Educational philosophy

As an art educator my goal is to create a comfortable and engaging learning environment where all students can explore their ideas and connect with their own individual creative process.  

Using a cognitive approach to education, I believe that art helps form students intellectual development using their own schema to develop a better understanding of themselves and the world they live in.  Art teaches students to appreciate different points of view and see learning as a process in which they actively build new ideas or concepts based upon current and past knowledge or experiences.  

I believe that art reinforces concepts of meta-cognition by exploring ideas and focusing critical thinking skills to help students evaluate, synthesize and create new work. I believe in a student-centered approach to education: this approach addresses the cognitive, physical, emotional, social, and creative needs of all students. I adapt my lessons so my teaching is developmentally appropriate in order to meet the needs and learning styles of all students.  

As a teacher I try to act as a facilitator or coach who encourages students to discover principles for themselves and to construct knowledge by working to solve realistic problems. I feel that students that benefit from an art education are better equipped to handle the complex challenges of the 21^st century.  In art you conceptualize an image or and idea and strive to give it light and form, problem solving along the way.  Gathering information about a subject matter, comprehension of central ideas and concepts and applying new knowledge to ultimately analyze a set of rules or problems and create new work that remains true to your original vision.  

I believe that the process of creating art is a very personal endeavor, whereby internalized concepts, rules and general principles may be applied in a real world context.  Furthermore I believe the process of creating art based on a students schema, psychological processes, information processing, memory and perception help develop a students overall capacity and skills as a learner.  As an educator it is my duty to structure the content of my lesson plans to focus on building intelligence and cognitive and meata-cognitive development.  Lastly education is like art…  Make it about something beautiful.

Reflective post #3

After reviewing the stages of technology integration, I feel that I am personally somewhere between stage 2: adoption and stage 3: adaptation.  As an art educator I believe there was some reluctance on my part to accept the use of technology to enhance my own skills as an artist.  However, after looking at some of the blogs and podcasts available on topics such as art history, art technique and personal development, it has helped me formulate a better vision of how I could implement the use of these technologies in my classroom.  I have never really seen any art educators rely on PLN’s or other social media in teaching students art.  Most of the teachers I have observed throughout my graduate work only used PowerPoint or other presentation applications to organize slides of artwork or arrange information for students.  I think that art educators are more likely to stumble at stage 2 or to work backwards from stage 5 and we need to focus more on the students acceptance of entertainment media, social networks and other existing technologies to create more engaged, critical thinking learning environments.

Reflective post #2

I chose the finding that 18 year olds devote an average of 7 hours and 3 minutes to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week), media multitasking (using more than one medium at a time), means they manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into that time frame.  What stood out to me about these findings is the incredible amount of time young adults spend using entertainment media.  That is almost equivalent to a full time job, watching social and entertainment media.  I think the value of research like this is in developing a better picture of who our students are, the ways in which they learn and access information and the types of avenues we as educators have for providing our students with information and activities that are engaging to them as individual learners.  Also, these types of media outlets like social networks; blogs and podcasts can help to create teaching strategies that capitalize on a student’s own involvement in their educational process.  All of these findings point to a larger need for educators to access information and present it in new ways.  I think we should assume that research such as this is accurate however, I would be cautious in how we use findings such as this.  Do we use entertainment media just to entertain, or should we create media based on existing educational models and research based strategies in which students can benefit from their application in the classroom?  Hopefully Educators can harness technology to create new ways of engaging students and developing, more equipped teachers that use new media to develop their own teaching style.  

Reflective Post #1

Hello, 

My name is Sean Killen.  I am a graduate student at Dominican University working towards my type 9 certification in Art education.  Here's the gist of how I arrived at this point in my career.  I went to Illinois State University and studied Fine Art and received my Bachelors degree in studio arts in 2003.  Upon Graduating I returned home and worked in every conceivable job, from hospitality, to sales and manufacturing to manual labor and skilled trades as a carpenter and interior painter.  In the spring of 2009 I took a job at a charter school as a teachers assistant.  After working with the kids for several months I came to the realization that I wanted to become a teacher.  I found it to be an incredibly rewarding job and one in which I could apply my skills as an artist, passing on the knowledge and wealth of my experiences.  I have some experience using PowerPoint and other Internet applications to aid in lesson planning and instruction.  However, I would like to learn more about how to use blogs, twitter and productivity applications to create more collaborative, creative and student centered learning environments.