Kristy

Going to an urban high school and not going there to go to school felt weird at first for me. Compared to my school, the atmosphere was more welcoming. Students better and were more likely to joke with teachers than be hostile. I can truely say that the reform for both of the high schools seem to be working very well for the students.

I enjoyed how at Jeremiah Burke, the students seemed to feel at home and comfortable. They were very welcoming even though they were shocked to see our group when they first walked into the class. I talked with one student who said he had just moved to Dorchester from Milford and that he never took art class before. He told me that even though he isn’t very good at making stuff he enjoyed it.

In the second class it was a bigger group and more students were doing their own projects. They seemed a bit more shy than the first class. and we talked about in our discussion that smaller groups need less time to get to know everyone and are more likely to branch to outsiders (us). The bigger class still wasn’t comfortable as a whole and that makes it harder to talk to a brand new person, when you you don’t know your classmates.

Another thing I liked about the class room was the Alyssa’s lesson plan and how she has a Do Now bored to get students thinking critically and engaged in the class ASAP. The students can tell she has love for her teaching and they appreciate that she works on her own project along side of them. I believe her working with them encourages them to keep with the project and to delve into their imaginations. They were making paper mache vessels and Alyssa told her students she was thinking of putting a baby elephant or something in side of it to act like a womb and the students were very curious to how she would do it.

At Dorchester High we met Chandra Ortiz, who is also a very inspiring woman. She is piloting Dorchester’s first art program in a new building that she is planning on having decorated with murals painted by students. I have to say she is a human machine with the amount of responsibility she takes on because students need art.

People need an outlet. Art helps you think critically and outside of what you normally would. It helps get all the stuff that clouds your mind out.
School systems are designed for math and english improvement, but there are still tons of kids who can’t read above 6th or even 5th grade level. Crazy is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. Why do politicians even THINK about cutting the budget for education to cut more art programs and such when there are numbers that prove that regular art and music classes improve learning all together?

For the museum tour group, my group is going in chronological order. We discussed our game plan for conducting the tour. We decided that we are going to have the students look around and sketch all while asking questions or us striking conversation for the first 15 or so minutes and use the last 5 minutes to discuss their impressions of the art in the room and wrap up to move onto the next room.

First class was exciting. I was happy to learn that we are going to a lot of places and meeting a good number of people. I am looking forward to the experiences and learning this class has to offer.

We had our first assignment after Beth and Jen briefed us on the semester ahead.

We were put into groups. Each group was given a new media art work and told to see it as a student’s. the groups then had to come up with an assignment that would inspire or direct a student to make the given piece.

My group was Sydney, Jon, and Lindsay. Our assignment project was from the artist Stelarc. I think I have to link his site somewhere else. I dunno, I’ll figure it out.

Anyways, Assignment.
The piece was a robotic arm hand extension that would sit on your arm. It is connected to a whole bunch of wires and pulse monitors that rest on muscles in your legs and abdomen. The electric signal of the muscles when they move trigger the hand to move in a certain way.

The assignment that we developed that would be “responsible” for this product was designed around a whole class. The class was exploring alternative body types. Different types of bodies, bodies that are extraordinary – like small people, people with amputations, people with physical mutation. The class would be about thinking outside the box and address exaggeration in nature. Students would do form studies of models using an media they choose. Their final project would be to pick a model of their choice and create an apparatus that would emphasize the model’s special form and provide some kind of function.

After we presented our group’s work the issue of word choice was brought up. I have to keep in mind that the words one uses can be taken differently in certain contexts. And I have to be sensitive about being subjective when presenting ideas.

I haven’t had the chance to write in here yet. When I first opened it I didn’t really know what to say.

Now, I have internet and now I can blog regularly :]

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