(5) My Experience at CAEA

I want to preface this entry by noting that with all of the volunteer commitments that I was assigned during this experience, I was unable to capture a variety of documentation styles. Therefore this entry only contains photographs, a video, and a scan of some notes that I took.

This entry will reflect on things that I learned that I will apply to my future curriculum and pedagogy.

Artifact #1: Adventures in Felting!

On Saturday, I attended a session that simply taught the attendees how to felt and how students can explore this medium in the classroom. I thought that this demonstration was awesome and super simple. I learned how to use felting needles and pads as well as how to execute the stitch that you see around my Bulbasaur friend above. The instructor said that she has her students create "stuffies" in relationship to a sculpture unit and I think I might implement the same sort of project. I love that the felting process is accesible to students of all ages and abilities and the ideas are transferrable to other mediums and fibers processes.

Artifact #2: The Nuts and Bolts of TAB

This session was a lecture by a retired middle school art teacher that walked participants through the structure of her TAB inspired classroom. Here are some of the aspects of her classroom that I can definitely imagine within my own:

• Various students are assigned as "art managers." These managers are responsible for accessing more expensive materials for other students. For example, if a student needs watercolor paper, they might ask the art manager for sheets as needed.

• Wet materials are located in one area of a room whereas dry things are in another.

• These are the studios that this teacher opened that I might consider:

Collage Studio

Fibers/Fashion Studio

Clay Studio

• Terraforma Cards for Project Ideation

• "Bootcamp" projects/demos for skill-building are assignments in which the teacher offers a demonstration of a skill and students complete formal and informal exercises. These opportunities are optional.

• Jedi Clean-up System - This teacher had a system in which students are nominated to be in charge of various cleaning and organizing roles. New nominees are inducted into the system every 2-3 weeks.

Artifact #3: Mini Pots

During this session, a high-school ceramic teacher gave us a demonstration on how to throw pots on a miniature wheel. He insisted that this is a great method for teaching beginners how to throw because it's low risk, and easy to understand. I thought that this wold be a great introduction to throwing for middle schoolers especially in an environment where we don't have access to potter's wheels. The wheels are also fairly affordable at $29 a piece. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have a few of those in the clay studio within a TAB classroom. This teacher also implemented a mini pots sale within his classroom in which students received custom orders and put the pots in those plastic containers that you get when you get those "quarter" prizes out of the vending machine. This activity allows artists to experience commission work.

Artifact #4: Bio Mosh

These paintings were created from a pop-up workshop called Bio Mosh in which participants experienced creating biome-like works that were later adhered to the windows in the hallway. The images were created with alcoholic inks and rubbing alcohol on top of tracing paper. I enjoyed this projects' interdisciplinary connections to science and biology as well as the freedom that the artist has to manipulate the inks. I can imagine myself implementing this sort of project within a painting/abstraction unit/studio.

Artifact #5: Danielle SeeWalker

Painting By SeeWalker (2022)

At CAEA, one of the keynote speakers, Danielle SeeWalker, spoke about how the arts are a device of activism for many different communities. Through the organizations that she runs in Denver, Danielle paints and creates artworks that illuminate the experiences of Indigenous peoples across the nation. Because of her talk, I realized that my future students who have marginalized identities need to experience and encounter other artists who share those identities. This is vital to seeing themselves as authentic creators. Danielle offers workshops for students and loves talking about how her identities are demonstrate presence in her work. I'm grateful that I got to hear her speak and am looking forward to sharing her work and research with my students.