Parent Teacher Conferences

Yesterday was the Trans-Am/Dakar Rally/Tour de France of teaching. A full day of teaching followed by an evening of parent conferences, a room tour for a local business, and my regular late night Wednesday college drawing class. 14 hours of school. It was a long day, but I’m not tired.

I’m energized!

Nothing gets my motor going like seeing parents latch onto the ideas of Standards Based Assessment. The parents I spoke to last evening voiced some concern about not seeing grades until the report card. But, they were all reassured when I told them about collecting a body of work that could be accurate in assessing a standard. I thought one woman was going to give me a hug when I told her that the number grade was just an estimate, and that I wouldn’t punish her child if he had a rough start in my class. I talked to all parents about how the standard score was a representation of the most recent demonstration of a skill.

Somehow, I also manage to build energy just by describing my method of grading. You see, I am using SBAR because I BELIEVE in it as the most accurate representation of student learning. When I have a chance to recount why I like this method of assessment, I become more passionate about using it in my classroom.

A New Semester, A New Approach

Today, I am grading the first batch of assignment/assessments for my Art II and Advanced Art classes. Instead of starting with a huge project that only assessed a single standard, I began this semester with three 4″ x 5″ painting assignments. Each painting was assigned for a single day, with a day at the end for make-up, and a final day for evaluating and assessing. I strategically assigned the paintings so that we could assess all 6 classroom standards. This will be the baseline for the semester.

One of the problems I had last semester with my recording system was that some standards weren’t assessed very early, and I had to field questions about why there were open spaces in the grade book. Hopefully this will take care of that inconvenience, and also provide an accurate baseline for my students. This way, my students can identify their weaknesses and focus their efforts to strengthen this area.

Now on to the giant project… 6 weeks of acrylic painting.

The Day of Reckoning Has Arrived

Standards Based Assessment and Recording has been a success this semester. There are always bumps with any system, but talking to kids today and yesterday as part of our final grade reporting has made me think that the students get it.

I’ve read a couple blog posts on recording semester and quarter grades in the Standards Based system. My system is incredibly simple, but is based on a complex relationship that is developed during the semester’s conversations.

I ask students two questions, “What do you want?” and, “Why do you want it?”

Most kids are honest about their progress. They know how hard they have tried. They know what each of their projects looks like, and what they wanted it to look like. They also know better than anyone else what their artistic limitations are.

The conversation usually progresses like this:

Me: What do you want?

Russell: How ‘bout an 83

Me: Why do you want it?

Russell: My drawings look real good, but my watercolor projects are not stellar. I do all the assignments, and…

Me: I agree, but I’m also interested in how you do in each standard. Looks like your composition standard is low. Can you tell me how to use the Rule of Thirds to add interest to your focal point?

Russell: It has something to do with dividing the paper, and placing the subject on the intersections.

Me: Great! Maybe this should standard should be a 3 instead of a 2. Do you use the rule of thirds in any of your work?

Russell: No.

Me: OK, we’ll just leave it as a 2 till you prove it in an assignment. So you are comfortable with an 83%? Me too. Be sure to let your mom know that you wanted the %83.

How do you do it differently? How would you change what I’m doing?

Critiques and Comments are encouraged.

Authentic Assessment

How in-depth and accurate are the assessments in your classroom?

For most of my career as an Art teacher, I have prided myself on having what I thought were some of the most authentic assessments in any curriculum in our school. Either you can draw or you cannot. Either your painting looked like a bottle or it didn’t. For simple things this worked fine. I have found that while this can evaluate a student’s ability to paint or draw or sculpt, it does a less accurate job of evaluating learning in conceptual standards like Composition or Engaging the Viewer. I am constantly looking for ways to refine my assessment to glean as much information as possible.

For my latest and most open assessment method, I have come up with what I call “Prove It” assignments. Instead of lecturing for a couple days on rule of thirds or some other topic, I send students out to research on the Internet. I am present to answer questions, and facilitate the self-directed learning. When the students understand the concept, they prove what they learned with a blog post and an art project. When the artwork is complete, I have my students work individually through a series of questions designed to start a conversation about the assigned standard. I meet with students one-on-one to discuss their learning, and ask them to “prove it.”

My questions often sound like this, “Where in your drawing did you use overlapping to create the illusion of space?” or “Tell me about how you used leading lines to draw attention to your focal point.”

This method of guiding my student’s learning sometimes means that I give the same lecture 30 times in one day. The difference is that I am asking kids about their own artwork. Many of these students would have drifted off during a whole-class lecture. It is too easy to shrink back in a class of 15 or 20. Some students plan up front to not answer question. But when it is just me, one student, and their artwork, real learning takes place. This is the most authentic assessment method I have ever used.

 

What do you think? Do you have a more authentic method in your classroom? I would love to hear about it.

Comments and Critiques are always welcome.

 

Standards based assessment in practice

This first semester has been a huge experiment in the 2D art classroom. Each assignment has been structured to meet specific standards. Each standard has been evaluated at some point during the semester. From those statements, you’d assume that everything was easy and moving along smoothly. It is not.

When I began the semester, I tried to evaluate three and four standards per assignment. I used a complex rubric, and students were able to calculate some of their progress, but the process of evaluating often overshadowed the actual growth students were making. I quickly determined that it was important to evaluate only one standard at a time. This allowed the assessment to be more in-depth, and focused. My plan is to begin my classes next time with a series of small assignments, each targeted at a single specific standard. This will set the base line for students, and allow them to quickly experience a variety of assessments.

The second major problem I ran into was that beginning students cannot meet end-of-year standards in the first week of class. My fancy rubrics assumed that students could achieve a 4/4 in each standard on the first project. I had not thought about what would happen if a student had perfect scores in the first week. The result was that I had students who were ready to quit creating after they had achieved perfect scores.  To correct this, I am working to devise a plan where students standard scores fluctuate up or down (previously only up) based on the most recent assessment. The limiting factor in this is the school grade book application I’m using to track growth.

So far, I have opted to record scores in GoEdustar, our district’s chosen grade recording system. To make standard scores visible, but not count towards a mathematically calculated grade, I have entered a letter followed by the score. “x2.5″ This fools the grade book into thinking that there is no value for a particular assignment. This system of recording presents one obvious problem. If a new value is entered in the grade book, the old value disappears. I believe that new data should be more important that old data, but in the art room, it is possible that early data is more accurate than late data. If early data represents an ability in a comfortable media like pencil, and later data represents ability in a more challenging media like watercolor, then I would rather take the early pencil data into account for the end of quarter reckoning. If the early data is erased, I have no choice but to record the later data.

One of my colleagues, @chrisludwig, uses a series of spreadsheets for his grade book. Each student has their own page of the spreadsheet on which is recored individual assignment with appropriate standard assessments. While @chrisludwig‘s approach is more informational than mine, and solves most of the problems I’ve encountered, it is also noticeably more complex and time consuming. Maybe I’m just being lazy. My plan for next semester is to record each project’s assessment separated by a letter. “x2-y3.5-z3″ We’ll see if I like this better. I fear that I will eventually succumb to the @chrisludwig system of long hand recording.

Next post I will try to detail my the progress in making my assessments as authentic as possible.

Comments and critiques are always welcome.

Casting Workshop A Huge Success

Friday afternoon, Toby Flores and the Fort Hays State University sculpture department presented a casting workshop in our studio space. Earlier in the semester, I had made arrangments with Toby bring the FHSU mobile foundry to cast aluminum for our 3D Art class.

Students have been carving designs into scratch molds in preparation for the molten metal. Each student collaborated with another student as they explored the process of imagining the reverse of their idea into the molds. Some students had an easier time than others, but that is to be expected.

In addition to the scratch molds, one of Toby’s students worked using our petrobond sand molds. These molds are created by packing oily sand around a pattern in an open iron frame. When the frame is full of sand, the pattern is removed leaving a space for liquid metal. While I have known of the existence of these materials, I had no experience using them. Toby and his expert students were very generous in demonstrating and sharing with me and my students.

When the mobile furnace had been assembled outside the lower studio, scrap aluminum was melted at temperatures exceeding 1200°. FHSU supplied all of the aluminum at no charge to us. This was a great blessing.



The large crucible was removed from the furnace, and placed inside the pouring handle. When locked into the pouring handle, the crucible was tipped to pour molten aluminum into each mold.


Every mold turned out as expected or better. One of the FHSU students even brought some personal artwork to cast. I was very pleased with how smooth everything went, and how much fun my students had.


 

Constructivism in the classroom

With the new movie “Waiting on Superman” getting lots of press on NPR, Oprah, and NBC morning programming, I’ve been reading and listening to a great number of teachers and education reformers as they present what they think is the best solution for America’s schools. Many of the most vocal reformers push for a constructivist setting for all of education. Teachers are to stop lecturing, and start “facilitating” learning. Students are to be no longer forced or even allowed to complete worksheets or memorize facts. Instead, the facilitator, asks questions and prompts and guides the students to explore learning and knowledge. A student’s unique needs and background dictate the direction and speed of learning.

None of this is far from what happens in my Studio/Classroom. Art is most often taught from a constructivist perspective. We have a few processes to memorize, and some vocabulary that makes it easier to communicate, but students have usually directed their own learning.

The public doesn’t seem sure about Constructivist thinking. At least, I haven’t seen any rallies in my town, or large scale public events or media concerning Constructivism. In fact, some schools use very different approach, and have recorded a certain level of success. KIPP schools, and Classical curriculum both encourage a great deal of memorization and traditional lecture. Many parents seem eager to let their children experience the success promised by these non-reform schools.

There is even a resurgence of ultra-traditional art schools called ateliers. In these schools, students are not allowed to draw anything they want. Instead, they draw and paint plaster models. They paint them again and again, until they have mastered light and dark. Next, the students work from live models. When a student leaves the atelier, they can paint anything they want. Their skills as an artist are so sharp, that they are ready to approach any subject or style with ease.

I wonder what it is that makes us so eager to jump into constructivism. Is it the custom fit for every student? Is this realistic? If this is the answer, what is the explanation for the success of schools with the KIPP system? If artists can have custom fit constructivist education, why is there demand for scripted, old world training of the atelier?

It seems to me that something is missing.

Apologies

Today was a good day to apologize.

Everyone has a load of stress they carry with them. I unloaded some of mine on a student yesterday. Today, I made it right. Not revolutionary but part of who I want to be.

Always be slow to speak, quick to listen, and slow to anger.  - James 1:19

Parent Night

Last evening, I had the pleasure of welcoming parents of my students into my classroom. Each parent moved with their child from class to class like a regular school day and teachers gave short presentations about the general activities in their classroom. In my presentation, I commented on our first few assignments where we learned about the illusion of space, and shading etc. However, the real push was to inform parents about our new Standards Based Assessment program in the art room.

While I talked, I watched as parents expressions started to tell of their apprehension, then understanding, then acceptance. I tried to point out to each group that until now, it was almost impossible to explain where an art grade came from. Many parents nodded in agreement. With our new standards based assessment, I still record grades, but these are educated guesses made by students as to what their grade should be. I occasionally council a student to change the percentage. But for the most part, students are willing to celebrate victory, and identify weakness. Usually, if I ask a student to modify their “guess grade” it goes up instead of down.

One parent explained that she was worried when she saw the “guess grade.” She remembered being asked to guess at her grade in Electronics, and she said “B-” out of modesty. She soon realized that she should have said, “A.”

In my talk I also advertised our new student blogs. For most of my teaching career, when I talked to parents, they had very little information about what actually happened in my classroom. They might hear about a great painting project, or a broken ceramics attempt, but they really know what was being described until parent night or the end of the year show. I could see the excitement in parent’s eyes when I told them that they now had a window into my classroom. They could check our their students work, even comment if they like. Mentioning comments drew sharp stares from the students who attended. On student commented, “That only leads to trouble at home.” Both the parent and I smiled.

I think we had a great night.

In Studio 201 we are not Waiting for Superman. We are making things happen.

New Studio Classroom

This year started in a new space with some great new benefits. Probably the most noticeable is the air conditioning. Though it has been nice enough to leave the outside door open most every morning, the A/C makes a real difference by afternoon. Our new studio is also smaller. This sounds strangely like a drawback, but the small size means that I can hear people when they ask for help. In addition classes feel like a community instead of a group of individuals.

Of course, this new studio also comes with some challenges. Where should I store supplies? Where should we store or display artwork? Where should I put 30 kids when there are only 20 desks? I try to solve as many problems as I discover in a given day. Some have been considerably easier to deal with than others.

So how did I end up with a small, clean, air conditioned studio? Our school combined some buildings over the summer, and I had an opportunity to move two of my classroom spaces closer together. In the past, art class was held in a large industrial metals classroom. This has been ideal when I taught jewelry, or sculpture, but it was a problem for my drawing and painting classes. In addition to the industrial space, I had also inherited a ceramics classroom on the opposite side of the building. Teaching in different parts of the building, was very disruptive to my creativity and organization. At one point, while I taught Stagecraft, I was supervising 4 separate classrooms simultaneously. It just became overwhelming.

The move has allowed me to keep my industrial space (Studio 213). And, I now have a classroom (Studio 201) directly above the shop, with observation windows, and a staircase connecting the two.