Art class: Festive-related art class

2017 is the year of the Rooster according to the Chinese zodiac. The Chinese New Year (CNY) is a gazetted public holiday. Since it falls on the weekends, the following Monday and Tuesday would be a holiday and a school holiday respectively. To increase pupils' awareness of the cultural festival, the Mother Tongue committee has requested to held an internal red packet design art competition. While the art making is done during art lessons, the form teachers would give an introduction of the tradition to the pupils.

With the festive approaching, many commercial establishments would capitalize on it to promote their own products or services. The newspaper is an accessible and economical resource to show pupils some cultural motifs to aid their artwork. I've chosen advertisement that have some aspects related to the CNY festive. By displaying all of them on the whiteboard allow us to see that the advertisement has a dominant colour - reds. We also discussed about the brilliance of advertisement by drawing a parallel between their product/ service to the festive. 

Since the pupils had only one lesson for this task, I've only skimmed on the surface of using advertisement as a form of communication. Providing the newspaper as a starting point for the pupils allow them to incorporate meaning in their artwork as illustrated in this pupil's artwork below:

Some teachers don't encourage students copying from an "original" source but have you heard of this saying: Originality is undetected plagiarism? While I value meaning making in their art, I would also like to see how they incorporate ideas from different sources and weave them together to create elements that compose a story. In the image on the right, the drawing is done by a pupil whose Mother Tongue is not Chinese. She had difficulty initially but she chose an image that she liked. While there are some similarities between the original source and her work, I think she had taken much effort to create positive and negative space to portray a rooster instead of just tracing from the newspaper image. She has intentionally left out some unnecessary drawings and incorporate a festive banner to frame the Chinese characters that also shows she's not copying mindlessly or racing to complete the task. For that, her work is one of those selected for class discussion.

Art Class: Aims of Art Education

The aims of Art Education according to the MOE Art Syllabus 2009 is "to enable every child to be visually literate and to appreciate art". If you look at the syllabus here (p. 5), there is a brief explanation of visually literate and appreciate art. In addition, the MOE English syllabus 2010 also has similar intent (p. 131). I will attempt to construct what visually literate is with examples in my own words.

Once during recess, I saw a Primary 3 girl buying only a few snacks. I made a causal remark about how little food she was eating. I expected her response to be something along the line about not feeling hungry but instead she said she wanted to lose weight. Flabbergasted, I asked her for the reason for wanting to lose weight. She was tall for her age but definitely not overweight. She said she couldn't fit in some of her clothes. After explaining growth spurts and suggesting that she can choose healthier food instead of restricting her food intake which might lead to malnutrition, she seems to be convinced.

It's probably too early for a 9 year old child to worry about body image. However, it's no wonder that they do so especially when we are bombarded with images in our environment. We have the media to tell girls what to wear or how to look, check out the internet or magazines which is easily accessible to teach girls how to wear makeup or perhaps trying to convince girls that being beautiful means you have to be skinny and fair. For example, below is a photo that I've taken on the MRT. It's an advertisement about a skincare product (I've pixelated the brand so I won't get sued) that emphasized about its ability to achieve "instantly 4 times fairer skin that keeps getting fairer*". Note the asterisk that comes with a small print at the bottom that probably states result may vary depending on individual skin types. 

Sometimes, it is also common to see advertisement featuring lingerie-clad models at the bus stops. These models who are featured are usually slim-built and fair. Girls learn indirectly from these sources that their appearances are more important than how smart or hardworking they are and many girls of colour have little hope of ever measuring up to the cultural standard. 

The film industry are aware of their impact on children. The classic Disney movies have moved from portraying women as a damsel in distress (e.g. sleeping beauty) to being more feminist such as the movies in Mulan and Brave.

It's also relevant to think about the societal messages to young children in the context of a patriarchal system. 

As a teacher, I think it's important that I know what my pupils are learning and not learning both from the outside and inside of a sanctioned educational institution. When children are more critical of images or information presented to them, they will become better-informed consumers. 

Art Class: Teacher as Gardener

I liken my work as a gardener. The photos below are my sunflowers (left) and my seedlings in different stages of growth. I have a variety of plants at my corridor and I use them for teaching, as food or just for leisure. Sometimes, I think of how being a teacher is very much similar to growing plants. :D

It's all about providing conditions for children to do their own thing.

When I sow the sunflower seed in the soil, I know I will get a sunflower eventually and not a lettuce, provided I can provide the necessary conditions for it to grow. I can't force the sunflower to grow by attaching yellow petals or thickening its stem. It will grow if the conditions are right. 

As the name suggests, sunflower needs a lot of sun, so I elevate the pot just to maximise its chance of catching most of the light. I have to be sensitive to the colour of the soil. When the soil shows a lighter colour, it means that it's dry and time to water. However, I can't overwater the sunflower, otherwise the roots will be submerged perpetually in water and prone to root rot and the plant will not thrive. I have to fertilizer the sunflower when it's closer to blooming period so that it will have more energy to produce seeds. I can't fertilizer too much either because it's contained in a pot and over fertilizing it will burn the roots and the plant will not thrive too.

In the photo on the right, the sunflower seedlings are obviously weaker. They are placed at my corridor too but in a shadier location. They can grow but they struggle to reach the light and since most of their energy are devoted to reaching the light, their stem become tall and lanky and they will probably not grow to their full potential and will be a sunflower that produce small flower without seeds. 

As a teacher, the conditions that we can provide for any students would at least be delivering quality lessons to our best capacity. In my school, I'm thankful to have autonomy to do things that I enjoy. According to Sir Ken Robinson, the most basic level in education is to create conditions in which students will want and be able to learn. He also explained on the art of teaching and followed by implications for leadership and school culture and the role of policymakers.

When I purchase planting seeds, it usually comes with a basic set of planting instructions on the packaging. Their life cycle is not too long and they don't take a long time to reach maturity. Babies doesn't come with instruction manuals and it needs 21 years to reach maturity (maybe longer for some people), I guess we humans have a lot of work to do. 

PAL: Using Art and Creativity to Build Social and Emotional Skills

I stumbled upon this course organised by the Social Service Institute and I attended a 2-day workshop conducted by Ms Caroline Essame. You can read more about the course overview here. I had to go for this because it seems so helpful for my planning of the PAL lessons. To find out more about PAL, please click here. 

There was a balance of theory and practical sessions during the workshop. The participants consist of people from various social service sectors. We worked individually to collaborative play and finally we have case studies where we do role play. We randomly picked a note that states the roles we are supposed to play and I was assigned the role of a social worker. My task was to work with 4 clients (my group members) whom each of them has different specific needs. It was exhausting at the end of the session! My group member were fully immersed in their roles and it was hard to get everyone to be on task.

In one of the activities, Ms Essame gave each of us a randomise unknown number to hold up against our foreheads. The numbers are only visible to other participants. Since there were 20 of us, she instructed us to guess our own number at the end of the activity using non-verbal language. We were to told to assume that the person holding the number 1 was the most noble and respected and the number 20 was the most undesirable. So, it works like a number cline. Of course the activity begins by seeing a number of participants bowing, smiling and waving to a lady, needless to say, she was holding a #1 and more participants flocked towards her. As the activity continues, we saw a man holding #20, some shoo-ed him away or just brushed him aside. The more "dramatic" participants pretend to spit when they see him approaching. 

When the activity ends, Ms Essame facilitated the session by asking all of us to stand in line according to what we thought our number was. She went one at a time and asked how we felt and to give the reason why we chose to stand in a particular position in the line. #1 was no brainer because of the treatment the lady received. She said that at one point she felt really good because everyone treated her so well so she thought she must be #1 even though she had no idea what her number was. The participants whose numbers falls in the middle range didn't receive much reactions and they were very much ignored. When we finally come to the man who received a #20, he had a very interesting comment. He was very sure of his number because of the responses he had received. At one point, he claimed that since he knew he could not change his number and the unkind treatment he had received, he decided to "scare" other people by approaching them because at least he felt powerful by having some sense of control to cause others to recoil in fear. 

It was really interesting to hear from everyone. We also reflected about our own practices after this activity. This simple and effective activity allows us to think about the class dynamics in general. Typically, the class would consists of teacher pleaser, class clown etc so to keep them in mind, teachers can engage them more effectively.

A collaborative work around the room

Things we would have learnt after an activity

     

Some recommended readings

To find out more, please visit:

www.spreaker.com

www.carolineessame.com

www.suejennings.com