My students do stuff all the time that secretly cracks me up tremendously, but I have to be stern and enforce the rules. Especially with 7th period high school art.

Like one time, about twelve students were still just outside the door as the tardy bell rang. Apparently one person was blocking the doorway. Within seconds, the barricade was weakened by the weight of incoming traffic. A dozen students spilled into the door like a dam had busted. Many nearly fell.

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A couple of weeks ago in 6th period art, a construction man working on the auditorium came in to collect packages which had been misdelivered to my room. He came in and out several times to get six boxes.

One of my 16-year-old female students said quite clearly when he first entered, “Who’s this fine piece of man meat?” The man was in fact gorgeous but certainly in his twenties. He was grinning ear to ear (from embarrassment or because it was funny,) but did not respond and did his work.

Upon his reentry once, she asked him if he was single, and he showed her his wedding band.

When he left I asked her if she was trying to get him arrested.

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I’m still a teaching student, in my final semester before moving on to my Masters classes. One of my current classes is actually my student teaching. I have a very unusual student teaching situation – instead of having three classes per day with a master teacher, I am all on my own with six classes per day plus a prep. This is an extremely good but daunting experience. It’s all up to me to keep on top of everything, not to mention create an entire year’s curriculum on my own for both art and drama. I think I’m doing well. One of the ways that my credential program keeps tabs on me is an evaluator who observes eight of my lessons throughout the semester. For each day he visits, I need to provide him a fancy-schmancy lesson plan, something I ordinarily have zero time to do. So, he’s coming this Wednesday.

I’m sharing my lesson plan with you. The format is based on Madeline Hunter’s recommendations. I adapted the rubric from this similar lesson. I borrowed the critique questions from Helen D. Hume’s book “The Art Teacher’s Book of Lists” (a lifesaver). The anticipatory set for the lesson will include transparencies of these artworks (self portraits by Leonardo daVinci, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gaugin, Robert Arneson, followed by the image below).

“The Black Felt Hat” by Bob Kilvert, from Creative Collage Techniques by Nita Leland and Virginia Lee Williams.

I’ll post up my own self-portrait collage as I progress on it.

UPDATE December 27, 2006

Here’s the initial self-portrait line drawing I did first in graphite, then in felt-tip pen:

Here’s the final collage I did based on the line drawing above:

Here’s a detail of one eye, showing that I did not merely cut out someone else’s eye from a magazine photo. I pieced it together using all kinds of sources to create an eye that was more authentically mine:

UPDATE 01-05-07: Student Work

These are some of the best work from my high schoolers:

There was a wide range of skill level, creativity and degree of completeness at both the middle school and high school. Here’s a sample from the middle school:

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I’m not going to give y’all a fancy lesson plan here, but I will share some stuff I created for collage lessons. I created these myself, and so far the unit has gone over well with my students.

Lesson One: Torn Paper Color Wheel
Students use a color wheel template to create a collage of torn paper from color magazines. This project took two 50-minute class periods for grades 6-12.

Materials:
Color wheel template (13kb PDF file)
Lots of full-color glossy magazines, catalogs, mailers, etc.
Bottle glue or glue sticks
(no scissors!)

Art elements explored:
Color
Texture

Torn paper collage gives the color wheel a very textured, layered and artsy effect. One student said, “I didn’t realize how much fun it is to tear paper!” I asked them to fill in the triangles, overlapping the edges, to show smooth transitions between color blocks. I told them that several shades of the same hue are great too. They often cooperated with each other in hunting down and identifying specific colors: “Is this red-purple?” Most students dove into this project with much enthusiasm.

My demonstration collage is below.

Lesson Two: Painting with Colored Paper
In the previous lesson, students used colored paper as a sort of paint. Students create an image of an insect, fish, lizard, or flowers using the same technique. They may create their own image of one of those four categories, or use one of the templates I drew in Illustrator. They may either tear paper as before, or use scissors. I expect this project to take two 50-minute class periods for grades 6-12.

Materials:

Image templates: butterfly, lizard, fish and flowers (47kb PDF file)
Lots of full-color glossy magazines, catalogs, mailers, etc.
Bottle glue or glue sticks
Scissors

Art elements explored:
Color
Texture

My demonstration collage is below.

UPDATE 01-05-07: Student Work

Here’s a sample of my high-schoolers’ work:

One of my middle schoolers, struck with brilliance:

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Reposted from previous blog, dated October 12 2006.

This was our eighth week in my school district. During the first week of classes, I had my middle schoolers and my high schoolers do pre-instruction drawings of another student.

Then I taught them drawing skills using tons of hands-on activities based on the lessons of some of the best-known teachers out there, including Betty Edwards, Mark Kistler and Mona Brooks.

Today’s lesson was to copy an image of a profile view of the human skull, using a full range of values. Below are some results from one of my middle school classes. The students range from 6th through 8th grade.

Each image is from a different student: the drawing on the left is what they accomplished today, and the drawing on the right is their pre-instruction portrait from eight weeks ago. Next week, they will do another portrait of a fellow student, using values and a more solid understanding of proper facial proportion, using your pencil as a sighting/measuring tool, positive and negative space, and perceiving detail. I hope to get even more exciting befores-and-afters then.

Click on an image below for a larger version.

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I live in northern California and teach in an urban high school. I am currently teaching three graphic design classes and two of web design. This is my second year of full-time teaching. I have previously taught art and drama full time at a rural high school, art part-time at a charter high school, and web design and graphic design part time at a community college.

I am 40 years of age. So far, I’ve had four college majors and about forty jobs, including doing freelance web and graphic design for six years. It may sound flaky but it’s put me in a great position to be a teacher. Of many subjects. I want to teach biology too some day, and I passed the teacher’s subject exam in that subject to qualify.

I am beginning my MFA in art, now that I have figured out how to expedite my lesson planning.

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