"Michael & James"
Stephen Assael Lambdin
Assessing Student Engagement & Learning
It has been decided after multiple attempts that I am going to pursue my advanced Graphic Design class in the VTS experiments to follow. I am struggling with participation, which I believe could be caused by trying to get responses out of large class groups. My advanced class is a smaller group (around 9 students), and have a better understanding of what we are trying to achieve with VTS.
Students noticed the basic elements of the painting: An African American fireman holding a child in his arms. Little attention was given to this particular piece and discussion was kept to a minimum. There were talks of the man saving the child, that the child could have been injured in a fire, and one student even said (jokingly) that the fireman possibly helped the child out of a treehouse. I found myself once again trying to prompt the students into going further into the discussion, but had little effectiveness. I have decided to choose a piece that may be more interesting to them. Thanks to Mrs. Franco for allowing me to pursue different pieces of work in efforts to gain more discussion from my class.
Reflecting On Practice
The VTS felt as though it was conducted successfully. Although there was little participation, it seemed to flow much smoother and with little interruption. I was much more comfortable in showing the artwork this particular time, and I felt as though there was no need to omit any questions. I did find myself prompting students more in efforts to try and gain some sort of discussion topic within the piece, but only found that the students are willing to give me the minimum requirements only. As mentioned previously, I am attempting to pursue work that I feel could get a more discussion-based VTS going. There were no surprises, other than bad joking and lack of interest in the piece. Welcome to High School. I am extremely excited, however to be one of the firsts to get to work with High Schoolers. VTS will prevail!
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4 comments:
As I mentioned to Lindsay after her students' less than enthusiastic response to this piece, when VTS doesn't generate conversation for a group, the first culprit is usually the image. You two work with the same demographic of students; I'll deduce, therefore, that what we have here is a mismatch between image and students. (It makes one appreciate the time and energy put into image selection for VTS!) Despite the fact that this image hasn't produced the rigorous discussion we had hoped, it has taught us about what these students DON'T find exciting to talk about.
The class of 9 is a great size for discussion. VTS works best with groups of 20 or fewer. Larger groups can handle it very well, and my average elementary groups were about 24, but these groups knew and enjoyed the process and knew what was expected. I'll be anxious to hear about the next image and how it goes. Do be sure to reflect upon Yenawine's Jumpstarting Visual Literacy recommendations on image selection as you do this. Despite their ages, you students are still VTS novices and will look to find narrative first.
Rusty,
I'd recommend reading Linday's posts if you haven't yet. I have enjoyed reading about how her class has slowly embraced the VTS process. In the meantime, try to keep your chin up - facilitation will get easier with practice. I'm such a believer now!
This was the image I used with my peers, and it did work well for them... again, I think it goes back to the experience component. As rich and intense as this image is, I know for me it appealed to the mother in me. These were the kinds of comments I heard from my peers as well. They could connect. So as Amber says, chin up! VTS is a wonderful thing and it will get easier!
This was the first piece I VTS'd as a participant. With graduate students in the classroom I felt our discussion was rich. I have had mixed results with the image in my middle and high school classes. Some discussions were rich in meanings and others were shallow. My first 7th grade class really dove into this work, while my second group of 7th graders were not engaged, my high schoolers weren't thrilled with this image either. Good luck. I have found VTS with high school to be a bit of a rough road.
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