Reflecting on new National Art Standards

The NAEA has rolled out the new National Art Standards to align with common core, and so far I'm very intrigued with the ways it can help me get a big picture of my curriculum and what I want my students to learn in each grade. I haven't explored them totally in-depth yet. I'm following along with the series of webinars the NAEA is hosting over the summer as my personal professional development. Tonight I downloaded the "at-a-glance" standards charts. It's a lot of information to absorb at once. So, being an artist and visual learner I thought I would play with some imagery to help myself understand all the concepts.

 First of all, there are 4 main activities students should be doing in art class: responding,creating,connecting, and presenting. These 4 activities are interdependent and cyclical, which is why I arranged them in the frame above. I selected the images on purpose For "CREATE", my Kinder Thankful hands image has a picture of the artist inside her hand on an abstract background- a project that involved painting, coloring, cutting, and collage, plus the HAND is essential for creating in my perspective. For "CONNECT" I used one of my 5th grader's self-portrait monoprints because the artist's eyes connect with the viewer and in that project students were connecting the history of self-portraiture with contemporary social media practice of taking selfies. For "PRESENT" I used an image of the first collaborative project I did with my students- a self-portrait mural in rainbow colors that took something small and individual and became huge and inclusive once they were all put together for display. For "RESPOND" I used a collage and embellishment image my 5th graders did last year which involved using someone else's artwork as a resource and which involved a successful group critique to determine best approaches for creating unity and emphasis.  So, these images have personal meaning for the context of the 4 aspects of art class.

 I went through the entire at-a-glance standards chart, which shows anchor standards for each of the 4 concepts. Each anchor has an "Enduring understanding", a big idea. I'm trying to see the big picture of my curriculum- what should my students understand and be able to do? What's the point of all these projects we do? How is it relevant? Why does your average individual in today's society need art education? What does it do for our society? Ok.. a little overboard there. But the enduring understandings are helpful. and not overwhelming. I took the enduring understandings under the category of "CREATE" and made some more collages. I like the 2 ideas in the one above- which basically come down to 1-people make stuff and that's an awesome part of being human and 2- you CAN and should learn how to be creative.

Then there were 4 more understandings under CREATE that seemed more concrete. When we make art we 1- play with materials, ideas, and the elements & principles of art, 2- we refer to and are part of flexible artistic traditions, 3-it's not just fun, and 4-you have to practice to get better.

I think I'll make more of these, maybe make them a little more aesthetically pleasing and turn them into a bulletin board for my room. It will help me internalize these ideas if I see them in my environment every day.
Sometimes the things I put on the walls in my classroom are for my kids, but a lot of times they are for me as a reminder to reflect on whether I'm following procedures and achieving the goals I set out to meet.