School Site Visit (Part 1)

This week, in Intro to Art Teaching, professor Silva conducted a school visit trip to the Oak View Elementary School, where I got to experience an art class by Mrs.William and Ms.Sousa. It was an eventful experience, and fruitful as well. Honestly, it’s been a whole decade since I last visited an elementary school, let alone one in the US, so it was truly a new and eye opening experience for me.

After checking in with the main office, we were taken to Mrs.William classroom first. I got to see how she organizes her classes folders and works very neatly, not to mention her classroom even has a whole kiln, which I thought was surprising. On her walls, there were posters about the acceptable noise levels in class, posters about how to communicate, to listen and also a poster about how skin color can range from the brightest to darkest, which I thought looked similar to a color scale. Also, there was also a poster on countries' flags, which speaks a lot about how she views the multicultural element of her class. After observing the classroom for a little bit, I made my way to the corner of the room and watched as the kids poured in, excitedly getting their work back to continue their ongoing threading exercise. As the kids worked, Mrs.William would walk around the room, checking in on each table of 4-5, assisting them in executing the task and also answering any questions they might have. Overall, I’d say the class was noisier than expected, even when the kids are just talking normally, not exactly screaming or yelling, but just kids being excited to talk and chat with their friends. I noticed how Mrs.William would just kind of softly ask them to keep their voices down and let that noise level carry on, surprisingly to a level that caused me a whole headache. Another thing that I was not expecting was that towards the middle of class, Mrs.William asked the kids to make a line and snaked through the whole classroom, so that they could look at everyone else's art works, and gave critique or words of encouragement. The kids were super cute, as they expressed their words in an honest and positive language, supporting their friends and pointing out works that stood out to them. Right after this critique session, we moved on from the class, letting the children get back to their projects.

Ms.Sousa had an entirely different approach to her classroom. Starting from how she organized the folders and such, the whole rack looked quite messy, though it seems like she could pinpoint any child’s work if asked about them. Then there’s the noise level of the class. Even though the kids weren't exactly keeping quiet or anything, they kept their voices down to a minimum and got out of their seats only when necessary. I asked a girl what they were working on for their painting and was surprised with the answer that I got, filled with terminology like foreground, background and base color; I think it’s such a wonderful thing for the kids to be introduced to such concept at a young age, though I do wonder how long would they retain such knowledge for. As the class went on, when the kids got a little out of hand and noisier, Ms.Sousa started this clapping gesture, and all the kids mimicked her, quietly listening to her instruction afterwards. I thought it was a nice practice for the children, giving control back to the teacher and getting the class under control. Another thing that was very to see was how Ms.Sousa handled cleaning up. Apparently, the class has gotten used to where everything is and once the time is up, all kids managed to work together, by table, to clean up and to rearrange class back to the way it was. This was really cool to witness, because my impression of kids has always been that they are extremely messy and wouldn’t usually clean up after themselves.

Couple of things to add was that all the kids were around the same age, of 4th graders and perhaps because it is a public school, all colors and cultures can be found here in the classrooms. With such a diverse group, I am amazed at how the teachers manage to teach and deliver so much knowledge to them, given through both lectures and in person assistance. Truly lovely seeing how the kids echoed their teachers' teaching when we asked them what they had learned to implement on their artworks.

Overall, I think the experience was one of a kind. As I got to witness two very distinct personalities and approaches to art education, I got to witness some of the ideology about art education mentioned in my readings being practiced in real time, from how the student working periods would be conducted, to critique and clean ups. I think that though the experience was a positive one overall and there were a ton of things to learn from, including how the teachers cooperating technologies in their communications and documentations of their classes, personally, I have come to realize that to teach children at such a young age, it really depends on not just the love the craft, but the love for children themselves.