Finnick Vest

Mark McGuire

ART EDUC 4900

18 April 2019

Secondary Reflection

During my secondary field experience placement I was given

the opportunity to work with an amazing population of students.

I never expected to be in a charter school, yet I am excelling

in ACPA’s environment. It is drastically different than any

school I have ever been in, but that is what makes it

successful. ACPA takes on a lot of students who do not excel in

other schools, and they all flourish here.

In having Mrs. Holm as my mentor teacher, I have learned

how she models the behavior she wants to see. In elementary

grade level, a lot of class time was spent correcting behaviors

and classroom management. Mrs. Holm doesn’t typically address

behaviors, and if she does she is very calm when doing so. ACPA

as a whole does not enforce a lot of rules, unless the behaviors

are extremely disruptive. Students are allowed to talk, walk

around, and step out into the hallway at any time. The students

are given a lot of freedom and for the most part students are

able to rise up to the level of responsibility.

 I really enjoy the more relaxed environment I have

experienced at the highschool level. I like that the majority of

time is spent on students creating rather than instruction. At

the elementary level, students only go to art class once a week,

so cramming everything in can leave kids with no time to

actually create some days, but at high school it is nice to see

everyone every day, and help with their progress. Students at

this level are also increasingly independent, thus they can be

responsible for getting their own supplies. Elementary students

typically struggle a lot more when left to their own devices.

One challenge with teaching at the high school level is

assigning, keeping track of, and having students turn in

homework. Since art is actually deemed a core subject area at

ACPA, homework is assigned just like all of the other classes.

When I took art course in high school, we never had homework, so

at first giving students homework was a lot to wrap my head

around. On top of this, grading was a lot more time consuming

and confusing than I anticipated. It is frustrating when you

know students are actively working on a project, but they just

will not turn it in. Knowing how difficult grading can be, I

want to think more about how I set up grades as a future

educator in my own position.

 One thing I observed at ACPA that I definitely want to

implement in my future classroom is how open all of the

assignments were. I loved that students wanted to push beyond

assignments. One students always wanted to do something else

instead of the project, so Mrs. Holm and I decided that she

would have to propose her idea to me. During our portraiture

unit, she instead worked on screenprinting and collaging

portraits, so I’m glad the environment of the class allowed for

students to bring the content to their ability level.

During my time teaching at ACPA, I have been able to really

connect to a lot of students. One student who was rather

difficult in the beginning asked me about my gender transition

since they are transgender as well. I loved that the student was

comfortable enough and trusted me enough to talk to be about

that. I think transgender kids do not know enough transgender

adults, and in turn those kids struggle to figure out their

futures. I am happy that, even just for a few weeks, I was able

to be a resource for the students.