Reflection #15: Where Am I Heading?

I figure that I am heading in a better direction for my teaching and for teaching my future students with the arts. I feel like I am more comfortable to teach the arts and I have many resources and tools at my fingertips. I feel like there are different areas of the arts that I can focus on throughout the school year. I hope to be able to try all of these areas and be able to improve and become better in my teaching.

I feel that I can do this through practicing and not being afraid to experiment and try new things. I hope to also be open to my other colleagues as well and be able to try out their ideas to know if it will be good for my students. Hopefully I can get to the point where I can feel good about my teaching through the arts.

I hope that my students will enjoy it as well and as much as I have. I hope that they can see the benefits of having the arts. Surely, I will teach them how they can appreciate the arts and become more exposed to them. I hope that they can see their creativity increasing and their critical thinking skills being enhanced. I hope that it will be something that they will always enjoy!

Reflection #14: My Journey

What I have learned about myself throughout this semester is having a more open mind for the arts. I felt that I always had, but this helped for me to have it grow more and more. I am beginning to understand how important it is to integrate the arts into the classroom. It helps enrich the creativity of the students so they can become more independent thinkers and solve more problems on their own. It has helped me to learn that there is no right way or wrong way to do something, but that they can feel safe and feel comfortable and accepted by themselves and their peers.

So I will begin to start to implement and create lesson plans that will integrate art more into the lessons. I will be more open about using dance and theater rather than drawing and painting as what I think of first when the arts comes to mind. I want them to be exposed to all different types of art forms and to allow them to be able to enjoy and to really enhance their thinking through all different kinds of art forms that they learn best from.

Now I will try to have the courage to be able to implement the arts more into lesson plans so that the students can learn and become more independent and creative in their learning. I want them to be exposed to what has made the world what it is today through the different art forms. There is so much to learn and appreciate. By having them be exposed, I hope that it will inspire them to love the arts and to expose it to others as well.

Reflection #13: Field Experience

What have I learned from my experience? I have learned so much from being in field. Our lessons we did for our field experience went well. Actually, one of our lessons went well with the students drawing the different types of Roman pillars, but the other lesson we had where we integrated process drama into the lesson didn't do too well. The students had been a little more rambunctious that day and it was harder to keep them focused. They did really well with the role-on-the-wall activity, but the pantomime activity, they weren't cooperating very well with it. We did have a good experience with the pillars though. They did a great job with identifying the different types and incorporating them well in their drawings of their ideal home.

So what can I do better? I can better understand now that the students need to have clear directions of what they are going to do in the different activities for process drama or for any other activity we might do with them for the future. I would have to know the students a little better to know what worked for them and what didn't. We found out after we did that lesson was that the students did not do well sitting on the floor trying to listen. They liked to work better in groups and being able to discuss what they can learn from their classmates in their groups. We could have done that in a different way where it would have worked better for them and for us too.

Now what do I plan to do in the future? I plan to be able to spend time and try these lessons again and work with what works well with the students. I hope to be able to keep the same activities, but maybe switch out activities for different ones. It would have probably worked better if the students with partners had an interview with each other about the story and the characters within the story rather than the pantomime. It's just a matter of experimenting and trying of what works and what doesn't work. All in all, I think it comes down to knowing your students well enough to know what would be best for them and their best learning environment.