Blog #6: Video 1, Assessing, Reflecting, and Planning.

Assessing

The students were mostly eager to participate in the discussion.  They all had their hands raised almost as soon as the image came up on the screen. I would like for them to really take the time to look before they start making decisions about what they would like to say because I think taking that time to look would really lead them past the listing kinds of observations into more meaningful observations.  At the same time, I am thrilled that they are so willing and excited to participate.

With this work, “The Tragedy” by Picasso, the students had a good mixture of listing and interpretation.  They noticed that the people had bare feet and were standing on a beach, and they noticed that both the date and the artist’s name were apparent on the painting.  Then they also made more meaningful interpretations, suggesting that the figures were stranded or poor.  One student suggested that the figures were praying because of their posture.  They also noticed that this painting highlights one of the abstraction techniques which they have been learning about, “unrealistic color.”

The students had a few interactions.  Most centered on some disagreement about the time of day depicted in the painting.  One student said night time, one said day, and another suggested sunrise.  The students also made connections with the observation of the unrealistic blue color and the mood of the painting concluding that something sad or unfortunate is occurring as if the figures were stranded or poor.

I think the students were applying some of the ideas they had previously discussed about abstraction techniques and it was good for them to see the technique of unrealistic color in action, and to see the way it affects the interpretation of the painting.  I observed them commenting on that unrealistic color of Picasso’s “Blue Period” and beginning to interpret how that color made them feel and how it made them see the figures in the painting as sad or somber.

Reflecting

I felt pretty good about this discussion.  It went much more smoothly than the discussion I led the week before about Rockwell’s triple self-portrait, and by comparing the two experiences, I learned just how important it is to choose the appropriate image.  “The Tragedy” seemed to be a perfect choice for these students.  They had a lot of interesting and various things to say about it and didn’t seem to get hung up on any particular aspect.

I am feeling very at ease with the VTS questions at this point and other than a couple of word jumbles, I think I used the questions as prescribed.  I have noticed recently though that I do not paraphrase the students’ responses before I ask the second question, I wait until after they have given me further clarification.  I feel like it would sound really repetitive, and waste a lot of time that we don’t often have to paraphrase what they say twice, but I know that’s part of the process so I will have to work on that.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear the students beginning to make deeper observations and interpretations.  In the past they had been doing a lot of listing.  I think this was a combination of having more practice at VTS and also the previous preparation for this specific kind of artwork these students had by discussing techniques of abstraction.

Planning

As I said, I need to remember to paraphrase before and after I ask the second question.  I would also like to work on encouraging the students to look quietly and thoroughly without thinking about what they want to say, waving their hands in the air.  I think that would help lead them to more thoughtful responses.  I think that will happen with more practice and self-awareness on my part.

Blog #5: Portrait of Possibility

My Portrait of Possibility is a 4^th grade girl who I will call Ashley.  I think VTS with be both a help and a challenge to her.  She had multiple great ideas to contribute to our VTS discussion of the Portrait of a Musician.  She noticed details about the instrument and the “formal” clothing of the musician.  I think she shows the potential to really grow in our VTS discussions, and that growth might help her in the artmaking portions of the class too.  She seems very spirited and has some trouble focusing.  I noted her bouncing around the room and was a little behind the rest of the class in the art process.  At one point she denied that her name was “Ashley” even though she was working on a project based on her name, “Ashley,” written largely across the page in front of her.  Luckily, I am not so easily fooled.

I think VTS will help develop her attention span as it grabs her attention with a work of art, but still requires her to sit quietly and contemplate.  This might help her better sit still and focus on her artwork.  I also think that looking at art will help her learn to value her own work and encourage her to concentrate and invest more time in it. I hope further VTS discussions will also encourage her to look more deeply past the obvious in the artworks and that I will be able to see her begin to notice more subtle details and meanings in the art.

Blog #4: Assessing, Reflecting, Planning.

The first VTS session I did at Ridgeway was with Thomas Hart Benton’s Portrait of a Musician, one of our paintings from the Museum of Art and Archaeology, which of course made this just a little more challenging for me.  These students had already done VTS with Mary before, and their hands were in the air before I had even begun my introduction.  Almost every student had something to say about this painting.  There was some discussion about what instrument the man is playing.  One student first suggested it was a guitar, then a violin, and then another student said he knew it was a bass.  He also told us that the musician was holding his bow incorrectly which he knew because he takes violin lessons.  Other students noticed the gradation of color in the background and on the instrument, and another suggested he was dressed for a performance because of his suit and tie.  They all seemed on point and focused on the painting. 

This discussion went very smoothly.  I felt very comfortable with the work and at ease with the VTS questions.  This was my first time doing VTS in a classroom rather than in the Museum galleries so that was a new experience for me.  It is hard to explain how it is different, but in some ways I think the students are more focused in the classroom, perhaps because they are in a familiar place and there aren’t a lot of other artworks around to distract them.  I also had never done VTS with that many students before, and as much as I wanted to call on each of them, it was hard for me to keep track of who had already spoken and who hadn’t.  When our time was up, there were still a lot of hands in the air, and I really hated not being able to hear what the other students had to say.  I would like to work on remembering who has talked already and make sure everyone has a chance to share their ideas.

Blog #1: Getting to Know My Class

The class I am working with for my VTS research is a  Unit C (4^th and 5^th grade) class at Ridgeway Elementary.  There are 24 students, 14 girls and 10 boys.  There are 11 5^th graders and 13 4^th graders.  I haven’t been able to spend a lot of time with this class in particular, but I almost always see a Unit C class when I visit for my field experience.  Because they are on a rotating ABC day schedule, it is always a different class, and seems to always happen to be not the class I’m really focusing on.  Anna is also working with one of the Unit C classes, so between Mary, Anna, and I, we make sure that all of the Unit C classes get the same VTS experiences so that our data will be relevant at the end of the semester.

My experiences of these classes is that they are all generally excited to be in the art classroom, and eager to work.  There seems to be two or three students in each class that have a hard time focusing, who talk all the time, or generally cause a ruckus, but even these students seem respectful and interested in the classwork.  There are also students who are very bright and meticulous.  I assume these students have always had art classes, but I’m not sure about how much art viewing they have done in the past. Mary has a great classroom with lots of posters of artwork from all over the world all around the room and I have done VTS almost every time I have visited, so I know they are getting a lot of it this year.

Blog #3: Pre-Assesments

Because Mary did the pre-assessment for me, I had already done VTS with these students and I was surprised at the vast difference between the discussion we had and what they had written.  In the classroom, it seemed like most students were eager to participate and had multiple well-grounded observations to contribute, but their pre-assessments did not represent this at all.  They seemed to be writing the bare minimum they thought they could get away with.  Many of them simply wrote some version of: "I see men fishing. They are in a boat with a net."
I am curious if their writing skills are on par with other 4th and 5th graders because I found their spelling and handwriting to be difficult to read at times.  It seems like they should know at this point to leave spaces in between words and be able to spell "boat" but most of them couldn't.

I saw many of Housen's characteristic, "ideosyncratic and imaginative" Stage 1 responses:
"war, because people don't wear metal hats when there fishing or doing something"
"also it looks like the first man is trying build something like hammering down a piece of wood, like there is a hole in the boat"
"I see a tiger with a dark coat I looks like it is triying to clime on the boat."

There was a wide range of word counts, from 13 to 70, but they were generally around the 25 word mark, and included 2 or 3 assertions.  I'm really curious to see how they improve at the end of the semester!

Blog #2: VTS with my professional peers

Because life around the museum is quite hectic at the moment, I decided to ask some of the docents to come participate in my VTS session with me.  I ended up with eight gracious and willing participants, and I chose to use William Paxton's The New Necklace as the image of our focus.

The docents are all avid art lovers and it wasn't difficult to start the discussion with them. I did not ask them to raise their hands before making remarks about the work, as I thought that they are adults and are capable of carrying on a civil conversation, but this made it difficult at times to really facilitate the discussion and to ask specifically the second question, but in general it went very smoothly.  Afterwards they also enthusiastically discussed the pros and cons (from their perspective) of VTS.  One noted that he felt like the VTS process draws him in more than just looking, and that it "forced [his] brain to start putting the pieces together."  Another noted that as art historians, we often talk "around" the paintings without ever really looking at the work, and valued VTS for encouraging that aspect.  Someone else really thought the group discussion was important because they could incorporate others' ideas with their own to come to conclusions. 

All agreed that they found the process somewhat frustrating though, as naturally at the end they all wanted more information, and I had not really done any research beforehand to be able to feed their appetite.  I should have known better!  But then they all also agreed that it is sometimes good to leave people "wanting more" and encouraging them to do more research on their own.  They also noted that VTS highlights the viewer's experience which is important, and sometimes overlooked by docents.

Finally, I thought it was interesting that they said that my restatements of their observations were not patronizing (yay!) and made it seem like I was participating in the discussion. I wondered if this was a good thing, or maybe meant that I was not being neutral enough.  These are people that I am pretty comfortable around, and I might have been a little less formal than is really necessary to be neutral.  I also know that on a couple of occasions I did sort of add to the second question saying, for instance, "What do you see that makes you say that this is the older sister?"  and wondered if this was an acceptable version of the question.  Because they were throwing out ideas so quickly, it felt necessary to clarify which ideas I was addressing, which goes back to my error in not asking them to raise their hands at the beginning.  It felt smooth and natural, and I think everyone found the process generally satisfactory.