What is the right balance & How do we Find it Together?

          Friday was probably the most beautiful day of the new year weather-wise which was great at a certain level, incredibly worrying at another. Great because we could take photos outside with the young artists providing the opportunity to experiment with lighting and angles in their shots; on the other hand, it is not supposed to be near 65°F near the end of February and some of the young artists would rather play outside than take photos. I don’t really blame them either, it’s what I would have wanted to do too especially when on break from school. I think these two factors played into the semi-rambunctious atmosphere the class had and why we had less young artists participate than other weeks. The week’s lesson was focused around portraiture: how to identify portraits and what needs to be in a portrait for it to be considered one. I felt that the activity we did to get this idea across was, on the whole, successful. Throughout the room, we put up portraits and non-portraits like landscapes having the young artists identify their favorite one, describe why it was a portrait and why it was their favorite. After that we moved on to our portrait-taking activity – those of themselves, their buddy that they were paired with, of one of us PC students, group portraits – outside to represent those persons’ personalities. There were some great photos taken, however I think we also did lose some of their attention because the young artists wanted to play on a nearby playground incredibly badly. Reflecting on this, I think striking that balance between giving the artists their freedom and also accomplishing our goals for the exhibition is still something we are working on; it’s a great sign that they feel comfortable enough to joke, talk, and play with us, those relationships are incredibly important. Yet, I believe they can also sense when we are hesitant to restrict them to doing what we must. Then, the artists can lose focus and run over us. Despite this, each of the young artists took some great portraits and were able to articulate how it represented the person in the photo as well as what artistic elements of the photo they enjoyed most.
            The experiences I have had so far while serving at ¡CityArts! make me reminisce aboutthe days when I was a student just like them in one of these classes as well as the times when I taught small, informal drawing classes for younger kids when I was in the later years of high school. I think that old experience is coming back to me, especially after this week in terms of what to do and not to do in these classes with younger people. I saw the young artist I was working with fluctuating between interest and disinterest in taking photos during the day; he wanted to play basketball. So, I incentivized his taking of photos: for every three shots he took, he would have to take three portraits which worked out for a good portion of the time. Sometimes this type of persuasion can be an incredibly effective quid pro quo. Maybe this is a way to find balance without having to turn to heavy handedness. Unfortunately, when we had to return to the classroom to discuss the photos, he became downtrodden because he still wanted to play and didn’t want to participate in our group debrief. I sat with him, tried to coax him to share, but I’ve learned that sometimes pushing can do more harm than good especially when someone is upset. So, I then decided to sit next to him for the remainder of the time. It reminded me of how difficult it was to teach youth and maintain their engagement in the learning. Still shaking off the rust, but really excited about the next few weeks.  

See this week's lesson plan below!

Week Four - Lesson Plan
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File Type:	docx

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Blog Author

Stephen Skelly, Providence College Class of 2017, Sociology & Global Studies Double Major.