As an undergraduate students I was always interested in critiques and how my professor lead the critiques. I want to teach students in design fundamentals in order to introduce new people into the world of art and design. To be the first encounter in the process of creating art and design since for a lot of the students they have’t had an art course since high school. As a teacher I aim to encourage students to think out of the box, make mistakes, embrace exploration of own style ,be approachable and treat each other with respect and professionalism, and feel comfortable using their skills learned in this class. As a student myself I understand the possible fear and resentment that could result in students not giving their fully potential in class and I would like to use that as my advantage and approach students while understanding their possible struggles. As a teacher I will make sure I treat the class as a safe space to express and create, be inclusive and feel included during critiques and use activities such as post it note critiques or anonymous critiques to make them feel more comfortable to speak up, and give my students straight to the point advice to help them feel comfortable presenting their work through oral, written and visual presentation.

I was fortunate enough to gained teaching experiences during my undergraduate studies with the total of two teaching assistant position for introduction to Photo-media and taught one quarter as a First Year Interest Group leader. During my Teaching Assistance internship during my junior year of college I work along my professor to teach the introduction to photo-media. During the class we will have one one on one session with each students before the assignment critique so students can discuss their idea and be physically and mentally prepared for a class critique. We also included anonymous critique where students will write their critique on a piece of paper and turn in to the designer in the end to read so it feels less direst and easier for students to digest and approach. The first year interest group is a class opened for students during their first quarter at the university to help students familiarize college life. As FIGs leaders I had the change to have weekly classes with 23 students from different backgrounds and interests. I got to create my own teaching outline and weekly material as well as talk to students one on one to help them discover their interests in college and intended majors. Many of my students switched the major they wanted to pursue during the middle of the quarter so a big part of my role is to listen to their struggles and give help advices regarding different major applications.

As for the future, I would like to keep using some of the models I’ve set with my photo-media professors as I found them useful for introduction art classes regardless of the specifications. I write rubrics for all the assignments and class exercises because for introduction classes I cannot make sure that all my students are on the same level of expertises. I designed the rubric more like a check list so students can learn without stressing out not knowing how I would grade them. For students that want to make edits after the critiques they will have a chance to make edits and I will be open to change their grades accordingly.  As I see introduction art classes more as a lookout patio for students to find out of this is what they want to pursue and less as a jumping stage for them to jump start their career either as artists or designers.

Teaching to me is an exploration of knowledge, as I always learn something new even when teaching the same class to new groups of students. In my experience as a teaching assistant for Photo-media 1 is that most students do not know where to start when first introduced a project. Since art in comparison to other subjects are so open ended comparing to the other classes they are taking, students often get stuck simply because they are not used to the amount of freedom they are given. What I’ve done in the past is to always set up one on one meeting with students a week after the project introduction to talk about their potential ideas and how to realistically execute them. A lot of my students in the past will also get discouraged by the limited skills they have for certain software. The one on one meetings give me an opportunity to answer specific questions centering softwares too.

For the FIGs group I ended up receiving a 3.27/4 final rating by students with an emphasis on how I acted as a listener and a mentor and make a great introduction to their up coming college experiences.