My first student teacher experience took place in a suburban junior / senior high school for grades 7th through 12th. I worked with the high school students, grades 10th through 12th. The school day is based on intensive scheduling. Each class meets for 90 minutes each day of the week for half a year. There are only four periods a day. The art classes are offered as electives for the students. Since there were no prerequisites, the student’s previous experience and ability would vary greatly.
The teacher I worked with during this experience advised and coordinated many programs and classes. The art department consists of photography, drawing studio, painting studio, and computer graphics. While I was at the school, I was able to work with the photography, computer graphics, and drawing classes. I was able to implement lessons to all of these classes. The photography class and the computer class had only 10 – 15 students, but the drawing class with 25 students was the most diverse in the student’s abilities. I enjoyed being able to use my creativity and imagination to develop lessons for such a diverse group of students.
The most challenging and rewarding experience for me was the computer graphics class because I had to teach myself some of the programs before I would teach them to the students. Some of the programs were Adobe Photoshop and Bryce 3-D. During my experience, I assisted the art teacher with setting up a student exhibition and developing the senior slideshow on Adobe Premiere. I also assisted the art teacher prepare the student’s artwork for the Governor’s School.