College One: Self-evaluation...

Research and First Impressions

The Stockport Introductory Session on Monday 11th March, made me feel comfortable in my choosing of College One. I knew College One would take me out of my comfort zone and meeting everyone else that is doing College One was a good way to start. The Ice Breaker of getting into pairs and using the knowledge of their partners to put onto a cup was eventful and enjoyable, it helped everyone settle in.

                All of the lectures and workshops have prepared me in how to approach preparing and running a workshop. I found most of the practical workshops challenging, they all placed me out of my comfort zone. Throughout the workshops, working in pairs and teams was encouraged, I surprisingly found out that I liked working in groups but still shied away from expressing our results at feedback time. As most of these workshops were aimed at helping us plan and produce our own workshop, I feel like my strengths lean more towards being organised. From all of the variety throughout the workshops, I was able to adapt and this boosted my confidence.

                Choosing the Organisation that would be best for me was a difficult decision. I chosen Darwen Aldridge Community Academy (DACA) because I felt like it was more beneficial for my future career and for applying onto a PGCE  course. Louise Klinck also made the opportunity sound amazing and I wanted to be a part of it.

Workshop Activities

Throughout the workshops, I encountered a broad range of materials and approaches to how a workshop could run. I responded to each activity, however, I liked some workshops more than others. I particularly enjoyed working over someone else's work! This task demonstrated the idea of adapting myself to suit and work around a particular problem. It made me focus on risk assessing my workshop ideas and always having other possibilities in case any errors occur.

                I preferred working with materials because of my Textiles background but I did enjoy exploring the elements of 3-D and the idea of forming a shape using limited resources. For example: making a Totem pole that had the theme of Manchester using only railcard tickets, card and shredded paper. I did not like working with sweets, they made my hands sticky and the smell was sickly, I do however, understand why children would get excited to work with them. I found crafting an Origami Crane bird difficult to do even though I had the instructions directly in front of me, I found this exercise more difficult than I anticipated, it took up a lot of time. This made me realise that I would need to be able to recognise what a suitable workshop is for my class' age.

                

Working individually for me adds more pressure. I think working in groups creates a better outcome because it is a collaborative of ideas but I also think it can hinder quieter people in a group. Every student will have an idea but it is about drawing it out and building on their confidence's to express them.

                These workshops have made me aware of a variety of elements that I will ensure and think about when preparing my workshops, for example: all the students will respond to each tasks differently, to encourage the students creativity and imagination, some students characters and personalities are more dominant than others, to be aware of other people's distractions, limited resources can be a good thing and that clearing up is just as important as the activities as it signifies the completion of one. 

Organisations and getting involved

The brief for DACA was broad, It was clear from the College One's brief that a workshop had to be involved, whether it was an individual workshop or a group one. We all started off considering individual workshops but decided to do a group workshop so the overall workshop idea could be bigger. The overall idea stemmed from Rory's individual idea of making paints but it was clear from group discussions that mark-making would be a prominent idea to use.    

             It was 10 'teachers' with a class of 15 students so we was aware that there was enough of us to run a workshop as big as we planned. As the classes and groups changed, we also changed roles,  it gave everyone the chance to present part of the PowerPoint and work at the other stations. 

             My first impressions of working at the school was that I found it over-whelming, intense and fast-pacing, maybe this was because I was in an unfamiliar environment and situation. The older classes seem to be more grateful for our help but they would not ask for it, we had to approach them, doing this regularly helps me build on my confidence and as each day goes by at the school, I felt my confidence growing. The younger classes want more interaction, they would shout me over, ask me how to do things and to show them how, this for me is encouraging because it made me feel approachable and that maybe the children seen me as an experienced figure that could help them.

 Planning workshops

My strengths have always lied with organisation but working in a group, I consider this to be my downfall. I need to have a detailed plan of what I am going to say/do/act/prepare whereas others in the group do not need this much preparation, preparation for me gives me confidence. Working with people from different fields in Art has been beneficial in demonstrating how different we plan and work.

              

For the PowerPoint, we all met as a group and discussed what we wanted to include but because some people in the group did not fully concentrate, not much was done, this resulted in us all taking the PowerPoint home and working on it individually. We then met again to put it all together, taking elements from each but all that was took off mine was the images which I did not mind but I would of liked my artist research text to have been used because I think it was relevant to the concept of the workshop. Louise even said at the end of the presentation that she would have wanted more artist background so maybe I should have argued my for my text to be used further. I sometimes felt over-shadowed working in this group, there are so many strong and dominant characters that sometimes I felt unheard. I did not have the confidence to argue my ideas across, at the beginning I felt nervous speaking in front of them and by the end I did feel more confident but I still felt unheard. In some group meetings it became more painful than productive, it was easier giving certain people things to do, then bringing it back and the rest of us would give advice on what could be improved. The group was sometimes too big to work in to get done anything productive.

                Our proposed outcome is a large canvas piece that will be showered with colour from recycled materials that the children will turn into paints. We did small scale trial and error experiments to test out whether the balloons would pop and how we would crush and put the 'paint' into the balloons.

The workshop duration ran smoothly until the very end when we began hanging up the balloons, the children became less interested in filling the balloons and became more interested in not focusing on what they should have been, this is because they could not get involved with hanging the balloons up because the device was too high for them to reach. We decided to hang the balloons up ourselves whilst the children carried on filling them. Maybe they were less supervised and took advantage of this, next time I suggested that the hanging device be accessible to the children, to keep them occupied. 

For the first workshop, Louise was there throughout to oversea our first trial, it must have gone well as for the second run of our workshop, Louise completely left us to it. It showed her confidence in us and that we can run a successful workshop, it made me feel impressed with myself and the group. Louise must have felt comfortable enough to leave us to make any decisions that came up, we felt a lot more relaxed in our second workshop. Practice makes perfect, or in our case practice makes for better.  

                 We agreed with Louise that we would buy the materials and give her the receipts and she would refund us, some materials we contributed ourselves. We chosen to mainly use recyclable materials because it adds to the concept of using 'recycled materials and making the students aware of the positives of this'. The materials we bought did work to our purpose, except for tissue paper, unless cut finely it just clogged the blenders. For the second workshop we also chosen not to use turpentine, in the first workshop turpentine caused some balloons to pop randomly creating unneeded mess.

Learning

From running the workshop I have learnt to be more adaptable, not to be as nervous, get as much involved as possible, enjoy the processes and be proud by how much the children seemed to enjoy it. Throughout this opportunity of work experience, I have felt my confidence grow. As this Unit has been about planning workshops and all it involves, the practical side has been limited but I still involved it by doing my own testing experiments at home. I have found that using blogger on a daily basis has become a part of my regular routine and it has helped my be more descriptive and thoughtful when reporting my days events.

                Planning our chosen workshop from the beginning was vague as I missed the original proposal because I did some volunteering at Z-arts. I was informed of the initial idea after and even though I agreed it was a great idea, the details I was given were limited but it was the very start of the workshop. We had group meetings where we discussed the workshop and how the day would run and everyone contributed. I do not think there was any disagreements, if everyone had slightly different ideas, the idea chosen was down to the group majority. Overall this worked but because some got on more than others it resulted in smaller groups being formed and anyone in that group that had an idea, the rest of the group new which idea would be chosen.

                Working at D.A.C.A has been an amazing experience. It has helped me develop a realistic idea on how a teacher's life is ran daily and what hinders they encounter, as well as the benefits. What I found encouraging about my experience at DACA was the children's gratitude of my help and this was an wonderful feeling. The hindrance I found in some of my classes was one or two disruptive students but with one to one attention they settled down rather quick. Even though some students can be disruptive and there were hindrances during the workshop, as a group we problem solved and learnt from it and moved on, this is how I would be and work as if becoming a teacher was to become a reality in the future. Nothing from working at D.A.C.A has put me off this prospect, if anything working at D.A.C.A has strengthened my passion for wanting to become a teacher, this may have been different if I worked at another high school. Louise and the children I worked with were so receptive and there was little restrictions making this workshop and experience incredible.        

                 

Reflection

My aim throughout working at DACA was to gain as much work experience as I possibly could. As I would like my future career to be in teaching, my main goal at DACA was to figure out what specific age range I would be most suitable to work with. I only worked with Year 7's and Year 10's but the gap between the 2 was huge. I enjoyed working with Year 7's because of how imaginative they are but I also enjoyed working with Year 10's as the ones I worked with were knowledgeable, committed and open as well as appreciative of any help I gave them.                                 

                         My expected outcome for the workshops was limited to the outcome we received. I may have put myself down as well as my group by having such a small expectation but the outcome was amazing and I was thrilled with the feedback from both the students and Louise. 

  

               

My greatest challenge that I had to overcome was my confidence and being confident when approaching the students, I found this very challenging. To overcome it, I gave it little thought. I realised that I have knowledge and expertise that could be beneficial to them.                              

To further this line of work I would continue to gain work experience in the field of teaching. I would like to have the opportunity to continue to work at DACA and also find work experience at other schools, to ensure myself that teaching is the right choice for me, as a career. From this Unit I have learnt a lot about myself and my confidence has certainly grown. I think that to become a teacher I need to be more aware that the children that I will be teaching will have external factors that affect the way they behave in class, I found this evident with some of the children at D.A.C.A.

Individually I put all my effort into everything I did. However, when working in a group I could have done a lot more and got more involved. I felt that sometimes I was not confident enough to argue my ideas further. We all played our part in making the workshop and this Unit a success. I have used my organisational skills, my communication skills and my practical and technical knowledge throughout this Unit, I also managed my workload, became resourceful when choosing materials and I worked collaboratively. As a group, we all set goals, tasks, we solved problems when they occurred, negotiated ideas and most importantly worked as a team. It has definitely been an enjoyable experience and the feedback was informative for when planning the same workshop on how to improve it and it was also encouraging to read. I hoped to have made a difference in one child's life and if so this experience began terrifying but it was worthwhile.