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| Las Posadas 2000 Carmen Lomas Garza My students readily engaged with this image. They could relate to the representation of a celebration, the mixed ages of the figures, the setting, and familiar objects. The image was intriguing enough to maintain high interest and open to multiple interpretations. The diversity level was 'just right' for fourth grade, and gave my ESL Hispanic students the opportunity to offer expert contributions. The VTS session for this image was rigorous and engaging. Students in my focus group were in agreement that this was either a family or group who was visiting the home of the woman for a Christmas / religious celebration OR a group of people who were trying to get the woman to join their celebration. The children in costume, the candles, the attire of the figures, and the piñata all contributed to the development of narrative. Multiple hands were raised throughout the discussion leading me to believe that the discussion was successful. I chose this image because I enjoy the work of Garza. Mexican folk art is a personal favorite of mine, so it's a nice bonus to share her rich images with my students. I have had great success using her work in the past. HOWEVER, in the selection of this image I failed to take in the possibility of the strong religious implications that would arise. There were four times that I did not implement question #2 because I was uncomfortable with the religious nature of response #1. Mary, Joseph, and the Christian symbolism of the lamb really had me squirming on the inside! (Sorry Yenawine, you warned me, I just didn't see it coming!) Did this image satisfactorily introduce the BIG IDEA, CONCEPTS, &/or ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS of your unit? Specifically, what “worked?” My Big Idea is Story, my essential questions -How do people express ideas through art? How has art been used throughout history to tell stories? Prior to our VTS session I shared the unit topic 'Story' with students. It has been a recurrent theme with students this year, so not a new concept, however, as with previous VTS sessions, they enjoyed the collective process of mining a piece of art for meaning. Was the image rich enough to encourage continued discussion &/or independent student investigation? If so, how might you provide continued exploration to satisfy student curiosity and/or motivation to discover more? This VTS session was conducted toward the end of the class period. When we were out of time, we were literally out of time. Hands were still raised and as they lined up students clambered to tell me more. It will be interesting to see if anyone mentions anything about it during the next art class. If a student were interested in exploring further, in true VTS fashion and consistent with the objectives of 21st Century learning, I might ask if they had any ideas for search terms they could use to look up more information on the artist or the style of art. If they pressed me very hard though I would probably cave in and give them some specific information. Did this image invite opportunities to explore the BIG IDEA through artmaking? How will you relate this image to subsequent artmaking for students? Yes, my students could clearly see narrative in this piece. When we get to the art making in this unit I will ask my students to reflect on the rich details which contribute to the narrative and to consider the details they use to tell their story. Due to the religious details in this piece I do not think I would use it again. I think I would feel more comfortable with Tamalada, another of Garza's paintings. This image contains a juicy story, and if mentioned, the painting of The Last Supper on the wall will be a clue about the residents of the home, not a major focus of the narrative. Whew! |
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| Tamalada Carmen Lomas Garza |
I LOVE your image. This is very interesting and has a strong narrative to attract your students’ attention. I feel the same way. If students started to focus on religious details, I would be uncomfortable like you. But I am really wondering if it is really a matter even if the teacher objectively mention or deal with religious things. I know the teachers basically never put the emphasis on religion stuffs though.
ReplyDeleteThis image is very intriguing but it would take pretty long time to deal with this because it has many figures and a lot of interesting thing going on. I had same experience during the last semester. I chose an image which has almost fifteen figures so it took 45minutes to go through the lesson with the image. After that, I try to avoid the images which have too many figures even though I really want to use the images.
At this point, I am wondering if it is a really bad idea to have longer VTS lesson like 50minutes or 1 hour long. There are some images that I want to deal with but I am afraid to choose it because the lesson might exceed the time limit.
This is an overtly religious piece (or is it....could it possibly be halloween and the seeming religious dress simply coincidental costumes?), but I wouldn't avoid it for that reason; especially when it gave your ESL kids the opportunity to feel like experts. You can allow religious interpretation into the discussion by paraphrasing it as just another possibility and respecting the experience of the children that read it as such. For example, you might say, "You believe this figure Might be Mary and this one MIGHT be Joseph who are important figures for people who follow the Christin faith. What do you see that makes you think that might be a POSSIBILITY?" If you load your paraphrase with conditional language, there's no way it could be read as anyone's endorsement of religious faith. But that's just me. (I taught a unit in Islamic Art & Architecture two months after 9/11 to dispell stereotypes, so I'm kind of a troublemaker at times!)Of course, you have to do what is comfortable and you were perfectly correct not to use question #2 when your intent is to get off of a topic and move along.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great artist (and image!) for the big idea of story!