Fieldwork Day 1: New Paltz Middle School

All I can remember from Middle School art is unmotivated students, loud noises, and ruined materials. Students that did not want to be in the classroom made it clear to the teacher and other students that they had better things to do. It was extremely disheartening to be in the class and think back about my experiences.

Going into my first day at the New Paltz Middle School I was expecting the worst. I expected crayons to be flying, students to be rubbing glue sticks on each other, and disrespect towards the teacher. To my surprise the classes were well under control and the students enjoyed being there! It was a great turnaround from my experience.

The Middle School runs on an A/B schedule and this Wednesday, my partner, Taylor Henshaw, and I were there for a B day. According to our teacher, Mrs. Sturgis, this was her "crazy" day. She explained to us that for each grade there is a theme the school likes the art teachers to work with. Mrs. Sturgis creates most lessons based on the theme.
On B days there is a second art teacher that shares Mrs. Sturgis's room, she follows the same themes when creating lessons. On A days, the teacher goes to the high school to help out there.

6th grade-identity and exploration
Mrs. Sturgis lesson- We caught the tail end of a technique project "Elements of Art" where the students simply learned and experimented with line, shape, form, color, value, texture, and space. 
Second teacher's lesson- Students created a "locker name poster." Each student wrote their name and decorated the piece to be laminated and posted outside their locker as well. When looking around, students created very unique and individual designs. Some were quite interesting! One student had balloons holding up each letter in the sky and another had all the letters of his name stacked on a desk.

7th grade- liberty
Mrs. Sturgis lesson- Students created a "locker word art project." In this project, students picked a word that described a close friend. On an 8x8 piece of paper, students wrote their word and incorporated it into a drawing and collage piece which covered the entire paper. Their final drawing was scanned and copied, each student then used their original and two other drawings for their final locker poster. Students were asked to glue the three pieces to a long black piece of paper which would then be laminated and taped to the outside of the lockers. Some words students used were epic, funny, athletic, and unique.
7th graders will be taking a field trip to see the Statue of Liberty and there they will create sketches and drawings based on their experience there.

8th- pop culture and current art
I found myself mostly interested in the 8th grade lesson. This was one of the first days for the introduction of this new project for the students. In the "Pop Art Project," students will pick someone in popular culture today and through the computer tool paint, they will create a bright colored pop art image. For the intro to this lesson, Mrs. Sturgis showed multiple short videos about 5 artists. I thought this was a great technique because it was not one long movie that students would either love or hate. They had multiple 1-5 minute videos to watch, so if they did not like it they could find information through the second video. The artists she introduced to the students were Andy Warhol, Wayne Thiebaud, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Harring, and The Art Guys. After showing the videos she handed out a worksheet in which the students needed to fill out three pieces of information they learned from the videos.
 

Wayne Theibaud

 

Roy Lichtenstein

Overall it was an enjoyable first day and I can't wait for next week!