Sydney Goldeman

ART 394

Professor Klauck

April 1st, 2024

Self-Critique

This semester I have grown to know more of the type of teacher I want to be. Throughout my classes this

semester and my student teaching experience I felt that I was faced with the question of what a good teacher

does. For everyone the answer to this question is different. For me a good teacher is welcoming. They create

safe space for students to learn and grow. A good teacher uses students interests and incorporates them into the

learning to make fun and engaging lessons. As a teacher I want to do all those things in my classroom. As well

as letting students explore in nature by going on nature walks and spending time learning outside.

There are many skills that I learned in this class that I plan to use in my own teaching but the three that I

want to mention most is affordances, teaching for artistic behavior (TAB), and visual thinking strategies (VTS).

I had never heard of affordances before taking this class but since our lesson on them I have been noticing them

everywhere. While in my field experience placement I have notice that my CT uses a sharpie and writes

students names on the table, so they do not pick or pull off a name tag on the desk. Knowing how to minimalize

or get rid of distractions in the classroom is a good tool to have as a new teacher. Second, I plan to use TAB in

my classroom. I found it to be a great way to express myself and develop my artistic skills. I think that it would

be great to have a TAB station in my classroom for students to use when they have free time. Finally, I plan to

use visual thinking strategies. I plan to teach the primary grades for Elementary (K-2) and visual thinking

strategies are important for them to know as many of them will be just learning to read. A picture is worth a

thousand words if you know what you are looking for.

The most beneficial part of this class for me was the lesson on affordances. I think that classroom

management is a skill that a lot of new teachers struggle with. It takes time to find what works for you and that

can be hard on a new teacher. Knowing about affordances and what can cause distractions in a classroom is so

helpful. It is easier to not have the distraction/problem in the classroom before it even begins. Like I mentioned
earlier not having name tags taped to students’ desks as it leads to students picking at the name tags and can be

distracting during lessons. Little things like this make a huge difference when dealing with classroom

management.

One thing that sparked my interest that I plan to investigate further is the stages of artistic development.

This was a new concept that I had never heard of/learned about. We often talk about the stage of development

and how students learn but never about how they develop artistically. After learning this I began to analyze the

artwork of my preschool students. I noticed that a lot of them seemed to be behind in their artistic development.

This told me that they were not given enough opportunity to create on their own. It also made me wonder if it

connects to students cognitive and fine motor development and how you may be able to use their drawing to

determine if they need help in other areas. Knowing all of this will help me better met the needs of my future

students.