Mobiles and Moving Sculptures After School Art Class: Reflections
This past week I wrapped up a 4-week long after school art class at a local elementary school. In this class we explored mobiles and sculpture-making techniques. Some parts of the class worked really well, and other parts were far from smooth. I’ve been reflecting on the class since it concluded, and have been trying to pinpoint the lessons that I can learn from the process.
The photos, above, were taken during and after the first class - which was the most focused of the four. In this class we talked about the meaning of the words “mobile” and “sculpture”, and explored methods for joining cardboard without using tape or glue. Students created at least 4 cardboard objects and balanced them from a thick cardboard strip, to create simple mobiles. The students were engaged, for the most part, and the activity was focused and relatively simple. Pretty much everyone was able to complete a simple mobile by the end of the class.
After this class, I showed the students a video of Alexander Calder’s circus and his untitled mobile at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. They enjoyed these videos and we had an interesting discussion about the works of art. The following activities that I led the group through engaged some of the students, but left others somewhat scattered and at loose ends. Because it was a high energy group to begin with, this lack of focus led to a somewhat chaotic atmosphere, at times.
After mulling over the experience, I’ve concluded that I should have continued to plan more specific and focused activities for the group (like I did for the first class), that would have enabled the students to finish a relatively small project at the end of each class. My plans were a bit too grand and open-ended, and some of the students seemed to find the lack of structure and direction frustrating. At the same time, though, some of the students enjoyed the freedom and forged ahead excitedly to realize their ideas. Overall, I think I could have struck a better balance of structure and ‘freedom’ for the group.
This series of classes brought up many questions for me about how to carry out effective classroom management in after-school school classes. I find that maintaining a relatively calm and focused work environment can prove challenging in the after-school context. Behaviour management strategies that work in the classroom, don’t always translate to this context. While I’ve reached some new conclusions after this series of classes, any thoughts and suggestions from other teachers out there would be most welcome!
