Lesson #1 documentation

Cooper Home, Lesson #1, Wax Resist Stained Glass, 10/17/2022

For this art experience, I think what went well in terms of our preparation was showing several examples as well as giving a short demo. I also think that having multiple materials, watercolors and crayons, was a good idea and it kept people pretty engaged until the end. In terms of teaching, we all moved around to each table several times and tried our best to answer questions and give tips and pointers. I think we all did a great job bonding with our class on the first day and making them feel comfortable in the space. A student opened up to me about a traumatic event that they went through and they expressed it in their art which was so amazing to see. I also like to use art to get out my emotions and express myself and It meant a lot that a student was comfortable enough to share that part of their life with me.

This was my first time teaching adults as well as my first time being in a class where every student is disabled in a way. Overall, it was a great experience and it meant a lot that the students really seemed to enjoy their time with us and also seemed to like the project we had for them. It was hard to keep everybody engaged for the total period of time and for our next art experience. I want to think about some more options we could have to keep people with different interests engaged for longer periods of time.

In terms of preparation, I think it would have been smart to have visuals to go along with our introduction with something like a slideshow. I think it would have been a good idea to show them examples of real stained glass to show them the abstract look we were going for. I think that giving them a practice piece of paper and maybe making a name tag or small design using the technique would have helped them get the hang of it before just jumping into a large piece. In terms of teaching, I also think that it would have been productive to show them what will happen if you don't press your hand enough with the crayon. We told them to press hard but we didn't really show how hard to press or what would happen if there wasn’t enough wax to resist the watercolor.