Evaluation.

Having the opportunity to do a placement in a primary school, I feel my ambition to be a teacher has become stronger whilst also making me see the difficulties, which will come with it. I feel with more experience I can overcome some of the difficulties. By difficulties, I mean becoming shy and allowing the children to take over and distract each other, if I am confident within myself and able to control, I feel I will be able to make it. My method of teaching the workshops changed throughout, in the beginning I thought they were able to handle tasks that I could, not realising they are children and think differently. This meant I had to adjust workshops to their ability, which I did find interesting to do.

The greatest challenges have been working with the children. Not knowing how to act with them and speak was a difficulty with me. I felt quite shy with them and personally did not know what to say. However, as the weeks went by I felt because I got to know the class I interacted with them more. Although in my group we all came from different backgrounds and did not know each other, I felt it was easier to communicate because they were of similar ages.  Some of children would get off topic and talk about their own lives, which was tricky to discuss because it was not important to me, what was important, was their education. Through this process, it has helped me learn of ways to keep myself focused on what I want to do and how to overcome this. I feel with more experience, I will become more confident with my speaking and working with different age groups will give me an insight of how to act with them.

As I am from a textiles background, I tried to incorporate my own practice into the workshops for the children. As textiles is about texture, I tried to bring that element in by using materials that had texture that they could feel and see. They were excited to collage and create textured pieces with this because it was different from their everyday curriculum subjects. Showing them samples of my own work fascinated them and hopefully pushes them into doing an art and textiles based subject. Giving them the knowledge of where I come from in the textiles world, helped them understand me better and allowed them to practice what I do through using suitable materials. I could push this line further by doing workshops in different organisations but aimed at children from a certain age. This would give me a variety of feedback and show me what I can improve and what that community wants. Creating workshops was exciting and a different way of thinking and so I would love to be able to do it again for a different organisation.

Unit X has been a great opportunity; it has allowed me to open my eyes on teaching in the art and textiles world. It allowed me to gain a new set of skills, which will be transferrable for my future careers. It has changed my perspective of working as a team, and has made me become more confident and to speak up about my own ideas. Although it was a team collaboration, it was made me see that are working for yourself and so you have to do things which will benefit yourself and the others around you. From this experience, I want to be able to do more experience in schools, maybe working with children that are older ages or even high school. I feel the more experience I get the more skills I will learn which will be beneficial for me and allow me to be the best. I want to continue with a PGCE course and get a CBR check so I will be able to work in any educational system. This unit has opened my mind of what I really want to and has allowed me to settle down and focus on it. I am thankful to be a part of this unit and I will be taking my new skills on board for the future.

Learning




Plan of our interactive board

 

Many skills developed throughout this process, my confidence built and my ability to work as a team grew stronger. My communication and people skills improved massively. By the end of this process, I felt I had become self-assured and it helped me figure out what I wanted for the future. This experience made me realise many things, which relate to my own practice. Some skills I already had because of developing them through university and from working in retail, which allowed me to put them into practice in the school. Although I felt I was shy in the beginning of this process, I felt I opened up and took control when I needed to. As a group we made sure, we were all on task and had a good co-operation system.  I felt this was vital, getting along with colleagues is necessary in any area and it allows you get along and do things efficiently. If communication is poor, it can affect your work and your self-confident. Our group planned a group on Facebook so that we could all communicate with each other and if we had any problems we could tell each other through that. I felt it worked very well and encouraged us all to stay on task.

The workshops developed through the unit, the first workshop made me realise what materials I could use and could not and how the kids reacted to it. Teaching children from the age of seven is very different from what I expected but it was a revelation and so later, I developed my workshops catered to them and their needs. The way their minds work was different to how I thought and so things had to be simplified. The use of materials had to be simple and easy to use. The workshops that we were taught in the beginning of the project helped massively and gave me a variety of ideas, not just for the workshops for myself as well. It made me more confident to use weird materials and this is something I could look into further for my own practice.

I enjoyed participating in the primary school; I felt I had gained a new set of skills that I would have not imagined to gain from there. Communication, organisation and planning skills were important and understanding of the children was another. I came out here to teach the children a new set of skills and I feel through the process I did. The satisfaction you feel when teaching these children these workshops was amazing and it was a self-achievement for both of us. As a group and teaching these workshops, I felt everyone gave their input of what they wanted and in the end; we are making a 3-D interactive piece, which is something new to me because I have never worked with wood or in that area. It made me see how others work and what they do in their practice. We all brought our own practices into one, I coming from textiles brought texture into the workshops and the final outcomes, some from art history brought the history side of space into it and the wood workers brought their ideas of how the final outcome should be created.