ARTEducators

ofIOWA

in this issue:Message From the PresidentFall Conference 2011 (Des Moines, Iowa)The Synergy ChallengeUNI High School Scholarship DayGetting Your Kids To Hit The TargetClassroom Management Tips21st Century Skills in the ClassroomAccomplishing Your Goals with 21st Century Skills & CollaborationBiography of a Board MemberSave the Dates

the messageVolume 3 ~ Issue 2 ~ October 2011

Pictured: Des Moines, Iowa ; east view of the Pappa John Sculpture Park

Message From the PresidentFall Conference 2011 (Des Moines, Iowa)

The Synergy ChallengeUNI High School Scholarship Day

Getting Your Kids To Hit The TargetClassroom Management Tips

21st Century Skills in the ClassroomAccomplishing Your Goals with

21st Century Skills & CollaborationBiography of a Board Member

Save the Dates

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MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT, Ronda Sternhagen, Grundy Center MS/HS, president@artedia.orgWhat an amazing start to the school year! I don't know about you, but time is sure whizzing by at lightning speed. I guess that means that good things are happening in the art room!

I was recently in a Barnes&Noble bookstore, I know that is probably a surprise - not. I think many of you share my passion for new books to inspire learning, both for my students and myself. I was stopped in my tracks when I entered the store, and the �rst thing I saw was a plaque that read "Art teaches nothing," (I've got your attention, don't I?) "except the signi�cance of life." (Now you feel better, don't you?) I now have that quote at the bottom of all outgoing e-mail messages. Isn't that the truth? What we do day in and day out is teach our students, colleagues, family, and just about anyone who will listen, about the signi�cance of life, how art records life throughout the ages and leaves us mysteries and probing questions. What we do is so much more than making marks on paper or whatever is your medium of choice, the sky's the limit. (The quote was by Henry Miller in 1941).

I imagine part of my extreme enthusiasm in this month's message is that the 61st Annual AEI Confer-ence is just around the corner, and I am pumped for the amazing workshops and keynote speakers that are planned. This conference is the premier professional development opportunity for art educators (and TAG teachers, as well as art therapists) in the state. Please take advantage of the planning and preparation done by the dedicated art educators on this year's planning committee, headed by veteran conference planner extraordinaire Pat Grubb.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to congratulate this year's award recipients: Dr. Clar Baldus, Outstanding Higher Education Art Teacher of the Year; Becky Johnson, Outstanding High School Art Teacher of the Year; Carol Webb, Outstanding Middle School Art Teacher of the Year; and Nancy Sojka, Art Teacher of the Year! We are proud to call you our friends and colleagues. Congratula-tions! Now, go out there and make some art and make a di�erence as you teach the signi�cance of life!

FALL CONFERENCE 2011 2Don’t forget to register for the fall conference that is coming up in just a few days! Wewill dive into the 21st Century and focus on Creativity in our profession. You may�nd the conference info at http://www.artedia.org where there are also linksthat will redirect you to an easy, online registration system!

SYNERGYCHALLENGEW

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challenging children to...> think critically> creatively solve a real-world problem> transform imagination into reality> have an impact on their community

FALL CHALLENGE>> Create a comic book character who promotes the good of your community or society.>> Assign a super power to your protogonist and tell us the story of how he/she improves the world.

Enter “The Challenge” and upload an image of your comic book pages athttp://on.fb.me/synergychallenge

All entries must be submitted by December 1st, 2011.See o�cial rules online for details.

Judged by Synergy Westchester’s Facebook CommunityTwo winners from each level will receive a $50.00 gift certi�cate to

Amazon or iTunesor a donation to the charity of your choice.

Synergy Westchester is a non-pro�t, advocacy group comprised of parents and educators,dedicated to promoting the education and enrichment of gifted and talented children.

To read more about where kids ideas take �ight, visit us on the web:Synergy Westchester

www.synergywestcheser.com

Sponsered by

G*tec Kids | www.gteckids.com

Message From the PresidentFall Conference 2011 (Des Moines, Iowa)

The Synergy ChallengeUNI High School Scholarship Day

2011 AEI Awards & BiosGetting Your Kids To Hit The Target

Classroom Management Tips21st Century Skills in the Classroom

Accomplishing Your Goals with 21st Century Skills & Collaboration

Biography of a Board MemberSave the Dates

The deadline to submit student portfolios for University of Northern Iowa’s Art Scholarship is fast approaching! Be sure to check over the followingrequirements and information so that you can give your seniors a shotat a great opportunity!

Scholarships will be awarded to high school seniors based onacademic performance and portfolio review.

What you will need:

>> 10 images of your artwork on a CD, not to exceed 1024x768 pixels, JPEG format or photos/digital prints (please no PowerPoints)>> A numbers image list giving title, date and dimensions of each art work>> Label each image with your last name and number corresponding to the image (i.e., Smith01.jpg)>> Completed scholarship application form available on UNI’s website http://www.uni.edu/artdept>> Department/College Scholarship Information Form that is also available on the website>> High School Transcript

All materialsmust be

postmarkedby Oct. 14th

to UNI’s Art Dept.

Send to:High School Scholarship ReviewDepartment of ArtUniversity of Northern Iowa104 Kamerick Art BuildingCedar Falls, IA 50614-0362

Finalists will be invited to campus on November 11, 2011for interviews and a day of creatingunique studio projects.

For more information, visit www.uni.edu/artdept or call 319.273.2077

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StudentsGetting Your

tothe

TARGETLisa M. Jorgensen

Webster City MSmarketing@artedia.org

he big topic of discussion my district, starting this summer after attending the Professional Learning Communities conference in Minneapolis, is targets, goals, and student learners. Has your district started talking about hitting the target? Maybe they call it checkpoints or something similar but it has nothing at all to do with the professional side of things. Targets have everything to do with our students and their journey through learning.

It is important to note that targets are not necessarily your standards or benchmarks. Those should be

more thought of as the “big picture” according to many of the keynotes at the Minnesota conference. Your targets should be simple and change daily to fit the needs of your students. They may reflect the big picture but they allow students to build the big picture more clearly.

It is suggested to have 2-3 targets per lesson or in a broader sense, 5-6 targets during a time frame of specific learning.

Each day, targets should be displayed for the students to see. This allows students to be reminded of what is expected and what they should be learning. Have you ever had a student get through an entire unit and right before the large assessment ask, “Well, what are we suppose to know?” We find ourselves frustrated because we just spent two weeks telling them. Having your targets displayed daily helps students stay accountable for what they need to know in the end. Not to mention, it reminds you what

students have and haven’t learned. Together it creates a positive environment in which students can thrive on their assessments.

Targets do not have to be complicated either. For example, during a unit that addresses the Elements of Art specifically, your target for the first day could be “Know how many elements of art there are.” and “Find an example of each element within this room.” The next day, so long as the targets were met could move into more detail such as, “Identify three types of line.” (cont.)

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It does not just end at at simple statements displayed for your students to see and understand. There are three parts of a class period that help foster the students hit the targets. I like to call it my “Ms. Jorgensen’s Daily RPR”.

First, review. When students enter the classroom it is hard for some art teachers to have a “bell ringer” that is completed until the bell rings or class starts due to lack of sketchbooks or, in reality, time. Therefore, as students enter, start a conversation with them about what happened in class last time. With your students that come to class every day, this can go quickly. With students you see once a cycle, this may take a few minutes but it can be the most helpful class to get the students back on track and into the mindset of art. Include at least three targets that were met the last time you saw them and include whatever information needs to be worked.

Second, prepare. Verbally announce what targets the students will be working on during that period. There should be at least four but remember, don’t overwhelm students with a lot of information - - keep it simple. Tell them what they are going to do, how they are going to do it, and how long they will have.

During class, once the students are into the lesson, reference any visuals that show the targets when teaching. These do not have to be headed with “TARGETS” but instead could be a list on the board, etc.

Third, recap and remind. At the

end of class, recap everything. First start with the last time they visited and what they accomplished and bring them into what was accomplished today. It is important, however, not to just tell them these things. Ask questions and push them to address the targets themselves. Students love to feel in charge and this is a great way to give students ownership in the classroom.

During the recap, ask students what targets they missed or just came shy of. Remind them that these “missed targets” will be adressed in the next class but there will be new targets to hit as well.

In my experience with targets and my trick of Daily RPR, students start to recall information more clearly and anticipate what is going to be covered next. Their assessment scores and comprehension improve because they are completely confident about what they should be learning and knowing - - not to mention, it’s right in front of their face.

I strongly encourage teachers to start addressing targets (many already do without knowing) and use student-friendly language to prepare students for assessments and comprehension.

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Be VisualCollege ofVisual Arts

St. PaulMinnesota

www.cva.edu

Managing the art room is one of the things teachers struggle with the most and talk about the least. It can be embarrassing for a teacher to admit they wish they could manage things di�erently, but it doesn’t have to be. If teachers don’t admit management shortcomings and become willing to dissect and investigate management issues, they’ll never build a classroom environment they can be proud of. Art teachers especially need to talk about this, because we face di�erent management issues then a traditional classroom teacher. Do you have a classroom that ANYONE can walk into at ANY TIME and notice a fabulous learning environment for kids to make and learn about art? I am not sure who can answer that question with a YES. Everyone has management issues they would like to improve upon.

Jessica Balsleyjessica.balsley@ankenyschools.orgAnkeny Elementary Art& The Art of Education

Top 10 Challenges of Managing an Art Room

1. Shhhh! The voice levels are too loud. Kids won’t stop talking. Kids won’t stop talking loud. Make it stop! My head hurts and students need to focus. 2. Clean Up - Clean up can be unruly, loud and it can be so di�cult to make sure every art supply gets put away perfectly before the next class comes barging in (and usually they are waiting outside your door). 3. Settle Down - There is an element of crowd control when kids enter the art room. They are excited to be there, but it takes too much time to get kids settled down and ready to learn. They want to share everything with you. You just want to share the art lesson with them. 4. Unmotivated - What do you do with the kid who lacks motivation and just won’t put any e�ort into their art? Some teachers have told me many stories about this issue, and there is not a one size �ts all answer. How can we make every lesson so exciting, so invigorating that all of the students just CAN’T HELP but hang on your every word? 5. Class Sizes - Are growing larger as our budgets grow smaller. How do you help 30 students in one class succeed to their maximum potential when 10 hands are in the air at any given moment? 6. Line Up - In the rush and craze of clean up, how do we ensure our students get in the line quietly and are ready to enter the hall? How can we be there to manage it e�ectively? 7. Blurting - Don’t interrupt the teacher. If you want to talk you can raise your hand. This is one thing I say every day. I try not to EVER call on a kid who blurts. But we all do. When is it ok and when is it over the line? 8. Look at the Teacher. NOW! - I want to give you the next step to the project but you really don’t want to stop working on your art. What signals can a teacher give to get the eyes and ears of their students quickly and e�ectively? What type of movement and transitions might help with this? How can we tap into other types of communication? 9. Sticky Fingers – Don’t touch that. Keep your hands o� your neighbor. How can we channel this energy into the artwork and not on everything else? 10. But the paper isn’t cut! How can teachers organize and manage things BEFORE the kids enter, to ensure a smooth class period? (admit it, we’ve all scrambled as a class is walking in to our rooms to slice that last piece of construction paper before we start).

Those are my Top 10 Challenges I’ve heard from teachers around the country and have experienced myself. What are your challenges to managing the art room?

21stcentury skills

IN THE

CLASSROOMWendy Miller, UNI Art Education, wendy.miller@uni.edu

What makes a quality art lesson? How do you develop an art project that incorporates contemporary art, collaboration, artistic skill development, creative thinking, problem solving and social justice? Students enrolled in Issues and Theories in Art Education at UNI are working hard to �gure these questions out as they embark on a journey in late October that will allow them to teach social justice through comic making to rural and urban students. This semester, students in art education at UNI are learning what social justice means to them. At �rst they were overwhelmed by the idea of using art as a tool to become more socially engaged. But as they read, discussed, and began to re�ect on our society, they seemed to see that it can start at any level and can truly help students in art classes to create art that has the possibility to open up dialogue about inequities in our world. As Tom Anderson author of Art Education for Social Justice said, “ So if art is communication from one human being to another about things that count, what better content than social justice? Precious few things count more than how we treat our fellow human beings and the kinds of relationships we have with them. The right of human beings to be treated fairly, equally, and with dignity and respect is the core value de�ning what it means to be civilized.” With this in mind, my students are setting out to teach students to re�ect on injustices in their rural or urban communities. Two diverse lesson plans are being created to take out to the public schools for two weeks. The focus of these lessons will be on the 4 C’s (Creativity, Critical thinking, Communication, and Collaboration) of the 21st Century Skills. The �rst lesson will be taught to a drawing class in a rural school about forty minutes outside of Cedar Rapids, IA. Students will be encouraged to develop and communicate through the medium of comics to demonstrate creatively an issue that they see in their school that is a concern to them. They will need to think critically to interpret these ideas, transform their thinking into narratives, and then shape them into a comic using a select few powerful images and words to communicate. In the end, students will work together to put each comic into a book with a collaborative cover designed to tie the work together. The second lesson will be taught in an urban school near campus to students in a photography class. Students will use Comic Life computer photo program to create their comics about the injustices in their school community. Students will collaborate in small groups to critically examine their school through the camera lens and document these issues. They will communicate visually their analysis of their school through a comic panel that uses words and images to interpret their argument. Students will put their comics together into one book and work collaboratively to create the cover. Our plan is to distribute black and white copies throughout the schools and to exchange them with the other school to encourage dialogue about these issues. Our goal is not to build more problems amongst di�ering parties in the building, but to open everyone’s eyes to student’s perceived inequities within their school climate. We hope that through these lessons, deep skills in artistic development will develop along with the opportunity for students voices in both rural and urban areas can be shared. We are also very interested to compare the similarities or di�erences between the issues students in rural and urban school share.

Teaching Comics to Rural and Urban Students

ACCOMPLISHINGyour GOALS with

21st CENTURY SKILLS& COLLABORATION

LIZ LYONS

lizart1@live.com

Tri-Center Elementary

Tri-Center this year we set goals at the end of last year to address core standards. The Iowa core that most relates to the art classroom for my goal is “Employability Skills”. I plan to emphasize class critiques for both master works and for classroom work. I have also numbered the Employability skills so they can be referred to easily in my lesson plans. For instance, for K-2 I chose 1.A.a “Share thoughts and ideas with others” and for 3-5 1.A.b “Articulate ideas clearly in writing and speaking”. To meet

the goal of observing and speaking about art, I plan to have at least one critique per quarter (we only meet once per week). During the critiques I will have 3-4 standard questions to jump start discussion, encourage the use of our “art words” during discussion, and also demonstrate positive interaction with student comments and reflection (which will appear on the self-assessment as well). We are also concentrating on writing this year at TC and because of the limited amount of time in the art room; I have found ways to collaborate with classroom teachers. For example, the 5th graders just had their Public Art Tour field trip, so I used a power point to introduce students to what they would see ahead of time and afterwards we have a critique/discussion to talk about different aspects of the field trip as well as creating a public art sculpture piece to display in the community (this year we are making pantyhose sculptures that Erin Almelien presented at a workshop last spring). In collaboration with the classroom the students are concentrating on ideas and content, word choice, and sentence fluency in language arts so they will choose 3 of their favorite pieces from the trip to write about while focusing on those goals. Another bonus was the sculpture in Pioneer Courage Park depicting a wagon train in very realistic detail which relates directly to what students are learning in social studies (it gives them a great visual and physical connection to what they are studying). These are just a couple of the ways the art classroom can stay focused on art curriculum yet still participate in the developmental goals set for students in your school, especially with limited class time!

At

BIOGRAPHY ofBOARDMEMBER

Kassi Nelson has worked at Gladbrook-Reinbeck High School for the past six

University. When asked what made her choose to teach or be involved with the arts in Iowa, rather than another community Kassi Nelson referenced

school art teacher and because of her energy and educational classes, Kassi found herself in love with art. Kassi attributes her love of education to her mother, who is also a teacher.

Kassi loves Art Education because “your room, your teaching is like no other class room.” She understands that students may not succeed in regular

believes art education allows for students to externally or internally express themselves. Her favorite part of her job is the “ah-ha” moments and getting students to reach outside the “box”.

Gladbrook-Reinbeck is known for it’s small size and tight community, some-thing Kassi is attracted to. It is also close to her family. Kassi is married to her college sweat heart, Joe, and they have a beautiful little boy, Rilon who is their pride and joy. They also have two dogs, Franny and Harley, who are spoiled rotten. Kassi has recently started taking photos and editing them for

themselves competing a lot on the golf course. Kassi spends loads of time with her nieces and nephews but tries to stay home with the family as much as possible (she calls herself a homebody).

Conference, she hasn’t looked back. The relationships that she has built and the things she has learned from other colleagues in AEI are things she believes she’d never have come across without AEI. She became the secre-tary of AEI and keeps track of minutes, papers shared with the board and helps out the President as often as possible. She would like to see AEI expand to more members around the state. She also sees an importance behind technology and orienting AEI in the 21st Century direction. She believes both AEI and the members within are amazing and extremely knowlegeable and encourages everyone to get involved.

And one last thing! If you are a fan of Angry Birds, Kassi might have you beat as she called herself an addict to the ever-popular tablet game.

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FALL CONFERENCE - OCTOBER 7-9UNI SCHOLARSHIP DEADLINE - OCTOBER 14SUBMITTION OF IASB DEADLINE - NOVEMBER 2ISU ARTIST’S TALK - NOVEMBER 10SYNERGY CHALLENGE DEADLINE - DECEMBER 1

friends and family. She enjoys gol�ng and her and her husband often �nd

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DON’T FORGETto bring items the Fall Conference Silent Auction

artworkwinefood

art suppliesgift cards

certi�catescraftslesson plansjeweleryand more!

[items of interest]

Please bring your items to the Fall Conference and �nd the designated tables for which you can enter your items

to be bid on. Any size goes and hand made items are very welcomed! Don’t limit your items to art-themed goodies;

include everything and anything you think your fellow colleagues may enjoy!