BY MORGAN MCDONALD, University Fellow
Can I do it all? Should I? These are questions I asked myself during student teaching as an undergrad student here at Ohio State. As many of us know, it’s easy in teaching to give more than you have, and sometimes it's even required. I knew when thinking about engaging in a community-based art project that it could easily become too much on my plate, and it would impact my ability to be present as a teacher. I had to be honest with myself and say, "I could try to do it all, but I think it would be smarter to do what fills my plate to a comfortable level and do it well.”
Ohio State always emphasized the need for involving the broader community, and I knew this is something I wanted to test drive in the student teaching context. I just wasn’t sure how. Through a conversation in the art classroom during lunch, a student expressed interest in sharing their art to the world and asked, “How can I make my art noticeable?” We talked about her goals, concerns and questions, and we quickly realized it wasn’t just one student who needed to hear this — everyone could benefit from participating in a discussion like this. In the final two weeks of student teaching, I scrapped my previous plans and began a project called "Art Week.” Little did I know it would become a pivotal project, both for the students and myself.
Starting out, I had a few goals in mind:
- Mirror a micro-art world in the classroom
- Focus on the art room and larger school context as a community
- Give students practical tools to share ideas (in this case art) with a broader audience in the digital age
- Celebrate and utilize the tools students already possess for communicating and sharing on digital platforms
Our goals as a community were to advocate, advertise, appreciate and anticipate — these became the "4 A’s of Art Week,” our guideposts for thinking and engagement.
The week began by students uploading one of their favorite artworks they made into a Google Slideshow, writing about their processes, and thinking how creating a platform for viewing student work could help advocate for the value of art programs and artists. This slideshow would later be disseminated to the school via posters on bulletin boards and scannable QR codes.
Next, students brainstormed how to advertise and catch viewers’ attention, for which memes became the answer. Students created a range of humor- filled memes related to art, art class or the art world as a way of communicating in visual format what it's like to make art and be in an art class.
