It is difficult for me to try to picture where in the world my classroom will be. When I graduate I plan to join the Peace Corps and teach abroad in a third world country. It is difficult to tell now if/when I would return to the United States to teach, or continue to serve with the Peace Corps. To make the availability of technology in my classroom reasonable, I will talk about my future teaching career in the United States, even though that may not be where I end up.
The year is 2025 and I am just about to begin the school year teaching middle school students in southern California. I work with students at an inner city school. Although the school is in the middle of the city, I try to get the students to incorporate aspects of nature into their works in the classroom. I have a really amazing setup and my classroom is attached to an enclosed school courtyard. In the courtyard we have a fire pit (for Raku fired ceramic pieces) as well as a garden full of various plants and berries the students use to explore creating their own paints.
Inside the classroom, it is divided into several sections. I have electric, sliding room dividers that can be closed off to separate the room into different sections or I can leave it opened as one big space. I normally like to leave all of the sliding walls opened because I like to encourage students to explore different mediums, be able to interact with other students, see what their classmates are working on, and use each other as sources of inspiration and creativity should anyone experience 'artists block.' When the wall divider are in use, the classroom can be divided into three different sections,
The ceramics side of the room includes ten throwing wheels, splash guards, a new state of the art electric extruder with a touch screen that allows students to extrude coils of many widths, lengths, shapes, and textures easily. There also are two tables covered in canvas so the clay won't stuck to the table. On the side of the room, there are three bins including different types of clay (stoneware, porcelin, and earthenware). Each student has a shelf to keep their tools and in-progress work. We recently aquired many bell jars in various sizes for students to keep their in-progress work in so it will not dry out. The bell-jars are electronic and are linked to the student's iPhone so the student can adjust the humidity in the jar, or if a student is absent from school they are able to turn the mist function on to ensure that their piece will not dry out before they return. Another function of the bell jars is they have a slow dry setting. Letting ceramic pieces air dry can sometimes cause cracking. This function ensures that their piece will dry at a reasonable rate without any breakage.
On the painting side of the room, we recently acquired 20 new desks. These desks are really great because they have wheels so students can take their work outside if they want to, the height is also adjustable as well as the angle the desk sits at. These desks can easily be converted into an easel. My favorite part of the desk is the new paint technology. Each desk has a tablet where students can select and mix colors and then once they are finished, they can send their colors to the paint machine in the corner of the room and it will squirt their colors on the pallet for them to retrieve. Of course students still are able to mix colors the old fashioned way if they would like, but this new technology is great because often times mixing paint colors as a beginner can result in a lot of excess paint that gets wasted as students continue adding colors trying to get to the color they want. Using the electronic paint mixer teaches students how much of certain colors they need to mix together to get their desired result without wasting materials.
In my classroom I also have a large supply closet. When you enter the closet, on the let hand side, the shelves are stocked with art supplies ordered by medium. All of the shelves are neatly labled to make it as easy as possibly for students to locate what they are looking for and return it when they are finished. On the opposite wall, there is a glass case filled with various technologies, computers, cameras, etc. Each item has it's own glass door to access it. In order to keep track of who is using these technologies in case anything is damaged, students are required to swipe their student id card to open the glass door and retrieve the technology they would like to use. Upon swiping their id card, students will be prompted to select if they would like to sign the item out for the class period, for the day, or the week. This allows students who may not have access to technology at home, still be able to explore creatively with it at their own pace.
One of my favorite pieces of technology in the supply closet is the Textureizer 2.0. It is brand new this year and I can't wait to see what my students will do with is. It is a paint-brush shaped scanner that scans texture when you brush it across a surface. Then when you plug it into the computer you can 3D print the texture. Say I am making something out of ceramics, I can press my textured piece of plastic into the clay and make class with the texture of carpet, or print a special paint brush and paint grass, that is actually the texture of grass. The possibilities are endless, I cannot wait to see what my students create with this.
The single most important thing I hope my students learn from my class is to always treat each other with kindness and respect and to work together and learn from each other by embracing their differences. I never want a student to feel as though they are ostracized by their peers or falling behind in my class, or any other classes, because of something that is going on outside of school or at home.
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