Classroom Observations

09/13/2019

17 Students, 14-18 years old, Grades 9-12

    Oyster River is a pretty progressive school in terms of adaptive learning and teaching styles, they are also excepting of all people. The community ranges from some poorer children to middle class and higher. Oyster River High School excepts a few of the surrounding towns because they have a big enough school and the number of students per class is around 100. Durham, New Hampshire is a college town and the property tax to live in the area is pretty high. For the surrounding towns it is considerably lower and some don’t even have a high school.

    There are three classrooms that connect in a sort of right angle and that makes up the art department there. The first classroom right as you walk in from the hall has five rectangular tables in the center of the room, each table has four to five wheeled chairs. There is a big white board on one wall and on either side are pairs of cabinets. On the other side of the room are shelves  above the sink and counter and it holds old art and inspiration materials for still life designs. There is a small dark room attached to this room to the left, right as you walk in. The room just past is more of the drawing and painting classes sort has more of these materials and there is almost always a still life set up  and the drawing horse are in a circle around the the still life. All around the walls of the room are cabinets and  old pieces from old students. The room just beyond that is the third and final room the is the ceramics room. It has a few tables just to the left, pushed together in a line creating a long family style table. It also has wheeled chairs all around it, around 16. There is also counter space to the left as you walk in and above that are shelves full of old students ceramic work. Glaze buckets to the right by the exit doors and in the middle of the room is  four wheel throwing tables. To the left of that is the little kiln room which has shelves to the left as you walk in and two kilns to the right and a drying rack. Behind the wheel throwing table is the sink and carving tools.

    In Drawing the students were continuing there sketches of the pre-set still life the teacher had created, using different materials and objects to create problem solving challenges. For Pottery 1 the students were told to create several pinch pots but for all of them, he wanted the students to keep their hands under the table so they were not over thinking just experiencing and they would compare the shapes, which he said would generally be the same because you get into a rhythm so your hands do the same thing the whole time. In Painting 1 the students were continuing their paintings on the same pre-set still life as the Drawing students. In Painting 2 the students were continuing their paintings on the individually chosen inspirations. 

    Drawing students were using 2B and 4B pencils on 60 pound paper and they used drawing boards propped on drawing horses. Pottery 1 students were using a red bodied clay. Painting 1 students were using acrylic paint for this assignment with assorted brushes. Painting 2 students were using oil paints and assorted brushes for their work.

    In Pottery 1 there was a short 10 minute demonstration for the pinch pots under the table, he created three of them pretty quickly but then showed how they look basically the exact same. He said although he has been doing it a while that even theirs will be pretty similar to the others they’ll create in both shape and texture.