Innovative Practitioner

Photos from

Mark Murray's

Art Show

Innovation in My Assessment

Here I discuss some assessment tools that I have created to use in my lessons. As Reflection is an ideal of my teaching philosophy many of my assessments include self-evaluations.

I am someone who prefers to be self-sufficient. This is why when any of my lessons need rubrics, handouts or evaluation sheets, I prefer to make them myself. During student teaching I have created several evaluation, reflection and rubric sheets. You can take a look at a few of them below. These examples have been filled out by students.

During my full day student teaching placement I was given a small group of "CC" students to work with. "CC" stands for certificate of completion. These students have been found to be below standard IQ levels, and many have other medical diagnosis which lead to difficulties in the classroom. Working with this group was a challenge and I talk about this more on my Committed to Diversity page. In terms of Innovation however, these students constantly pushed me to develop new ways to engage them and get them to focus on the work in front of them.

I found that I had to rethink the way I was looking at the students. My expectations could not be focused on the end result, as so often it is in high school classes. I had to focus on their experience. Were they learning new things, having fun, relating their tasks to previous knowledge and connecting their artwork to themselves. The Comic Strip project is where I found these expectations really changed the end results. Each student got to tell their own joke or story in a three panel comic strip. This let them share with me their sense of humor, their hobbies and their favorite things.

As my goals and expectations changed so did the connection I felt between the students and I, and so did the work that they created. They began to buy more into the projects I presented to them. They began to focus more on their work, and that showed a big difference in the end results.

CC Class'

Animal Mask

Project

Hanging artwork

at Garden

City High

4th Grade

Artwork from

Mark Murray

Innovation in My Practice

Here I discuss how I incorporate innovation into my teaching practice. Through lesson plans, evaluations, and ideologies I show how flexible and dedicated I am to developing my best practice.

Being dedicated to innovation, to me, means constantly seeking to improve my practice by trying new techniques, assessment tools, mediums, projects, technology, and management strategies. It means not being attached to practices that may not be working. Most importantly it means not being afraid of change, because as a teacher our classrooms, our students, and our world are constantly evolving.

Innovation starts with research and I was fortunate enough to be able to be immersed in information at the NAEA Convention in Chicago, IL this year. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn about new methods, technologies, strategies and mediums from my peers. I attended a lecture on incorporating comic books into lessons so that I can more easily connect the students to the Principles and Elements of Design as well as the larger themes of civil rights and equality. There was an amazing presentation on Visual Journaling by David R. Modlar and Eric R. Scott that would be wonderful to use in a classroom to get kids in the habit of practicing their artistic craft every day. Beyond these two examples I attended lectures regarding new ways to use technology in the classroom, how to connect with and inspire students who are on the cusp of dropping out, how to use sound to inspire artistic creations, new assessment tools for TAB classrooms, teaching about bullying through lessons, and connecting personal histories with conceptual art projects.

This experience was a floodgate of new ideas, methods and best teaching practices that I am excited to put to use in my own classroom. The next step in being innovative is practicing. Not just your teaching practice but your practice of teaching. A classroom is laboratory and it affords us the chance to try new things, see what works and what doesn’t and then move on.

Throughout my student teaching I have had the opportunity to practice many of my lessons more than once. This affords a great opportunity to learn from my mistakes and quickly adjust for the next class coming in. As art teachers we don’t always get this opportunity, with many once-a-semester classes on our roster. So I feel fortunate that I was able to try things and figure out what works best for me while in the classroom. It helps that I had wonderful mentors and field instructors there to give me feedback to work with.

Feedback is also crucial to being an innovative practitioner. We must put ourselves in the proper mindset in order to receive feedback and be able to change things for the better. If we stick to our comfort zone or we do not accept the ideas of others we limit our potential for growth and betterment. This is what innovation is about, growing our practice so that it is the most effective it can be.

It was a wonderful compliment to receive from my mentor teacher Mrs. Mitoraj, when she said that I took her feedback and turned it around very quickly. In this instance I was practicing with an Art 2 class, giving a presentation on making ceramic vessels. After my first lecture she told me how long it had been and by how much I should shorten it. The very next hour I had my second Art 2 class of they day. I took Mrs. Mitoraj’s advice and kept a much closer eye on the clock. This led to a more successful class because I could give them more time to practice with the clay and I had more time to demonstrate proper techniques. Without feedback we could not grow and be innovative practitioners, therefore it is paramount to be open to other’s opinions and ideas.

I believe that throughout my student teaching placements I have demonstrated my commitment to being an Innovative Practitioner by utilizing feedback effectively, with an open mind to change, researching this wonderful wide world of educations by attending the NAEA Convention, and pushing my practice to be better every day.