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Heart of Illinois Conference (HOIC)

IPTS (2013) Standard 3 – Planning for Differentiated Instruction: The competent teacher plans and designs instruction based on content area knowledge, diverse student characteristics, student performance data, curriculum goals, and the community context. The teacher plans for ongoing student growth and achievement.

Description: This lesson plan was designed for the 2022 Heart of Illinois Conference (HOIC). During this lesson, students worked with the big idea of mental health while learning about poster design and typography in preparation for making typographic mental health posters. Students also learned about, and used as inspiration, poster designers/typographers Gail Anderson, Jessica Hische, and Alex Trochut. To create their typographic mental health posters, students developed a short phrase that was personal to them about their mental health. They spelled out their phrases using cut-out magazine and hand-created letters while considering effective ways to design a poster that is typography focused. 

Rationale: Mental health is very important and impacts every student at some level. Designing a lesson around the big idea of mental health reminds students of its importance and allows them to reflect on their own mental health in a creative way. Teaching poster design and typography is also important because through these topics, students can gain a better understanding of foundational art principles used in many art forms and develop a new understanding of how to convey messages, in this case, about mental health, in a powerful way.  

HOIC Artwork Example

HOIC Lesson Plan

HOIC Artist Statement

Poster Design and Typography Presentation

Mental Health Graphic Organizer

Poster and Type Design Exercise Worksheet

Unit Plan

IPTS (2013) Standard 5 – Instructional Delivery: The competent teacher differentiates instruction by using a variety of strategies that support critical and creative thinking, problem-solving, and continuous growth and learning. This teacher understands that the classroom is a dynamic environment requiring ongoing modification of instruction to enhance learning for each student. 

IPTS (2013) Standard 7 – Assessment: The competent teacher understands and uses appropriate formative and summative assessments for determining student needs, monitoring student progress, measuring student growth, and evaluating student outcomes. The teacher makes decisions driven by data about curricular and instructional effectiveness and adjusts practices to meet the needs of each student. 

Description: This unit plan is an extension of my HOIC Lesson Plan and maintains the same big idea of mental health and topics of poster design and typography but has an additional focus on how to create messages. Instead of using cut-out magazine and hand-created letters, students will sketch and use Adobe Illustrator to create mental health posters.

Unit Plan Artwork Example

Rationale: I kept my big idea and topics the same for this unit plan because of how important mental health is and how prevalent poster design and typography are in today’s world. Adding content on how to create messages was an important addition because expression is a key part of being an artist. The use of Adobe Illustrator in this unit plan appeals to the digital age we live in and teaches students how digital tools can be used to create works of art. 

Unit Plan

Unit Plan Artist Statement

Unit Plan Artist Handout

Unit Plan Presentations:

Gail Anderson Presentation Part 1

Essential Elements of Poster Design Presentation

Gail Anderson Presentation Part 2

Typography and How to Create Message Presentation

Unit Plan Sheets:

Message Map Worksheet

Mental Health Poster Project Overview Sheet

Mental Health Poster Planning and Sketching Worksheet

Mental Health Poster Artist Statement Worksheet

Literacy Lesson

IPTS (2013) Standard 6 – Reading, Writing, and Oral Communication: The competent teacher has foundational knowledge of reading, writing, and oral communication within the content area and recognizes and addresses student reading, writing, and oral communication needs to facilitate the acquisition of content knowledge. 

Description: This literacy lesson is part of my Unit Plan and is a research- and writing-based activity about poster design. In this lesson, students are asked to find two poster examples and write a short paragraph about each poster that describes them using three adjectives and that identifies two of the essential elements of poster design that are used in them. 

Rationale: Research and writing activities in the art classroom are important for both teachers and students. I will be able to assess if my students understand what I taught about poster design through my literacy lesson, or if they will require further instruction. My literacy lesson gives students a chance to engage in another method of learning that is more application- than lecture-based.

Poster Design Literacy Lesson

Teaching Philosophy

IPTS (2013) Standard 7M: Articulates a logical rationale for the role of the visual arts in the school curriculum, including philosophical and social foundations for visual arts education.

Description: This teaching philosophy is one that I have developed over the last couple of years at Illinois State University. It discusses my motivation for teaching art and my beliefs about being a teacher, and specifically an art teacher. 

Rationale: Teaching philosophies are essential for every teacher to have. They not only showcase who the teacher is to others, but they also guide and remind teachers of their beliefs and what they stand for in education throughout their professional careers. 

Learning is a life-long experience, but one begins to understand learning when they enter into the school system. Learning exposes people to vast amounts of knowledge and is valuable to the growth of oneself. Learning is successful in the traditional sense when it leads to an understanding of something new but is most successful when passion is born from it. I became passionate about art when I learned about it in school. Because of that, I want to be an art teacher that imparts that same passion onto my students. 

 

I believe that a teacher is the most influential person in a student’s life because learning guides students to who and where they want to be. Teaching is meant to present students with many possibilities for their lives, and I believe that a teacher’s job is to show their students those possibilities. I want what I teach to be constantly changing and fluid like the world is. I want my students to not feel limited by what I teach, but rather walk away with a sense of ultimate freedom. A freedom of having multiple life paths and an understanding of all the places they could go. 

 

As an art teacher, I believe that there should be both structure and spontaneity. Structure in the sense that learning about the history of art and art techniques is essential to understanding what art is, but spontaneity in the sense that art should also not be contained. As a student, I enjoyed art because it was what I made it to be. I want my students to do the same. Students are more motivated and connect better with their work when it is something personal and derived from themselves. I will teach content with structure and teach creativity with spontaneity. 

Professionalism, Advocacy, and Leadership: PAL 1's 

IPTS (2013) Standard 9 – Professionalism, Leadership, and Advocacy: The competent teacher is an ethical and reflective practitioner who exhibits professionalism, provides leadership in the learning community, and advocates for students, parents or guardians, and the profession. 

Heart of Illinois Conference (HOIC) Exhibit

Description: In February of 2022, I attended the Heart of Illinois Conference (HOIC) Exhibit located at Illinois State University’s Transpace Gallery. The exhibit included a wide range of artworks created by the high school students that attended the 2022 Heart of Illinois Conference (HOIC).

Rationale: Viewing the 2022 Heart of Illinois Conference (HOIC) Exhibit was important to my professional development as an art teacher in how it showed me what current students are creating in Illinois public high schools. Seeing the various medias and skill levels that are present in high school classrooms instructs me on which media I should teach and what expectations I should have for my future high school students.

Grad Review

Description: In April of 2022, I attended the grad review of Jade Nguyen, an incoming MFA graduate. Nguyen displayed and discussed her semester’s photography and videography work about her culture and relationship with her home country.

Rationale: This was the first grad review I have attended at Illinois State University, and I was very inspired by both the artwork that was presented and the questions that were asked by Illinois State University arts faculty. This grad review contributed to my professional development as an art teacher in how it showed me how to properly display a series of artwork and demonstrated to me how to ask insightful and reflective questions to my future students during critiques. 

Professionalism, Advocacy, and Leadership: PAL 2's

IPTS (2013) Standard 7N: Advances his or her knowledge of current developments in the field by participating in professional development activities (e.g., coursework, professional organizations, and workshops).

IPTS (2013) Standard 9 – Professionalism, Leadership, and Advocacy: The competent teacher is an ethical and reflective practitioner who exhibits professionalism, provides leadership in the learning community, and advocates for students, parents or guardians, and the profession. 

Mirror Frame Commission

Description: In January of 2022, I painted a 3’ x 4’ wooden mirror frame for one of my aunts. She wanted the colors and intricate design to match her bathroom. I completed the project by hand with chalk paint.   

Rationale: Commissioned work is requested of artists, and it diversifies their skills with various medias and teaches them to value their time and artwork. Charging for artwork is challenging, but a required task for artists. Understanding that creating art is just as important as doing any other job is important for all artists and art students to recognize because art is hard work and deserves both recognition and compensation. Learning how to appropriately value your artwork and the time you put into it will be a key topic in my future art classroom

2022 NAEA Spring Mini Exhibition Artwork

Description: In April of 2022, I created three 5” x 5” sized watercolors that connect to each other to form the word “RELAX” for the 2022 NAEA Spring Mini Exhibition. I chose to depict the word “relax” because at the time of creation, it was important to remind myself to relax while balancing the chaos of life. I used cool colors to create a calm aesthetic that paralleled to the word I was depicting.

Rationale: Creating work for an exhibition is an important task that all artists complete throughout their practice. As a teacher, showing my work in an exhibition demonstrates to my students that I am knowledgeable in artmaking, and it encourages them as artists to be proud of and showcase their own artwork. 

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