Project Planning!

We’ve made a lot of progress in the last month. During our Thursday meetings, we’ve been able to focus on the concept of rhetoric, both visual and verbal. Now, we’re in the process of forming a unit that investigates this question: How have we been shaped by advertising?

Our hope is to create something truly interdisciplinary, in which students can take principles that they learn about both art and language and create something original. We’re going to continue our research with books like Everything’s an Argument and No Logo. We’ve also started discussing the graphic design curriculum with two enthusiastic and inspiring teachers — and now we are even more excited! These teachers showed us several student projects and they were impressive! The graphic design students will be studying branding and ad campaigns, and then creating works informed by their studies. We can’t wait to plan the bridge between our disciplines — and to continue the learning process!

We’ll be meeting tomorrow in the library to share ideas, develop our unit, and plan for our discussion about InterArt at NYU on the 19th!

Inspiration Information!

And the process continues! To borrow a phrase from Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, we have found some “inspiration information!” Over the past few weeks, the InterArt team has decided to meet during tenth period on Thursdays. This week, we changed it up and met today (Wednesday) because of Parent-Teacher Conferences tomorrow.

Frank, Lorraine, Jackie, David, and I met in the library to discuss our next steps for creating a project this spring. We have had some really engaging conversations about controversial issues our students could study — but we’re still exploring the planning process behind project-based learning.

This led us to High Tech High School in California. Today, we spent time looking at the school’s website, especially at their Seven Successful PBL Projects. It was so exciting to look at a school that is implementing engaging and rigorous coursework that allows student to explore the world in interdisciplinary ways. We’re going to continue to look at the school’s projects next week. So, if you have a minute, click the site for some inspiration!

Check back soon to see what topic we pick for our project!

-Maeve

 

Back to School

After our coursework this summer, Lorraine and I wanted to start off September with several InterArt team meetings. The goals of these meetings were to get to know the teachers who would be collaborating and to build community. As the school year has started, we have run into some programming issues and some teachers who are interested feel as if they cannot devote the necessary time to the project. They want to be kept aware of our progress and hopefully join in the future, but for now, they have decided not to join InterArt. As a result, we had some difficulty meeting. This week, Lorraine, Angela, and I were able to meet during tenth period and after to talk about InterArt. We decided to discuss our goal of creating an interdisciplinary project to be implemented in the spring semester. Through our discussion, we came to some exciting conclusions that we are excited to share with the rest of the teachers. As of now, we are thinking that the eleventh grade would be a great focus group for the first project, as it focuses on both American literature and history. Additionally, most of the interested teachers teach eleventh grade classes, so there is more of a chance that we will share students. After our initial discussion about the logistics, we also started to brainstorm about potential topics. We would like the InterArt project to focus on a debatable or controversial topic that students would want to read, write, create, and think about. We tossed around ideas for a focus on social media and privacy in the world today. It was exciting to think about all the parallels that could be drawn among classes and the potential for public display of student work. We’ve planned our next meeting for this Thursday and instead of having one time to meet, we will hold two meetings in hopes that more teachers will be able to participate. We’re looking forward to extending this conversation and hearing the brilliant ideas of our colleagues!

Summer Learning

We just finished our last class at the New School Institute for Urban Education‘s Summer Institute. Wow, there is just so much to reflect upon! We had the opportunity to take three classes: “Creativity, Community, and Change,” “Rebooting Pedagogies,” and “Action Research.” From 9 am to 6 pm each day, we learned about ourselves, our practice, and our implementation of InterArt. We came to so many new discoveries and now feel so energized to return to school on September 6th!

We feel so strongly that InterArt will benefit our teachers and students. So many ideas buzzing around our heads! Let’s give our students opportunities to be passionate and connected to their work. We have wonderful students with such a range of talents — we can’t wait to see what they produce this year!

Just want to take a minute to say thanks to all the participants in the Summer Institute – you all helped us to challenge ourselves creatively, think about our plan, and laugh! Now, we’re ready to take steps forward and make InterArt a reality!

Hello world!

What do you think it takes to learn? We’re interested in exploring. As teachers, we want to see how creative project-based learning can impact our students and the larger community. At Art and Design, creativity is our home. By using the skills and passion that our community members have for the commercial arts and fusing them with the academic subjects, we think that all of us can move forward in our abilities to critically think, problem-solve, and analyze the world around us.