Final Report vs Final Paper

My winter quarter of the crazy teaching load is almost finished. Next week is finals and though I usually finish my grading mere hours or minutes before the deadline for posting grades on Friday afternoon, this year I am leaving for a conference on Wednesday. Though I have more students and more classes, I have tried to arrange the grading to be done by Wednesday morning.

Actually, the final grading has been interesting. This quarter is a doozy because I am teaching three Art Appreciation classes (with 29-35 students in each). Most quarters I assign a written paper about a a contemporary artist for a final project and spend finals week grading papers (and tests and critiques and other assignments). This quarter I nixed the paper and instead built the same information into an oral presentation. Each student meets privately with me for ~10 minutes and talks to me about the contemporary artist they've been researching all quarter. The requirements are almost identical to the written report, but after they present (about 5 minutes for most students) I have a chance to ask follow up questions.

gratuitous picture of sabbatical work (from the last time I was allowed near my studio)

I was worried, at first, that the oral reports would be too easy or that it would be hard to determine who knew their artist and who didn't. I was pleasantly surprised by both how fast and easy the oral reports are to grade and how clear it is who knows, not just their artist, but the class terms and concepts as well.

I have always preferred a written paper to a final exam because the students have more time to prepare and are less likely to make silly mistakes like filling in the wrong bubble on the Scantron. The silly mistakes they do make, like forgetting to spell check or not starting until the night before, are entirely preventable and/or an essential skill for college and life.

My sabbatical work will be on display at Oak Hollow Gallery in April

I have always required a one-on-one meeting with me before the paper was submitted. The students research their artist all quarter long in very short, weekly, graded assignments, then write a draft of their report and bring it to class where they have short "writing conferences" with classmates. The idea is that the classmates can help point out errors or missing information. All the drafts can get read and discussed at least twice in 50 minutes, far less time than it would take me to read and discuss them all.

After the students have a chance to make revisions on their drafts, they schedule a "conference" with me. I read their paper and make suggestions to help improve their writing. I think the conferences with me are very valuable and fun, too, because I get a sense of what they understand and I can help them clarify things they almost understand (or don't understand at all).

So this quarter I rolled the paper and the private conference into one assignment. I kept the student "writing conferences" but had the students present to their classmates as practice before presenting to me. The classroom was pretty noisy that day, but I think the practice was useful and students got some helpful feedback from classmates.

The show at Oak Hollow in Yakima opens April 12.  I'll be posting more about the show later. 

About half the students have now done their official artist report presentations with me. Some were better prepared than others, of course, but what was particularly striking was how useful the follow-up questions were. One requirement I have always had was to use citations correctly. I have students quote and paraphrase and give the source information. In a written paper, a well-placed quote can be very helpful in supporting what the student is trying to say. It is hard sometimes, though, to know how well the student understands the quote they've chosen.

Yesterday, during the string of student presentations, I wrote down part of the quote, particularly if the student used phrasing or words I wasn't sure they understood. After their presentation, I asked the students to explain the quote or define the word. Some were confident and were able to clearly explain their quote and even elaborate. It was easy to score these students high for their reports. Other students fumbled and demonstrated that they only had a vague idea what their source was trying to say. I was surprised, though, that some of the students simply told me they had no idea what the quote or the word meant. Some sheepishly admitted they should have looked it up. One told me that she didn't know the word and it didn't matter because it was just a quote.

Listening to and grading the reports has been much more enjoyable than reading papers. Partly it is nice to listen, take notes and then ask questions. Partly it is easier for me to mark a low score after having given the student a second chance to explain, and partly it is fun to hear what the students have to say about their artist after they finish presenting.

The show in April features work by photographers, so I won't be showing wall installations

With several students, I would guess that I got more information out of the student because of the relatively casual format. One student, in particular, was able to tell me a lot about the artist's method, but might have left that information out of a written report. Several students revealed understanding of class terms when I asked follow-up questions but had left that information out of the report itself. And, as would have happened with a written report, too, some students didn't do the report or barely knew their artist's work.

Next quarter I move back to a more manageable teaching load with only one Art Appreciation class of 35 students. However, I'm thinking I might keep the oral presentation format for the final artist report. I've also been thinking about how I might incorporate the presentations into class time so that students might benefit from hearing their classmates present.

Maybe next quarter I'll be able to find time to get in my studio again 

Noticing Dead Birds and Numbers in Trees

On my way out of my classroom building everyday I walk towards a set of tall glass windows that are adjacent to the doorway. In the bushes outside the window as I was leaving one day, I noticed a bird which seemed to be suspended in flight.  The dead bird seems to be caught in the dead branches, but its wing is outstretches. The rest of the body is hard to make out and at first I thought it couldn't be a bird; it must just look like a bird.

I'm curious how the bird ended up like this. I'm even more curious how many people notice this bird that is only about a foot away from a heavily trafficked hall and entranceway.

When I asked some of my students if they'd seen the bird, they said they hadn't, though I've been fascinated with it every day for weeks. It takes me a few minutes to pack up all my class materials and lock the classroom door after the students have left, so perhaps I see it because my view is not blocked by the crowd.

The surprise of seeing this bird right outside the window reminds me of our retired photography instructor's thoughts on seeing and being aware of one's surroundings. There is a tree near the entrance to his building that has a mark on the surface that seems to form half a heart shape when you look at it from the right angle. He liked to point it out to students in his class and ask if any of them had ever seen it. Usually they hadn't.

Yesterday, on our way to a reception at Larson Gallery, my daughter pointed up in the air over the bookstore and said, excitedly, "nineteen!" It took me a moment to realized that she was pointing at three long seedpods hanging from a branch over the building. One of the seedpods had curved across the other to form the shape of a number nine. It was backwards, but still, she noticed the number shape. As a kid learning to read, she is always pointing out numbers and letters in fallen sticks, pavement cracks and tree branches, so I was relatively well prepared for her exclamation this time.

Adjustments and Impacts of a Heavy Teaching Load

This quarter, due to some unforeseen circumstances, I am teaching more classes and a lot more students than I normally teach during a given quarter. The increased student load in particular has been a major challenge. I am teaching three sections of the same class in the morning everyday. The course capacity is 35 so I started the quarter with about 105 students and 3 straight hours of class in the morning. Twice a week I have my clay class in the afternoon with an additional 20 students. The clay class is 3 hours long, so twice a week I teach for 6 hours with a half-hour for lunch and switching buildings.

The teaching itself has actually not been too much of a challenge. For a few days I would forget to prepare for a later class and have to run back to my office (in a different building) between the morning classes or hurry to prep something while the afternoon class was getting their wheels ready, but now I am fairly adept at packing up everything I need for four classes right when I get to campus.

The major challenge has been getting all the non-teaching work done. I have taken over department duties in the wake of my colleague's retirement. I have also started the tenure process, which requires meetings and writing from me. I am now doing the departmental scheduling and planning a trip in March. I supervise four student workers in the clay studio and my office was moved to a different building last week. On top of this I have also worked fairly diligently to find and hire new faculty to make up the shortfall from a retirement, an illness and a general lack of depth in our adjunct faculty pool. These, and a variety of other minor duties, tend to consume much of my time in the office but I also have roughly three times the grading I would have during a "normal" quarter.

Sadly, the fact that I seem always to be rushing from meeting to meeting, obligation to obligation, means that I am not very accessible to students in my office. I think I have only talked to three of my advisees this quarter, probably because they can't find me when I am not teaching or at a meeting. I get the sense, from my Art Appreciation students, that they wish I had office hours in the morning between classes, because they aren't always on campus in the afternoons on the days I am in my office hours.

There are limits to how much energy one can sustain and how many hours one can stay at school. I have always been pretty strict with myself about not bringing work home. I try to reserve grading and paperwork and class preparation for school hours. I might stay a bit later, but I won't bring it home. This approach works well with a limited number of students, say 40 some students in studio classes and another 35 in Art Appreciation. This quarter, however, there has never been enough time at school. I had to make a decision between staying at school for hours into the evening (my home schedule doesn't allow me to go in earlier) or bringing work home.

For most of January and February, I have been grading for an hour in the morning before my daughter wakes up and an hour in the evening after she goes to bed. I still try not to grade when I am with her. Sometimes I'll sit with my husband after her bedtime and grade while he watches TV.

I wouldn't want to repeat this quarter--like, not ever--but it has been an interesting quarter for comparison and I've noticed I have developed an efficiency in grading that I haven't needed to have before. When there is a manageable amount of grading, I am very careful about checking and double checking answers and considering every possible nuance the student was trying to communicate. This quarter, I have changed a few assignments to be faster and simpler to grade. I can also grade some of them quite quickly because I don't pay attention to nuance; if the answer is mostly right, I give them the point.

Another major change I made this quarter was in the structure of my tests. In the past I have always sent the students to see public art on campus or art shows at Larson Gallery. The tests were done in the gallery but the students could also take them home to finish or type their answers. The questions were all short answer, requiring the students to identify and explain or describe their answers based on works they were seeing in person. I've used these tests for several years and I find they give me a pretty accurate view of what students know and how they understand it. I can sometimes get to know individual students better as I read their answers. This type of tests privileges complex, thoughtful answers but allows the students some flexibility in knowing exact terminology. These tests also require a great deal of time to grade and usually I need to go back to the gallery to check answers. It probably takes most of a week to grade a set of 35 tests and students often write about things I didn't notice when I first wrote the test (since the tests are written anew for each changing show in the gallery).

This quarter I was loathe to change the tests, but it was clear I couldn't spend three weeks grading each of the three tests--at least not if I expected us to do anything else in class. So I compromised. The tests this quarter were done in two parts. The first part is a take home test in the gallery with a limited number of short answer questions. The goal of this first part is to encourage the students to look at the works in person. The next day they have a multiple choice Scantron test asking questions about the work they saw in the gallery. Pictures of the works they saw in the gallery are projected on the classroom screen to accompany their questions. After the students are done with the test, I can quickly run the forms through the machine to grade them.

The test is efficient and approximates what I want them to get from a written test in the gallery. It is an assessment of what they know, but, unfortunately, I don't like it as much. One problem is that students misunderstand the questions more often in this type of test. Writing the test is a little trickier, since I have to try to anticipate how they might misinterpret my phrasing. I have thrown out a couple of questions after the fact because I could see how they might be misunderstood. But beyond the potential mistakes, my gut feeling is that students, overall, don't perform as well on multiple choice tests as they do on written tests. It seems counterintuitive, since communicating through writing should be an added challenge for the written tests.

I have trouble articulating exactly what it is about a multiple choice question that causes problems for students. Not knowing the exact problem makes it harder to adjust for it as I write the test. A piece of the problem may be that they don't understand the terminology or phrasing that comes from my example (or the book's example), but, since I want them to know the class terms and understand what they read its hard to know how to account for discrepancy between Scantron test results and written test results.

The current classes have one more test this quarter. It will be interesting to see if more practice will improve either the way I phrase the questions or the students' ability to approach the test questions. Teacher friends, what do you do to create efficient, useful and accurate tests in your classes, especially when you have a lot of students.

Upcoming Art Events in Yakima

Though I don't seem to get much time in the studio this winter, there are a few interesting craft-based art events coming up in March.

Tieton Mosaics
This weekend Tieton Arts and Humanities is hosting a couple of events featuring mosaic work. Tieton  Arts and Humanities, the folks who bring us a variety of events at Mighty Tieton's Warehouse and lofts has apparently received an NEA grant to make some mosaic signs for the city. Saturday morning, March 1 from 10-noon mosaic artist Kate Jessup will be giving a free public lecture about the Tieton Mosaic Project.

In the afternoon on Saturday there will be a free mosaic workshop. The website lists two names for the artists, so I'll let you explore the original source yourself.

Wine Country Craft

Larson Gallery's functional art show, The Wine Country Home opens on March 7 with a reception from 5-7pm. This is a national juried show and I am optimistic that the media will be broad and varied. The card makes it look like that's the case.

Art Play

On March 9 Larson Gallery hosts "Art,"a Tony award winning play by Yasmina Reza. The play will be performed by Larson Gallery director, David Lynx and YVCC faculty Tim Jeske and David Huyke.  For tickets and more information, visit Larson Gallery.

Art in Downtown Yakima

This weekend I went for a walk downtown. I went for lunch but I also went to see the Windows Alive project. There's some pretty nice displays in those windows on the north side of Yakima Ave between 3rd and 4th Streets.

Sandi Drury's display window

I don't know all of the artists and there wasn't much biographical information about them, but the works were strong and they were set up well. I participated in a similar project in my hometown in Wisconsin but the windows set up for the artworks were parts of stores that operating. The Yakima version puts works in windows of business that have closed or were never open (to my knowledge). The lack of competing visual information meant that the Yakima Windows Alive project puts the art front and center and the focus and arrangement apparently can be controlled by the artist. Even the partial walls on which 2D work was hung were well made walls with minimal visual distraction.

display for work by Mike Ritch

Thought Windows Alive doesn't have a strong online presence (and I can't seem to find many pictures), it appears to be going strong. This is the second group of works and I have heard that there will be another call for artists in spring or summer.

Mike Ritch

Though this will disappoint my photographer friends, I didn't bring a camera with me on my walk. I had to go back the next day for pictures and only took a few. You'll have to go down yourself to see the show. The weather is pretty nice here in Yakima (sorry to my Midwestern and Eastern friends), so take some time this week or next weekend and go for a walk. There are even some shops and restaurants downtown that we sometimes forget about.

Lindsey Merrell

On my walk I also saw the Liberty Bottle chandeliers put up by Allied Arts. They were apparently painted by Naches Elementary students. The focus may not have been on the sound exactly, but they were blowing in the wind and making noise when I was down there.

 chandeliers blowing in the wind

I have been hearing or seeing a little about Allied Arts doing some "Art Scene" stuff downtown but I didn't realize what was actually going on until I got down there. Now that Allied Arts is building-less I get the impression they are "creating a new identity" for themselves. It should be interesting to keep an eye on their transition. I hope they increase their online presence so the Yakima arts community can stay informed.

Some chandeliers on North First

Apple Valley Elementary Clay Project

At the end of January I visited a local elementary school to lead a clay project. This was the second year of me doing this clay project with the kids, about 70 second graders. 

me telling them what to do. I look annoyed but I wasn't

The Apple Valley PTA has been organizing these events to supplement the nonexistent arts program at the school. Last weekend the Yakima Herald did a feature on the arts program. The images they show are from the sculpture project led by local artist Mindy Clark.

kids preparing the balls to go inside the bells

Four of my clay students joined me at the elementary school to help run the project. The PTA also brought in quite a few volunteers and the project went smoothly, for the most part.

kids adding slip to the scored edge of their pinch pots

We had the students make bells or rattles by forming pinch pots and attaching them to flat slabs of clay with small balls of clay inside to make noise. The whole group completed the project in less than an hour and most kids had a chance to decorate their bells.

kids decorating their bells

The lesson happened right before the Super Bowl and it looked as if they kids were in uniform, about half of them wearing jerseys and the rest in Seahawk colors.

a finished bell

Because of the timing of the project, there were also quite a few football themed bell decorations and I set my student volunteers to checking for strength in the field goal structures on top of the bells.

two finished bells

Back at YVCC, I had my class load the kids work into the kiln to bisque fire. My students were interested to see the clay was a different color and the volunteers told them how different the clay felt compared to our class clay.

I cut the kids faces out of the pictures because I didn't get consent from all of them to publish the pictures. The pictures with the kids are pretty cute.

My students at YVCC checked for strong attachments and made sure the kids all created pieces that would survive the firing without cracks or explosions. One of my students was surprised when she heard the internal ball rattling around inside the bell. They don't always make noise until after firing.

another finished bell

Next week the PTA volunteers will pick up the kids pieces and the kids will have a chance to paint their bells and take them home.

Considering Tasks for a Studio Assistant

Sometimes when I am feeling overwhelmed with how much work I have to do, I start thinking about what tasks I can give away. At times this is just idle mind-wandering while I'm avoiding something, but thinking like this can help me prioritize what I need to do and what can be done by someone else. Occasionally this thinking helps me identify a task I can give away, thus freeing me a bit of time and, more importantly, a bit of mind space.

At this point in my teaching career, giving away certain tasks can be good for more than just me. I have work-study assistants in the studio who earn money and gain experience when they take over studio maintenance jobs. Students in my clay classes also benefit from the experience of leading tours of the studio and showing visiting groups of children how to throw a bowl on the wheel.

throwing demonstration

When I delegate duties and tasks at work, I like to think that I am exhibiting good leadership qualities while also finding time to perform the pressing jobs that must be done by me. Ironically, I don't have much experience with delegating tasks in my studio at home, except to my husband (who graciously helps me clean bike parts, alter metal pipes and safety-wires sculptures) and my daughter (who will make up her own task if I don't find one for her). 

safety wired bulb

I always used to ponder what I would do when I became a rich and famous artist. I certainly remember considering, as early as high school, what jobs I would have an assistant do when I reached the elevated level at which one hires an assistant. At this early stage, I suspect the tasks I envisioned ran along the lines of someone to wash my brushes and cut my mats (I've always hated cutting mats). In college and graduate school the question became a bit more pointed as I was, more often, the assistant doing the tedious clay-mixing job for the successful professional artist who could afford to hire these jobs out. 

preparing clay

Now sometime in the last few years it began to occur to me that I am, at least sometimes, the harried, overworked professional artist who could use some help around the studio. I don't have a clay mixer in my home studio, so recycling clay, the obvious job for the clay studio grunt, is already one I hire out to Seattle Pottery. Lately a few more tedious jobs have come to my attention as possible to hire out. In Pasco, installing my show, I had some help (by which I mean Randy did it all) screwing in 100 L screws and putting up the scary high pieces in my wall installation. Recently, as I was discussing my frustration at taking professional quality images at my show (discussing with a professional photographer, I might add), I realized that maybe that's a place to delegate, too.

my installation shot

I'm not quite comfortable delegating in my own home or my own studio, but maybe that's worth a look. When I was a teenager, considering my future assistants, I'm pretty sure my visions of the artistic fame that necessitates the hiring of an assistant were a little loftier than my current status. Of course back then my friends were planning on marrying movie stars and royal heirs. At this point, hiring someone to take photos of my work and hiring someone to help clean up and prepare my studio is starting to sound like a pretty reasonable idea.