Consider the journal response you wrote in Week 1 about qualities a successful social studies teacher should have. You also discussed your strengths and weaknesses and your goals for the course. As you complete the course, what has changed? Do you have anything to add or change regarding the qualities of a successful teacher? Have your strengths and weaknesses changed? Did you make progress towards your goals? What new goals do you have in regard to history and arts instruction?
Response week 1
Part 1: Qualities of a Successful Social Studies Teacher
A dynamic social studies teacher has diverse characteristics that are useful in teaching. To begin with, the inner drive to learn drives students to dig into the places of history, culture, and societal structure. Effective teachers with perfect communication skills can clearly and interestingly express difficult and complex information, which is critical (California Department of Education, 2019). Cultural sensitivity and empathy are essential qualities in this context, which create an atmosphere of engagement by approaching different perspectives respectfully. An educator without adaptability will be ineffective as they have different backgrounds and ways of learning among the students. Critical thinking and problem-solving are among the most distinctive features of good teaching; thus, students must figure out what resulted in historical events.
Part 2: Learning Through the Arts
Recalling a School Experience with the Arts:
I attended a history lesson about World War II in senior high school. Our art teacher, Miss Johnson, blended some artworks relevant to the curricular content. The project we had to carry out was to design illustrative images of the crucial events of that era. We could choose any medium: painting, sculpture, or digital art. The sympathy comes from when I remember making a mixed media collage of the Dunkirk evasion. I had in mind old newspapers, wallpapered with mold, paintings taken from magazines, made of watercolor and charcoal. Due to continuous work on it, I was increasingly involved in the historical context, researching firsthand accounts to understand, and started analyzing the photos I had never seen before. Mrs. Johnson organized the discussions about what we should use and whatnot, which somehow related to history.
What Students Are Expected to Do (Grade Four Visual Arts?)
In Grade 4 Visual Art class, students partake in multi-faceted investigations of art expression. Initially, they should work with their hands to produce artworks of their choice, portraying their feelings, feelings, and thoughts through line-craft, painting, and sculpture (California Department of Education, 2019). However, at the same time, students acquire critical thinking skills in studying art by checking into constituents such as color, arrangement, and symbols to understand the intention of different art pieces.
Classroom Activities:
In the classroom, students join different activities that help broaden their artistic knowledge. These activities include discovering Impressionism and Cubism art movements, creating self-portraits using numerous materials, studying local artists through interviews and observation, and making history and art collages(California Department of Education,2019). With these varied activities, students would learn the skills of art making and understand how art, culture, and history are interrelated.
