Art and Community Research Class for RCEF 2006

Class Description:

This class is a two-week class, in which students aged between 11 and 14 learn to use drawing as a visual expression tool to build connection with their internal world and their communities. The class activities include: self-portrait, field trip, poetry visualizing, community research and storybook drawing. For the final project of this class, the students go out to collect folk stories from their elder generation in the community and draw stories books based on their research. This class does not require students to have a strong drawing skill but encourages students to draw and express their own way of seeing and telling about their community.

The Process of the Class: teaching activities, reflection and stories.

In the Summer of 2006, I taught this class in Dongbaoquan Village (Heibei Province, China) as a volunteer teacher for Rural China Education Foundation. I taught this class to two groups: a elementary school group from Grade five to Grade Six (aged 11-12, around 30 people) and a junior high school group from Grade 1 to Grade 2 (aged12-14, over 20 people). I describe the process of the class with my reflection on teaching below:

Class1: Self- Portrait. July 25, 2006 (both the junior high school and the elementary school groups.)

Part1:

Warm-up activity	“Mirror Game” Put two students in a group. One plays the role of “mirror,” one looks at the “mirror” and acts out different facial expressions and movements. The “mirror” has to follow his or her partner to act out the same expressions and movements.
Objective	This warm up activity is to help students relax and pick up a sense of observation on people and movements.
Reflection	My students tent to like the “mirror game” activity and feel relax.

Part 2:

Self Portrait	Draw a self-portrait. No specific requirements on the drawing but simply ask students to draw a picture of themselves.
Objective	This may work as a subtle introduction to the basic tone of this class: drawing as a way of self-expression. The first important step of this class is to help the students to first build connection) with themselves in their artistic expression.
Reflection	The self-portraits turned out interesting. Almost everybody drew one portrait of himself or herself. Most of them didn’t really care about composition but liked to use diverse colors. Only one girl said that she could not draw. I drew a portrait of her with some simple lines (not necessarily very professional), and then she started to open up. A little guy only took up a quarter of the space on the paper to draw his own portrait, as small as he was in real life. He showed me his drawing with a grin on the face.

Class 2: Field Trip. July 26, 2006 (for the junior high school group)

Part 1:

Discussion	Raise question to students: Why do we draw?
Objective:	I set up this discussion for students to discuss what our class is about. So that they will be clearer about what we will do in the class.
Reflection	The discussion about “why we draw?” didn’t go very successfully. Perhaps I didn’t do a good job in leading this discussion. I feel it is easier to do stuff with them than talk about it. Hope that ideas will get across through the activities in the classes.

Part 2:

Discussion about field trip	a. Divide students into groups. b. Let them talk among groups to choose a place where they want to go and do drawing. c. Then each group sends a person to present their choice. d. Students vote and choose one place for the whole class.
Objective	To pick a place that the students feel related.
Reflection	The field trip discussion was interesting. Students brought up different places they liked about their village: their old school, the riverbed, a hill in at the bottom of the mountain and the little forest behind one’s house. When they presented their choice, some would talk about their good memory of the place. One little boy talked about the forest behind his house and said that he appreciated that beauty was just behind his house.

Part 3:

Field trip	Walk to the place. Divide students into a group of two: one student keeps his or her eyes shut, the other student leads the teammate to a spot and describes the place. The students with the eyes close don’t open their eyes until they leave the spot. Both the students come back to draw. The students with the eyes close only draw a picture with what he or she hears, smells or feels. Then they compare their drawing.
Objective	Provoke sensitivity of the students to their surroundings and help them build connection with nature through drawing. Use drawing to describe what you see, hear, smell and feel.
Reflection	Field trip: the “eye closed” part didn’t work out. Most students didn’t do it. Many of them just relaxed, walked around, and chose their spots to draw together. One group sat on the rock and drew a Shepherd and his sheep. They showed their drawing to the shepherd and asked him for advice.

Class3: Field Trip. July 27^th, 2006 (for the elementary school group)

Part 1:

Simple visual vocabulary on drawing	Lines: thin, bold, feint, wavy, broken Colors: dull, bright, light, dark Shapes: long, curvy, oval Texture: smooth, crinkly, rough Composition: arranging, visual quality…
Objective	Expose students to visual language of drawing.
Reflection	It was more difficult for me to teach the students to apply these concepts to visual the world they see than to explain what these concepts are. But I guess I was not supposed to teach “draw a circle, and it means the sun,” if the kids feel that “the sun could be oval.” I should encourage them to use the visual language to explain the world they see. Here some students often asked me: “Teacher, what color should I use for the river?” I often just said: “Use the color you prefer.” We originally plan a 45-minute period for each drawing class. Now we feel that it is important to make it into 90 minutes, so that after my lecture, students have time to draw. I will try to my lecture concise. Some students often rush in their drawing to turn it in for homework. I feel it is important to encourage them to spend time on thinking, composing and drawing.

Part 2:

Looking at campus through the “frame”	Give students a square paper frame and ask them to take the frame to observe a corner of the campus Ask students to collect some objects (i.e. leaves, stones and sand…) from the spot they frame and note down visual information (color, shape…) from what you see the in the frame. Draw a picture about what you see in the frame
Objective	Let the students get the sense of framing and composing, when they draw on a piece of paper. Encourage students to do close observation on their surroundings.
Reflection	Students seemed very serious about using the frame and had a lot of fun. The frame did work to make the students look closely at what was in and out of the frame. But some of the students didn’t tend to associate their framing activity with their actual framing for their drawing. They framed what they observed and then drew with another framing they imaged. Elementary school students heard about the field trip of the junior high group in the riverbed. They strongly requested a field trip to riverbed later on.

Class 4: Visualizing a Poem. July 28^th, 2006. (for junior high group)

Visualize a poem	Put down some Chinese ancient poems that students have learned from their Chinese class in school. These poems are usually short and visual. Ask students to explain the meaning of the poems. Analyze the visual information of the poems: time, place, characters, objects, shapes, colors, stories, and feeling. Ask the students to pick a poem and draw a picture about it.
Objective	Bridge students from verbal description to visual description and emotional expression.
Reflection	Students felt very comfortable about visualizing these poems, since they were so familiar with them. They could recite most of them. They mostly draw the visual information from the poem. Somehow many students’ drawing looks alike. To improve this lesson in the future, it may be helpful to let the students explain their feeling about the poem and they way they draw about it in the future. One student drew a picture about a poem he liked from outside class.

Class 5: Poem Visualizing Field Trip. July 28^th, 2006. (for the elementary school group)

Visualizing a poem by the riverbed	1. Take students to the riverbed as they requested. 2. Give them an ancient Chinese poem about river: Alone Looking at the Mountain By Li Bai From the walls of Baidi high in the colored dawn To Jingling by night-fall is three hundred miles, Yet monkeys are still calling on both banks behind me To my boat these ten thousand mountains away. Ask students to explain the meaning of the poem. Analyze the visual information of the poem: time, place, characters, objects, shapes, colors, stories, feelings Ask them to look at the riverbed and draw a picture about the poem.
Objective	Bridge students from observation, verbal description to visual description and emotional expression.
Reflection	It was hard to organize elementary school students on field trip. May need more teachers to come along. Seeing the riverbed is helpful for some of them to develop a stronger sense about the space and distance. The Junior high school groups, who have not seen the riverbed, tend to draw a flat river horizontally in the front of the paper. Some of the elementary school students chose to draw a river vertically going through mountain ranges.

Class 6: Community Research Methods. July 31^st, 2006. (Combination of the elementary school and the junior high groups, 25 students. Half of our students stopped coming to our RCEF classes for various reasons.) Taught by Xiaoqin, an experienced researcher from SVRS. Class length: we cancel other morning classes for this research. After one hour of lecture and preparation, students went out to collect stories with their mentor for the whole morning.

Part 1:

Research methods and research preparation	A. Divide students into groups. Each group has a mentor from SVRS, who have been doing community research in the village B. Talk about Research Methods What is community research? How do we do community research? This class emphasizes more on how to do interviews for research, since the kids will mostly interview their elder generation for the stories. I also reminded the kids of asking more visual details about the stories for their drawing. How do we take notes for research? How do we analyze research data? C. Each group decides potential research subjects and develops some possible research questions for story collecting. Outline a proposal. D. Proposal presentation.
Objective	Introduce students to basic concepts of community research.
Reflection	It is important not to overwhelm the kids with the scientific side of the research, but try to motivate them to go out in the community, explore and collect the stories.

Part2:

Collect Stories	Look for elders who are good storytellers. Visit the storyteller at home and collect stories
Objective	Students walk into communities, express their questions and start a conversation with their elder generation.
Reflection	The mentorship provided good guidance for the students to keep up with their research, though it took them a long time to find a good story. I followed two groups. In both of the groups, students were able to raise good questions to collect the details of the stories. The mentors for some groups organized the notes for the students instead of letting the students do it themselves. So it is important to emphasize letting the students do their work.

Class 7: Organize “Research Data” and Draw Storybooks, August 1^st, 2006

Part 1:

Organize “Research Data” for Story Book Projects	Each group selects a story among their collection. Decide a theme, central characters and a structure for the story. Develop a brief introduction and an outline for the story. Based on the structure, break the outline into parts consisting of 2-to-3-sentences. Each part of the outline will serve as an illustration for one page of the storybook. The minimum length of the storybook is 7 pages. Each group present their structure and outline of the storybook.
Objective	Teach students how to organize the story information for the storybook.
Reflection	I develop this lesson based on what I learn from editing documentaries and my experience of reading storybooks. I am glad that it worked out. I may try to explore more on how to teach this in the future.

Part 2:

Visualizing the Story	1. How does a storybook look? Cover, introduction page, the body content. 2. Explain the format of the storybook: divide the body page into two columns, one for drawing and one for illustration. 3. Ask each group to do brainstorming discussion for possible visuals for each page of their storybook. 4. Start drafting and drawing the storybooks.
Objective	Give students the basic guideline in the format of drawing the storybook.
Reflection	1. I find it important to emphasize collaboration on the storybook drawing. In some group, one or two students who are better at drawing tend to dominate the group and even color the whole thing themselves. 2. A student from one group went back to the village to ask the elder for more visual details of the story. This good practice of revisiting storytellers should be encouraged in community research projects.

The rest days of the class are spent on drawing storybooks. We have three storybooks come out from five groups. Students put the elders’ name as the storytellers and their own names as authors for the storybooks. We made black-and-white copies of them and distribute them to the students and the elder who told the story in the village.

Thoughts for future improvement:

It is important to combine community element with art education, but after the class, I wonder whether the kids were really interested in drawing folk stories. If I just ask them to draw one story they really want to tell, what story would they choose? If this class really cares about children’s own interest, perhaps we can give more room for the kids to choose the stories they want to tell? Then how shall we guarantee the sense of community in this class project? I need to think about it more to generate questions.

Diedie Weng

MFA student, Media Study

The State University of New York, Buffalo