Please read the attachment, this is due within 10 hours!.

Week 5 Discussion (Algebra 1)

Discussion 1: Discuss how you can create classroom activities and discussions that promote respect of multiple perspectives. Provide an example from your specific content area. (content area is High School Algebra I)

Response 1: In art education, as well as all content areas, it is important the teacher ensures students of all backgrounds are not only tolerated, but are actively included and celebrated in classroom environment and curriculum (DeWilde, 2019). In the visual arts, it is important to study artists from various time periods and cultures. During my college career, the majority of the time was spent studying the “masters”, which were typically white males. It is important to study these classics, but equally important to incorporate women artists, as well as black artists, hispanic artists, artists of asian descent, and other diverse perspectives and cultures. When presenting a project, I show artworks that can be used to inspire and guide student work. When doing so, I am sure to incorporate work from a wide range of walks of lives. We discuss how the works are similar and also how they are different. Discussing what makes these artworks unique and stand out goes a long way in fostering an appreciation for diversity not only in art work, but also in community populations. Additionally, displaying posters of artists and their work in the classroom can represent diversity.

Discussion 2: Social and emotional learning is often overlooked in the secondary classroom since teachers have limited time with students. Discuss a strategy or idea you could implement in your future classroom on a regular basis to help students connect with each other, build self-confidence, and create a supportive community that values everyone’s contributions.

Response 1 :Allecia “Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions” (Krajewski, 2020). Components of SEL include self awareness, self management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. Luckily, art education incorporates SEL into national standards. It is recognized that the emphasis of art should not only be technical skill, but also the ability to incorporate apply a personal lens to one’s work. This creates a lot of room for SEL within daily lessons and activities. One way that I encourage relationship skills within the art classroom is through small group discussions and critiques about in progress and final bodies of work. Sharing one’s creative ideas is a vulnerable thing to do. Discussing and sharing work can build a sense of community and trust within a group of students as they are sharing a unique part about themselves. Before engaging in these discussions, we have conversations about what these discussions should look like through modeling and looking at video examples of professional artist critiques. These critiques not only allow for students to use new vocabulary words and share creative ideas, but also get to know their peers on a deeper level.

Response 2: Stephanie “First, I think teaching students about a growth mindset is key to helping them build their own self-confidence and be supportive of their peers. With a growth mindset, students realize early that failure is a part of life and that to grow as a person and succeed, there will be failures along the way. When students understand that it is ok to fail, when they do, or when they see their peers do, they can change their attitude from being a failure to what can they learn from this so they can do better next time. When students have a fixed mindset, they feel they are personally responsible for the failure and their self-confidence goes down with each failure. Students with a fixed mindset will also be harder on their peers and make fun of their failures instead of helping them to learn from them.

My future classroom will have a gratitude jar for each student in the class. Students will get to take their jar home and decorate it in ways that show their classmates who they are. When the jars are brought back, a different student will daily take turns giving a quick description of their jar and why they decorated it the way they did. This activity will help their classmates get to know them better. The jars will be displayed on a back shelf in the classroom and as I notice, or classmates notice, students doing positive things, or if a student notices a peer is having a bad day, they can write a positive note of thanks or encouragement and place it in the jar. Discussing the process of gratitude and looking for the positive things in their lives, instead of focusing on the negative, can change a person’s day (Optimistic Thinking 6, 2019). When we go through our day looking for the positive things, because we know we will be asked what we’re grateful for, there is less room in the day to look for the negative.