Sara E. Thomas
For my unit I would like students to learn about the properties of energy and how learning to harness energy has changed our lives profoundly. Using the steam engine as an example of harnessing energy, I would like students to create their own model of a boat with a simplified steam engine. Students will draw up blue prints, work through a series of models, determine how to increase efficiency, and finally address the aesthetics of the boat as a form. This unit will be appropriate for all students because it will teach them through a variety of learning styles, most specifically kinesthetic learning, It will enforce every day skills such as problem solving, creating and testing a hypothesis, measuring, analyzing data and applying the elements and principles of design.
I teach art at High School in the Community (HSC), a small urban magnet school. HSC is a unique teaching environment because we are a teacher run school. Each teacher plays an integral role in the operation of the school. We are all encouraged to create our own curriculum in alignment with both the Connecticut and New Haven teaching standards. I have a large amount of freedom designing my courses so I try to create courses which will engage my students, integrate with other subjects and relate to their lives personally.
Since HSC is a magnet school two-thirds of the students are from New Haven and are selected through a lottery process. The other third of our population are students from surrounding suburban areas who choose to come to HSC instead of attending their local public high school. This selection process creates an extremely diverse community of students from a variety of different backgrounds. Each individual brings an extremely different set of experiences with him or her, creating a wonderful and sometimes challenging classroom environment.
Along with a diverse population there is a staggering imbalance in their art knowledge. Some of the students have a strong art background, while others have not had art for over three years. This forces me to teach the basic elements and principles of design while also making them interesting to those students for whom they are review. My classes include students from ninth through twelfth grade. Students attending HSC are required to take one full credit of art (some combination of visual art and music). This requirement sends many students through my door and finding a way to reach them all and keep them interested is one of my favorite challenges.
In teaching high school it is imperative to teach through subjects that are interesting to your students. This can be challenging with art because they often have a very limited definition of art. Usually they associate art simply with “fine art”, or art which is hung in a museum. One of my main goals is to help students create their own personal definition of art. Through this unit I would like to broaden students’ idea of what art is and open their eyes to the world around them. Things in art reflect nature, but even more importantly everything they use has been designed by an artist, from the clothes they are wearing to the seat they are sitting in, right down to the buses they ride. I want to bring art to their level as it surrounds them.
This unit will be appropriate for all students because it will teach them through a variety of learning styles. It will enforce the everyday skills of problem solving, creating and testing a hypothesis, measuring and analyzing data and drawing conclusions. It will also help students prepare for their CAPT test through a lab done to determine which variables will make their boat faster.
