Undergraduate Experiences...
Fall 2021
Student Teaching at Mahoment-Seymour Junior High and Middletown Prairie Elementary School - Mahomet, IL
I was so blessed to work in Mahomet-Seymour CUSD #3 for both of my student teaching placements. I worked with Mrs. Nicole Kelly at the Mahomet-Seymour Junior High for my eight week secondary-level placement first, and we taught art classes to over 350 students in grades 6 through 8. Our day would begin with two sections of seventh grade followed by two sections of sixth, with eighth graders in the afternoon. I also helped with lunch duty and a seventh grade homeroom period at the end of the day. For the first couple of weeks, I observed Mrs. Kelly instruct her classes, then gradually took over one class at a time. Students focused on ideas including pattern and repetition, appropriation, metamorphosis, and movements in art history, while working with media including digital art, colored pencils, air dry clay, and watercolors. Some student work included tessellation designs, zentagles, neurographic paintings, reimagined art history masterpieces, pixel art, and Inktober drawings.
For this first placement, I opted to complete the EdTPA process for additional certification, and I carried out those requirements of designing, implementing, and documenting an original learning segment to all sections of our sixth grade students. This unit focused on reasons for artmaking, how to build up art from meaning, and how to communicate about art. Titled "Why Art?", first students learned about reasons artists from the past and present create(d) work. From there, students participated in reflections to think about reasons for their own artmaking. The unit project was organized on a choice board, with four different medium categories for students to choose from - otherwise, it was open-choice, adhering to TAB (Teaching for Artistic Behavior) guidelines. Students worked on their projects in class and at home, and also completed artist statements to accompany their work. When finished, each student uploaded their work and words to our online class gallery through the Padlet platform, and there could view and respond to each other's work. Some students also volunteered to present their work to the class in person as we wrapped up the unit with an informal critique - "show and tell."
Below I have attached the slideshow that structured this seven-day unit. At the end of the slides, I have included the two scaffolding worksheets I designed for students, as well as an expectations checklist and rubric I used for the unit project. Along with that file, I have the choice board PDF that describes the unit project options, and that students used to guide their work. To view a PDF of the students' Padlet gallery, with names removed, click the third button. Finally, to see a summary of the total curriculum of my first placement, click the final button below.
From the junior high, I travelled across town to complete my primary school placement for my second eight weeks at Middletown Prairie Elementary. I worked with Mrs. Jeramie Truax and over 800 students in grades K-2. Here, the class motto that is displayed in decorative letters on the wall for all to read is, "Treat everybody like it's their birthday!"
In this teaching placement, students completed a wide variety of lessons that introduced visual artmaking language and technical skills - e.g. what is the background of a picture? or what is the proper way to handle scissors? - along with room for unique expression in every project. Lessons often integrated contemporary and culturally diverse references, including artists like Yayoi Kusama and traditions like Dia de los Muertes. Students also completed multiple seasonal and celebratory projects, including polka-dot pumpkins with pastels in the fall and watercolor-painted nutcrackers in early winter. Finally, students learned about collaborative art through projects like the rainbow drip wall (pictured above) inspired by artist Jen Stark, and in collaged landscapes created by sharing texture patterns drawn on colorful construction paper. See the slideshow below for documentation of the process + products of these units.
Not only did I teach curriculum designed by Mrs. Truax, but I also designed some original lessons of my own for the students. A slideshow of these lessons is available to view by following the buttons above, as well as another full summary of my second placement curriculum.
Summer 2021
Parks & Recreation Kids Art Camp - Bloomington, IL
The summer of 2021 was my second summer working with the Bloomington, IL Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Arts youth summer art program. In the summer of 2021, a teaching partner and I designed fourteen arts and crafts classes at a local community center for youth ages 4-15 in two four-week sessions in June and July. This summer, our classes were Building & Sculpting, Painting & Drawing, Glitter Glow & Shine, Fiber Arts, Watercoloring, Landscape Painting, Artist-Inspired, Outdoor Artist, Neon Art, Realism Drawing, Wacky Ways to Paint, Collage Creations, Ceramics, and Portrait Art. The wide variety of projects and age groups really made for a summer of excitement and huge amount of artmaking! I couldn't ask for a better opportunity to prepare me for my student teaching semester the following fall.
Spring 2021
Prairieview-Ogden Elementary School - Ogden, IL
Through ARTE 301: Curriculum, Assessment, and Art Education, I was privileged to join the third grade class of Prairieview-Ogden Elementary Wednesday mornings for six weeks in the spring semester of 2021. I worked with twelve student artists, and we focused on a unit theme of Comfort. First we brainstormed about what Comfort means by creating a word cloud on the computer together, because our first lesson was in a virtual classroom. We learned about how Comfort may be represented by artists in different ways, and why. Some of the artists we discussed were Mary Cassatt and Do Ho Suh, and we also talked about this theme in the non-visual arts, like poetry and music. We learned that Comfort can be found in things, people, places, actions, words, and thoughts, and that we can both bring Comfort to ourselves and Comfort others during difficult times, like the coronavirus pandemic that has greatly impacted all of our lives.
Then when we were united in person in the students' classroom, we took what we learned about Comfort and created collages of words and pictures from the Internet using a free and fun program called Sketchpad. These exercises prepared us for our unit project, The Paper Quilt Project (TPQP). TPQP came from four weeks of slow and steady work, as we learned about how we could mimic in construction paper some of the techniques used in quiltmaking. We talked about the history of quiltmaking and the close connection it has to community artmaking, specifically focusing on how the women in generations of the families of Gee's Bend, Alabama, came together around their famous quilts. Each student created sixteen paper squares, four to keep, and the rest to give away to other students in the class, so that in the end, each quilt was a compilation of comforting words and drawings created by all of us. We arranged these on a backing and attached to the reverse side individual labels, where each student listed their quilt's unique name and their own artist's statement to tell about how these quilts came about. Overall, it was a beautiful experience with a fantastic group of young artists, and this is a project I will surely bring along to my future art classrooms.
The Paper Quilt Project does not stand alone in my work as a senior in my semester. TPQP was inspired by my own art making in my capstone studio arts course for my BFA in Painting. This work produced QUOTEQUILT, a quilt directed by that same theme of Comfort. Both QUOTEQUILT and The Paper Quilt Project were displayed at the BFA Exhibition 2021 at the Krannert Art Museum on the University of Illinois campus in May 2021. Because they so much influenced each other, it was only right to present these sister projects together.
The following is my Artist Statement on the two projects issued with the Exhibition:
QUOTEQUILT is a resting place for body and mind. It’s a safe place to decelerate, decode, and digest. There’s something very soothing and human about a quilt, composed of parts that have their own histories, just like I do. Its physical presence is affecting, but so is the process of meticulously and methodically making it real. With such sudden and widespread adoption of social distancing and the transition from real-space to digital-space, clinging to comfort is orienting: little scraps of the old familiar feel like treasures, and the wrap of a quilt like a hug.
Self-comforting in fabric and text may or may not be enough on its own. At twenty-four, Christopher McCandless wrote, “Happiness is only real when shared”; there is sharing in the living history of quiltmaking. To bring this concept to a local grade school community during uncertain times through co-constructed paper quilts in my piece’s sister work, The Paper Quilt Project, is an act of returning to finding comfort in each other. For ARTE 301: Curriculum, Assessment, and Art Education, I had the pleasure of working with a group of third graders on the topics of comfort and quiltmaking. Translating my own art into a lesson plan that became The Paper Quilt Project was a challenge and a joy. Working within our limitations and the huge ability and ideas of these students, we created paper quilts built from squares designed with comforting words and images, and exchanged by each student for each student. It’s an honor to present these works together with QUOTEQUILT and credit these artists for their big ideas and big hearts. For the rest of us, “The quieter you become, the more you can hear” (Dass); taking the time to really listen to these voices can reveal so much. Their participation in the artmaking community is their right, and the community is all the better for it. I am all the better as an artist because of it.
To view QUOTEQUILT and The Paper Quilt Project more in-depth, click the button below.
Summer 2020
Parks & Recreation Kids Art Camp - Bloomington, IL
see Summer 2021
Fall 2019
Stratton Elementary School - Champaign, IL
For ARTE 204: Everyday Arts Lab, I had the opportunity to work with a teaching partner to organize and facilitate an eight-week afterschool arts program at Stratton Elementary School in Champaign, IL in the fall of 2019. We led a group of sixteen first and second graders through six two-day projects that culminated in a public showcase of students' work. We worked under the guidance of our professor Jennifer Bergmark and teaching assistant Seoyeon Kim, and all of our projects were build on the foundational theme of Belonging: how belonging is created in the places we are at, people we are with, and things we do that are meaningful to us. Below are some highlights of the program.
Lesson Plan
Class Presentation
Lesson Plan
Presentation
Lesson Plan
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Lesson Plan
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Summer 2019
Camp Micah - Bridgton, ME
In Summer 2019, I was blessed to spend two months on the other side of the country at a Jewish summer camp in Bridgton, ME. With a talented arts and crafts team, we each offered original lesson plans to campers ages seven to fifteen in four classes each day for five days each week. Working with limited materials and many special events, this opportunity helped me see the importance of being resourceful, adaptive, and open-minded with project building. These pictures show the projects that the kids seemed to have the most fun with, and projects that I had a lot of fun facilitating! The chance to teach arts and crafts at summer camp was a wonderful first step into building lesson plans, working with the kids, teaching in a team setting, and experimenting with new ideas.