Atelierista, Learning to Help Teachers

I got a comment asking questions about how I support the classroom teachers. During my first year as Atelierista, this was my biggest challenge and one I didn't meet well. This year, my second in this job, I feel like I am doing better. There are some classrooms that I feel I am a vital part of. I hope to grow and learn so that soon I will be a part of every classroom, and a partner with each teacher in the pre-school.
Here is one story to show the back and forth between the teachers and me, the classroom and the studio. It is an unfinished story, which will be complete when the work goes back to the classroom and adds (or not) to the bigger project.

One classroom has interpreted the investigation into PLACE and photography as a look at how children see each other and themselves. For three year olds it seems, a place is the people in it. Sara and Cris showed me some portraits the children have been taking of each other, and some self-portraits made by collaging found objects over photos. In our discussion, we agreed that a further investigation into identity through self-portraits might be the next step. Cris had interviewed the children and had a list of favorite colors, animals and other information about each child. I took on the idea of photographs of the children being their favorite color.

Here is my first group...   drawing plans


using the overhead to see if it would make people purple

Drawing masks and using tattoo markers to be purple

After the masks were done, the girls decided to make puppets to go with their masks. This idea continues an earlier puppet/story project in their class.The excitement grew as the children made "puppets" out of paper strips and sticks. They were the purple people! They would have a purple people puppet show!

They paraded down the hall and back to the classroom...

Oliver Plays His Drums

after watching this video, he said "It's not done, you know. I still need a tom tom."

The Challenge of Meeting Each Child Where They Are

Oliver is a child with a lot of aptitude for drawing and much knowledge about the things he likes. Left alone, I think he would draw and write and make wonderful things. But he often tells me he needs help, and doesn't move forward alone. I have come to see that when he has reached a "knotty problem" in his thinking or making, Oliver needs someone to come close, listen and help him talk through the difficulty. It seems that the support he feels just by having someone near, who is interested and involved in his process, is all he really needs.

Here (above) I helped Oliver think about the some of the shapes in an electric guitar, which he drew and then made in cardboard (which I cut out for him).

Here Oliver drew from a photograph of Ringo's drums. He asked for help to draw the cymbals, when he had drawn the stands, so I drew one (my lines are lighter than his, right), and later I drew one version of Paul's bass at his request (the tiny one center left). It feels important to contribute when a child asks me to, but I don't want to draw in a way that shuts down the child's process. It is tricky!

Below, Ainsley was the support by working in tandem with Oliver. They are using rulers to draw straight lines for violin necks. Oliver made 2 clowns holding instruments in our earlier Circus project.

Other children were inspired by the drumset Oliver built, making their own versions. I believe that collaboration and interaction with other children, both in the process of making things and afterward, by seeing the 'contagion' of his ideas, is one of the things that teaches Oliver the most.
Meeting each child were they are means helping children move forward in their thinking, understandings and skills. I believe that people are smart in many ways. Knowing how and where to scaffold, and finding the places where I can support each student requires listening, and stepping in at times and holding back at others. It requires much reflection and skill, constant self-questioning, and  is one of the most interesting pleasures of teaching. Some day I will have learned this, how to teach in a constructivist classroom, but in the meantime, I will enjoy practicing.

Place and Imagination...

Sitting with a group I had challenged to draw a favorite place, "something you will want to remember after you leave this place", Abel had drawn; "Benjamin with 2 extra heads and snowballs falling all around".

 

Next, I asked Abel to create this drawing life-size, so that we could take a photo of the real Benjamin in the scene. The snowballs seemed easy enough to make, but how will we make Benjamin have 3 heads? A headband with two paper heads on top might work.

Abel drew the snowballs with faces, hung them on string, and Benjamin came to the studio to help make and to wear the hat with 2 extra heads. Abel took pictures, and Arthur came along and took photographs using a second camera.

Soon, I will ask the guys what they think of the photos (or, if parents happen to read this, please ask them for me, and comment here if you like.)

Do they represent Abel's vision? Was it fun for Benjamin to be the subject of this whimsical project?

Mostly, I am excited by the prospect of helping children cross modes from drawing to photography and back again. It seems like a technique that could be very useful for helping children think through ideas about what is real and what is not.

What happened in the studio today

So many things happen in every classroom every day. Some things that happened in my studio today were continuations of longer-term investigations, while others were people coming in to just 'make something.' Here is what happened in the Sabot studio today...

Rainbow room rocket builders worked on space helmets. Some liked the plaster helmets we had been letting dry, some did not and will keep working. Benjamin came to build a transformer using hammer and nails, then Abel and Benjamin worked on the snowballs for the photo, and Arthur came and took photos. Lola continued making robots, Ainsley and Dacy made dog toys, Cooper made a chart showing all of his favorite stuffed animals, Nolan worked on his model of the school, adding a path and labyrinth, Isabel drew a picture of our first aid kit, and Stella started a beautiful gift for her Mom.

Place project and inventories: Ainsley and Abel Draw

Here is such a nice example of children working together. Abel listened to Ainsley throughout this 'drawing lesson', trying out some of the ideas, and laughing at some of the suggestions, but maintained his focus and confidence. He continued to draw the 38 snowballs. (I only wish I had saved Ainsley's scraps with its array of ways to draw noses and mouths, but sadly, she drew on the other side and then cut out the shapes!)

When Abel was working on making the snowballs to use in the photograph his imaginative favorite place drawing (above). Ainsley suggested that he might want to make want to make a different kind of mouth on some of them, so they wouldn't all be the same. She showed him the ways she knows how to make a mouth. "I either do it without teeth, or I do it with teeth, but with another layer, or I just do it with one line."

Abel tried all of those ways, but made sure we knew that he wanted all of the snowballs to have a smile (not another expression), because they were happy that they were coming down out of the sky (this was before our big snow here in Central Virginia).

Next, we talked about noses. Ainsley said Abel was making the noses the pig nose way (they were round with two small circles inside), but that there were other ways to make noses.

I asked Abel how he was going to make the nose on the next snowball. He showed us, drawing a triangle with two circles inside.

Ainsley showed us on her paper or with her fingers on her own nose, all of the ways you can make noses. "Triangle, with nostrils.  Then there is the circle way, the L way....
I said "and we have the way where you connect it to the eyebrow, thats what I do."
She nodded, "And we have the pig way, and the human way, which is the triangle, cause see my nose? It's a triangle."

My colleague Marty first pointed out to me that from time to time, children seem to need to make inventories of what they know. Whether it is a list of the numbers they can write, a list of each family members name, or an array of pictures, like the noses and mouths here. In this case, the collaboration between the children was very special, with Abel almost silently trying out Ainsley's ideas, and her noticing his work and gently suggesting that he might try something new. It seemed to bond them, because saw them playing together a lot for many days after this exchange.

Here are just a few of the snowballs hanging up, waiting to fall on Benjamin!

Place and Imagination

Having the children draw their favorite places before photographing has led me to a knotty problem. How do you photograph some of the more imaginative places? Stella and Lila's favorite place, for instance, contain multiple points of view (Inside and outside, upstairs and downstairs. Not to mention the image of the Sabot Dragon next to the swings. There is already quite a bit of debate about whether the Dragon (who appears at our school in the Springtime) is real or not, but how can we get a photo of him in the Winter?

Both Henry and Ainsley show interiors and exteriors of our two school buildings. Perhaps these images can be done with a collage technique.

However, Abel's drawings will require something more like the building of a stage set. This picture depicts Benjamin with 3 heads, 38 snowballs with faces falling all around him. Abel has drawn the snowballs, and is in the process of hanging them from strings. I hope soon the boys can solve the problem of the three heads!

Place Project 2010

Here are two more entries in the continuing examination of place at the preschool. Children come to the studio in groups, and we talk about how we will be leaving this place, and it won't be where we go to school any more. I ask the children what they would like to remember about this place, if they have a favorite place or thing here. Dahlia (3), drew her favorite place, "The forest, the pavilion, and everything."
Later we went outside so she could take a photograph of it.
Henry (5), drew several things. This picture shows one of his favorite things to do at school, the springtime activity of looking for bugs under rocks, and putting them in a bug box. We borrowed a bug box from the Rainbow room for Henry to photograph after drawing.














Henry 'A bug box, a rock and a spider'.



I have never tried having the children draw to plan their photographs before. It does seem to work like other types of plans we ask the children to draw, by slowing down their thinking and helping them anticipate problems. Like how to get the pavilion, the forest, and everything, in the picture!
This idea of drawing before photographing was inspired by a post on Urban Preschool (http://www.urbanpreschool.com/?p=304), in which a teacher helped make a life-size version of a child's drawing to photograph. What a brilliant idea! After seeing that last year, I began to think about ways that photography could be de- and re-constructed, to help children realize its affordances and limitations, so that photography might emerge as a language for some children.