Final thoughts

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In Chicago, I thought of using performance art as my teaching methodology in Chicago’s public schools. Mrs. Kate Thomas helped me to refine my idea . She communicated with many art teachers in different schools around Chicago that I could go and performed while observing their classrooms.

My performance Art’s name was “ Carpet Woman” and basically I was wearing a carpet and sitting down on the floor and invited students to come and sit down with me and join each other. This brought all the students together on a piece of carpet and then we talked about the idea of connection. I started from the carpet and asked questions: “why Iranians have made carpets in the history and designed it with beautiful flowers? Usually there is a bouquet of flower in the center, do you know why?”

Students started naming the beauty of carpet, its application, its sense of comfort and warm feeling. Then I mentioned that Iranians have made carpet because they were interested to have a long lasting garden full of flowers for all seasons in which they could sit down together and appreciated the beauty of togetherness. So they visualized that garden and weaved it into a carpet. That’s what artist does, visualizing some thing and make it happens. Here, the carpet brings people together and is a site of togetherness.

Following my invitation, all students came and sat down on the carpet and at the end they mentioned it was a great experience for them as they felt more connected, more welcomed and relaxed. In some classes, by conversation with the art teacher, I came up with a responding activity to the performance. In one high school, students wrote the reflection paper about their experiences and in one of the elementary schools they painted the carpet lady with oil pastels. In a social studies class, they reflected on the performance art by participation on classroom’s conversations.

This experience was very beautiful for both my students and me. It elevated me and taught me some thing new. I find contemporary art pedagogy has a stronger influence on the students and makes them more open-minded individuals with compassion for others.

This note was my immediate response to this experience:

…….”I came back from walking in a flower garden! Today was one of the most beautiful days in my life., I taught art to students in an elementary school in Chicago . Kids were so close, engaged and connected to me during my performance art that I can still feel their pure energy. The overall experience was very exciting, refreshing and relaxing for us like walking in the garden. We all found a common moment of an awareness of our bodies and our emotions being tied together. We became so connected that we did not want to leave the experience. I think it was one of the most extraordinary moments in my life that I found I have made a strong bond with the students in one session. Our bodies and our emotions were the art materials. The whole experience was art. There was no teacher and no student and we were all the same. Teaching overlapped the art beautifully!

 

Final thought: My reflection…….What I do next?

 

I continue my inquiry as an artist and art educator; I continue my teaching philosophy of creating an environment for my students to be more compassionate and respectful of others.

I design new art curriculum that encourages more group work and community based projects, as I believe the role of me as an art educator is to raise an awareness of the importance of togetherness in our community and celebrating diverse cultures in Canada.

To be continued………

My inquiry in response to my teaching philosophy

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Parvin Peivandi

My Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy is creating an educational environment for my students in which they practice to be open minded and respectful to all people from different cultures or races. In my pedagogy, I like to raise awareness about the importance of community and togetherness. My art projects hover over the concept of connection and integration.

I believe my Art is not separate from my teaching practice; In both art making and teaching art, I desire to make people connected through art and sharing the stories of different cultures. In my artworks, I usually talk about my passion of connection and communication with people. My art works express the struggles and the difficulties of living between two cultures and the labor of assimilation. Coming from Persian background, I put emphasis on the importance of togetherness in our community and want to invite the students to be more sensitive and respectful of different cultures.

In my recent art projects, I brought my art practices and teaching art projects more closely by bringing performance art as one of the most influential contemporary art practices to my pedagogy. I believe the successful pedagogy is an art by itself because it touches the heart of people and evokes their feelings and self-awareness. I want to set forth the idea of how our cultural bodies are also material in the process of making art and also responding to art. I like in my art pedagogy, delivering art, making art and responding to art overlap each other. I believe in a successful art educational environment, the artist and the teacher, the student and the instructor, the material and the concept all find the same status, meaning and matter. There is no authority or autonomy of one over the other. This is the moment that I strive for to level out any hierarchy or power structures in education.

I like the morality that exists in Chris Hedges quote, “ the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.” I think Hedge’s belief that “the measure of civilization is its compassion” is stunning. His idea made me think of my teaching philosophy that is based on increasing compassion and respect between individuals and students in this particular context, so I think I am on a right track in my educational endeavor. I aim to design contemporary art curriculum with more emphasis on collaboration and community art experiences.

I think the profession of teaching calls forth self-awareness and reflection in me and I consider mirror as my credo. The educational career lets me to have self-reflection all the time and try hard to improve my honesty with the world. I think as an art educator I am in constant dialogue with the world; world is reflected in me and me reflected in the world, this mirror needs to be spotless.

 

Spaces for Possibility

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MONDAY, MAY 4, 2015Sitting with “carpet woman” to experience closenessHello my friends,In the past week Parvin Peyvandi, a visiting artist and art teacher from Vancouver, Canada has been visiting your schools (Ravenswood, Armstrong, Hancock, and Peck Elementary). Parvin is originally from Iran and brings a beautiful and vibrant connection to her own culture to the students and teachers of Chicago.In her performance “carpet woman” she invites students to sit with her to consider the history of the Persian carpet and how a piece of fabric can bring us into proximity with each to other to experience closeness. This performative experience has allowed students to talk about racial segregation in Chicago; the act of sitting together to form a connection with each other; what a life long art practice can be like, and much more. Parvin is like a radiant flower in the center of the carpet, emanating love and openness. Like Marina Abramovic’s performances which involve a sense of being in connection with each other, Parvin opens up the space for conversation and touching through materiality.The invitation to join Parvin on the carpet is extended.First grade students from Armstrong Elementary School are eager to sit close and touch the carpet and Parvin’s hair. The little ones are open to more than just sitting. Touching is often a part of being together.6th grade students at Ravenswood Elementary are considering their own cultural heritage. Parvin’s visit comes at just the right time. There is much conversation around how people feel connected through sitting on the carpet. Some students are aware that there is segregation in Chicago and comment on the recent police brutality events in Baltimore. Parvin says as an artist she cannot control the actions of others but through this gesture of sitting together she hopes to bring people together to experience closeness.Mature bodies, less room for sitting but still high school students at Hancock are more than willing to sit close for a conversation. I notice that the students of various ages hold their bodies differently on the carpet. The little ones fidget and wriggle to find a sense of comfort. The 6th graders hold their bodies with a sense of comportment. Their minds are open to many different associations – the carpet in Chicago extends all the way to Baltimore. In the high school, students are comfortable with being together but they are unaccustomed to sitting on the floor. From first grade to high school, these students have travelled great distances with their bodies. This performance is a beautiful connecting point for the bodies in proximity to each other over time. We never lose the sense for needing to be with each other. Posted by Kate Thomas at 12:09 PM No comments: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to PinterestSATURDAY, MAY 2, 2015Student Reflective WritingThis ain’t on any standardized test!Curie HS Art 1 Students are doing reflective writing during their critique. That’s right! Our students think and process and then think about their thinking! That’s art education and we have to let the parents and administration know what we are doing in the classroom. (That is thinking deeply and reflecting throughout the creative process). I’m always surprised when others are surprised that art teachers do this. So many don’t realize the depths we bring our students to.Click on the link to go to our blog. There will soon be another post of some of the studies with the student writing attached. I regret I did not video the discussions. It is so hard to document and run the session at the same time! I need to get that equipment so I can set up the video camera and let it run on its own….teachers after hoursValerie XanosCurie HSPosted by Valerie Xanos at 8:44 AM 1 comment: Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to PinterestLabels: metacognition, mindfulness, reflectionTHURSDAY, APRIL 30, 2015″Vibrant Matter” in the art room”It is never we who affirm or deny something of a thing; it is the thing itself that affirms or denies something of itself in us.” Baruch Spinoza, Short Tretise IIHello my friends,I visited Jeanne Walker’s room today at Hancock High School. The art room was gorgeous and full of vibrant matter and possibilities. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I am reading about new materialism and post humanism. Now I look at this beautiful art room exploding with “thing power” and wonder what might these “things” be calling us to do?Reinforcing the sculptural chairs with paper mache.A non-chair related project involves these beautiful mannequin heads covered in gold leaf. The beauty of these materials cannot be captured by a photo. One has to feel the materiality of gold leaf. This one seems to speak to me as a throne.Recently I have been wondering, what if we were to re-conceive of the art room’s materiality differently?  Jane Bennett who I mentioned in the last post says “‘thing power’ works because it’s in the n

Source: Spaces for Possibility

Parvin Peivandi,IB Reflection, Jan. 27th, 2015

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Parvin Peivandi, IB reflection, Jan. 27th, 2015

Today we explored more about the interdisciplinary units. We brainstormed in groups of three and we shared our ideas about how we can make interdisciplinary units between two or more subjects. I was feeling more free and creative in this way as I enjoyed collaborating with my peers in different subject areas. Most teacher candidates came up with interesting ideas for interdisciplinary units. I found art is the most flexible subject that can be aligned with other different subject areas. To my viewpoint, every subject area can be expanded and challenged by using art. Particularly I was thinking of sculpture as a medium that can be employed in all subjects. Folded papers and making flat paper to a 3D form is an easy fun activity for visualizing DNA or cells in Biology. In French or other languages, art can be a starter for writing a well thought reflection paper in a different language.

I came up with the idea of using literature and English language as the starting point for making a sculpture. Illustrating a piece of poetry for a book cover is another example. All sorts of interdisciplinary ideas are there and I am very passionate to explore these possibilities in my unit plans.

Parvin Peivandi, IB Reflection, Jan. 21st, 2015

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Parvin Peivandi, IB reflection, Jan.21st, 2015

This IB seminar was about revising IB unit planner and also interdisciplinary units. In this seminar I learned how to make interdisciplinary units in IB unit planning. I liked the idea that interdisciplinary units are based on the interdisciplinary understanding between two or more subjects. This is what I have learned in other courses in education program that those projects or questions that need the student to use his/her previous knowledge are the most valuable projects or questions. In interdisciplinary unit, student has to use the knowledge of one subject as a foundation of her/his thought and then apply this knowledge to the new context of a second subject. Both designing a high quality interdisciplinary unit and participating in it, needs huge amount of creativity.

I learned also that Interdisciplinary units are developed in grade groups by horizontal planning and at least one unit must be developed per year of the program. I feel so excited about designing interdisciplinary units because I think these units improve the Meta cognition skills of the students and add variety to the subject areas. To my viewpoint, the idea of joining two subjects together by key concept, global context and ATL skills, guide teachers to design interesting unit plans.

Interdisciplinary unit plans help the students to synthesize and integrate the knowledge that they have acquired from different sources. These units make the students reflect on their own thought and the process of meaning making and problem solving at the same time. This is why Interdisciplinary units prepare our students as efficient communicators.

Parvin Peivandi,IB reflection, Jan 14th, 2015

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Parvin Peivandi, IB Reflection, Jan 14th, 2015

Peer Assessment of the summative tasks was another valuable experience in IB seminar this week. I found some of the IB task sheets of my peers were assessing too many things at the same time that seemed confusing for me. I was thinking of ESL students in our future classrooms and how they feel when they are confronted with the complex assessment tools like this that they do not exactly know what is the expectations of their teacher and where are they going. As we have studied in assessment course 310B, in a high quality education, assessment is overlapping the instruction and if the assessment tool is not explicit, it does not have so much educational value. The assessment task sheets are not merely for grading tasks, but they are designed to improving the students’ learning outcomes. A high quality assessment is the beginning of instruction and measures specific aspects of learning outcomes and performances. Typically two criteria should be selected in IB task sheets and the objectives should be clearly described. I asked myself how complexity of assessment task sheets might affect validity, reliability and fairness of the assessment. If some students do not understand the concept of the instruction and content of assessment, they cannot respond properly to the assessment and their performance does not show their real capability of the task. I think making high quality task sheets in IB needs practice and knowledge of the students’ behavior and understanding. Strong rubric and assessment task sheets have a student friendly language and are combined with different assessment tools to measure the students’ learning in different occasions.

Parvin Peivandi, IB Reflection, Jan. 6th, 2015

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Parvin Peivandi, IB Reflection, Jan 6th, 2015

In this IB seminar, there was a time for peer assessment of the IB unit planner. I found that was a very valuable experience that we could look at our classmate’s unit plans and learn from their specific strategy in unit planning. For me, observing different unit plans from diverse subject areas was instructive. By reflecting on some one else’s assignment, we could also improve our own units. I like to use this method more often in my future classroom.

We also have chance to chat with each other about the different parts of the unit plans including key concept and global context. Key concept is the main focus of each unit, so it needs more attention to select the right key concept for the specific outcomes of our units. IB education also pays attention to global aspect of the education to prepare individuals for active participation in real world and cross-cultural interactions. As my inquiry question is about international minded education, I have selected identities and relationship as my global context. This is very close to my inquiry statement. I think weaving the threads of my inquiry statement into my unit plans is a great decision that makes me more motivated to be on the same track and do research about the global minded education in art curriculum.