Eva Vincent

Teaching and Learning 301

Artistic Project Reflection

For the final artistic project, Hannah DeGarmo and I worked together to create three

canvases of colorful handprints. We chose to create a simple elementary craft for our project

because we felt that the simplicity of it was what made it so powerful in relation to everything

we discussed in class over the course of the semester. The main idea behind our project was to

be able to represent all of the differences between people and how they all come together.

Future students of ours will have to come together to create and work on something with their

peers which will require them to use their strengths, help each other out and be able to

respectfully overcome differences. The two of us felt that our project clearly represented

teamwork, community and diversity in all forms through the various colored hand prints that

were randomly distributed across the three canvases. We chose to work together on this

project because we felt it was fitting to do partner work on a project where it represents ides of

teamwork.

We used so many colors on our project to show how each child has their own

knowledge that they are contributing to the group, based on Molls Funds of Knowledge theory.

Each child has their own Funds of Knowledge which makes classrooms and our world so diverse

(Woolfolk, 2019). Because each student has their own prior knowledge before entering the

classroom, they have so much to contribute to the classroom community, and in contrast, each

student has so much that they can learn from each and every one of their peers (Woolfolk,

2019). The colors we chose to use for handprints represented how individuals can come

together to make something new, just like how we had blue and red handprints on the canvas

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and then added purple ones to show the meshing of ideas and backgrounds of different people.

As a future teacher, I will be encouraging and nurturing a collaborative environment so that

“new colors can be created” through student interactions. Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological

model was another theory that really helped to shape our project. This theory shows the

impact a child’s ecosystem has on them and the amount of importance it holds in their life

(Woolfolk, 2019). Each ecosystem is represented by a different colored hand, which all end up

coming together on the canvas to show how all of these different ecosystems will come in

contact with one another. Through working together and crossing paths we used the formation

of a new color to show the overlap of ecosystems in the exact same way that Molls Funds of

Knowledge Theory was depicted in the way that each individual is able to mix together to form

something new which was the new colored handprint.

Each of these theories are very important and relevant to my future career as an

elementary school teacher. Molls Funds of Knowledge Theory explains the importance of

recognizing that each child enters the classroom with a head full of knowledge and it is our job

as educators to help them sort through accurate information that they know and build off of

their prior knowledge to keep them engaged in lessons (Woolfolk, 2019). Bronfenbrenner’s

Bioecological model is crucial for educators to understand because this model explains the

impact that a child’s ecosystem has on them and how each child will have a very different

ecosystem at home (Woolfolk, 2019). Each of these theories we found to be of the most

important for teachers to understand about their students, so we chose to incorporate them

into our project. This project allowed us to apply things that we learned in class into a creative

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piece of art which really helped us to solidify all of the concepts we learned over the semester

and made us think about how useful they will be for us to use in our own classrooms.

Works Cited:

Woolfolk, A. (2019). Educational Psychology, 14th Edition. Pearson. New York, NY: Pearson.

Moll, L. (2019, May 12). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWS0YBpGkkE.