Our Fieldwork III Presentations

Today, our Theory and Practice class had a meeting in the lecture center to go over our fieldwork III experiences. We had to create a presentation, dress professionally, and speak about what we learned, what we saw while we were there, and specifically, all about our lesson; what it was, how it went, how it could have improved. We did this last year for our fieldwork at Duzine, so we kind of knew what to expect. What was cool and new about this years was that we were all at different schools around the Hudson Valley.

I really enjoyed hearing about the different lessons everyone worked on with their students, how their classroom was handled by their teacher, and how they got to interact and learn from the students. I really loved Laura's lesson, and actually learned a totally new watercolor technique that I had never seen before, which I think is really cool, especially because it can be used in my own work and in the classroom. Someone mentioned how they got to do a demo on a technique that their teacher had never even seen before, which I was impressed by. I also really liked this kind of presentation because we were all pretty comfortable in front of each other by this point in our art ed careers, but choosing to put us in the lecture center was really smart because it was totally new, and definitely a little intimidating, but a real possibility for our future. It kept things fresh, not having us just sit in the same classroom, in our same seats, but it also helped us to think about projection of our voice, posture when in front of a room but also standing behind a computer, and the task of making eye contact with your audience. Definitely a smart choice, guys!

After almost every presentation, Nicole reminded us that we should be taking notes on what other people learned/did in the classroom - particularly their lessons. With how much she kept reminding us to do this, I realized that "borrowing" lessons is exactly what our teachers want us to do in order to build up our own type of teacher portfolio. Of course each lesson you hear from someone else will have to be appropriated for your specific students, but it's cool that in the end of our 4 years here at SUNY New Paltz, we will graduate with probably close to a hundred lessons or more for all ages, that we can one day use or get inspired by in our futures in the classroom.