Blog Topic 5

Identifying a student VTS might help or challenge is a tough question in my situation.  Most of my students are operating at or above grade level, and most of them have high grade point averages.  However, a student who I believe VTS might help is Brad.  Brad is a really, really talented artist in my advanced art class.  He shows so much skill in technicality, but often lacks meaning in his artwork.  He doesn't participate much, if at all, in VTS discussions during class.  While I do think he is the "sit back and take it all in" type of person, I think he could greatly benefit from being involved in our VTS classroom discussions.  Getting Brad to participate in VTS could help him to see that artists create art to tell stories and share meaningful experiences, which he struggles with in his own work.  In the future, I think that I could ask all students to make at least one or two comments about the work we view during VTS so that all students participate without pointing him out.  Overall, my VTS discussions have gone really well so far and I can't wait to see where they go next.

Blog Topic 4

After a bit of a rough start with the written portion last week, I was really happy and intrigued with my results this week.  I did a VTS using the following image:

The main aspects of this image that my students noticed were:

• This is some type of dwelling, but it looks really bare
• A relationship between the woman and child
• The woman's clothes seem really nice, may elude to wealth
• The letter look really old and may have a link to the woman's past
• The woman's grip on the box in her lap and the woman's gaze

Overall, I was so super proud of my kids.  They picked out themes of time, place, and culture in this image, which I definitely was not expecting.  It was interesting to see how students would play off of one another's thoughts, creating theories of their own about this woman's story (there were lots of ideas about the letters being family heirlooms or that maybe someone she knew had been away at war).  The VTS definitely employed a sense of community during the discussion in that sense.  The only real issue I experienced was that when my kids got excited, they tended to talk out of turn, interrupting before I got a chance to paraphrase.  I think I can better avoid that next time by making sure the group understands my expectations before we start.  

I felt completely comfortable leading the discussion, and I noticed that I had a lot of patience, even when kids spoke without giving me a chance to.  Next time, I will absolutely take more time to develop expectations for a VTS discussion.

At the end, I had two students stay after class (at the end of the school day!!) to tell me how much they enjoyed the discussion.  They mentioned that they liked to hear other's stories and felt it was enjoyable to search for more in the artwork.  One student mentioned that he liked my inclusion of vocabulary words when I paraphrased their remarks.  I was really proud to hear that.  It was a fun discussion and I am really looking forward to the next one.  

Blog Topic 3

In all honesty, I was really surprised by my Pre-VTS assessments.  As I have mentioned earlier, I am moving through this class with my Advanced Art class.  I am not sure if the title of the class or my prior knowledge of my students gave me high expectations, but this exercise really made me realize that I believe my students to be more advanced viewers and artists than they really are.  I felt a bit disappointed, because, really, many of my students blew through the exercise, writing only a few sentences about what they saw (and I have done VTS with some of them before).  I would say my students are probably somewhere in between stage 2 and 3 viewers, by wanting to expand on ideas and imagery, but not have as much background in Art History and technique as a historian would.  Before I sound too negative here, there were around three students who did an exceptional job, picking up things that I hadn't noticed in the given image.  So it may be that I really have a range of viewing skills in my classroom.

Peer VTS

I completed my peer VTS last week, and overall, it went great.  Most of the adults felt pretty comfortable, but the other art teacher mentioned that she felt a lot of pressure about looking at the work.  The image I chose was "Dad's Coming" by Winslow Homer.  Everyone participated, and most people seemed interested, though there were a few people who joked around about not having an art background.  The general responses I got afterward were:

• VTS helped the narrative/story come together for the participants
• VTS forces you to continue to look for more, even if you think you have noticed everything
• helped to think critically about the image 
• encouraged you to revisit objects or things in the image you already looked at

Overall, the experience went really well and I even had one group member ask if I could help her do this with her students.