Pittsburgh Science and Technology Academy, or SciTech for short, is a public high school that has a completely technology based art class. The art classroom is a computer lab where Photography, Video, and Graphic Design classes are taught. While at SciTech I was able to teach animation, manual photography, and Adobe Photoshop and Premiere.
When students come into the classroom, they go directly to their computers, log onto Moodle, which is the schools Internet learning platform, where educational materials, such as Powerpoints and instructions can be delivered and submitted.
The students immediately start the day’s introduction, which is usually a short lesson about a relevant artist or artwork. Then one student is selected to be the discussion leader while another student keeps track of who shares out. Students are expected to be highly involved in class discussions and receive a point each day for sharing out. The period ends in a similar way when students complete the summary for the day, which usually takes the form of a reflection on the day’s lesson.
While at SciTech I became involved in the SciTech News club, in which students would create a 3-minute news video each day, which served as the schools daily announcements. I would help coordinate the students as necessary, as well as aiding with any filming or editing problems.
During my time at SciTech, I participated in Beyond Diversity training through Pittsburgh Public School. This was a two-day professional development, which helped teachers think about how race and privilege play a role in the classroom, as well as in life.
Lesson and Student Work
Students will be taking street photography with the work of William Eggleston and Instagram in mind. The goal for this project is for students to document 2015 SciTech campus by taking pictures of something “insignificant” or ordinary and overlooked that interests the students or are visually interesting. The students will learn the following techniques and look at the following artists to make their photographs more interesting: Crop (Bill Brandt), Close up (Ersnt Haas, Paul Capinigro, Edward Weston), Far away (Richard Misrach), “all over composition”(Andreas Gursky), Strange angle (Bill Brandt), reflection/ symmetry (Ernst Haas, Minkinnin)
Not-So-Instagram Photos displayed in SciTech's Hallway
Students will learn about comedy, specifically what makes something funny. The students will view examples of comedy as portrayed in animated cartoons. These examples will inspire the students to create a short (30 sec) funny animation. These animations will begin as a storyboard. Students will then use Photoshop in order to draw the animated frames, which will then be exported to Premier, where it will be turned into a video.
My first student teaching placement was at Pittsburgh Langley K-8. The school is in an urban environment and while I was there I taught kindergarten thru 3rd grade art classes. All of the art projects I created taught students about the elements of art and followed the Pittsburgh Public School standards.
Students at Langley K-8 had a rewards system in place in which if students were well behaved and cooperating all class, they would receive one sticker in their name card. For every 5 stickers received, the students would earn a prize. If the student did not behave as expected, the student does not receive a sticker, and the reason for loss of sticker was written in their name card.
I used varied instructional delivery to keep the younger students attention. I used puppets of the primary and secondary colors to show students that the complimentary colors were ”best friends”. I also would make “magic tricks” such as drawing in white crayon on a piece of white paper and make the drawing appear with watercolor paints. I would use posters with various visual examples from art history as well as sample projects I created to inspire students.
While at Langley K-8, I took part in team meetings. This is where teachers would talk about different events going on at Langley, as well as discuss how students were doing. I also participated in a professional development meeting specifically for art educators at the Manchester Craftsman’s Guild, where the teachers talked about Pittsburgh Public School’s arts curriculum as well as art making demo’s that could be used as potential lesson ideas.
Lesson and Student Work
Students will create a watercolor painting with crayon resist of an underwater scene. Students will use their imaginations to think up what kinds of things live underwater. This will serve as the background for the symmetrical fish they create. Students will receive a piece of paper folded in half and a fish to trace, which they will cut out to create a symmetrical fish. The student will then cut different scraps of paper and markers to decorate their fish with shapes and lines.
