My first student teaching experience was at Catasauqua Area High School in Northampton, PA. I taught Fine Arts II to students in 9th—12th grades, Humanities (Intro to Art) courses to 9th grade students, and Advanced 3 Dimensional Craft Design studio classes. I had the pleasure of working with an instructor and developed lessons to related to her curriculum theme: observation.

Fine Arts II
Fine Arts II classes spent the previous semester learning various 2D processes, so I introduced them to 3-Dimensional art and we began with a material they were already familiar with: paper. The students created geometric and non-geometric forms out of paper, before learning to create paper-mache sculptures. The students studied the art of installation artist Sandy Skoglund and created animals that became an installation in the school. (Installation works are site-specific sculptures that encourage the viewer to interact with the art in a unique way.)  As a firm believer of creating art outside the classroom, I created this unit to challenge students to create a 3D form that became part of its surroundings. The unit introduced students to installation as a new medium, and provided them with an opportunity to engage their school peers in a fun, interactive, and comical way.

Humanities
The 9th grade Humanities course is a requirement for students at Catasauqua High School. With these students, I created lessons for journal making, collage art and logo design. These projects allowed students to incorporate their interests as well as their  visual culture with the course. As the students learned about the history of design, they explored logo recognition and developed an awareness for the amount of corporate branding that surrounds their lives. The students also explored how positive and negative shapes affect overall readability, and how color-blending can be achieved through cut paper collage.

Advanced 3D Crafts Studio
This course’s curriculum allows students to create usable, 3D products. I created lessons around fiber arts. Students learned how to create felt from raw wool and learned many basic stitching techniques. They examined different cultures that used these techniques and reflected on the processes by writing an artist statement. Students used these skills to embroider their journals, a hand-felted pillow, and a final, 3D marionette puppet. 

Featured: Dimensional Crafts: High School
(Catasauqua Area High School, grades 9—12)

Students designed sketchbook covers as they learned various ways to embroider designs onto fabric. They then learned about the history of felt-making in with the nomadic tribes of Asia, and hand-felted their own piece of fabric that would become the front of their pillows. They then chose a design from nature and embroidered the felt with their chosen design. They stuffed their pillows and hand-sew the pillow for the final assembly of their finished piece. The finished products were beautiful. They were eco-friendly, usable, nature-inspired pillows.