings. There are some pretty interesting themes this term.

In drawing I they had a work day to finish up their 3D negative space drawings, which are due the beginning of class on Monday, or move onto the next drawing where they have to set up six different shapes into an interesting still life and draw them monochromatically.


Perpich Center. Today at Perpich was the state high school league, where students for different high schools submitted work to be evaluated by a variety of judges. While the work was being looked at by the judges, there were different workshops that the student to go to, one of which I led. With the ten students that came to my workshop, I made 5”X5” accordion books with them, then had them work on creating content for the pages of the book. Some people worked diligently on this part and others spent the rest of the time pretending to sketch out ideas. They all seemed very glad have learned how to make an accordion book. It was definitely a great opportunity and learning experience for me.




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Week 11 – CVA Student Journal entries from April 5-9

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Walker Art Center - Ilene Mojsilov - 3 hours
  Barton Open School - Meri Gauthier - Art Class - 8.5 hours
  
  Walker. I finished my internship at the walker today and looking back on the past four months I realized how much the internship at the walker show me in systematic steps how to choreograph an environment that set the kids up for success artistically. It is still kind of a abstract idea, but much clearer then before I started practicum. Ilene’s use of her big-kid knowledge of how children learn best and artistic direction will definitely influence the way I look at teaching art or being a teaching artist.
  
  Barton. Meri did a demo with the 5th and 6th graders, and I thought her technique was really interesting and a very straightforward method. She was trying to explain how to take the first layer of ink off the work the kids had created. I watched her masterfully explain that the sponges have 6 sides so rubbing the paper with them will just push the ink rather than lift it. I thought it was helpful to watch a teach of that caliber show the kids a visual demo in terms of helping me break steps down for kids and to help me think outside the box about explaining things.
  
  
• Rudy Arnold
  No site work this week.
  



• Cara Fazio
  Site work finished.
  



• Christa Meyer
  Barton - Jane Spicer - 1st and 2nd grade - 10.5 hours
  
  
I taught at Barton Open School, for the 1st and 2nd graders. The lesson plan was to teach them the primary and secondary colors and about the color wheel. They then were able to practice on cut out stars and construction paper to practice mixing the colors. Another event that was going on outside of the classroom was having the students sponge paint star patterns unto a black sheet. This will be used for their solar system play that will be taking place in a few weeks. I thought all together the teaching went really well, next time I would want to have these art projects on two days instead of one. The students seemed to have fun with the paint and watching them explore primary and secondary colors was worth this assignment.


• Katrina McMahon
  Ramsey Center of the Arts – Letty Vaughn – 1st and 2nd Graders – 6 hours
  Bethesda Hospital – Erin McGee – Elderly – 3 hours
  
  
Ramsey. This week at Ramsey I did a sort of prep lesson for next week when I teach my lesson to them. Letty tested the students which she has to do weekly while I had their word list in front of me and chose one word for each of them and had them write the word on a note card then think of a sentence and then draw a picture on the back. The first graders were very slow with this and only got one done but the second graders were much faster and got up to five done. I noticed that the kids when writing their sentences would ask how to spell a word and I decided to sound it out for them and have them guess which letters to use. The first graders had lunch bunch on the day that I was there. Letty talked about what is push away behavior with friends and what would draw friends in. An example of push away behavior would be not showering and smelling, also eating with their mouths open and very messy (which she is working on with one of the students). Then one student asked another about hanging out over the weekend and Letty asked them what they should do first, they replied make sure it’s ok with our parents. And then she also told them to talk on the phone a few times too. I also brought another first grader down that we usually don’t have and tested him on his alphabet and numbers. He wrote down the numbers 1-30 then some simple spelling words. When he was writing his words I noticed that he writes his P’s and J’s backwards. I corrected him once and he would remember sometimes to write them correctly but most of the time they were backwards. I also had him count by twos, fives, and tens. Then I had him read some numbers I had written out and noticed that he did very well until it got past 100. Then the numbers were read as 1000.

Bethesda Hospital It was our first week with the clay class at Bethesda The class is for elderly with Parkinson’s disease. It is also something for them to do outside of their home. Only two guys showed up to the class so we had a lot of clay for them to work with and make some larger projects, and they also had way more one on one time with the teacher. We started with exercises to play around with the clay making people and motor vehicles in one minute. Then the main project of the night was making a pinch pot. The pinch pot was larger than I expected. It really got them working with their hands in an intricate way, which the disease hinders them with. They had to really use their thumbs to push and pull the pot to shape it how they wanted. And then when they had to roll coils they had to use their entire hand so that the coils didn’t become lopsided. One of the men I noticed started having tremors and he became very self conscious about it and was more discouraged than the other man. He wanted his pot to look perfect and looked like he was becoming frustrated because his mobility wasn’t allowing him to do what he wanted. The main instructor kept encouraging him and demonstrating how to move his hands and he eventually got something he liked. Then when it came time to carve his name in the bottom he accidentally poked a bunch of holes in the bottom because of his tremors. It was made into a joke and he actually was able to laugh about it, which was good.


• Jaclyn Nelson
  
Southwest High School - Susan Armington - 11th & 12th Grade - 6 hours>

This was my first week shadowing teaching artist Susan Armington. Susan is most famous for her Talking Suitcases project where people create items that go into a suitcase that tells a story about themselves or others. Susan ’s first Talking Suitcase was about her dad. She wanted to know more about him so she did a lot of talking with him, asking him questions, visiting him, etc. She created this suitcase about him and shared it at one of her parents’ anniversary dinners, and turns out that she got to know him on a deeper level than most of her family members because he didn’t really talk about himself. She was finally able to get the connection she wanted with her dad through this project she came up with. The way she felt about making the suitcase transformed into how she wanted other people to feel out of finding things about themselves or others. This is a very versatile project, as well as her Map Boxes, and is mainly used within immigration curriculum in the schools. Susan likes to work with all types of organizations and ages and it is more difficult to do residencies in the schools because of time and money.

I came into Southwest High School on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday morning to work with the students and watch Susan in action. We didn’t work in the classroom and there was no art room to work in, so Casey (English teacher) was resourceful enough to get the old darkroom classroom to use. It is pretty small and we had to fit about 21 students in there. While working on the actual suitcase some were allowed to work in the classroom attached but they had to be quiet because there was another class going on. Tuesday was the first day the students got their suitcases and started working with all the materials. I helped Susan before class to set up and she has a particular order to organize everything even though it seems chaotic. Everything she does seems to be loose, but in reality it has a strong underlying structure. Another little history, Susan started out as an ESL teacher and she loved to write and be organized (her family was big on academics). Her first teaching experience was an ESL teacher at her college where only one student (Chinese) arrived the first day and she didn’t speak much English. Susan had a whole lesson plan mapped out but had to scrap it because there was only one student. It was at the moment when Susan was communicating with the Chinese girl that she realized that listening to her students’ life story and just communicating generally was key to getting to know what you, as a teacher, can help them with. I’m probably not explaining this as effectively as Susan (she has an eloquent way of speaking) but I hope the point was clear. Back to Southwest, the students had been reading books about immigration and Susan came in to do the Talking Suitcases project with them. It’s a pretty big project considering all the materials that are involved, especially the suitcases which Susan scrounges around thrift stores to get. The big ideas/questions for the project were broken up by day so that the students don’t feel too overwhelmed. They had an hour to work on these each day. The suitcase revolved around the student and if they had to move somewhere. The questions were to be answered by the student creating an object in/for the suitcase. For example, one of the questions asks, “What would you be glad to leave behind.” Most students made objects that represented their school as something they would be glad to leave behind, or some did snow since they don’t enjoy the cold weather in Minnesota. There are also questions like “What represents you?” and “What feels like home?” Susan would start out each class with a new question and give a short few minute demo to get the class started on ideas by showing examples.

I helped by going around asking if anyone needed help making anything or asking them what they were making and reflecting it back to the questions. Talking about their work helps them to better analyze what they are making and how it fits. Sometimes they don’t know why or what they are making and I’ve seen Susan turn it back to one of the questions. For example, one student created this conglomeration of wooden objects and didn’t know why or what it was, so Susan offered that it represents his creativity for the “What represents you?” question. I’ve never done anything like the Talking Suitcase project so it was fun problem solving with other students to help them manifest objects for their suitcases. I will be going in next Friday to see the students present their suitcases and stories to the rest of their class.


• Rachel Smith
  No site work this week.
  



• Crystal Tomczak
  Free Arts MN, Harriet Tubman, 2 hours
  Anoka High School - Kevan Nitzberg Art Class - 8.5 hours
  
  Free Arts Minnesota. This week at Tubman was a lot of fun. We started by reading the kids the Dr. Suess story "Bartholomew and the Oobleck". Meg, one of the volunteers, had already made some oobleck (corn starch and water with foodcoloring for color), so the kids could play with it while the listened to the story. Oobleck looks like a liquid, but when you pick it up it becomes a solid, and returns to a liquid when you put it back down. After the story, we all helped make more oobleck. We made enough so that everyone could bring some home. It was a mess, but the kids loved it. some people were a little scared to touch it at first, but eventually everyone was playing with it.
  
  Anoka High School. Today at Anoka was their third day into the new term. Kevan still teaches the same three classes. In Video Computer Arts Kevan gave a presentation on how to use Apple Works paint and draw, and where to find tutorials on the internet for the program. The students have the option to chose between Apple Works, Photoshop or Illustrator, Whichever they are most comfortable with. The rest of the time was work time for them to work on their elements and principles assignment. In Drawing II Kevan gave a presentation on drawing materials and techniques. The students were to hand in their series statements, statement on what theme they will be working with for the term, by the end of the period. They had work time to work on their statements or their drawings. In Drawing I, the other student teacher working with Kevan introduced their second drawing, which is a 3D negative space, chalk pastel drawing. After this project was introduced, the had work time to finish their first drawing, a negative space drawing due the beginning of class Monday, or start the 3D negative space drawing.
  
  

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Week 10 – CVA Student Journal entries from March 29–April 2

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Harriet Tubman - 3 hours
  
  This week at Harriet Tubman I came across a very young girl who I tried very hard the whole to engage in the activity. She was about three and I could tell she had been through a lot trauma. She didn’t respond to anything anyone said except by simply starring at you. It made me see that simply being a presence in a child who has been a victim is sometimes all that we need to do as teachers.


• Rudy Arnold
  Spring Break for schools–no weekly journals
  



• MIchelle Fuller
  Spring Break for schools–no weekly journals
  



• Christa Meyer
  Perpich Arts High School - Nancy Norwood - 11th and 12th grade Photography - 2 hours
  
  At Perpich this week it was a short class period for the black and white photography class. It was a critique of their work from an experimental photography project. The three techniques they accomplished were solarization, sepia, and double exposure. These are just a few styles for creating prints in the darkroom. This was a good project for them to try; now they have more options for their own work.
  



• Katrina McMahon
  Spring Break for schools–no weekly journals
  



• Jaclyn Nelson
  Spring Break for schools–no weekly journals
  



• Rachel Smith
  Spring Break for schools–no weekly journals
  



• Crystal Tomczak
  Spring Break for schools–no weekly journals
  
  

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Week 9 – CVA Student Journal entries from March 15–26

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Clara Barton Open School - Meri Gauthier - Art Class -11 hours
  

Meri decided on gestural/ observational drawing with the 3rd and 4th graders. Her ability to word things in a way that the kids are able to relate to is astonishing. Makes me realize you can bring that kind of technique into just about any age classroom. One thing that helped the kids stay on track was a visual projection of the expectations set out by Meri. Giving them an idea of what gesture drawing really is, and helping them let loose.


• Rudy Arnold
  
Jackson Elementary - Christopher Nelson -3 grade - 5.5 hours
Perpich Art High - Nancy Norwood -11 and 12 grade - 11.5 hours

3/15/09-Jackson Elementary. Today I did a writing workshop with the students of Mr. Nelson’s 5th Grade Class. I asked them to choose certain words that come to mind when they think of the photographs or drawings that they made. I also asked them to write two sentences about each drawing or photograph. This would be due on Wednesday.

3/16/09 PCAE. Today from 10 to 11am I prepped for my lesson. Then at 11:20 I taught the students about well known photographers who utilize the Pinhole/Camera Obscura. I also introduced the students to the assignment that would be due on Friday. We also made one test exposure so the students could see how the project works.

3/17/09 PCAE. Today I simply helped the students develop and gave advice on exposure times. If their were any difficulties with the process I was there to help. Today was their main work day.

3/17/09 Jackson Elementary. Today I Taught the students how to mount their photographs, this meant showing them how to have good craft by centering the photographs on the front of the card stock paper that we were using. I told the students I would return before the work goes up. I also observed some reading time.

3/17/09 PCAE. I came back to PCAE in order to observe Mrs. Norwood’s video class. I got to watch them shoot a balloon narrative that they were making. I also viewed some of the students past work. 3/18/09 11:00am-2:30pm

3.5 hours PCAE. Today I taught the students about making a positive photograph from a silver negative. I helped some students make decisions on printing as well as some students who still needed to shoot. In addition I showed some of them how to dry mount. I also observed a class who was learning lighting and shooting with medium format cameras. I showed them what I new about fashion lighting.

3/19/09 PCAE. Today I facilitated a critique on the pinhole photographs that the students had made through out the course of the week. We were able to talk for most of the class period about composition choices, exposure, craft and accuracy in printing. Next Friday I will be grading the projects. I spent the rest of my time at PCAE making a grading rubric and also watching a documentary film with some of the students.


• Cara Fazio
Hazel Park Middle School - Mr. Hagg - Social Studies - 35 hours

Monday: Today I prepared all of the materials for the bookmaking project. I cut 175 tag board cover, and copied off 1750 pages with cut lines totaling four reams of paper.

After preparing all of the supplies I observed Mr. Hagg’s classes. Today was also the start of the new trimester, so it seemed very mixed up as far as getting into the academic groove. Most of his classes watched a movie, Freedom Writers, as inspiration for the poetry books they will be making. The students will be entering their poetry books into a school wide competition where their poems will be on display, as well as put into a book for the school library.

Tuesday: Since I had prepared prior to the lesson, the students got to cut out their own paper and pick out their covers. After this the students punched out the sewing holes and then put the books away. It seemed like a slow start to the project, due to only being in each class for half of the period, but it seemed to work out okay. The first hour was a little strange one of the teachers decided to get the students started on the their project before I had gone over to their room, which would have been okay, however the directions weren’t given properly. I was a little frustrated due to this, mainly because of the lack of care taken into making the books. Holes weren’t punched out properly and some of the paper was off because of the cutting. Not a good start to a project. How do you work with teachers who don’t think what you’re doing is serious? The experience was by no means to that point, and the teacher apologized for the messy work, which made me feel bad. But how would you work with that? It was more the lack of seriousness from the teacher then kind of created a less serious mentality from the students.

I think the demo part of the week was a lot better than the first project I did, I learned a lot from working with Marie. I did learn from my first shadowing at Hazel Park, that middle schoolers have a short attention span, so this lesson was broken down into two days. Even though the project could have been done in one hour, this allowed for one-on-one time, and questions. The first day we divided the lesson and I spent half of the class in one room and then the other. It was also a testing day so for the first day half of the students were missing; this also provided the motive to go slower with instructions.

Wednesday: Day two of instructing, and a Sub! Mr. Hagg was at a conference today so I taught the lesson while we had a sub. This then meant that I spent most of the day except, fourth hour, with Mr. Hagg’s room. I have no idea what it is about students and subs but it really amazes me every time. The students were very squirrely, well a handful of them were which then seemed to provoke the sub to get loud, it was successful in the sense that most where able to get their books up to speed, especially the ones who had testing the day before, however the amount of time wasted due to bad attitudes was again, amazing. It always gets me how a few people can over throw an entire class.

I also ran into a problem with the subject of sewing. I guess sewing to some boys at Hazel Park it was for girls. Therefore I had a few boys in my class who straight up wouldn’t sew, I had them then pair up with one of their guy friends who wasn’t afraid to sew of one of the girls who was done. Besides the few boys the only other problem with the sewing part where a few students who refused do to it being “too hard.” Again I took my tips from Marie and paired up the kids. This really worked wonders, seeing as I couldn’t help all of the students at once and it also gave those students who were done, a chance to do something else. Sewing was something I didn’t think would be so strange or ill thought of in a classroom, but I guess this is where I would think about a different approach to bookmaking…but then again, maybe not. Stapling just isn’t a better option to me.

Those who weren’t finished I sewed part of if they were most of the way through… this might have not been okay, but again, working with Marie helped me understand some areas where one can help out.

Thursday: Today I was in Ms. Morrison’s room only, due to me spending most of my Wednesday in Mr. Hagg’s room. With these hours we were able to get most everyone caught up, including the people who missed the first days because to the testing. After demoing the sewing part, which was excepted much better in these classes, we were able to move on the bone folding part of the lesson, those who weren’t done with the sewing would then finish with me the next day, unless they were most of the way done sewing, then I finished them off for them.

I also ran in to my first supply problem we ran into was we ran out of thread toward the end, which was due to re-sewing bindings.

Friday: I took the rest of the students in the hall and we finished making our books. Otherwise it was the bone-folding day! Which everyone seemed to like, because it was the easiest step to the bookmaking process. Everyone seemed to be really happy with his or her final book, which really made my week. I think seeing the final product really helped in the understanding taking pride in ones work.

Extra Notes: I feel like the assignment was age appropriate, however, I made a mistake and assumed that most of the kids knew how to thread a needle and sew… they did not. It worked out though, because I had a number of students who did sew, (a large Hmong group, girls and boys, amazing at craft) who helped the other students when they were done. This really helped me, but also helped each student understand what he or she were doing, for both the helped and the helper. I also showed a few of my sketchbooks before we started and talked briefly about who and how to use a moleskin book. I think it helped some of them see where their poems could go. We also encouraged them to decorate their books to add personality. The project did seem a little bit difficult for the students though, and I with 160 students and four hours a day, I found better ways to make the books, each hour seemed to provide more techniques and easier methods.

I circled the room a lot, and then took students out in the hall or to the back of the class if they needed to catch up, the next days. I also, finished some of the stitching for some of the students who were absent and would be back after I left. (Don’t know if this was okay to do, but I didn’t want the students to never finish their books because I wasn’t able to help them. Marie did this when I shadowed her, and the teachers thought it was a good thing to do)

I think I talked the most about what we were making, and why… the moleskin vs. a stapled book. I had a fair amount of students get mad or verbal about how they hated that they had to sew the binding, however when I sat with them and helped them stitch their binding, they seemed to really underrated and appreciate their final work. I think even though the materials were pretty mid to low grade, (we replaced drawing paper with reams of printer paper, for cost purposes) the final book made the students feel more connected to the book. I also showed them the use of the bone folder; this was a favorite part of the students who really didn’t enjoy the stitching part. It was easy and also seemed to seal the deal for them. Some were grossed out by the bone part.

While working with students I would ask the doomed question, “If they would be mad if we started over.” I really wanted them to be happy with their final work and I could tell when they just wanted to finish to be done, but were not happy with what they had. This is when I would grab a new cover or paper and we would start over, they really hated me for this, but then came out with a great book and a better understanding of what they were doing. I had one girl really pissed and distant because I had her start over, we finished her new book in 15 mins (after 4 days) and she really loved what she made at the end. We cut new pages and I had her pick out a new cover (the other was ridded with holes and was ripping) at the end we high fived over the perfect book she made and bonded over the satisfaction of using the bone folder to get out our anger and hate toward sewing. The look on her face as she left really made the whole week worth it.

The main outcome was to create a book, which would then be used for a poetry contest and review. The real art was going to be their poems, however the book was suppose to create a sense of pride and place to house their work. I hope they feel that later.


• Michelle Fuller
  No site work this week.
  



• Christa Meyer
Barton Open School - Jane Spicer- 1st and 2nd grade - 3 hours
Shadowing - Aki Shibata - 2.5 hours
PCAE Arts High School - Nancy Norwood - 11th and 12th grade -2.5 hours

Barton. This week I was at Barton, learning all about globes and reading maps. I had a small reading group to work on a worksheet booklet with. The students took time reading out loud, then working on the exercises when they were done reading a section of the book.

Shadowing Aki at Kenwood. This shadowing a teaching artist was again at Kenwood. The students were still learning about focusing on two to three items found in nature and photograph it in a new way. Whether that is on different perspectives through the viewfinder. We spent most of the class time exploring outside along the lake. Observing the class I saw a great deal of the students trying to capture their specific nature item.

Perpich. At Perpich this week, I sat down with Nancy and created a grading sheet for the project a sense of place. And was able to critique the students work. Next week I will be scanning in their images for the teaching artist website.


• Katrina McMahon
  Bethesda Hospital - Erin McGee - Elderly Adults - 2 hours
  Ramsey Center of the Arts – Letty Vaughn – 1st and 2nd Graders – 11 hours
  
  Ramsey. This week I went in twice to Ramsey. The first day I got there and a student had gotten in trouble because they had not gotten their homework done again. The student had to stay in for their lunch period and finish the homework with Letty and then she had the student tell her what they did to get in trouble then draw it out on paper. Then they made a plan as to what can be done next time to fix this problem so it doesn’t happen again.
  
  Later on in the day I read students their math tests. When they didn’t understand the math problems I was able to re-word the problems but not help them out with how to solve the problem. I did notice that the students have difficulty with changing a word problem into a number problem like when it says there are five apples and she needs four more they didn’t know to use an addition sign when writing it out. Letty decided to copy the math test and once they are all done we will go over it and the major problem areas so that they have actually learned something instead of just them getting the problems wrong and not understanding why.
  
  On this first day they also were learning about the seasons and how they always are in the same order. Some of the students didn’t understand this, so Letty had me draw out a puzzle with the seasons in order so that when you put them together they can only go in the same order.
  
  On the second day another student was having trouble with fallowing the rules. The student had thrown a piece of paper at another student and then started acting up when the teacher asked her to stop. Then she got taken out into the hall where she started to hit her teacher. Letty helped out and took her into her room where she tried to have her sit and think and make better choices but the student thought it was just a game and tried throwing things around the room.
  
  Letty called the students mom and asked her to talk to her child and explain to her that once you make a bad decision that you have to deal with the consequences instead of continue to act out. Letty also had everyone ignore the student when she would try and talk to you when she was to be in her chair writing out what went wrong.
  
  Bethesda Hospital. I started my orientation at Bethesda Hospital. We went in and had to fill out a volunteer application and had to go through all the rules and such of the hospital such as Hippa and things of that sort. Then I got a tour of the hospital and noticed that it is small enough that all the workers know each other.
  
  I went to meet Erin and got to see her and the Parkinson’s residents working on tai chi. They were doing very small hand movements and having one foot forward and one back shifting their weight slowly because as the disease progresses their balance gets very bad so this helps them to concentrate and try and improve that. I also learned that small tasks like opening a candy wrapper can take a very long time so this clay class will help in doing tasks with their hands. Also a lot of the times a spouse will be there and do the activities with them and it becomes a fun family outing in a way.
  
  
• Jaclyn Nelson
  No site work this week.
  



• Rachel Smith
  No site work this week.
  



• Crystal Tomczak
  Free Arts Minnesota - Harriet Tubman - 2 hours
  Anoka High School - Kevan Nitzberg -72 hours
  
  Harriet Tubman. This week at Tubman we had a few new kids which all the volunteers were happy about, because we were beginning to feel that we were outnumbering the kids. Today I brought the Dharma dolls back to be painted. The kids that were there in the making of the dolls were happy to be able to paint the piece they made, and the new kids got to paint the dolls us volunteers made. There seemed to be great interest in the firing process of the clay, which I explained to the best of my ability. I brought in blue, yellow and red paint and reminded the kids that they could mix the colors to make other colors. Most of them just made a nice shade of gray/brown, which was kind of expected. They seemed to really enjoy the painting, and it got the more quiet kids talking more. I took photos of the work as the kids finished, which seemed to give them more pride in their work. They were also really excited that they got to take them home with them.

Anoka High School. Today in Video Computer Art it was a work day to complete their videos, editing them and adding music. All assignments need to be complete by Monday, and Tuesday they will be watching all the videos.
In Drawing I they have today and Monday to finish all their work. They were working on their pen and ink drawings, and their packets. The packet was due at the end of the hour. They will be taking a written final and cleaning the classroom on Tuesday.

Drawing II was a work day. They students were figuring out the number of pieces they have completed this far, and if they have met the requirement of ten pieces. Monday is the last day they will have to work on anything, and Tuesday they will have work time to complete their collection on ArtsConnectEd. Everyone seems to be on track, if not really close.
They will be going on spring break after school on Tuesday the 30th and returning April 9th, so I will not be at this location next week.


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Week 8 – CVA Student Journal entries from March 8–12

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Walker Art Lab - Ilene Mojsilov - grade - 6 hours
  
  
At the Walker Art Lab this week a group of 75 1st graders came. I asked Ilene if she comes up with lessons particularly for certain installations, because we were planning on doing the “mirror mirror” lesson again. She told me that it helps the kids understand what they have seen and in this case it was the “Events Horizon”. In this installation there are two pieces dealing with everyday objects like mirrors. The kids used one object that is reflective (dealing with identity) and one plastic cap that was to be incorporated. I think this lesson is a very strong way to make kids look at concepts in a not threatening way especially when it is along side the show. Every time I’ve come to the art lab Ilene has come down to the children’s level and enforces the idea of the art lab being like a laboratory. Using that simple explanation helps them to understand a different way of looking at how art can be interpreted.


• Rudy Arnold
  Jackson Preparatory Magnet School - Christopher Nelson - 3rd grade - 5 hours
  Perpich Arts High School - Nancy Norwood - Photography - 11th and 12 th grades - 2.5 hours
  
  Jackson Elementary. Today I showed a PowerPoint to the students about choosing photos and how to pick one with good composition. I explained which photos to pick if they were damaged and I also Told students who did not get photographs back, it was not necessarily their fault if they did not turn out. I explained that since we had free camera’s that we could not be picky if they did not work perfectly. I also observed some reading time.
  
  Jackson Elementary. Today helped the students pick their photographs, I reminded them about the PowerPoint I had gone over with them on Monday. The students picked the two photographs that they wanted to use, and the students who did not have two photographs to use were asked to make drawings of what they took photographs of. I also observed reading time again.
  

PCAE. I prepped the classroom before the class from 10 to 11. Today I introduced how to make a pinhole camera to the students. I taught a bit about past pinhole photographers, and then we made our pinhole cameras. I taught them about the focal length and showed them in detail how the actual camera works.


• Michelle Fuller
  No site work this week.
  



• Christa Meyer
  Shadowing - Aki Shibata - 4 hours
  
Perpich Arts High School - Nancy Norwood - 11 and 12 grade - 1 hours

This week I was able to observe Aki teaching a class of 5th graders landscape and a sense of place photography. It was good for me to see a teaching artist teaching the medium that I would be doing. The students were interested in the PowerPoint, because she showed a lot of images that kids grabbed on and wanted to say what they saw in each piece. They then had the chance to go outside and photograph using a digital camera. The students were really trying to explore the area out of school. I saw one student lying on the snow taking a photo looking up at a tree; I could then see they understood what the teaching artist was teaching them.

On Wednesday I was at Perpich, this was the final critic day for the project that I was teaching. I had them lay their three mounted photographs and gave them time to walk around and write down things they saw in each piece as well as comparing the three images together. Then we went around and talked about each person’s final work. The discussion went really well and students were explaining and seeing new things in the pieces as they were going deeper into each photograph.



• Katrina McMahon
  Ramsey Center of the Arts – Letty Vaughn – 1st and 2nd Graders – 6 hours
  Wilder Bush Children’s Center – Deb Robinson – 2nd-6th Graders - 1.5 hours
  

Ramsey. This week at Ramsey there was a “code yellow” for the whole district, so I had to be let into the building and then I was promptly asked why I was there and then once they approved they watched me sign in and explained what a “code yellow” is. In this case there was a threat in the district but not to the school specifically, so all of the classroom doors needed to be kept locked and shut at all times, and no one was to be outside at all.

This week we did testing again with the kids but instead I taught them while Letty tested them on their reading. She had me choose between word bingo or making a book with the kids and we made books. I decided to go one page at a time have them cut out the words to the story and then glue them on the page for all seven pages. Then after they were done gluing the words on they were allowed to color their books. It was hard to keep them focused on getting the cutting and gluing done. They wanted to just do one page at a time and then color right away, but then it would have taken them days to get the whole book done.

While we were finding the right words to the pages I would tell them what the page said and they had to find which one matched to what I was saying. So they had to read each one and select if it was correct. I also had them write in the page numbers not only so they wouldn’t get out of order but so they could practice writing their numbers too.

I also talked to them about me leaving for Paris over break and that I wouldn’t be coming in to see them. One student was interested in how far it took to drive there. I explained that you couldn’t drive because it was over the ocean and showed him a map, but he still wanted to know how long it would take if we drove there. Then this brought up more questions like he asked where New York was on the map and how long it takes to drive there.

Wilder Bush Children’s Center. This was the last week at Wilder. It was a simple project we made books that they could decorate however they wanted and then at the end have everyone sign them like a yearbook. Some of the kids really got into what they wanted on their books and others just didn’t care at all. It did seem that everyone was really interested in writing in each others books though and having all of us put things in them too since we wouldn’t be seeing them again. Then at the end we pulled out cupcakes and had them decorate their own while signing everyone’s books. The person who passed out frosting gave way too much so the kids ended up frosting and then licking it all of and then frosting and doing this many many times. When it was time to leave they all thanked us and were very excited to go read all of their books and what people had written in them.



• Jaclyn Nelson
  No site work this week.
  



• Rachel Smith
  No site work this week.
  



• Crystal Tomczak
  
Free Arts MN - Harriet Tubman - 2 hours
Anoka High School - Kevan Nitzberg - 7 hours

Free Arts at Harriet Tubman. Today we were not able to paint the dolls we made last week because they were not dry enough to be fired in time. Instead, we took a bunch of crafty things out of the supply closet; markers, crayons, colored pencils, pipe cleaners, feathers, yarn, construction paper, etc. With this we made expressive self-portraits, telling the kids that it need not look anything like the them. There wasn't many kids that showed up this week, and the ones that did, did not hang around very long. The ones that did hang around to make their expressive self-portrait, had very interesting results.

Anoka High School. Today Kevan was out at a meeting all day, so he had a substitute teacher. It was actually the lady that hired him in the position he has now at Anoka.

In Video Computer Art today was a workday to work on their manipulated self portraits. The AP Studio Art students this hour seemed to be a little off track, probably because Kevan was gone.

In Drawing I it was also a work day. Students were working on various projects, some working on their gridded self-portraits, some on emotive self-portraits, and a couple working on their pen and ink drawings. About 1/3 of the students actually worked today. I made a deal with one student that I would give him a pass to the bathroom if he would be back in no more than 5 minutes, and start working on his drawing right when he got back. This was successful.

Drawing II students had time to work on their theme based work and their collections on ArtsConnectEd.


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Week 7 – CVA Student Journal entries from March 1–5

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Barton Open School - Meri Gauthier - Art Class - 9.25 hours
  Northside Community Center - Chrissy Stockton - 1.75 hours
  
  BARTON. I spoke with meri about my teaching presentation. Decided on doing a 7-8th grade teaching lesson with a demo with grout and how different material can be used. The grout is also kinetics and something I’ve worked with before in my own artwork and paintings. I notice Meri commands the attention of the kids by coming down to their level, and is honest about difficulty she is having when there is noise in the room. Getting the kids to understand the complexity in the making of contemporary art, and she challenges their ideas of how to make art and the different we try and create. I notice Meri has high standards for the outcome of the art the students create.
  
  NORTHSIDE: This week the 4 volunteers jointly decided to do gesture drawings to different kinds of music. We set up to have the kids either use paint or color pencil and had 3 of children pose while the others tried to draw them. The activity I think was quite successful. Some of the kids seemed unsure of themselves so I tried to affirm what they were doing while showing them another way of doing it. It helped that I did a demo in the beginning to give them some understanding of how to do it.
  
  BARTON. Yesterday we critiqued the 7-8th grader’s work and today they are expected to take the feedback they received and apply it to their work. I walked around and helped that seemed to be struggling with what to do.
  
  
• Rudy Arnold
  Jackson Preparatory Magnet School - Christopher Nelson - 3rd grade - 3 hours
  Perpich Arts High School - Nancy Norwood - Photography - 11th and 12 th grades - 2.5 hours
  
  JACKSON. Today I spent time talking with most of the students about how the photographs went over the weekend. Some of them told me that they were very excited while others were nervous about damage that had happened to the cameras. I checked in with the students who had not brought the camera’s yet. I also observed some reading and research time as well.
  
  JACKSON.Today I stopped by just to grab the camera’s and look through them, preparing for the development.
  
  PCAE Today I helped facilitate a demo on the dry mount press. I also helped students with exposure printing in the darkroom, the students are still working on their sense of place project. I also went over a certain students work with him. In addition, I also had some prep time to make a handout on how to make a pinhole camera for next week. I was also able to gather and organize all the materials I will be needing for next week.
• Cara Fazio
  Park Spanish Immersion Elementary School - Maria Olofsdotter - Shadowing - 4.5 hours
  
  First day with Marie Olofsdotter at Park Spanish Immersion Elementary School! Wow, what a school! It was so nice to enter PSI this morning. I had never been to the school before and had no idea where I was meeting Marie; luckily the helpful secretary walked me down to the classroom and introduced me to the class. A few minutes after getting there is was lunch break, which was nice for me in allowing me to get the “low down” on what was being taught.
  
  The mission explained to me by Marie was; the 2nd grade classes (four of them) were going to be making masks, and then putting on a theatrical performance with the masks. They stage they were at when I arrived was "the create a clay mold stage." The previous day was the concepting stage where the students were asked to draw a mask they were interested in making. The requirements were that it had to be an original idea, so no sponge bob or mainstream character. They then drew out the image and colored it, in the way they hoped to paint it. The next step, the step I was introduced into was the clay mold stage. At this point watch student was given a large slab of fresh clay and asked to create the mask in 3-D. they were asked to elaborate the shapes used and really make each part of the mask stick out. This was a really fun step in the process; each student dived right in creating the mask. The next step after laying out the clay mask was to cover it in plastic wrap to keep the clay moist. The next day they would then cover it in paper mache.
  
  When entering the classes I was greeted with smiling children and parent/grand parent volunteers (who were lovely to see). Marie had made, when first creating the lesson several years back, a request that she have parent helpers in order to teach her lesson. The community at PSI was happy to get involved!
  
  Each class had a different way of working, and each had a different feel (all wonderful). The students were all excited to learn and get started on the step of their projects. It was fun to work with students in helping them brainstorm ways of turning their drawings into 3-d objects.
  
  It was also nice to see a teaching artist in action! Marie was so engaging to/with the students that they were all on the edge of their seats in anticipation for the directions. Marie started off by giving an example of how to start the mask, she used a students drawing to start it off, and showed the process to getting started after showing the students with her example she then smashed up the clay and allowed the student who’s work she was working on create and start their own idea (tip #1).
  
  Then while the students worked she walked around giving “drive-by complements.” The students took to this very well, and were inspired to keep going from it.
  
  Day 2. Today was a hard day to get motivated to go and be in a classroom, after having a somewhat disheartening morning pertaining to my senior thesis, I thought the last thing I would want to do was be around children, how wrong I was! The second I walked into the school I was immediately able to switch my mood. Then once we got into the classroom it was as if the first half of my day had never happened. The stage we were at with the students today was the paper mache stage. Marie had ordered a new kind of wheat paste/wall paper paste, which was a new test. It mixed up fine and the overall product seemed to be fine. I started the day cutting both brown paper bags and newspaper into small pieces. The students were then asked (and had started the day before) to create four layers of paper Mache, alternated the newspaper and the brown paper. As they went along the students were asked to push in all of the bubbles and spaces. The students went about this really well. When and if they were done Marie gave them the option of clean up or helping other students get their layers on (tip #2 help each other). At the end Marie get an example of the how to finish the mask layers after putting on all of the paper, which was “taking a bit of the paper Mache and rubbing it on the face of the mask like lotion.” (Tip #3 easy metaphors).
  
  Day 3. The students had painted their masks white on Tuesday, I had not been there (Marie recommended I work on my thesis, which really saved me), and then on Wednesday started painting the masks. I guess when they went to work on the masks Monday morning Marie noticed the layers of the masks were separating. She quickly came up with a glue recipe and made a project out of painting the paper Mache layers with the glue mixture. They students had no idea that the process was not part of the original plan, and the solution worked (tip #4 be quick on your feet, there is always (most likely) a solution). By the time Thursday rolled around we were cutting eyeholes and attaching straps to the masks. The students were then allowed to embellish and decorate the mask as they saw fit. It was wonderful to be the masks in 3-d especially after seeing the whole process, from drawing, to mold making, to mask casting.
  
  The students will then go on to write their play and then act it out this Friday. I am so excited to see the performance.
  
  I loved working with Marie; I hope take the skills I observed and be able to apply it to my next round of teaching. The lesson and the process with which it was acted out was a total success, including some of the minor setbacks. I think this was the most beneficial experiences I have had yet and hope to take the skills and tips learned into any other classroom or experience I have.
  
  I think the type of school had a lot to do with the success as well as the teaching artist. Marie had commented that PSI was the Cadillac of the teaching artist programs, and that the school in some ways can make all the difference. I can believe this, not only because the school was an elementary, but due to the parent involvement. I think to compare a school who is lucky to have a 30% showing of parents during conferences to a school where parents want to volunteer really makes for a completely different setting for the arts.
  
  How can we maintain this respect for the arts is low budget school? How can we stress the importance and integrity involved with teaching art in schools with less parent (and district) support?
  
  
• MIchelle Fuller
  No work on site this week.
  


• Christa Meyer
  Perpich Arts High - Nancy Norwood - Photography - 11th and 12th grade - 2.5 hours
  

This week at Perpich, I went on a field trip to the University of Minnesota for a Water Dance performance. I really enjoyed this; they had music, poems, and dancing incorporated all together. So for next week, I’ll be doing the final critique on the sense of place project. This project that I was able to teach we will go over printing quality, location the artist chose to photograph.


• Katrina McMahon
  Ramsey Center of the Arts – Letty Vaughn – 1st and 2nd Graders – 6 hours
  
  This week at Ramsey I started out by creating a calendar for the kids. Letty and I decided to use lambs and lions for the March calendar because of the saying “Go in like a lion, out like a lamb” or reverse for March. The kids noticed the pictures right away when they walked in the room. Letty would ask them what the images were first and then explain the saying to them. Then for the 1st graders we picked out a date on the calendar and they had to find it then navigate and tell us which day of the week it landed on. This seemed to be difficult for them so we explained it step by step and then said that they would be doing this the next day as well.
  
  It was also a testing day. They have this once a week to keep track of their learning progress. Letty had me go out in the hall and they read a story to me. I had to count how many words they got wrong. While they were reading if they did at first get one wrong I was able to say go back and sound it out and then read it again. Then if they got it right on their own they would not get a point taken away. Otherwise I wrote down the words that they had most trouble with and Letty was going to use those words in another exercise later on in the day.
  
  I also noticed that there were new site words this week. The site words are about 10 words that they read out loud together every day before they go into their classroom. They are mostly words that go against all the rules of the English language so that the kids can memorize how to say them.
  
  One of the second graders had “lunch bunch”. This is when the student stays in for lunch with Letty and gets to choose a friend to stay as well and they play learning games and practice skills on how to make friends and keep them. On this day they had gotten books from the book club and one was about super heroes. Letty took the super hero idea and asked which were there favorites and showed them which ones they had in common and then asked them how they were heroes themselves. She explained that a hero could be a person who makes good choices by helping out a friend. She also took the time to practice with them good manners while eating because one student was going pretty wild with the food everywhere.
  



• Jaclyn Nelson
  Jackson Preparatory Magnet - Judith Kerrigan - 1st Grade - 7 hours
  
  
It is the fifth, and final, week of my residency with Judith’s first grade class. I came in earlier than usual so I could observe how Judith gets her class started each morning. She writes a message on the board with either words/letters missing or math problems that the students try to figure out before class starts. Sometimes there are problems with students erasing answers that were already put down by another student and, if noticed, they would have to “make it right/fix it” by apologizing to the other student. I believe the little word and math problems helps the students get their mind concentrated in the morning and it is good practice for them.

They begin class by joining hands and walking in a circle singing “Good morning / good morning / good morning to you / the day is beginning / there’s so much to do!” (I think that’s how it goes). Then they sit down and Judith goes over the board and works with them on changing the calendar. Then she assigns the jobs for the day (ex. chimer, door holders, etc.). Giving the students jobs helps them take responsibility and feel a part of something important. On Tuesday, I took the students back, one or two at a time, during reading and writing to glue covers to their books. Teaching them in small, controlled groups helped to make the process more effective since they weren’t use to gluing with PVA and brushes, and I could give them more one-on-one attention.

There were a couple students absent on Tuesday so I came back in on Thursday to finish things up. I took them right away once they entered the classroom in the morning because soon after school started there was a musical. After the morning routine we did have some time before the event so Judith, Mr. Brian and I showed the students how to make labels for their books.

The musical was composed by the music teacher who created a group called the “Eco Team.” The Eco Team had been working all year for this event and also helped around the community by demonstrating how to be eco-friendly. They even planted flowers in front of their school in the fall and other work with “no benefit, except what comes from their heart.” Every staff member helped out in some way or another to make the musical possible. This shows the students that team work is universal. The musical was well choreographed and sent a strong message on how to keep our Mother Earth alive and healthy with facts, quotes and a story. This is beneficial for the children to learn how to conserve our resources and to keep our planet clean. It was touching to watch.

I stayed until a little after their reading buddies came because I wanted to see the interaction of them sharing their books. It was enjoyable to see some of the reactions of how proud the student was of their accomplished “first published” book. The reading buddies thought it was a nice project for them to do.

Some questions that I have pondered this week are: How do you effectively ask students that you need space around a table when you are working individually with a couple students, even when you have asked politely why you need the space multiple times and the same students keep hovering back over? How do you effectively get a student to follow the rest of the class to their activity instead of them staying behind and not telling you why or what’s wrong? How do you know which words are “politically correct” when it comes to saying things in school? For example, Mexicans vs. Hispanics.

To conclude, another successful residency!


• Rachel Smith
  No site work this week.
  


• Crystal Tomczak
  Harriet Tubman - Krissy Stockman - 7.5 hours
  Anoka High School - Kevan Nitzberg - 1.5 hours
  
  HARRIET TUBMAN. Today at Tubman, it was my turn come up with the project. I decided to bring in clay and make Dharma dolls with the kids. They were very excited to work with the clay. Everyone was engaged, and even the kids that usually go straight for the video games hung around to make a doll. There were a variety of results but they all turned out really cool. I will be bringing them back next week to be painted with acrylic paints.
  
  ANOKA HIGH SCHOOL. Today in Video Computer Arts, the students fine arts primer assignment was due at the end of class, and it was the last day to turn in any re-done work on the elements and principles project for additional credit. On Monday Kevan will be introducing layers in Photoshop to the students to be an aid for their manipulated self portrait assignment.
  
  In Drawing I it was a work day for them to work on their gridded self portraits. This is a new assignment so students are just in the beginning stages of this drawing. Monday the emotive self portrait assignment will be introduced.
  
  In Drawing II it was also a work day to get more drawings finished. Each student will need a total of ten drawings finished and turned in by the end of the quarter.
  
  During 4th hour prep, the 5 students that signed up to take the online AP art history course online next year, came in and got an overview of what the course is going to be like. This class is taught by Kevan, and will be district wide.
  
  

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Week 6 – CVA Student Journal entries from February 22–26

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Walker Art Center - Ilene Mojsilov - 5-6th grade - 7.5 hours
  
  This week at the walker with Ilene the children had trouble focusing for the experience at the art lab. The age of the kids that came were 5th and 6th graders, but even in the chaos or lack of attention the outcome for their projects was far more advanced then what I would have expected. At Northside the other volunteers showed up late and so I winged it and put together a lesson for the kids. I decided on doing a collage on what makes the kids happy or sad and then we critiqued at the end. The some of the collages were very good which was a happy surprise.


• Rudy Arnold
  Jackson Preparatory Magnet School - Christopher Nelson - 3 rd grade - 2.5 hours
  Perpich Arts High School - Nancy Norwood - 11th and 12 th grades - 2.5 hours
  

Jackson. I found out I was not going to get the grant from target, although they wrote a kind letter in my mailbox about it. I have since acquired enough funding for the project through friends and family. I started the project today, the students were taught about various documentary photographers, including Ansel Adams and Wing Huie. Interestingly enough one of the photographs I showed had one of the students mother in the photograph. I will be collecting the camera’s next week and getting them developed.

PCAE. Today I watched Christa Meyer give another demo on how to analysis contact sheets, I helped a few students learn more about filters. I also started to plan for my pin hole project. I collected enough pin hole containers and I will start writing the lesson plan soon. We also watched a video on photo history and discussed it.


• Michelle Fuller
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  
  
• Christa Meyer
  Barton Open School - Jane Spicer - 1st and 2nd grade - 6 hours
  Shadowing - Aki Shibata - Barton Open School - 5th and 6th grade - 1.5 hours
  Perpich Arts High School - Nancy Norwood - 11th and 12th grade - 2 hours
  

Barton Open School. This was my second time being in the classroom, I was able to understand and observe how they go about their day. Starting with a math problem which I was able to help students solve the problem. As well circle sharing, and the kids in this classroom really get to interact with each other. I saw them reading out loud to one another and helping if a student need a word spelled out. They had a printing practice and writing time. Being able to be in this classroom you can see all the different learning styles the teacher really integrates into her teaching, whether the kids are listening to her, music or one another. Or visually moving their hands to write a word. The time that goes into teaching the kids can really be noticed from this classroom, and each of their learning styles.

I will be teaching the painting lesson on March 8th and 9th. This project will go towards the solar system play project, as the backdrop.

Shadowing. I was able to observe and assist Aki, who is a working teaching artist. Being able to see what this side of teaching is like coming into Barton school was another great learning experience for me. She came prepared with all the materials, and was ready to teach the students for the 40-minute class period. Not a moment was wasted for the students to begin making a book art folder. The kids seemed to be learning a lot about craftsmanship as Aki explained it, and took it step by step tell the finished product was created.

Perpich Arts High I was able to lead the class into making their contact sheets for the sense of place project. Being able to help wherever I could, and looking over their contact prints. Seeing what the students are shooting and looking over which ones they may want to print into 5x7. Again on Friday I was able to give advice to the printing quality and look over more contact sheets.


• Katrina McMahon
  Ramsey Center of the Arts – Letty Vaughn – 1st and 2nd Graders – 7 hours
  Wilder Bush Children’s Center – Deb Robinson – 2nd-6th Graders - 1.5 hours
  
  Ramsey Fine Arts. This week there was a new student that joined the group. They have a daily routine and she needed to get the student accustomed to it. When they were sounding out the words she would make sure to include and emphasize on the hand motions for each letter sound to try and help the student remember and learn easier. She had him make the motions with her. They would all do the words together as a group and then individually to test if they each understood.
  
  I also noticed that Letty tries to incorporate the math lessons in with the reading lessons. Like when they have to find the page for their story to read she would say the page number and then say 8 in the ones place and 1 in the tens place. Then as they were reading the book they would all read it together slowly by sounding out each word individually and then going through and reading the whole sentence faster. If the students still had trouble then Letty would say go back and start over, read it again. She would say good readers start over and read again.
  
  The students also had their weekly testing in order to see if they are learning and improving. Letty times them and had them read words and I played a word game with the students.
  
  Wilder Bush Children’s Center. This week I lead the project. It was last minute so I came up with scratch off drawings. It is black to start with then you scratch off the black and underneath are either gold silver or a rainbow color. The kids really seemed to like them. At first they were all very quiet and intently working on their own then they opened up and showed each their own way of doing the project.



• Jaclyn Nelson
  Jackson Preparatory Magnet - Judith Kerrigan - 1st Grade – 9.5 hours
  

This is my fourth week in Judith’s class. Tuesday I attended writing and reading where the students were busy working on finishing up their animal books and also writing about one story they liked when they went to the Children’s Theater. This writing will play into the arts infused lesson that I taught them on Thursday. I helped them with writing and thinking about the important parts of the stories which helps them to summarize easier. During reading they focused on a poem about a cat that had a lot of descriptive words and similes. Judith and Suzie went through the poem with them to help them understand some phrases or words that were confusing to some students. It was nice to see how the students weren’t afraid to ask questions. Sometimes when one of the teachers was explaining something, the student would get that “Ah ha!” moment and finish the answer before the teacher was finished.

Thursday I presented my lesson on illustration/book making. There are many components to my lesson and it will be a 3-4 day process. The first day (Thursday) I gave my presentation where I showed them how to illustrate using the technique of starting out with shapes to create a character. This fits well within their geometry since they need to learn shapes, but my main curricular focus is within the language arts where they are able to use comprehension strategies to understand the meaning of texts that have been read or listened to. The art standard I addressed is to create original 2D/3D artworks to express stories.

I showed them my thinking strategies when I was making my book (the mock-up) and how I chose one story by Pamela Allen and summarized it into 3 sentences with a beginning, middle and end. Then I read each sentence and pictured in my head what I saw and that is what I would draw, using the illustration technique. That day they wrote the words and some were onto drawing the illustrations. I helped some students get caught up with their rough draft and showed others where to write and pick out 3 sentences.

Friday I went in during writing and reading again to help keep my lesson going. That day I mainly helped students with the illustrations and getting them to think about breaking up characters into shapes. There were also two students who were absent the day before so I presented to them and got them caught up. It was also the day that I let them use color pencils to color in what they drew and there are many who are now ready for the next step, which is to glue the paper to the hard covers, but that will come next Tuesday.

Also on Friday, I was there for library day where they watched a story about the book “Follow the Drinking Gourd.” The book is about African American slaves who would escape north by following the big dipper, or as they call it: the drinking gourd. This goes along with the field trip they will take on Monday to the Planetarium. They also had a regular guest speaker come in to read them some books during reading. And to top off the week, I went out with them to recess (since I’m feeling better) and also had lunch with the students in the cafeteria.

Some questions I have developed over this week are: How do teachers coordinate if one of them is going to be late to school? How do you fit field trips into the curriculum? What is it like to be an ESL teacher? What is the average budget a teacher gets for curriculum activities? How can you encourage a student to work on a project when you know they can do what they are asking help with? One of the students was asking for help with writing in the book when he had the rough draft written out in front of him. I know that they have been writing all year and it would be copying the draft word for word but for some reason he wanted me to do it and said he couldn’t. I encouraged him but he started to isolate and not do anything and I told Judith, who was able to get him to but I don’t know how she did it.



• Rachel Smith
  No work on site this week.
  



• Crystal Tomczak
  Harriet Tubman - Krissy Stockman - 7.5 hours
  Anoka High School - Kevan Nitzberg - 1.5 hours
  
  Harriet Tubman. Today we had a handful of kids for Free Arts time. Meg came up with the project for today, where we made punk rock valentines. Meg also works at High Point and she got this project from the leftover stuff used for a project they did there. There were stencils of dying roses, wings, chains, skeletons, etc. that we colored, cut out and made collages out of. This was over a week after Valentines Day, but we told the kids that love can be celebrated on any day. There were a few incidents that happened to day, but were handled very well. A young girl slapped the arm or one of the volunteers and the volunteer explained that that hurts people and isn’t a nice thing to do. The same young girl also wanted to follow a volunteer to the supply closet, and the volunteer responded by telling her that she thinks kids should stay in the room. Both seemed very effective.
  
  Anoka High School. Today during first hour, Video Computer Arts, it was another workday for the class to get further on their next assignment. Kevan finished meeting with the AP Studio art students to talk about the content of their portfolios during this time as well. During second hour I went upstairs to observe a ceramics class, where some students were throwing pots on the wheel and the rest of the students were making coil pots. Ted, the instructor, let me attempt to throw something on the wheel, so I played around with that for a while. Ted also gave me clay to use with my kids at Tubman on Tuesday, and said that he would fire them for me.
  
  Third hour, in Drawing II, there was a critique. The critique was led differently than the last. This time everyone was given 8 different colors of paper, and each color was assigned a category. The class walked around and left the color of paper next to the artwork they thought best represents the category. Then they had to write a paragraph discussing which piece they thought was most effective and why. After this, Kevan picked a few pieces for the whole class to discuss orally, and talk about why they assigned it the color/category they did. The rest of the class (about 30 minutes) was work time.
  
  

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Week 5 – CVA Student Journal entries from February 15–19

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Barton Open School - Meri Gauthier - K-8 Art - 8 hours
  

I noticed this week the way Meri interacts with the wide variety of kids is by treating like them as if they are adults and expecting the best out of them. This week we did a recap on the color theory lesson with the seventh and eight grade class. The students had very good knowledge of primary, secondary, and complementary colors. They were expected to take notes in their process journals that they designed on the outside. In her 1st and second grade class we watched a video on red clay ceramics. I noticed that her expectations of the students were quite a bit different. To help them gain something from the discussion she gave the kids an obvious right and wrong answer. I found the straightforwardness of that discussion helpful in understanding how to gauge student’s abilities when dealing with a large age range.


• Rudy Arnold
  Jackson Magnet School - Christopher Nelson - 3rd grade - 3 hours
  PCAE - Nancy Norwood - 11 and 12 grade - 2.5 hours
  

Jackson. Today I talked with Stacy at Target, Stacy is the charitable donations director at the Hamline-Midway Target. Stacy told me she reviews the applications on Mondays and Wednesdays. She asked me to call her back in a week if she hasn’t called me by then in regards to funding. At Jackson I helped students with their reading goals, I asked different students to tell me about the characters, setting, and plots in their books. Today the junior high school sent some teacher over to allow the 5th graders to ask questions about junior high.

PCAE. Today I watched Christa Meyer give her printing demo on printing with filters, bracketing, and test strips. I helped her with set up and helped the students with questions that they had in regards to the content that she was teaching. I find the small differences between PCAE’s photo lab and CVA’s photo lab to be really interesting. Today I really enjoyed getting to know the students personalities a bit more, along with learning more about the school itself.


• Cara Fazio
  Hazel Park Academy Middle School - Kitty Kremer - grade - hours
  

Today the kids had a sub. I was expecting either a horrible crazy day, or some sort of amazing success story. Luckily, it fell closer to the success story than the later. The classes all seemed, and it might have been due to having Monday off, but much more relaxed than any other day. The sub mostly sat and did nothing reading his online book; while I walked around the classroom and helped students work on their projects they were finishing from the last class.

The students I was working with finished the project I have presented, and worked on it with much more interest than the past Friday. Some of the students stayed working quietly until the very end of class, filling in each space, while others moved on to a coloring sheet to tie them over until Kitty was back (the following day). I was a little bit amazing at the personality that came out this last time working with the students. Symbols and personal flair were used, by a few students, at the end. Although not part of the lesson, I couldn’t help but enjoy the amount of creativity and personality expressed in the work… so I let them go a little off the path.

All in all a much better day, quiet classes, focused students, and the ability to help students. I have to say it was the first day, thus far, that I felt that I had actually helped and been successful (however no one was there to witness it, well my students were there) But I truly was able to understand was I wasn’t doing properly before. I hadn’t thought about the students and what it was they were maybe hoping to learn and gain from me, it was more how I was going to make something meet standards and meet requirements. I feel like the ability to give students a guideline, while also giving them a means to ask for help created a much better learning environment.

I was grateful to have a day were I was able to be helpful, and truly teach. Compared to my actual lesson plan, this day was much more of a success. I ability to help someone feel good about the work they create, and also understand what they’re doing is an amazing feat!


• Michelle Fuller
  School - teacher - grade - hours
  
  
Journal missing.


• Christa Meyer
  PCAE - Nancy Norwood - 11 and 12 grade - 5 hours
  
  This week I taught my first class at Perpich. The project was called Sense of Place. As for the students this being their first black and white photography class I was excited to teach them this project. The idea of a sense of place is to be able to capture a space through a variety of elements including lighting, the angles, symbolism and time. Their goal is to create three images that work together as a series and expresses the place in a new way.
  
  Teaching the class, I started with a PowerPoint, going through a wide range of classic to contemporary artists that incorporate this style of shooting. Throughout the slideshow I did the critical thinking questions, which students were responding to. After that we took some time to see example work of contact sheets as well as good quality printing in a black and white photo. They were able to see the different styles and I think the examples were a great way to end the lesson plan. This ending had more interaction between the groups. After teaching for this first \ day, I really enjoyed it. I look forward to my next teaching experience.
  
  After explaining the Sense of place project, I taught students bracketing and correct exposure. So to start off the class, I showed a PowerPoint on the examples of bracketing to have 3 images that showed over, under and normal exposure times. After that, I was able to do a demo making test strips in the darkroom. I then showed them how to use filters to create contrast and depth in the image they are printing. The demo went really well, and I was able to answer questions for them as well. All these elements that were taught today will come in handy for creating great quality prints for the sense of place project.
  
  
• Katrina McMahon
  Ramsey Fine Arts Magnet - Letty Vaughn - 1st and 2nd grade - 5 hours
  Wilder – Deb Robinson - 2nd-6th graders - 1.5 hrs
  
  Ramsey Fine Arts Magnet. This week at Ramsey we once again went through the daily routine of picking the kids up then coming down to the classroom and going through their vocab words then spelling words then reading full sentences in their books.
  
  I did notice when Letty was teaching that when the kids got to be too loud or speaking out of turn she would speak softer and then raise her hand and say “stop, think” and the students would know to listen to what she had to say. The students also had trouble sounding out words and she would tell them “listen to the sounds of each letter in your brain”. She has to remind them to look at each individual letter in the word and sound it out and then find familiar words within the longer word. When all the students have trouble reading then she has them stop and start over because then the repetition of saying the correct pronunciation goes into their brains and hopefully they remember it then.
  
  Wilder. This week we did masks again. The leader who introduced the project started out by asking the kids what New Orleans, football players, hockey players, and so on all had in common? And the answer was they all wore masks. He was trying to have them make connections between different cultures and their different uses in masks. The kids had trouble coming up with what they wanted to decorate the masks with because their was no example for them to see, and I have noticed they usually get inspired by the examples or in some cases they use the example and do the same thing.
  
  
• Jaclyn Nelson
  Jackson Magnet School - Judith Kerrigan - 1st grade - 4.5 hours
  

This is my third week with Judith's class and it's also a week that I fell ill so not as many hours attended. In writing class on Tuesday the students were starting to finish up their animal book reports where Judith would go over each students' writing and coloring and then assign them to go over the words in a black felt tip pen in order for them to stand out. I went around and helped the kids start with the pen, but mostly I helped some of the kids who were trying to catch up with the others. There is this one boy who was doing a report on sharks but he was having trouble reading the text, so I helped him get motivated by asking him what he sees in the photos that could tell him something about sharks. For example, there's an up close photo of sharks teeth so that tells him that sharks have sharp, pointy teeth.

Thursday in writing the boys and girls were doing a project based off Black History Month where they looked back at tribal Africa. Each table had an African symbol that they would paste onto construction paper and write the African word underneath it. I helped by getting symbols and translations to tables that needed them, giving chalk out to those using black paper and completely making ones for those who were absent. They will use these for an assembly in front of the whole school where they will be singing and celebrating. Later that school day they did a practice run, but I wasn't there to attend. I do wonder, however, how schools set up performance assemblies, and how are they executed? Judith did a reminder session about how they are supposed to look like up on stage: quiet, standing tall, hands at side, ignoring the person next to you if they are trying to get your attention, etc. They will also be decorating their faces with chalk masks.

Reading on Tuesday consisted of another practice run on how to properly transition into groups. I helped a couple of girls learn how to illustrate a cat and bird for a reading response picture assignment. That is how I got my idea on how to strategize the illustrations for my lesson plan that consists of them making a book based on the plays they saw. I also ran through a long poem with another student where she was able to read everything pretty decently and I helped her with some words, but I was really interested if she knew what was going on within the poem. I decided to go through each line with her; explaining words she didn't know and ones she was mixed up on (ex. plain with plane), and making big hand gestures to explain what is happening. She would do the gestures with me and get really excited about it.

Thursday reading class, I studied Judith's group sessions again. One group started a new book based on real life heroes that had pictures of Mt. Rushmore, firefighters, Dr. King, etc. Judith started out the new book by having them do a preview where they just looked at the pictures throughout the book and then they were to guess what the book would be about. Then they would read the book and she w ould help them with some words and saw how they used cognates to try to guess a word. After reading the book they were asked some heroes that they know of to relate the book back to the students to make it meaningful.

Some other questions I have gathered over the week are: What exactly do principals do? Are grade levels taught with the same grade level techniques? How do you teach a 1st grader to illustrate? What would be considered a too advanced art project for a certain grade level? How do you go about teaching art at a school where art is not a specialist class? - Would you start with basic ideas? Do schools still have to meet art standards even when the school has not art program?


• Rachel Smith
  No work on site this week.
  
  
• Crystal Tomczak
  Harriet Tubman - Free Arts - 9 hours
  Anoka High School - Kevan Nitzberg - 2 hours
  
  Harriet Tubman. Today we had a pretty good turnout for the number of kids that came. Unfortunately, the lady who was going to come up with the project for today didn't come tonight due to the fact that she had the flu and didn't want to spread it to all of us. Me and the other volunteers looked in the supply closet and what we had to work with, and had to come up with something the kids could do. We decided to do collages. They enjoy cutting paper and gluing things, and there were some really great results, though a few kids got bored quickly and moved on to games in the other room. Next week I heard that we a re going to do a Dr. Seuss project with the kids, which I am sure they will all be excited about.
  
  Anoka High School. Today was another work day in Video Computer Art, but at the end of class their elements and principles work was due to be handed in. Anything not turned in by the end of class receives late credit. Drawing I started with a half hour video that went over perspective and how we interpret what we see. The rest of class was work time to continue working on their 3D shape drawings, which are due on Tuesday. Drawing II started with a presentation about making a collection on artsconnected.org based on the theme they are working with. This is something Kevan wants me to do as my lesson to give students an example of what to do. Then they were handed back the first assignment grade sheet, along with their peers critique worksheets. The rest of class was a work day to prepare for the 3 drawings they need to have in for next weeks mid-quarter grade and an additional drawing for fridays critique. The next critique is going to be done in a different format.
  
  
  

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Week 4 – CVA Student Journal entries from February 8–12

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Barton Open School - Meri Gauthier - variety of grade - 10 hours
  
  
The children at Barton stayed focused throughout the lesson even though each class was of different age groups. The expectations of the kids I noticed varied on age. The teacher kept control in the classroom by picking out the children having difficulty concentrating and having them take a timeout, but depending on how old they were sometimes it wasn?t needed. The difference in age groups gave me an ability to see how a teacher interacts with a range of students in terms of their developmental stages. Meri grabbed the children?s attention right away and laid out her expectations of them during the class period.



• Rudy Arnold
  Jackson Magnet School - Christopher Nelson - 3 grade - 4.5 hours
  Perpich Center of Arts Education - nancy Norwood - 11 nd 12 grade - 2.5 hours
  
  Jackson: Today I observed the students reading lesson again. However, this time the students were learning to create images in their mind. So as the students talked about characters and settings from the story they were reading, I would draw what I thought the images looked like. The students continued to ask me through out the day to draw pictures for them. The students had a geography test today. I also helped the students talk about the books that they are reading. It was a very interesting experience, some students would look twice as long at the pictures, while others would be reading long fiction novels.
  
  PCAE: Today was my first teaching experience at PCAE. I ran the darkroom for the class, giving advice on printing and composition. The students told me a lot about their school. Later in the class period, I helped run a discussion about art history and how various historical photographers. This class was focused on getting to know the students. I had a really great conversation with a student who transferred into PCAE his senior year, he told me about the similarities and differences between the school he was in and PCAE. I can already tell that PCAE has a very different learning approach than any high school I have ever experienced.
  
  
• Cara Fazio
  Hazel Park Middle School - Ms. Kremer - 8+9th grades - 9 hours
  
  Feb. 9th: Art rooms art messy! Ms. Kremer taught more color mixing today, while I cleaned her room.
  
  The students were going over color mixing with paint, along with finishing any left over work from the previous lesson/section. The day was mostly a workday; students also were able, when they were done, to work on valentines.
  
  It felt nice cleaning up the room, and getting it ready for the open house. I found a fountain, which is now providing the room with movement. I had help from a student, Jon, watering the plants and sweeping. Also, I cleaned out the extra desk, went through old work, and organized papers. All in all a very fast-paced day.
  
  I pitched my lesson plan, which will be color mixing, through painting, and tracing, working with the ESL class. The idea is to have the students? partner up and trace each other?s hands, and then color them in with primary colors, mixing where the hands cross. They will then label the colors in English, along with their language. The hands will be traced on black paper and painted with tempera paint. I also am going to create a PowerPoint to go along with it, on mixing, color vocab, and emotion through color. Here is hoping it works?!
  
  Feb. 11th: I gave THREE PowerPoint presentations today! The first two I wasn?t planning on teaching, the other I was ready for?
  
  I created a PowerPoint explaining color and the emotion it can express. I was only planning to share it with the ESL (6th hour) class, however upon seeing it Ms. Kremer thought it would be fun to show the other classes. I did, and it was a little terrifying. Half of the class (in both the fourth and fifth hours) was interested, the other half was completely checked out. It was interesting to see how the students, I hadn?t planned on presenting to, responded to the artwork. One of the paintings I showed was identified as Michael Jackson, even though it was a portrait of a large female, in both hours? by more than one person. WOW!
  
  I was pleased to have students, I never thought would be interested in slides so excited to share their ideas. Some students wanted to share their ideas with every picture, and some that thought the work was old and uninteresting, it makes me question, ?What art would engage the students of today more?? I also remembered, though the help of Ms. Kremer, that the students I was presenting to were in a strange place between elementary and high school. How could I have forgotten? Middle school seems to be a strange limbo, between excited elementary and smart/sharp high school. At times I had to remind the students to raise hands and wait t be called on, and other times I almost had to beg for attention.
  
  I think all in all the class thought it was an interesting presentation. I asked a few what they had thought, they said ?it made sense?? but that doesn?t mean it was good.
  
  The 6th hour class was much more involved with the PowerPoint, which was my hope, as they were the targeted group. They enjoyed identifying the colors in the paintings and talking about the artwork I showed. There was some lovely insight /ideas about the pieces, it was wonderful to hear what the students thought. I tried to remember VTS teaching styles but, couldn?t help but praise the student. I think I might become one of the ?anything is the right answer,? people when working with kids? I feel more ?Whys?? and ?Hows?? would benefit my teaching more.
  
  I did love that the students were excited to at least try, that is all worth the effort to me? Perhaps I should ask myself ?Why??
  
  Feb. 12th Art in action, Today the students created my idea! It was an interesting experience. I don?t know how many liked it, or enjoyed it.
  
  The kids didn?t seem to want to be put with partners, mostly boy/girl groups. And others didn?t think theirs ?looked beautiful.? So they didn?t want to keep going? We will be finishing on Tuesday.
  
  I have more questions at this point than actual feedback, so far. I still want to see how everything turns out before I give my final say on how the project went. So here are my questions:
  
  How does one keep the attention of a class while you are presenting how to create something using a technique? How do you help a student feel that their art is beautiful, especially during the ?work phase.?? How can you stress the guidelines of a project? How do you, as a teacher, help ?steer? or ?correct? the path a student is going artistically? Even when the work is amazing?
  
  
• Michelle Fuller
  Highpoint Center for Printmaking - 5 hours
  Southwest High School - Cecily Spano - 9-12 grades - 4.5 hours
  Shadow - Jan Elftmann - 1.5 hours
  
  
February 4, Southwest Highschool. As today was Thursday, another student was up for their critic. The student that presented went to Ghost ranch in Santa Fe location during the summer and made these recycled dolls out of tin, sticks and wire. When she started this year she started making a collection of them. She has made 11 dolls so far. She was shy to explain way she makes them. Her mom makes and sell recycled stuff, so she enjoys it as well. I asked her what she wanted the viewer to get out of them, she didn?t know. I want to get the students to really think about why they do things, because that has been a problem with explaining what I do. I think if they know how to explain that it will help in the future if they go in to an art-based education program.

February 9, Southwest. Today I went in at one to observe the higher level IB art class. I was talking to Cecily about how I can do more with the students. I wanted to participate more with the students and try to help them have ideas. I choose to show some of the student?s pinhole cameras on Thursday. The students are focusing on a ?Tracing? projects. Tracing meaning what leave traces. Such as dreams or memories.

February 11, Southwest. Pinhole camera day, I brought some of the stuff to make pinhole cameras. I brought shoeboxes for the students that were interested. With only an hour the students only got to paint the boxes black so far. A couple of the students and I tested out the pinhole camera I made. We tested outside and tested it inside. We couldn?t get a full image to expose. I think it has to do with the paper being old. I am going to buy more paper and test it before next time I go in. This is not my project I am doing with the children. I am hopefully doing dry-point Intaglio and bringing them to CVA to print them. I am still getting permission to do that. I am just trying not to stand around and watch the children with there independent pieces.

February 12, Highpoint, 12-2pm and Jan D. Elftmann, 4:30- 5 pm At highpoint I went for a couple hours to get ready for Free Ink day tomorrow!!!! I helped put 400 pieces of paper in a wet pack, made signs and cut stencils. It wasn?t much but I had fun talking to the other interns and getting info about the ink day.

I meet with Jan today! We met at Nina?s for a coffee to talk about my schedule. Jan is so nice, she even invited me and my friends to an art opening at her apartment building on Saturday. I get to help Jan at the Science Museum. She has been teaching classes there for about 15 years.

February 13 2010, Highpoint.Today was Free Ink day! We had like 12 helpers and maybe 200 people come to the studio to do a print. It was a lot of running around and cleaning supplies! It was interesting at first telling and controlling a group a people that didn?t know what they were doing. Especially when they all came at different times, so you had to explain demos for everyone. It was such a good experience, you have to be happy when everything is chaotic, help everyone, and keep things clean. I loved today! My parents even came to see the space and make a print. They have really never made a print so it was so exciting seeing their eyes open to what I'm really doing with my work. Set up and clean up wasn't bad because we had so much helper. Kristina Mooney Came, a CVA almuni and even my roommate Emma Kullberg (that did the high school emersion program there 2 years ago). Highpoint is the best place ever!


• Christa Meyer
  Perpich Center for Arts Education - Nancy Norwood - 11+12 grade - 2.5 hours
  
  This week in the classroom, I?ve been getting ready to teach 'sense of place'. Working on the PowerPoint and looking up photographers who would be a good example for teaching this assignment. The students were working on the elements project. Whether that be developing or printing in the darkroom they were creating their 10 prints. Working with different angles or shadows through photography is teaching them the range of this medium and what you can do with it. There was also a video on photography that the students were watching about the different daguerreotypes/ beginning of photography techniques. Questions and thoughts I have for next weeks teaching is how to keep it simple, as bracketing and right exposure with good quality printing can be a little tricky to catch on too.
  
  
• Katrina McMahon
  Ramsey Center of the Arts - Letty Vaughn - 1st and 2nd Graders - 5 hours
  Wilder Bush Children?s Center ? Deb Robinson ? 2nd-6th Graders - 1.5 hours
  

Ramsey: This week in the classroom the students went through their regular routine of spelling in the morning session and math lessons in the afternoon. They come in and do their site words, then get into their books and go through some spelling words. This week from their site word that the students got missed Letty had me write down each of theirs in bubble letters and later they would decorate them for Valentine?s Day. Letty also asked me what I noticed in the classroom and I said that there was a lot of repetition, when reading the words then spelling the words and then writing them out. Also with the same routine everyday starting with picking the kids up from their regular classrooms and then going through each lesson. She also told me that she wants to show the students how to go about figuring out how to say a word if they have difficulty with it. For example if the ?e? sounds makes an ?e? noise or an ?a? sounding noise when speaking it out loud.

This week there were more behavior problems than last I noticed. One student was bouncing with energy and the way it was handled was to keep encouraging the student and reminding them what was to be worked on with their assignment at the time. Letty also then told the student to go and burn a ton of energy at recess and play as hard as they could. Then she also encouraged the student that they could control themselves and to take extra care in trying to do this that day. I also noticed that when something else came up, like another teacher needed to talk for a few minutes during her teaching time that she had the students play games that had to do with the things being learned at the time. For example the numbers game, the students had to take turns counting as high as they could and whoever made it the furthest won.

Wilder Bush Children?s Center: This week the same art project was made as last week, the heart shaped tin. It was a different group of kids that came in this time. Two more volunteers joined our group so there were 8 adults in the room with about 5 kids. The kids got plenty of one on one attention. I had made an example tin to have a variety shown on the tables and I noticed that the kids each sort of picked the parts from each of the examples and incorporated it into their own design. Some did exactly as the examples shown. Then teachers would suggest something to add to make it their own and to get the kids thinking about other ways to design the tin.


• Jaclyn Nelson
  Jackson Preparatory Magnet - Judith Kerrigan - 1st Grade - 10.5 hours
  
  This is the second week I attended Judith?s class. They had already welcomed a new student to the class. When it was reading time I decided to introduce myself and have him read to me in case he felt scared being in a new atmosphere. Turns out he is very energetic and has made some buddies with some of the boys in class.
  
  Tuesday during writing the students made Valentine?s for their reading buddies for Thursday. It was nice to see how much they enjoyed doing artsy things and they were very creative with their cards. Some even knew how to cut out letters from the construction paper in order to create words. It was very hard for them to transition from making Valentine?s to their next activity because they enjoyed it so much. We worked a little on transitions on Thursday from writing to reading where each group got up one at a time and showed the others how they calmly got their book bags and went to their assigned stations.
  
  Most of the time it was just review and practice from what they did the previous week, so a lot of repetition to get it into their brain. There were some new things added on, but since the week was a little hectic in and of itself with it being Valentine?s week, they went on a field trip on Wednesday, special guests on Thursday, and Friendship day on Friday, it was good for them to review and build on their previous knowledge. I wonder how field trips are coordinated and followed through since I never actually got to go with them to the Children?s Theater on Wednesday.
  
  I would like to note that in science class they worked more with the marble and track, but this time they worked as a team to get the marble to roll on two tracks around their table without touching the marble or letting it fall on the floor, otherwise they would have to start over. It is harder than it sounds. The group I worked with was more concerned with who had the marble than to finish the lab, so I tried to get them motivated by choosing who did what just so we could get going. We were almost half way when one of the group members picks up the marble from the track and wanted to hand it to me. I then had to sadly tell them that we had to start over because someone touched the marble. We never did finish the circle in time, but I think it was a great exercise for them to get to learn how to work together in order to achieve a goal. I was wondering how to get students more focused on the main objective of a teamwork project than on the smaller things like who gets the ?coolest job.? The science teacher took photos and I hope to get a copy of them soon.
  
  What was really awesome about this week were the special guests that came on Thursday. There was an all-school assembly held in the gym. I even saw the principal and it was great to see him getting some of the students? attention by name basis. That really showed me how much this school means to him. Anyway, the special guests were Cheryl Anderson from Lifetime Fitness and Matt Blair who is a former MN Vikings linebacker and part of the Vikings Children?s Fund. He inspired the students with a story about his career and he was very charming and funny. Then he went on to talk about how there were only 2 schools picked for a donation; one from Minneapolis and one from St. Paul. The schools? had to be worthy of the donation and he said he could tell how Jackson is an exemplary school and can see why it got picked. Then Matt and Cheryl presented one of those big checks I have only seen on T.V. with a worth of $5,000! I?m not going to lie: I did get choked up and there may have been a tear or two. It was amazing to witness this event.
  


• Rachel Smith
  No work on site this week.
  


• Crystal Tomczak
  Anoka High School - Kevan Nitzberg - grade - 7 hours
  
  Today in Video Computer Art it was just a work day for the students. Kevan met with his AP Studio Art kids he has during this class individually to go over what they had in their portfolios to this point, and what they need more of. In Drawing I their 3D, negative space, chalk drawings that they started last week were due by the end of class, so it was also a work day in here. In Drawing II It was their first critique day. The students laid their work on the tables with a number and a strip of paper that had the theme of their work written on it. Then the class walked around and looked at everyone's work. They had to pick at least three to fill out a critique form for. The critique form had spaces for them to describe what is being shown, what elements and principles are effective, what media is used and how it is used effectively, their interpretation of the work and what makes them feel that way, and any suggestions to make the work stronger.
  

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Week 3 – CVA Student Journal entries from February 1–5

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Northside Community Center – Krissy Stockton– grade – 2 hours
  
  Northside 2 hours Northside I found very different from the Walker Art Lab, which seemed to be ?controlled chaos? where as Northside depended upon focusing the children enough to do one big project without the critique afterwards. The kids were much more rowdy at Northside and the supplies appeared to be short. It also seemed much more laid back from a teaching standpoint. The kids were very enthusiastic about doing grown up hand painting with things such as cotton balls and coffee filters as a tool instead of a brush. The outcome was somewhat difficult for some children and less so for others.
  
  
• Rudy Arnold
  Jackson Preparatory Magnet School – Christopher Nelson – 3 grade – 3 hours
  Perpich Center for Arts Education – Nancy Norwood – 11 and 12 grade – 1.5 hours
  
  Jackson: Today I observed the students reading lesson again, I also helped them all get their planners filled out for the week. However, the main task was to come up with a good proposal for Target, in order to get funding for the camera project coming up. I checked it over with Mr. Nelson at the end of the day. Also there was a confrontation today between two students. I was able to learn a lot from the teacher about how to deal with confrontations in a learning environment.
  
  PCAE: Today I met with Mrs. Norwood from PCAE, we scheduled out the semester, so it looks like I will be doing slightly more hours at my first residency than my second one, Around 55hrs at Jackson and Around 35 at PCAE. I will be teaching the students pinhole photography during CVA?s Spring break. Which is when I will do the bulk of my hours, otherwise I will be going there every Friday.


• Cara Fazio
  Hazel Park Middle School – Kitty Kremer – Art class – 14.5 hours
  
  Feb 2nd: Wowie, how a group dynamic can set mood. Today, more one-point perspective? only, because of lack of craft/understanding of the last four-lettered assignment, they are making any word you want one-point perspective? or at least the ones who have moved on.
  
  Also, we have found the problem to the lack of speed put into the work! 90% of the time is spent sharpening colored pencils. I sharpened? more than 100 colored pencils today for two and a half hours; I have three blisters, and mad-hand cramps? However, now time will (I hope) be spent coloring and not sharpening!
  
  Also, color I have no idea if these kids get color? some were asking what color goes with what? I made quick color wheels explaining complementary colors. I completely melted, when I was thanked, and told, ?It was a cool trick.? Later the ESL students slightly jumped into the melted puddle of my heart by bombarding me with ?teacher, I need this color,? and holding up a hundred of that type of colored pencil to me. I am thinking a color wheel/mixing lesson for all, but also incorporating ESL into the mix, then I wont feel so ignorant when asked for help with a color? My goal: create a page we can all be on.
  
  Feb. 4th: More sharpening pencils? really it seems like all I did, and I think it was. We have wrapped up the one-point unit and are moving on. I pitched my idea to Kitty about color? it?s a hit! Also, a heavy-duty $102.00 pencil sharpener is on the way, along with a box of pencils? Yay, admin hears the needs of artists!
  
  Feb. 5th: Thank you great one by the name of OFFICE MAX! We have a heavy-duty xacto pencil sharpener! Kitty brought in a cheap one from target that stopped after the tenth pencil, but this one? this one is the Mecca-god of pencil sharpeners. Two bulk boxes worth of pencils done in an hour, and zero blisters!
  
  The first two hours, which I usually miss due to the time a get to the school, just finished working on honor boxes (a 3-d box honoring a woman who is important to you). Some of these boxes were so detailed. The women honored were anyone from mothers to Tyra Banks, a smart project and a complete success. The class is now moving on Winter Count, and creating a symbol representing ones self. They started the class listening to a reading from the book about Crazy Horse, and how he received his name.
  
  They then moved on to the gender roles in Native American tribes and the idea of man and woman, Yin and Yang. They then compared that to today?s society, and how the roles are mixed today. Kitty and the students talked about what roles people had in the families of the class and how they are the same or different, along with the roles of young-adults today. An interesting discussion.
  
  Color theory 101 today, wow? I have cut my job out for myself. I am excited to teach next week, I hope the kids like the lesson. They need better ears and eyes; the color coloring/mixing page worked on today seemed very confusing? but at last was grasped and (I hope?again) retained.
  
  
• Michelle Fuller
  No work on site this week.
  


• Christa Meyer
  Barton Open School – Jane Spicer – 1 and 2 grades – 1 hour
  Perpich Arts High School – Nancy Norwood – 11 and 12 grades – 2.5 hours
  
  On Monday, I had my first experience at Barton school. Meeting with Jane and the classroom and coming up with days that I will be there. I will be teaching in March, a painting project. They have a play in the spring and we will be making backdrop panels of dark blue stars for example.
  
  Second time being at Perpich, today I really got to see what it?s like for a teacher to prepare for classes and how much time they have to do it. Also making sure that their lesson plans fits the full class hour. For class though today, they were working on developing their film and getting it ready for printing. They were taught about the operations of the camera last Friday and how to load film into the canisters to begin processing. This project is on elements, which is experimenting with the camera as in angles, light exposures and what your subject matter is. Being in the classroom is showing me, how to explain photography in a basic structure and experimenting with this medium.


• Katrina McMahon
  Shadowing – Barry Klieder – 7th and 8th Graders – 2 hours
  Ramsey Arts Magnet ? Letty Vaughn ? 1st and 2nd Graders ? 5 hours
  Wilder Bush Children?s Center ? Deb Robinson ? 2nd-6th Graders – 1.5 hours
  
  Shadowing: This was the second to last day the students had to finish their Graphic novels. The students came into class and right away got working on their projects because of the lack of time left. Each student talked with Barry individually as he went around and if they were behind they made a plan to get it done in one way or another. An after school open lab with the computers had been planned for a week and students were able to go to that for extra time if needed.
  
  From the overall experience I have noticed that each student took the project in a different direction. Some cut images out, some tilted images, some drew on top of the images, and some used filters. I also noticed that Barry had already gained their trust in knowing the program so sometimes when I would offer to help answer a question while he was busy the student would say they would wait for him instead. The students have also had an overall visual process to show, first with the drawn out storyboards, then the photos, then the final product with the images and the typed out text arranged as a graphic novel.
  
  Ramsey: The students are in a special needs program that work with Letty. The kids get picked up twice in the day from their regular classrooms and go and work on specific trouble spots in their learning. For example this day we worked on vocabulary and writing skills. Also testing in math.
  
  There is a system used everyday with the kids with one of them being the leader and the rest fallow for heading down to the classroom. Then they work on reading words out loud and using correct pronunciation. Letty uses very specific sounds for each letter in the alphabet and hand gestures that go along with each sound to help the kids memorize how to read and say the words at the same time. For example the “th” sound is said while putting your pointer finger up to your lip.
  
  Then the students went on to spelling out words. One for was “fun”. She went step by step making the sound of the letter “f” then “u” then “n” while using her hand signals. Then Letty had them check their spelling by writing it out herself and the students had to make sure that their letters were curving correctly. As this was all happening Letty also complimented students individually on things such as “I like how you _____ are keeping your letters in-between the lines”.
  
  When the students would get too loud she would have a singing type of saying that she would do and then she would purposely speak softer so that they would have to quiet down to hear her speak. Then finally at the end of the time I spent there, we read aloud the students math test questions. I did notice that certain areas of the test were more complicated for the students, like when it was 1+ ___=5 the students had a hard time filling in the blank portions compared to if it was 1+4=____. My question would be how do you teach a student how to recognize or learn that it’s a different left out blank than the other?
  

Wilder Bush Children’s Center: The leaders had arranged a project for the children coming in. The project is then done twice because there are two different groups, one the first week and another the second week. The projects have to be for a wide range of levels for the kids because it’s a wide age range in this class. Two adults always come in with the kids as well so we ended up with 6 adults and 5 kids.

The project made was a little heart shaped tin that they decorated for someone for Valentines Day. There were coupon cards to pick from where they could come up with some sort of chore or free gift that they could write out. There were beads and feathers and sequins and magazine pictures to pick from to decorate the tin however they wanted. I noticed that each student got individual attention because we had so many adults there to work with them. I also notice that the adults would make a small suggestion and then the student would come up with their own more creative idea that was stimulated from the adult’s suggestion. The kids were encouraged to do whatever they wanted with the project. My question is how far in advance do the head leaders come up with projects?


• Jaclyn Nelson
  Jackson Preparatory Magnet – Judith Kerrigan – 1 grade – 12 hours
  
  This week I started my new residency with Judith Kerrigan?s 1st grade class at Jackson. She teaches her class writing, reading, and math, and during her prep time the students go to gym on Tuesdays and science on Thursdays (the days I attend). I entered the class for the first time when they were in the middle of doing their ?book reports? (as I call them). The students would read about an animal they are interested in and then write a rough draft about what they learned using their own words. When they are ready they transfer the writing to a book pamphlet were they can have text with drawn images to create a book. I went around helping the students with pronouncing words, but I was to not tell them how to spell them; they had to think about how the word sounds and use that to try their best at spelling it. This helps them use their thinking brain to piece together how certain words are spelled by the way they sound.
  
  During reading the class learned/reviewed about different book features like a title, heading, index, and table of contents. This helps them to recognize book features that help them to figure out what the author is writing about. They can get a feel for the book and navigate through it. This reminded me of how Kara?s 4th grade class were learning about article features by doing ?before questions? based on pictures, headings, etc. Judith also does the mini lessons before delving into the bulk of the class. After learning about book features the class went into their reading groups that focused on things they learned by doing repetitions. The class benefits from the repetition and practice time in order to become better at whatever they are focusing on. Judith and Suzie take on a couple of reading groups that switch every once in awhile and this helps the teacher to focus on and recognize how a student is progressing.
  
  After reading the students head up to the computer lab and work on a program that helps them further develop their reading, writing and math. It monitors their progress to make sure they are ready for 2nd grade when it comes around. I think the computer program also helps some students get more involved because it seems more like a game.
  
  Next in the schedule is recess and lunch. The students are reminded to bring appropriate weather gear and if they don?t have snow pants she suggested they should bring in an extra pair of pants if the ones they wear outside get wet. I thought the reminder and suggestions were caring. Judith doesn't eat lunch in the teachers lounge like the rest of them, but instead eats with her class. She is able to be there and help them with their table manners and is just another thoughtful thing she does because she wants to see her students succeed in life, not just school.
  
  In math class they were learning the rule of ?turn around? numbers. For example, 5 + 3 = 8 and 3 + 5 = 8. You can just turn the 3 and 5 around and still end up with 8. They did a page in their math journal that had a bunch of boxes with addition problems. I helped the students with some of the adding by having them use their fingers or draw dots on their paper and then whenever they would come to a ?turn around? I would point it out to show the relationships because some of them were just trying to figure out the sum again. I believe this helps them to recognize patterns in order to solve math problems faster.
  
  In between math Judith has her prep time. Tuesday they went to gym where they played games that involved being on either side of the gym and trying to toss objects to the other side, like balls or bean bags. Talking over with the gym teacher got me to realize there is a lot more to gym than just exercise. They were learning how to follow rules of a game, being able to distinguish which side is their side, how to aim, etc. The gym teacher actually told me that the kindergartners can?t comprehend that they have to stay on their side so she would have to put down big mats as barricades and then they transition in first grade to establishing a line for separation.
  
  On Thursday they had science class where they learned about how things move by using a marble, cup and track. They would figure out creative ways to get the marble to roll down the track into the cup. The students also wrote down in their science journals what they did and drew a picture along with it.
  
  After Judith?s prep the class comes back and continues to work on their math. Thursday they learned about reading ?in and out? tables to come up with a rule. I helped a group of students figure out the patterns in the ?in and out? tables to come up with the rule. This helps them to recognize patterns and helps them to figure out whether to use subtraction or addition to develop rules within the patterns.
  
  On Thursday after lunch, the students are visited by reading buddies. The reading buddies are volunteers from U.S. Bank who come in for 30 minutes to read with the first graders. It is a beneficial program that has come out with great results in students? ability to read.
  
  At the end of the day Judith reads to her class a book by Pamela Allen. This is to lead up to their surprise field trip on Feb. 10th to the Children?s Theater where they will see plays based off of these books. I think I am going to base my lesson off of the stories.
  
  During this week I have developed lots of questions and had long discussion with Judith about teaching in general. More of these questions will appear later but the ones that struck me the most were: What techniques can you use to help give a smooth transition in between curricula? How do you get a student motivated or to even get them to have a conversation with you instead of them being silent? Since 1st graders seem to have little concept about boundaries, when would it become prevalent to enforce them? In order for Judith to really understand what is going on with one of her students, she needs to know what is happening in their home life, so I was wondering how you get a parents? trust to let you in on some of those things because sometimes it can be discrediting to the parent.
  


• Rachel Smith
  Shadowing – Margot McCreery– Puppeteer – 2 hours
  
  This is the fifth day and the second week I have worked with Margot. Thus far we have worked in four classrooms with two separate projects. Three classrooms were working with puppets and one classroom was working with masques. Since last week I spoke about the puppets this week I will speak about the masks. This week the students have completed their masques and their puppets so this week it was time to begin breathing life into their creations. We worked first in circles just with our bodies to get comfortable acting in front of a group. This allowed the students to unwind and get silly. After we acted out different animals and feelings with just our bodies we slipped on our masques and acted our characters. We experimented with different voices and movements. I learned that masques are meant to be facing the audience as much as possible otherwise the audience will start to lose interest.


• Crystal Tomczak
  Free Arts Minnesota – Harriet Tubman – 1.5 hours
  Anoka High School – Kevin Nitzberg – Art Class – 11 and 12 grades – 7.25 hrs
  
  2/2/2010. Today was my first day at Tubman. I meet the other three volunteers and the Tubman staff that are around if we need anything. The room that we are in has a couple tables and a wall of cabinets full of art supplies. This room is also connected to a game room where the kids get to go after we do our art projects. Right now there are only a couple kids at Tubman, but the number of kids is always changing since people are always moving in and out. We were told today that someone is moving into a three bedroom apartment so there will probably be more kids coming. Small numbers is kind of nice though so that we have more one on one time with the kids, which is pretty important to them. The project we did with the kids today was making pony bead animal key chains. Kelly planned this activity and brought in patterns for three different animals; frog, butterfly and firefly. This gave the kids options, but not so many they couldn't quickly choose one. I got to see the different paces the kids work in, some get the project done quickly, some start but never finish, and some get bored before they even begin. There was a younger kid who just wanted to play with scissors and throw the beads around. One of the guys who works at Tubman handled this by telling this child that there are two rules for the project today, not throwing the beads and not cutting anyone's things, then gave him some paper that he could cut up instead of doing the pony bead project since he didn't seem very interested. I think I am really going to like it at Tubman. It is very nice to know that in having fun with these precious children, I am making a difference.
  
  02/05/2010 This term Kevin has Video Computer Art first hour, Drawing I second hour, Drawing II third hour, and prep fourth hour. Earlier this week in Video Computer Art the class was given the assignments for the next three weeks, so they were all on the computers working on different things for the project. There are a few AP Studio Art kids in all of Kevin's classes that are all working on building their portfolio. In Drawing I students were finishing up their negative space graphite drawings, and beginning their 3D negative space drawings where they were all learning how to make shapes appear to be 3D. This drawing is to be done in chalk pastels. Drawing II is a theme based drawing class. The students had to have their theme proposals handed in today. They are having their first critique next Friday, so the students will need to have their first piece done and ready by then. I am interested to see how a high school level critique is lead, and to see the theme based work the students are working on. During Kevan's prep, he showed me the powerpoint presentation about windows and doors he had put together for the Saturday class he teaches at CVA.

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Week 2 – CVA Student Journal entries from January 25–29

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Shadowing – Ilene Krug Mojsilov/Walker Art Center – 3.5 hours
  Free Arts Minnesota – Krissy Stockton – 2 hours
  
  I notice that Ilene is able to create ?controlled chaos? in the space with the kids and that she keeps bringing their attention back to the big idea which forces them to take something from the activity. The big idea for activity was appropriation and excavation each kid had to personalize a board with pages of magazines. Ilene goes through the directions in the middle of the room with the kids three to four times before starting the activity and then stops mid-way through the activity to go through another aspect of the activity. Ilene, I notice commands attention of all the students all the students in the room and keeps them on task. I saw children even stabbing all the way through their board to make them more sculptural (which was very interesting). I saw her testing the kids in same ways such as asking them what terms would best describe their piece along with theme or title.


• Rudy Arnold
  Jackson Preparatory Magnet School – Christopher Nelson – grade 5 – 4.5- hours
  Shadowing – Barry Klieder – 1 hour
  
  1/25/09 Today was my first day back in a week and a half. Last week the students has all school testing which some of the 5th graders told me about. Today was mostly observational. The kids were learning about graphic novels. The particular one they read was called ?The Great Bearded One? The illustrations were very interesting and the kids seemed to be quite interested in the small portion that we read. I am noticing another teaching style that Mr. Nelson uses, Cooperative Learning model. There is a large carpet on the floor with a color-coordinated grid on it. The students sit in assigned squares for various activities during the day. When Mr. Nelson introduces a new word or an idea that he needs the students to understand clearly, he asks them to turn to a certain color (on the grid mat) they turn to the respective square and talk with that student about what ever the topic might be. This gives students a chance to learn from each other as well as the teacher.
  
  1/27/09 Today I helped a couple of students with their reading and observed some different study groups. I talked more with Mr. Nelson about the project, it seems as though we may be able to get the camera?s developed for free by target if we can get the necessary forms together. This would heavenly way in on the budget issue. We will be able to give each child their own camera to take home if we can get the funds. Estimated lesson date is probably one or two weeks away.
  
  1/27/09 I met with Barry Klieder today, we discussed my portfolio and the timeline of the project he was trying to do. It seems as though the shadow will happen in late April, early may. He will be working on a project with students between Kindergarten and grade 6.


• Cara Fazio
  Hazel Park Middle School – Kitty Kremer – Art class – 9 hours
  
  Jan 26: More On-point perspective. Kitty moved the students (4-6 hours) on to four-letter word, one-point perspective (with the use of stencils). The kids are finally getting it after the first few exercises. One thing that doesn?t seem to be sticking is the idea of the ruler, how do we express the use of a ruler better? Why would you make it harder by hand drawing lines to a point and having it look? less than par?
  
  Jan 28: Conferences are tonight, so we are getting the room ready for the parents. The kids are still working on one-point perspective drawings, and coloring. Most are working hard on their drawings, but there is this core group whom wont even attempt to try and figure out what they are going to do.
  
  Thus, some of the objectives that Kitty put into place are were, Content vs. Coloring. She asked the class a simple question ?What makes an art piece good?? while holding up some of the other students work. She then called on people, at random to give feedback. While giving examples she would point to the strong points hoping to inspire final touches expected (or hoped) for this last stretch. Craft and Intent, were also brought up, as aspects needing to be used and stressed.
  
  Also, to calm the sixth period class, we started with a five min. meditation/silence? totally worked, and hard workers followed.
  
  
• Michelle Fuller
  Southwest – Cecily Spano – Art – 11 and 12 grades – 10 hours
  
  January 26. Today was my first day at Southwest High School in Minneapolis working with an art teacher there, Cecily Spano. I was here to help out in the IB senior art class from 1-2, and also the advance video class. The first class I went to was on the second day of the second semester. IB art students are more based on an independent work time for research and studio time. It was only the second day so they really didn?t need help with anything. I went around and looked at some of there journals from the last semester, I was impressed at the research that they do with their pieces. I had a journal in high school, but it was really just to put things I liked and doodle in. I think its great that they get to learn how to really put meaning in their pieces. It was be helpful if any of them really wanted to go to art school. There?s a couple of students interested but I just felt like some of the students thought doing art as a living was a joke. Southwest has a weird feel to it. I felt that the students are very comfortable with Spano but to an outsider it?s a very negative space. I don?t think that I'm needed at all. Or I'm just not what she wanted. The only thing I enjoy is working with the advance video class. It is during 2-3pm when she is teaching a painting class, so I help out with the 6 students that are making videos together. We are making a video for a recycling competition for Feb. 16th. They can win money up to 2,500 dollars. We are doing a take off of the Axe commercials. I feel like they really don?t need my help either, and I?m just there as another person in the group. I have fun, and it always good to be there just to observe about the grade levels and was the students are.
  
  January 28. I went for the second day in IB class, every week they choose one of the students gets critic from the rest of the class. The student talks about what she has been doing, in this case in old classes, and what she wants to do next. The group picks two student to lead the critic, in this case the two students wanted to go around the circle and ask one question to the artist. Then the student would answer the questions at the end. It was cool that they did critics, of course there is no what they can do better, but more what other students liked. With the Video class we started writing our storyboards for the contest video.
  
  January 29. So, today I went to school almost the whole school day. I got there at 9:30 and left at 3 pm. The first class was freshman painting that was from 9:30 to 10:30. It was still there first week so they were working on painting color wheels and color gradations sheets. I mostly talked to students and helped clean up a little bit. The next hour she had off, so I helped looking up contests and shows and the computer there were another teacher and students in the classroom so we had to be quite. It was interesting in that class there were 5 deaf students and an interpreter. Also the teacher used a microphone to talk to the whole class. I was informed that the have them in all the classrooms, because there are so many children in that class, like 30 to 40. After that class at 11:30 was lunch. Spano and I went to a classroom to eat with other teachers. They were talking about school trips and bed bites and some funny stuff. For the next class it was the younger IB students from 12-1, because it was the first week, they haven?t started anything yet, but they were figuring out what the wanted to make for Foot in the Door. Spano is telling all her student to submit something. It was exciting to hear what they are all doing. In video from 2-3, we finished the storyboards and get to start filming next week!
  
  
• Christa Meyer
  Perpich High School – Nancy Norwood – 11-12 grade – 2 hours
  
  
This week was my first experience in the classroom at Perpich. Teaching Traditional black and white photography for a 50-minute class, as for this week I came to observe and see what they were learning. The assignment this week was to create photograms, which is when you place transparent or non-transparent objects on the paper to expose it as it creates a silhouette of that object without using an actual negative film.
This seemed like a good first project for the students to be able to experience the enlargers while experimenting with the boundaries of photography. Showing them all the things that light sensitive paper can bring to the eye. They were really expanding on objects to use from feathers, and double exposure images.
Some things to start thinking about for my time when I teach the class, I will be doing the Sense of place project. Which includes teaching them what a good/bad print looks like, with this teaching subject comes a demonstrating of lighting. I am wondering how I should go about teaching them bracketing/lighting in a new, fun and easy way to understand this sometimes-confusing topic to photography. Finding a good exercise of teaching these techniques to use in their own shots?


• Katrina McMahon
  Shadowing – Barry Klieder – 6 hours
Free Arts Minnesota – Krissy Stockton – 2 hours

This week at Avalon the students were continuing on with their graphic novel project with teaching artist Barry Klieder. They started working on putting their images onto the computer editing the images and then putting their pages together adding text as well. It was mostly independent working. At the beginning of class they gathered to get direction at to ask questions then they were instructed to go ahead and get to work on the computers. Most of the students seemed to be able to work very well on their own. Some of them had to have a little push to get going but then they got concentrated. The teachers wanted the atmosphere to be very quiet to know that the students were working hard and not getting off task. A few students needed help staying on task, so this is where I came in and tried to help out by sitting next to them and helping out with any questions. The students I think are learning how to work independently and how to be creative and collaborating different subjects into one project (text and images). They are also learning how to use different computer editing projects (gimp). Also they are learning the freedom to come up with their own ideas and techniques even when they all have the same assignment. For example one student is taking his images and using an illustrator technique on top of them and then doing some hand drawn images as well, it is his own creative approach to the project.


• Jaclyn Nelson
  Lincoln Elementary School for the Arts – Kara Johnson – 4th Grade – 7 hours
  
  This is my fourth, and final, week being in Kara Johnson?s fourth grade class. Tuesday was my last day with the class. There were some adjustments to the class schedule due to new curriculum and evaluating the students? comprehension. Ms. Johnson had look at the state tests that the students will have to take and realized that learning context clues would be beneficial to work on, especially with her first reading class who needed to slow down. Context clues help readers solve word mysteries in order to comprehend the text better.
  
  The example Ms. Johnson used was: ?Planted among the roses and the daisies, the clematis was one of the most colorful ____ in the garden.? Using the words in the sentence, such as planted, roses and garden can help a reader figure out what word to put in the blank: flower. Or, noticing roses and daisies can clue the reader into figuring out that clematis is a type of flower. The students were to read their ?just right? books and find context clues to help define a word they are questioning. I went around and helped the students find context clues if they were having trouble and after finding the context clues I would try to get them to think about how they all relate to each other so they can get a good idea of what the word means.
  
  Ms. Johnson?s homeroom reading class advanced to working with ?red questions.? ?Red questions? are not answered directly in the text. You must stop and think about the text and what you know to help you find the answer. This helps the students to become critical thinkers and evaluate how the author is writing in order to figure out what may happen in the story, or to find out why certain things were happening. Some ?red questions? may start out as ?I wonder why??? or ?What would happen if??? I went around making sure the students were on task and also read one-on-one with a student where we came up with ?red questions? together within her ?just right? book.
  
  Social Studies became Writers Workshop and today they were working on how to construct an essay, beginning with a thesis. They had been working on developing a thesis before and Tuesday they were working on how to support their thesis. Ms. Johnson went through a demonstration on ways to support a thesis with her exemplar and then had the students work in partners where they would share their thesis and get some suggestions on how to support it. I believe working in pairs helps them to better understand what is going on, especially if one student is lost, and it also gets them to think about other opinions on different subjects. I noticed while going around helping that some of the students? theses had supporting info already included in the sentence by having ?because?? So I reminded them that a thesis just states a matter and the ?why? and ?because? portions go within the supporting sentences.
  
  During lunch on Tuesday there was a staff meeting about the new class schedules that were to commence in mid February. They discussed the Advantage Math Recovery, which are small groups to help struggling students get better at math, and how there needs to be more time committed to this group throughout the week.
  
  Friday was a Teachers? Workshop day, but I came in anyway to document the Immigration projects, hang them up and discuss with Ms. Johnson some ideas for her revised Sketch-Up arts block class about architecture. It was interesting to see what it was like during a Teachers? Workshop day. There were a lot of discussions about curriculum, and paras would come in and work with Ms. Johnson to create learning goals for certain students.
  
  Throughout this week I wondered what happens to closed school buildings. Can you switch which grade you are teaching? Why is there a seemingly rising need for paras then there were just a decade ago? How do you arrange curriculum to fit the needs of students and still meet the state standards?
  
  
• Rachel Smith
  Shadowing – Margot McCreery– Puppeteer – 9 hours
  
  This week was the first week I have worked with Margot. The day I started I just jumped right in. The puppets had already been started and had been completed up until their midpoint. They had beautifully painted heads and hands they just needed bodies. That?s were I came in. I glued on previously sewn shirts to the heads and the hands with a hot glue machine, otherwise known as a hot glue gun. The puppets are simple and functional but, unique and well considered. The students were given permission to begin interacting with their puppets and giving them character by demonstration and role modeling. Margot gave them trail voices and I followed as we were gluing on their bodies. Some students were hesitant at first but, others really got into it by giving the puppets all sorts of voices. I learned some valuable lessons while working with Margot. I would like to bring some of them up so I can look back and remember them later. Students understand when they are being respected and respond well to it. Listening is so huge. Little kids love to talk it doesn?t have to be about any thing important but, they do want to be listened to.
  
  
• Crystal Tomczak
  Anoka Senior High School – Kevan Nitzberg – Art Class – 9-12 grade – 6 hours
  Free Arts Minnesota – Krissy Stockton – Training – 2 hrs
  
  1/22. Today was my first day at Anoka with Kevan. It was mostly a getting acquainted day. Kevan has three drawing I classes, but this will be changing after next week due to the change of the term. There is another student teacher in Kevan's room right now. Her name is Grace, and she is from Northwestern. Today I just observed the classes, they were all doing pen and ink drawings and trying to get any unfinished work finished. Kevan told me about all his classes he will have while I am there, and burned me a CD with all the information, slides, powerpoints and links he uses for his drawing II, theme based class. He would like me to do my lesson with this class. I also talked with Grace about what her requirements are while she is there so that we can work around each other.
  
  1/28. Today I had my training with Free Arts, and found out that I will be doing my internship at Harriet Tubman. We went through the handbook, covering the policies of Free Arts and learning more about the organization. I am starting on Tuesday, and am very excited.

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Week 1 – CVA Student Journal entries from January 19–22

• Lydia Aldsurf
  Lydia was not on site this week.
  



• Rudy Arnold
  Rudy was not on site this week.
  



• Cara Fazio
  Hazel Park Middle School – Kitty Kremer – Art class – 9 hours
  
  DAY 1. It was my first day in Kitty Kremer’s classroom, at Hazel Park Middle School. I came in the middle of her second period class, Native American Art, as they were about to be told a story, about Kitty’s Grandmother. The class was going to be working on memory boxes, representing a “Strong Woman in Your Life.” The boxes, mostly shoe boxes, were decorated and embellished containing items or photos belonging to the honored subject. After hearing the story, they were then asked to pick a woman who they thought was the strongest in their life… their were many Tyra Banks requests.

The second class, third period, was a squirrely bunch. Walking into the room, directly after lunch, it took a while for the students to clam down. After the class was able to calm down instructions were given to take a quiz, worth four points. The quiz given was to draw out examples of the past assignment about, Unity, Variety, and Emphasis. After directing the students to the examples on the board, they were to take 10mins to draw out the test. Most who were finished at the end of the class were exact copies of the ones I had drawn on the board.

The last two classes were about the same as the third period, however more tamed energy. It still took all class for the quizzes to be completed, most were finished the next day.

The last period, I helped organize the supplies during the 35mins of class. I ended up talking with my former health teacher who came in that hour to watch the class while Kitty was given an extra “prep” time.

DAY 2. The first class was immersed in working on their boxes. Some had brought objects from home, and others had even gone shopping. One of the boxes was lined with purple roses that hung like a curtain around the edges. While Kitty presented the grades and quizzes, she asked people to name the image, on each quiz as she held up and passed them back. After going over the quiz, she announced the next lesson, One Point Perspective. Originally, she was going to have the students turn the word ?Art? into a 3-D image, by connecting it to a point directly below the letters.

We noticed that some of the students were copying the drawing, but weren?t grasping the concept from the outcome. Rather than have her students move onto the next step, (writing a three-lettered word, and connecting it with lines to a point. To make it appear 3-D), she came up with a new assignment. Using a lesson from a past class. Kitty had the students draw six squares on a piece of paper, all mapped out with a ruler. Then, by using the ruler like a ?wiper,? or ?clock,? connect the six squares to the point in the middle of the paper. All (or most) of the students were able to understand what they were doing, by the middle of the assignment. Then the next step was to color in the boxes and foreground, with the limit of only three colors per-box.

In the final hour, one of the students asking to see if she was still enrolled in the class, talked about how she prefers painting with berry juice. She is a Lakota Medicine Woman, with a leather pouch of sage around her neck. Kitty went on to describe her as being the type ?to take the assignment and go about it, in a different way.? I truly enjoyed listening to the two of them begin to discuss, in-depth, art and the process to which they approach working. It was inspiring to hear a student talk about his or her own choice of medium, when making art. I think it was for Kitty, as well.


• Michelle Fuller
  Shadowing – Highpoint Center for Printmaking – 3 hours
  
  January 22. Today, at highpoint, we had a group from Minneapolis kids. There were 17 children ranging of ages and 3 adults that got to print with the students. It was the biggest group I worked with yet so it was intimidating. I got to work with Maria and Olivia again. Olivia did the demo in monotype instead of Elizabeth. She did a good job, forgetting some steps but during the class would bring it up during class time. That worked out nicely. There were so many people in the classroom, but there was so much excitement in the room. Most of the class time was running around cleaning the ink and rollers for students, but it was so energetic. I have so much fun working with students that are so excited to be there. When I have taught at some places, it is very heart breaking to teach children that don?t want to be there, and could care less what you are doing.
  
  
• Christa Meyer
  Shadowing – Aki Shibata – 1.5 hours
  
  I haven’t been in a classroom yet, but I’ve been communicating and getting my schedule worked out. Meeting with Aki was really a good way to start off this teaching artist semester. I’ll be shadowing her at Barton and Kenwood throughout the semester, between my other residencies. I am going to Perpich this week, either Wednesday or Friday to visit that classroom.
  
  
• Katrina McMahon
  Shadowing – Barry Klieder – 4 hours

This week I was able to see two different age groups, 7th and 8th graders. They were working on making storybooks with photographs and text. The students were in the stage of finishing up their written stories and taking photographs to go along with the text that was written. The photographs were being taken with camera phones that were collected from people who no longer needed their old phones. Instructions were given at the beginning of the class period as to what was to be done and what they can work on. Then they went off on their own.

I think the students were learning how to manage their time with working at their own pace and independently. I also think that they were learning creativity and how to collaborate different areas in this case writing and photography.

Some students were very far ahead finished with their storyboards and selecting photos while others were very far behind and not having enough photos or written pages (requirement of 30+ storyboards). The teacher was able to go around and have one on one time with each student and guide him or her along to the next step in the process or push him or her along to get to where they needed to be. I also noticed lots of excitement in the 7th graders and how quickly they trusted the teaching artist who is only there for a short amount of time. I am wondering how to get this trust with students when you are only there for a week lesson rather than the two-week lesson like this one?


• Jaclyn Nelson
  Lincoln Elementary School - Kara Johnson – 4th Grade – 11 hours
  
  This is my third week being in Kara Johnson?s fourth grade class. In reading this week, for one of the classes, half of them did not turn in their reading homework. Ms. Johnson quoted Chico with how he said that we all need to make goals and then focus on them to make them happen. She talked about the reading 20 minutes a day is not something she assigns to be mean, but something to help them become better because if they don?t start practicing now it will just get harder as the years go by. During the mini lessons she continued on with the questions before reading by using text features such as captions, headings and bold words to get a feel for what the article is about. When she asked a question she waited until over 90% of hands went up before having someone answer because she wanted everybody?s brains to get thinking.
  
  On the 19th I presented my lesson plan to Ms. Johnson?s homeroom class. The project, called ?In Their Shoes,? dealt with the big idea about if they were immigrants, what would they bring with them? This idea ties well into their social studies curriculum where they have been studying immigration in the East since before I arrived. I wanted them to take what they have learned and make it into a personal connection. The project was a collage with a map in the background and the students tore out images and text from magazines that symbolized what they would bring with them if they were to become an immigrant and they would arrange the composition and paste it down. I first taught them what makes a good composition ? they didn?t know what a composition was. Then I went through my mock up to explain my process and ways of thinking and showed a demo on how to glue down the collage. I gave the students a little over 2 hours to complete the project so they would have the time to do a good job. I made sure that each student checked their compositions in with me or Ms. Johnson before they could glue anything down. After they were finished they wrote 1-2 paragraphs explaining their collage, both conceptually and compositionally.
  
  On the 22nd I spent the reading periods and social studies period finishing typing up their papers from the immigration project in order to have them posted up next to their collage in the hallway for next week. The arts block period I helped one student finish up their floor plan drawing for their dream house.
  
  Throughout this week I wondered how do you manage time if projects/lessons take longer than expected? Are you allowed to leave the building at all if you?re a teacher, like for lunch or running an errand? How are teacher conferences set up and discussed? What if you need to use the restroom really bad when you are in class? How do you go about setting up a seating chart when there are problems with where students are at the moment?
  
  
• Rachel Smith
  No Site attendance this week.
  



• Crystal Tomczak
  No site attendance this week.
  

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Early Start – CVA Student Journal entries from January 4-15

• Rudy Arnold
  Jackson Preparatory Magnet – Christopher Nelson – grade 3 – 11 hours
Jackson Preparatory Magnet – Christopher Nelson – grade 3 –16 hours

1/7/09 7:15-8:15 I met with Mr. Christopher Nelson, he showed me the classrooms that the students learn in, and I will be coming in tomorrow to observe for my first day.

1/6/09 8am-1pm – First day here at Jackson. I will be observing the classroom of Mr. Christopher Nelson. He teaches a class of about 30 fifth graders. The students day starts out with a morning meeting and warm up work. Next is Math+Reading, then applied math, followed by recess/lunch/break. Then a reading period, snack, meeting time, and then dismissal. Today was very interesting.

They have some really great learning techniques. For example, the students have a silent hand sign that has a unique purpose. They touch their right middle and index finger to the palm of their left hand. This sign is used when one student agrees with what another student says. Also, instead of giving the students a consequence, such as sending them to the hallway or detention, when a student is disrupting the class, they offer the opportunity for the student to take a break. They get to go away from the group for as long as they need too. (within reason) A variety of teachers teach the students each day. Mr. Nelson’s teaching is very investigative, cooperative, encouraging, and supportive. The students seem to be always eager to learn. One student is already learning algebra!

1/7/09 8am-2pm – Today was even more interesting. It seems as though each teacher has a different way of getting the students attention, I think the students could benefit from this being more unified. Before each lesson Mr. Nelson resents the goal of the learning time on a small white board. I think when I do my lesson, I will adopt the Goal board as well. Also when he presents the board they all silently put their thumbs up, down or sideways in order to show how much they already know about the subject.

The students have a period of the day where they go to a computer lab. They each sit at their own computer. The computer has some outstanding software that tests each student and advances them when necessary. The Software consists of 30 second problems in math, reading and general problem solving. This was the first time I helped assist the students a lot.

I noticed that all the students have their own organizer on the back of their chairs. The organizer seems to teach the students not to lose things. This would have been beneficial to me.


1/11/09 9:30-2:30

I'm starting to think of a project to do with the 5th graders. Mr. Nelson has a lot of disposable cameras. They expired a year ago through. I think, what I will do is test out one camera, develop it, and if it works then plan for them. I was thinking about doing a writing project from this as well. I could choose to have them photograph just their room or their house, but no people. I will make a powerpoint explaining some vocabulary, along with some of my work. I started helping the kids much more than I have before in math and reading. The kids are starting to warm up to me. I need to find out the cost of developing a role of film. Tomorrow I will be going on a field trip with the students to a one room school house.

1/12/09 8:30-2:30

Today the class went to a one room school house, we spent the first hour of the day making bonnets again for the kids before leaving on the bus. We left on the bus and went to Cahil’s one room school house from the 1900s. The woman who ran the show was very nice, and very very knowledgeable, we were giving clothespins to place on the children’s ears incase they misbehaved. (fortunately we didn’t use them) The kids got to write on old chalk boards and learned many differences and similarities between school life in the 1900s and school life today. It was another great observational experience, today I developed the disposable camera that Mr. Nelson gave to me, the photos did turn out, so this is an option for the lesson.

1/14/09 9:45-2:30

Today I ran a short chapter review with the kids and had them ask some questions about the reading, then the students had to answer a series of questions. The kids did pretty well. It was fun analyzing the different learning styles of the students, some were visual and some were not. I also enjoyed trying to get the student who “hates paying attention” evolved. I succeeded through giving him some helpful suggestions and approaching the lesson as a challenge, I helped him visualize what it would be like to be a character in the book he was reading. I'm still thinking about a lesson plan. The students have Geography maps that they have to learn though out the course of the year, so I think it might be fun to have them each pick a map or part of the world that they are trying to learn, and then cyanotypes it, that would be a lot of fun for the kids. However it involves a lot of learning but not a whole lot of their creative skills. The other option is to use Mr. Nelson’s disposable cameras, I think this would be very beneficial to the kids because they could take the cameras home, on the other hand, the photographical quality is absolutely horrible, they should illegal. So it’s a matter of exploring different possibilities.


• Michelle Fuller
  Shadowing – Highpoint Center for Printmaking – 9.5 hours
  
  January 7 . Today, I went to Highpoint Center of Printmaking for the first time to meet Elizabeth Flinsch. She is the Education & Community Programs Manager at Highpoint! We went over my schedule and because I have never been there before I got a tour. Highpoint is a co-op printmaking studio where artist come in and use a shop with everything you need to print. They also have a pro shop attached to the shop, where the ?master? printmakers print highpoint editions. When I passed, I couldn?t help but think that maybe one day I can get to print in that shop like Santiago Cucullu, one of my favorite printers that did an edition there in 2008. In the back of highpoint is where the classroom is. The room has stations and tables for the students and a big press. The whole experience was very exciting, I was happy I was there and Elizabeth was very inviting so it was hard to be scared about the experience.
  
  January 8. Today was my first day in the classroom. All the helpers get their 30 minutes earlier then the students to set up the inks and everything. I got to meet Maria Johnson an education Fellow and another Education Intern like me, Olivia Nielsen. They were working at Highpoint for the year, so they know everything, so they where very helpful in showing me what to do and where things were. The group we had came from an all girls? school called Visitation. All 15 of them made calligraphy plates before they came to the lab. So Elizabeth just showed the demo on inking and printing the plate. I was surprised how nice most of the girls were, they would say good job to each other. It didn?t seem like a competition like I have seen before. It went pretty smooth for my first day.
  
  January 14. Today at Highpoint we had a group of 10 girls from Hazelton aging from 16 to 20. This time, the students did monotype plates and printed them. This was different then before because I was the only helper. I got to run the press for the students! It was so cool. Some of the students cut out stencils to make their images others just went straight to the plates with the ink. Making cards for their parents, peace signs, flowers and much more. There are students every class that thinks it funny to get ink all over them. There was a girl in this group that started putting it all over her face. I felt like that puts us in a weird position to tell students to behave when it?s really not your job to, because there teachers are there. I learned it is better to not tell them not to, I just told them that the pigments probably would stain their skin for a while and they quickly washed it off there skin. It is makes me so happy to be in a place that the student are so excited to be there and want to do it.
  
  January 15. Today, I went to help highpoint label and stamp the 5000 newsletters they send out to people, organizations and school. I found a couple of people that I knew, including Maria Santiago. There were 10 of us helping, it was nice to meet other people from highpoint and just sit and talk with them.


• Jaclyn Nelson
  Lincoln Elementary School for the Arts – Kara Johnson – 4th Grade – 35.0 hours

This week I was in Kara Johnson’s fourth grade class for the first time. She teaches her homeroom class for half the day with reading and social studies and then she teaches two other classes: another reading class and also an arts block class that changes with which day it is. The reading class is more of an independent learning time. The first ten minutes focuses on a mini lesson and the rest of the time the students read and/or go into reading groups. The mini lessons this week have been focusing on “green questions” which help readers better understand a text. The big idea behind this is that good readers ask questions before, during and after reading a text. This is also transferred over to the social studies class where they also create “green questions” and speculate the text. In social studies they have been concentrating on immigration, specifically this week in the East with Ellis Island.

I believe the students were learning how to speculate information that is given to them, especially within a text. This helps them to comprehend texts since they become more involved with their reading. They helped each other by problem solving through “green questions” where they quizzed one another. Within their independent reading books they learned to comprehend the text and become better readers by taking Accelerated Reader computer quizzes and by creating at least one “green question” out of each page of their book. Some of the students were taken out by groups to meet with Ms. Johnson or a staff member to work on certain aspects of a book.

I helped out monitoring the classroom to make sure the students were on task during their independent reading time. During language arts I helped some students with their reading fluency by having them read aloud to me, me read aloud to them, and by using little tricks like pushing my finger at a certain pace through the words. I would encourage them to create “green questions” and summarize to me what they have read. During social studies this week I mainly helped them with the technical aspects of an online interactive tour of Ellis Island they were exploring. In one of Ms. Johnson’s arts block classes she was teaching them to create a sort of blueprint for their dream house and she asked if I had any tips on perspective so I made an example showing horizon lines and vanishing points.

Throughout this week I was wondering how a teacher can monitor a classroom when she is busy conducting a smaller group. I have also been curious on knowing how much is too much when it comes to an unruly student. How do you know what to expect from a student when you have never worked with them before?

Week of January 11-15th. This is my second week being in Kara Johnson?s fourth grade class. I started the week by joining her homeroom in their art class with Linda Reilley. This helped me to get a better understanding of how the students work with art. For the actual art class portion they mainly watched a movie relating to their art project they were finishing up. From my observations and what Mrs. Reilley discussed with me, I concluded that the students work at a slow pace, but they will do a nice job. This information became helpful when creating my lesson plan.

For Ms. Johnson?s reading classes one mini lesson dealt with fact and opinion. This helps them to speculate and understand what an author?s intentions are, as well as the difference between a fact and opinion because sometimes an author can make an opinion sound like it is a fact. After the lesson they all had an assignment that consisted of writing a paragraph about an animal they would love to have as a pet using facts and opinions. I helped in a mini group to get them started and then helped individually for those who needed help. They had to use their schema (previous knowledge) in order to do this lesson. For the other days they read more articles that dealt with fact and opinion and also doing the ?green questions? and asking questions before reading a text so as to become a responsible reader. The students will better understand a text this way, especially with what the authors? purpose is.

In social studies they learned how to write a friendly letter as if they were an American immigrant writing back to their home country. Ms. Johnson did an example friendly letter in front of the class in order to show them her thinking process. They would include in their letter such things as their job, the landforms and how that affects their job, places they visit on their time off, and some positive and negative things about living in America. The next day the students would create an outline for their letter which would help them the following day when they wrote the letter as an assessment. This assessment/letter is a way for the students to show what they have learned about the East with Ellis Island and immigration.

On the 13th there was a substitute and from being in class with him all day I saw a new side to the 4th graders and also speculated about him as a teacher. The 4th graders became a bit more active around him and I thought that he could have had more authority with them. He seemed to have a lot of patience with them but that also affected the amount of time to get things done. During the immigration assessment a lot of the students were chatting with one another and looking at each others papers. I actually had to move one of the students to a back table because I had already warned her more than once to stop talking to the girl next to her. Then that same girl kept trying to talk with the sub instead of writing her paper.

On the 15th Lincoln had a treat by having a teaching artist come in. His name is Chico and he is well advanced with African drumming. It was fun to sit in on half of his lesson before I had to go. He started out by relating and talking to the students about focusing on goals and how your attitude can change how you feel. He then went on to teaching them some drum rhythms, which was fun to watch. He had this genuine aura about him.

Throughout this week I wondered how do you handle situations were children fight? How, as a sub, can you make sure the students know that you are an authority figure and should show you respect? What do you do if a student is being a smart aleck towards you? How do you encourage a student to keep trying to do something themselves instead of depending on you in order to get anything done? How do you set up for teaching artists to come into the schools?


• Rachel Smith
  SPPS Expo Elementary- Ulla Tervo-Desnick- 2nd - 46 hours
  
  This week shadowing with Ulla Tervo-Desnick was a great learning experience. The object of the lesson plan was the understanding of biography and how books are set up and what is included a book. They learned the difference between fiction and non fiction and what an author and an illustrator are. They learned about parts, like title pages, the synopsis, the table of contents, illustrations. Everyone looked up facts that they found in their particular book. They looked up different parts in their books, like the title page, the author.
  
  All of the early work led to writing their own book, the type of which was going to be a biography. They first had to pick out a famous person and that person was going the central idea of their book. The students were all pretty excited about picking out their famous person. There was a wide range. Some were famous athletes, others were famous composers. Some were presidents. One person chose the woman who created the Barbie, Ruth Handler, another chose Amelia Erhardt
  
  Ulla and I decided that I should incorporate my lesson into their book. I printed out images of everyone's famous person and made them all the same size and divided the picture itself and the blank picture plane into four equal parts. From that they were able to look at where their person sits on the page in relation to the lines and they were able to use that information to help them initiate their understanding of proportion. I kept the language simple. I walked around and helped them understand the proportion and helped them utilize the lines. We worked on noses and eyes. In the end they created beautiful renditions of the famous people they chose that they can include in their books.
  

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