Having a role, as a teacher is something that I never considered before this unit; being the one to give out the instructions and not the pupil that is listening and doing; feeling like I have to give a professional delivery; as well as actually teaching the children something. Providing something new that the children learn, can adapt from, and can carry on developing was harder than I ever thought. Having to rely and depend on other people, that sometimes in one way or another can let you down can be frustrating at times, too. Within my own practice, I only have to think about my own work and me. I have never collaborated, as a group of so many different practices before and in a teaching environment was tougher than I thought.
Throughout this unit, my confidence has grown dramatically. Speaking aloud and making my voice heard was something I was always afraid off and would run away at the first chance I got. Speaking to the public has now become a lot easier as it has been a weekly task throughout this project and a good example of an ambiguous scenario is when I was doing my micro teaching brief. I was very nervous before hand, but having prepared myself well and taking time out to make sure I had everything that I needed it was more of a success than I imagined, when I had my ten minutes ‘in the spotlight’ the support and involvement of my peers helped me to overcome one of my worst fears.
I’m still undecided if teaching is for me, and my next step within my education is going to be to try and sort out some work experience in a primary school. This will allow me to work with both age groups, to see if teaching is for me. Even if I don't go into this industry, I will take lots of valuable experiences from this unit, such as collaborating skills, group work and of course a much greater confidence in public speaking. As well as these key skills, I have a also learnt a lot about new types of processes and media such as powder paint and mark making techniques, if needed or required I could develop these when I go back to the Art School in September.
What did you learn and discover? How has this informed your practice and wider understanding?
During this unit I learnt and discovered a lot of new aspects not only about the teaching world, and the creative world, but new discoveries about myself too, things that I never knew before. One aspect that stands out for me is my drive and enthusiasm to get the work done and my positive attitude towards helping my group achieve what we needed to. Patience goes a long way when working with a large group as well as looking after yourself. I didn’t ever realise exactly how important collaboration work and in particular patience is until this project. The main reason for this could be is I’ve never had to deliver work to this kind of standard before. I will take away with me all the discussions and options we have each shared during our meetings and involvement of this unit so that it will impact and inspire me with my future work or projects. It’s been very important that we have had to think about every single challenge and dilemma that we could face, including child needs, disabilities, weather commitments, props and media. When I carry on with the rest of my degree after this unit, I will draw from this as I've realised that to be prepared is very important; being able to plan everything; knowing exactly how to react and what to do if something goes wrong within my work; or if I ever run out time, I will know how to tackle things.
Group work has taught me a wider understanding of all process within a plan; it has taught me that the key to success is to break things down and work things out slowly and thoroughly; time is the most important aspect of anything, and with the right sort of focus. One discovery I will most certainly take away with me from this opportunity is the delightful bond I had with some of the school children as well as fellow peers in my group, it’s given me the positivity of knowing I helped someone out, and that’s a great feeling.
Reflect upon your engagement with each aspect of the unit from primary research to workshop activities, tutorial groups, collaborative work and contextual understanding. Did you commit to each appropriately and contribute well? What aspects do you consider that you developed? What could you improve upon, and how might you now achieve this?
Even though we had frequent group meetings, maybe not as many as we should have but enough, we were still able to discuss different aspects on each occasion. As I’ve previously mentioned at our dry run it was all over the place and unprepared. The artist research was covered but nothing much else was in context, but other than that, things weren’t ready that should have been on the day. This meant that our run through was a disaster which resulted in us being told we had to turn it around in less than twenty four hours otherwise we weren’t able to deliver the workshop at all. Even though we all knew what we wanted to do and vaguely knew how the day was going to go, it was not set in stone, nor were we disorganised, which gave us room to adapt. After this, my group did turn it around and we were able to effectively complete the workshop, which proved to be extremely successful. We looked into different aspects like the Holi festival and art direction on our PowerPoint and gave them a bit of information about there background, then led an activity followed by a discussion. By the end, the pupils knew the learning outcome and knew what we were trying to teach them. Even though we were doing group work at this point it really didn’t feel like it. There wasn’t enough engagement happening within the workshops (this also felt like this with the exhibition night too). Our final objectives had clear links with all aspects of backgrounds including fine art, interactive arts and graphics and this really reflected on our project. Communication within my specific group, slowly got better towards the end of this unit, as there was a slight hiccup over the Easter holidays, as brief ideas and plans began to get discussed. The start-up meeting and getting everyone’s involvement was key, and there was a slight difficulty trying to find everyone and trying to get every body’s first opinions on the matter, partly because we didn’t all know each other. After the Easter holidays had commenced communication got better, friends were made, and lots more time was spent on doing what we needed to. In the future, I think it would be important to start earlier, we all thought we had plenty of time and the whole unit would be a breeze, it wasn’t until the last few days were we had to cram weeks worth of work in when we realised that as a group time management has been a massive problem for us.
Reflect upon your choices, from material, to process and research. Were they conducted at the right time and to the appropriate depth and level of interrogation needed to fully inform your ideal development?
By the materials and creativity that was made, it all came together that we had made the right choices for the process of the day. The initial ideas from each and every one of us who were involved in this workshop, all had some aspect of our specialisms. We all wanted to play it safe and do something we knew we could do, something we had each done before. We eventually came to an agreement that the final choices we were going to make had to be the right ones suitable for the children. The paint fight was a brilliant example of this, it was something that only half of us had done before, something educational that had aspects of culture, history and education behind it but still fun to do. Even though it didn’t work out exactly how we all imagined it would because we had initially hoped to complete this activity outside and at the last minute we had to improvise andiron the session inside. Within in 20 minutes we had to all come together and used our initiative to think of a plan B. We quickly put down dust sheets, covered up key areas of the room and began laying out paper. As we ran out of time, we got the children involved as they also lay out paper on the floor. They understood this to be part of the task, as they didn’t know any different. Lots of fun was had by all and even though it was a massive mess to clear up it worked out well in the end. The teacher of the classroom wasn’t too impressed with the mess but in the end he got a cleaner classroom.
It was interesting to see that every activity during the day as well as people who were involved all expressed different kinds of moods and let off different kinds of feelings, an interesting aspect as our theme was relating back to mood and colour.
The research that we did to produce the main part of our workshop was ‘Culture into the Indian Holi Festival’, ‘The Manchester Colour Run’, Spain and Italy's Tomato Festival, artist inspiration and media background research, and everything we did was focused on colour and these were all big aspects for the children to reflect back on and to remember.
Even though there were many brilliant ideas behind everything that we initially wanted to do, when we did have to change or where we didn't quite achieve our plan it was because we were too slow, and not fully organised from the beginning. Nothing was done in enough depth for example at the last minute we had to rework the whole work shop to be able to actually present it on the day. The most positive aspect from our difficulties is that we can show a brilliant development journey from start to finish for our whole project.
What learning did you achieve? What could you improve upon? Identify an aspect that you could develop further in line with your practice.
I have learnt a whole range of teaching skills. By teaching in different lessons you have to consider changing the style of teaching depending on the subject, this is very important. I discovered that different age groups need to have different ways of teaching to suit their particular needs - more common sense than anything but the younger you are, the more guidance they will need. I learnt how to keep a class focused; how to get their attention; how to gain their respect, and how to deal with a whole load of new challenges. Activities that help with concentration, involvement, stress, thoughtful work, colour and media, activities and games that we used confidently on the day of the workshop that I will be able to carry with me through my future work.
Personally if I had the chance to do something like this again, I would consider doing a workshop even bigger and better than the paint fight was this time around. I would make the work bigger, I would take it outside, I would love to have more children or people involved to produce something really spectacular. As confidence with speaking was a problem I will carry on practicing this so that my voice would be heard more in events, this could be developed on further with in my practice, as when I go into third year next year voice and opinion is something that really matters.
Based upon your choices made within the unit (workshop, theme, and process) identify and select the key motivations within this unit. Evaluate how these relate and have informed your practice and future ambitions.
Based upon my choices for this unit, personally and within the group, I have thoroughly enjoyed most things I have been a part of. The key motivation for me is how we evaluated everything in relation to each other. By doing this I have informed my own practice and future ambitions within any circumstance that I have to sell myself as an individual, this will include any future presentations or work experience I am a part off.
When something does not go right, after this unit I have learnt anything can be fixed, anything is possible. Next time I do a project will be by myself again, although I do not see this as a bad thing as group work has been very difficult. I will be able to keep calm, break things down and focus on one thing at a time. This has changed my practice in many ways, and in particular is confidence as I go into new disciplines and other kinds of specialisms and working with new kinds of media, that beforehand, I would not have considered. I am still unsure of my future ambitions at this point due to being excited over lots of different kinds of industries. To tackle this situation I’m going to try and look into doing a whole range of types of work experience to slowly narrow down were I want to be over the next few years, even if I don’t decide to go into teaching I still stick by what I thought before this unit. I never would have had the chance to be involved in anything like I have done with this unit, it has been a brilliant opportunity for me and opened up a door, I never would have thought about before.
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