Second Observation - Verve
Observation #2: October 29, 2015
Happy Halloween, Colleagues!
So yesterday, I was up bright and early, before the sunrise, and off to highschool! It was honestly quite fun to take a bus, with highschol students, and to be going to the same school as they were going to, and also to attend the same classes. This was a new experience for me and I greatly enjoyed it.
I arrived and was in class for 8:45am - again with the wonderful, outgoing, and giddy grade 10 morning class. Ms. W. called the the class to order at 9am, this took a moment. But she was patient and the class quickly came together and quieted down. She gave a firm deadline (next class) for a major project that the class was currently working on, immediately followed by a strict warning to students to use their class time wisely, and if needed use their focus period and or lunch break to meet the deadline. Having said this, I should clarify that Ms. W. does not use deadlines within her art classes. Art is one of those subjects that fights tradition naturally as it's much less structured – content wise, than arithmetic or biology. Ms. W. understands this and therefore does not dock marks for late work. However, she will give the student A temporary fail on missing work until it is handed in. This generally gets the attention of a student who has missing work. So when Ms. W. gives her classes a deadline it is mainly to tell them that it is time to move on, and the current work must be completed and “put to sleep” (a term in art used to signify when an artist “pauses” working on the current project or piece).
After the class had started she went around the class and spoke with every student individually, despite the fact that it has been a long, hard week, and she was tired. She still made the effort. She was asking them how they were doing personally, giving advice on the card project and how to properly finish it, and should the student have any work missing she would remind them to finish it and hand them in as soon as possible. She continued to make many rounds through the class, as well as her other classes later in the day, answering questions, checking on individual progress (and therefore class progress), engaging in conversations with her students, and watching carefully for any individual teaching opportunities. For example she would take notice if a student was struggling with a specific aspect and then show them a way of tackling the said aspect, explain to them what was missing or too strong, or even simply encourage them. I observed a noticed that Ms. W. made a point to help or at least speak with every student in her class (both grade 10 and grade 20).
Ms. W. also made lots of time for me. She explained to me how her "deadlines" with students worked, why she does it like that, and what programs she utilizes to achieve this. She allowed me to view a couple of her marketing rubrics, the attendance program that her school uses, and some of her notes regarding marking of student work. She explained how the school has auto phone calls for students who are absent from a set number of classes without explanation. This is quite useful, how there are some students who skip entire days, run home, and then delete the school’s messages on the answering machine before their parents come home. So sometimes, especially with certain trouble students, Ms. W. will e-mail the parents as well.
Ms W. has a very original, brilliant, and unique section to all of her marking called Verve. Verve stands for Visual Nerve. A quality in art that measures that wow factor, the originality of a piece, and most importantly the artistic risk involved in the piece. Although this may not sound very useful to some, and some may argue that it is poor marking, I believe that this is a vital revelation for myself and is something that I will certainly take with me and use in my future teaching career. I highly value and I'm incredibly thankful to Ms. W. for sharing such a profound discovery and tool with me.
And on that note I'm signing off,
William L. B.
SA Councillor
Education Student, Fine Arts Major.
Line Cook