Justin Scherer

Dr. Patel

ARTEDUC 4500

December 8, 2021

Reflection

This semester, I had the opportunity to engage in short teaching experiences at

my elementary and high school teaching sites. In this short paper, I will take some time

to reflect on my strengths and areas of growth within these experiences as well as places

where I still have room to improve.

First, I’d like to start with my elementary site. In the months of September and

October, I had the chance to teach a lesson at Scioto Darby Elementary. In this lesson, I

gave my third grade classes a short overview on Ancient Greece. They then took a class

period to plan out narrative scenes to place on their greek inspired pottery. Overall, this

lesson went really well – each class seemed to be genuinely interested in the creation of

their narrative scenes. This lesson also gave me an opportunity to flesh out my

presentation skills aimed at a younger audience. While the content of this lesson was

pretty successful, I think the areas where I still have the most room to grow would be in

the practices of classroom management and fostering motivation. To clarify, I felt like

the only thing that I could hold onto to keep control of my students was their general

interest in the topic at hand. For a few uninterested students, I couldn't seem to keep

their attention or adjust their behavior. This is something that I would like to explore

more the next time I teach at this site.

At my high school site, I taught a photo-collage lesson in the months of

November and December at Dublin Scioto high school. In this lesson, I had my students
take a series of self-expressive photos. After 5 or more photos were gathered, each

student used their photos as eventual pieces of a final photo collage. Once the project

was over, we all sat down and engaged in a full class critique. Overall, this lesson was

pretty successful. The major hiccup would have been at the very beginning of lesson

with the initial photo series. Engagement for this step was about 50% ... meaning that

only about half the class turned in a photo series by the deadline. Despite this

discouraging start, I continued to bring positive energy and foster interest in the second

half of the lesson – and my students responded really well! This was most apparent

during the final critique where most everyone was actively engaged. Once again, I think

the place where I still have the most room to grow would be in the practice of fostering

motivation (especially early on). It was encouraging to see that I could get my students

motivated as the lesson went on… but I still need to work on starting strong and getting

my students excited from the jump.

As far as my own professional preparation for these teaching experiences. I felt

like I got a lot better at managing my time throughout the semester (specifically when it

came to efficiently writing my lesson pans). Further development is needed when it

comes to my own artmaking practice. I feel like I need to take time to make art for

myself in order to conjure ideas for future lessons.

In summary, these teaching experiences lent themselves really well to exploring

the depths of my teaching prowess while also showcasing areas where I can still improve

(specifically with regard to student motivation and classroom management techniques).

All in all, this “preview experience” was super valuable and has me looking forward to

my student teaching next semester.