Read & React Day 3

I am very excited to be talking about Richard Serra. I have never really know what to think about his art, but last summer while in the Toronto airport I stumbled onto his piece below Tilted Spheres. It was not until seeing his work and the sheer  magnitude of his work that I really started to appreciate it. Walking around the tilted spheres, it felt as though Serra had discovered a way to defy gravity... pretty sweet!

 

 

 



The Transmediation article speaks to a class many of us have take with Nick Kramer! I loved that class and how it opened my eyes to a totally different world and the way that now I analyze what I see a lot more and in a very different way. I really like how the article pointed out different exercises for older students, but some of the questions they were discussing are really great to be asking yourself about your curriculum every year.

"How do students make sense of what they learn?"

"What contradictions exist in the knowledge they acquire, invent, or interpret from the texts they read in classrooms?" (Ladislaus M. Semali  Judith Fueyo)

These questions are interesting from the stand point that we always have to put ourselves in our students shoes and try to understand what they are thinking or how they are thinking. In my art room I only get to see my kids once a week, so the down time can be great for them to process and really put some thought into their work, but it can also be too big of a time space. I also think it is important when considering contradictions, that we consider the things that they learn at home can be vastly different from what we are teaching them, and sometimes they are opposing views.
There was one other quote from the article that really spoke to me:
"Among the various aims we consider important in education, two are especially so. We would like our children to be well informed-that is, to understand ideas that are important, useful, beautiful, and powerful. And we also want them to have the appetite and ability to think analytically and critically, to be able to use what they know to enhance their own lives and to contribute to a democracy." (Ladislaus M. Semali  Judith Fueyo)
I just kept thinking can you imagine if when schools designed their curriculum's, they were thinking about these ideas rather than what is the state going to test our students on. The approach of a more rounded education is something that  needs to be emphasized in our schools, a lot of children are not being taught what they used to.

Freedman- These chapters were so much about the need for art history, but also the need for all of the views to be taught, including political issues, both sides of the story, artists of all kinds. It is also interesting that Freedman is connecting to the idea of symbols and visual culture. When I design my curriculum, I started with the thought of what looks cute and fits the standards, to now I design my curriculum to yes fit the standards, but to also actively engage my students interests so that they art they are making is meaningful to them. "Learning takes place based on cognitive connections, including those that relate to emotion, and more connections mean greater learning. Learning is dependent on student engagement, which is an indicator of emotional investment." (Freedman 2003)
It is not uncommon to get into a project and if most are not interested, we scrap it and find something better. Being able to teach students about those visual symbols has been very interesting considering how much information comes at them each day. "Visual culture includes symbolic forms that make us want to look." (Freedman 2003) Our students are decoding images and information frequently and giving those skills of understanding has opened a whole new door for artistic development for my students and myself.