Blog Topic #8

Reflect on your VTS experiences and curriculum experiences from the beginning of the semester to now. 

At the beginning of this semester, it was pretty hard for me to plan VTS lessons and design the unit plan at the same time. It was especially difficult to choose images according to a particular big idea since I had to consider the connection not only to the big idea but also between images. However, now after finishing the 4^th lesson, I feel more comfortable with planning VTS discussions and choosing VTS images since I have spent much time to analyze and critically evaluate my lesson and plan.  

  

 One thing makes me happy during the last discussions is that my students’ responses and behaviors seems to be continually developing. I was especially impressed by the way my students find meanings and connections in the continuous discussion. There are high level interpretations and thinking as well as active interactions. Besides they seemed to be more serious toward discussion compared to those of the last semester. Because of that, their excitement about discussion could seem to be decreased but it doesn’t really matter unless they want to participate and could concentrate on the discussion

The most challenging work is still to master VTS guidelines and keep my eye in the skills. To know what my problem is as a facilitator, objective assessment had to be required. Since I have to watch my video at least three times to make subtitle, I could objectively evaluate my performance in detail. Even though the process took a long time and it was a hard work, it is worth doing it, as a result. Needless to say, the self assessment process has been a big help too.    

Reading contents for every week has been very beneficial because it enables me to learn and think deeply about the ideas suggested by many other art educators. It has been also helpful for me to build my own perspective toward art appreciation. However, as an international student who use English as a second language and took two more classes, the assignments for one week have been too much challenging. Once I had to spend all four days a week only doing VTS assignments including reflection, blog topic, subtitles, assessment and VTS lesson. Anyway, I have been trying not to fall behind the course schedule. Hopefully, these challenging works could end up a successful experience at the end of the semester which would be remembered for a long time during my future career.