INSTRUCTION & MANAGEMENT

I believe that good classroom management is based around the students. Every student is different and every students idea of a safe, welcoming classrooms different. Going over with the students what they think is important in the classroom helps with enforcing and following the rules. If students are the ones to come up with them they have no excuse as to why they should not be following the rules. There are also classroom rules that apply to art and general safety that I will already have as my set of rules. For example, safety, honesty, and respect for classroom, peers and materials are my top three rules or a classroom. Without those three rules I feel that an art classroom can fall apart very quickly. I have witnessed it firsthand in my student teaching career that when the rules are not enforced, especially respect for the classroom, peers and materials, students tend to get chaotic, disrespectful towards each other and ruin perfectly good materials. This is something that I believe can be avoided if classroom management is done properly. My classroom is also choice based. Student always have a choice in their art wether it is the material, content or the entire project all together. Giving students choice allows for them to care more about what they are creating instead of me demanding they create something they might not be interested in. Altona Middle School's art classroom is heavily choice based and while it has its pros and cons, students are definitely more interested in their artwork and the creative process.