Thomas Flaherty

Art 344 Teaching Reflection

Dr. Staikidis
27 March 2016
The first thing that I would like to focus on in my reflection is how I transformed as an
educator and a teacher. One thing I really feel like both changed and weakened my performance
as an educator were my nerves in front of the classroom. My physical ability to perform in front
of multiple individuals was perhaps something that I was not particularly worried about initially.
This was most likely because, being a standup comedian and someone who generally loved to
give speeches in front of others and enjoyed public performance. However to my initial shock I
found that when I arrived and stood in front of the class for my first lesson I was shaken to the
core with fear and reckless nerves. As usual I tried to dominate my feelings in this regard
however in this instance I was quite unsuccessful. In addition to my growing fear in front of my
class, I only had four students. Although I had known that this was going to be the case I still felt
completely taken aback at their behavior. Most of the students were more shy and quiet. They
had a general vibe of not wanting to be there when I introduced what my project was and how it
was going to be completed. One girl even going so far as to state that she had done printmaking
in several other art lessons and so did not desire to do so again. I steadily became more and more
flustered under the pressure of both trying to teach and being verbally contradicted most notably
through the quietest of the students. In my fumbling I ended up skipping over parts of my own
introduction to the product and did not give a satisfactory explanation as to why my art was
different. This was not a very encouraging experience to say the least. Horrified at my inability
to behave and teach in a satisfactory manner to my own standards, I spent much more time
preparing verbally for my next lesson. In my second lesson again I felt uncharacteristic
nervousness and fear. This time I performed a bit better however. In this lesson I reminded the
students who again confronted me with the argument of having previously done printmaking that
propaganda is nothing less than an extension of a part of themselves that has purified into an
opinion and distributed. This seemed to hit home with several of the students and I found myself
much more confident easily keeping the conversation going with the students as well. However
still rapped in more nerves and self-judgment than I cared for I found that I again forgot a part of
my intro. Believing that only drilling myself further toward perfection would bring me closer to
living up to my standards of teaching, I set to work intensifying my preparation verbally and
physically for my final lesson. Coming to my third lesson, though there certainly were jitters,
they were nothing onto what I had felt before. In this lesson I was sure that I did a fantastic job
opening, demoing, preforming, and closing.
One thing that I would really like to work on for next time is my ability to use my time more
wisely. In both my second and third lessons I started about five minutes late due to poor time
management. I feel that one way I could improve on this is to start preparing for my next lesson
about 5 minutes before my predecessor finishes their own lesson. By doing this I will ensure that
the lesson will start on time. In addition I plan to spend more time working and less time
speaking in my lesson, I would like to cut my demos and intros shorter to afford for the
maximum possible time to work on our lesson. Initially as well I was always on time with my
lessons, but at the end we were just shy of our artist statements.

The quality of the work was fantastic as well. each of the students showed visible evidence that
they had listened to me during my demos and 3 out of 4 students finished all three of their
necessary tile prints. They were even good about the cleanup actively following my instruction
during demos without having to hear it again. After each day I tried to do s closure of what they
had completed or at least a reflection of the reasoning behind their work which was marginally
successful.
One of the things that I felt I personally did well at was my organization in my lesson. My
performance and time management aside, I felt like my organizational skills were phenomenal. I
had the entire lesson set out in individual parts across a few days. Even my lesson binder was
complete with flash drives, examples, demos and all necessary handouts for the lesson. All of
my materials were well stocked and I ended up having more than enough for every student in
every single lesson that I taught. Not only this but I had every material divided up into separate
sections so that I could be prepared for every lesson separately and even brought extra materials
to prepare for contingency.
Another thing that I would like to observe is how the students interoperated the lesson. This is
another part of my teaching that I am particularly proud of as well. Even in my first lesson it was
clear that the students really understood what I wanted them too. In the first lesson many of the
students were shy and unhelpful. One could even gather just by being in the room with them that
they did not want to be there. However even in my first lesson I stressed to them the importance
of choosing a social issue for their propaganda. They took initiative and began to develop clear
and concise ideas that had actual relevance to their own daily lives.
There was a particular female student who I had an especially hard time adapting to the lesson.
She did not want to do it and went so far as to express boredom and discontent with my lesson.
However once I began to connect with her I managed to learn that she had a background in dance
and therefore was able to get her to choose the gender associations with dance. Once she had
picked an issue that was important to her and had given her a new vision she wanted to see
realized. Her improvement over just the three classes I had with her was really encouraging and
by the third class she was even able to be helpful to other students. I also managed to express to
her the importance of her project in regards to just regular printing which also really helped her
disposition.
Over all I felt like it was a good learning experience more so than a great teaching experience.
There are quite a few things that I plan to do differently for my next lesson purely based on these
lessons. I feel also that I learned more about teaching in these three lessons than I did in many
weeks of reading. In retrospect this lesson I learned presenting my own makes me wonder and
look forward to my next set of lessons to teach.