Student Characteristics

Kelly:
Kelly is a senior at City High, who is a very creative student. She pushed herself in creating interesting, abstract forms in all of the projects she participated in, and had some really strong pieces in the show. I think her weakness is that she struggles with commitment, and because of this, it was difficult to fully assess her work since there was not much of it.
I think Kelly really respected my opinion on her work, and would confer with me about ideas before starting on a project. I tried to be very open with her, so she felt comfortable discussing ideas for her work with me.

Maya:
Maya is another student at City High that was in my class. Although, she believes herself to be a goofy girl, her use of intricate designs in her work show a complex side to her.
During the "sad" week it was Maya who failed to push herself in the assignment. Although her work was pretty, everyone agreed that they wished it was bigger, so they could see more of the design. That was when I realized that a size requirement was necessary, to make sure that students were not playing it too safe. After that, her work became much bigger, and you could see the intricacies of her designs a lot more.

Anna:
Anna is an eighth grader in one of the Iowa City middle schools, with a very big personality. She started out as being my quiet student, but as she grew more comfortable in the classroom, she really started to come out and show that she was actually a quirky, young girl.
I think how I helped Anna out the most was providing so much freedom in the class and a bunch of new mediums to work with. She enjoyed all the different projects, and she was a lot more consistent in her work. She jumped right into any medium, and had no issues experimenting with the new techniques. When I established the size requirement for the anxiety project, she exceeded that requirement and created an amazing abstract piece,

Alex:
Alex is also a senior at City High, who was already taking a couple of art classes before taking my own- those being Advanced Photo and a drawing class.
I think Alex did have issues with self-confidence, and so my task with her was to provide her plenty of encouragement and positive feedback. I tried to make sure it was not all coming from me, though, which is why I tried to always include one positive statement from classmates during critique. During the final class, when we discussing our work overall, Alex was struggling to come up with her strong points in her work. Instead of trying to force something out of her or provide my own opinion, I had her classmates look at her work, and tell her what they most enjoyed about her pieces. I think she appreciated hearing other people's opinions about her work, and I think it showed her that she did have success with her projects.


Something that I had to learn to do for all of my students to help them advance their ideas, is to start doing one-on-one critiques with them as they were still working on their projects. Prior to these, they were all playing it pretty safe, and creating small simple forms. When we all came to this realization, though, they decided to start pushing themselves to create bigger work, while I decided to check in on them occasionally to see where they were at in their process. I think because of this, their artworks became much more interesting and complex, and I think they were especially proud of those pieces.