The Final Lesson: [Re] Produce

The final lesson for Saturday School was printmaking, specifically focusing on collagraph prints.  Although printmaking can be quite a process, collagraph allows students to learn the basic steps that are universal to printmaking, while using a technique that is extremely accessible.  Students used cardboard as a plate, various textures from fabrics, plant material, and dried food goods, modge podge and heavy bodied acrylic as ink.
In class, when we had spoken about chaos in the classroom, I think that could have applied to this past Saturday.  Although Dana and I were extremely organized with our materials and room set up, the process was still very foreign to our students.  In setting up this lesson, I anticipated that students would have lots of questions about this new idea so I made worksheets so that they could follow the process step by step.  The students still came running up to Dana and I after each step to ask what came next!
I'm glad that we broke the project down into steps so that the whole class was on the same page.  This made it easy on Dana and I when it came to keeping track of the materials.  The negative side to this organizational device was that students who were flying through the steps could have had more time to print.  I knew that time would be extremely crucial for this project and I am still glad that Dana and I went with the collagraph process instead of using foam for a relief print because we wanted them to think outside of drawing to make an image.  Although a lot of students could have worked longer on their prints, I think the turn out of the project was really great.  A lot of students really understood the process and produced beautiful prints.  Other students (who I noticed were not paying attention during the demos and the introduction) struggled with the steps, even though there was a worksheet detailing the process.  I'm wondering how as teachers we can alleviate this problem without losing our minds!
So one of the main points of our lesson was to get students to think about how to reproduce an image, not by drawing, but by using a collagraph relief print to create an image.  As a teacher, I should have been more assertive about an issue that I knew would come up with my class-- my students all love drawing!  And their drawings are extremely detailed.  A lot of my students would think of an image and get stuck on creating the details instead of the overall picture.  Because they were wrapped up in the detail, they would get behind during the process.  In a lesson like this, it is very important to keep track of time, stay as organized as possible, and provide the students with a timeline as well.  If I had to do this lesson over again, I would change a lot of things.  One of the most important changes would be to provide a timeline for the students at the front of the classroom detailing each time that students should move on to another step so they can finish their project.
Dana and I experienced some pleasant surprises with this lesson.  Either the students followed the steps to a tee and produced beautiful and well thought out designs, or they went in the completely opposite direction and really experimented.  We talk about Griffin a lot in this blog, but this kid was an experimenter and we loved it!  He really embraced this project and made it his own by inventing his own printing techniques and style.
Although I am glad to have my weekends back, Saturday School was a great experience in that Dana and I had a lot of roadblocks along the way.  One of our biggest challenges at the beginning of the semester, the classroom environment, turned about to be one of our greatest wins.  After looking back at all the lessons that we have taught over the course of eight weeks, I am really amazed at what we have accomplished!