Rationale
I have been teaching art and graphic design primarily to students of Latin American descent at a middle school here in Houston Texas for about 10 years now. It is to these students that I have dedicated my interest in participating in Yale's 2005 National Initiative Fellows Seminar. This is such a special opportunity for me, as any teacher would be so delighted to have time to work intensely with colleagues from different regions of the country and the Yale faculty.
In trying to decide what exactly my unit's objective should be, I tried to depict what it is that my students really need as well as what they would enjoy learning. My students often have caught me off guard when they speak vaguely of their ancestry or what they know about their ethnicity and culture. It occurred to me that they know very little of their heritage. When students say familiar idioms or discharge rhetoric such as when they declare "Viva la Raza," pertaining to their magnified pride, it usually has very little to do with backup knowledge or historical details; it's more about the latest soccer "futbol" game. They equate pride for their country by rooting for their favorite teams. This seminar has provided the time and chance to create a unit that supplied me with more of what I needed to know about Mesoamerican history so that I can, in turn, have an exciting set of lessons to impart.
Each year, I am called to become more and more involved in activities, contests and art shows all having to do with Hispanic themes such as: "Day of the Dead" or Spanish Heritage month. This is a huge topic to delve into without spending time researching it on your own! I've equipped myself with researched information, read substantially and from this, tried to present a noteworthy unit that I can relay to you with confidence.
These lessons have been prepared to generate enthusiasm. You can generate enthusiasm in the classroom when you are truly prepared, and have equipped yourself with quality information. That goes along with personally discovering the information yourself. These lessons are versatile and can be applied by other subject matter instructors for their use.
Teaching requires constant tweaking of your lessons and I believe that teachers can read this, get excited and be prepared to discuss this very subject with certainty. This is because you are receiving ideas from another colleague! Any information that one can relay with passion and excitement is always received better by the recipients. Students can tell that you know your stuff!
I would like to expose my Latin American boys and girls to the world of their ancestry. I'll also make sure that for those who do not share this ancestry, I've provided equally interesting twists in the lessons, with the expectation that they become more responsive, sensitive, and begin to compare and contrast their own ancestry and civilization. Through the investigation of these civilizations, Olmec, Maya and Aztec, my pupils will gather profound awareness of what a civilization is- learn about the initial needs of a society to survive, perhaps critique, reflect and analyze about these past cultures and include ours today for comparison. Finally, this unit will benefit all students to perceive how in our society, especially in Texas, the Mesoamerican influence is alive and well today.
Here in Texas, our students learn about Texas history. When they learn about the discovery of the Americas, Columbus is introduced… Cortez is mentioned… but what about the Americas prior to the Spanish or European invasion? What about the indigenous peoples? Do my students even realize that there ever was a history prior to the conquistadores? Here in Texas, we fail to mention that we were part of New Spain once, long before we were part of the United States.
What a great opportunity to visit a culture that most of my students have a natural curiosity for. Many have shown to me that they have a deep respect for the Aztec or Mayan heritage even though they know little or nothing of it. They are attracted to graphic drawings that depict Aztec symbolism. They have them scrawled all over their notebooks, they like to trace and draw these renderings of the classic Macho "Chulo" type with a sexy girl and their "lowrider" vehicles. In the background of these graphic drawings you may see included Aztec temples, the Lady of Guadalupe, Maya Warriors, the Mexican flag and other very recognizable icons from the Mesoamerican past. My students love these! They trade them and sell the stickers or drawings to each other! I am used to hearing in my art class a whispering voice saying, "Hey, Julio, draw me one of those and I'll pay you a dollar tomorrow." Of course they are not supposed to be creating an entrepreneurship or selling anything that is not a school fundraiser in class, but it happens! They wear tee-shirts that have Mesoamerican icons! They prefer to eat Mexican candies or eat traditional foods. They use words that are directly from this past civilization and don't realize it.
I anticipate that giving them a well thought-out unit of lessons about the ancient Olmec culture (and perhaps I will expand the time line to include other ancient Mesoamerican cultures), will give my students some authority and enhance their personal connections in being Mexican or of Latin American decent Now, they will get a chance to learn, read, discuss and spend time with their ancestors.
I believe I have imparted why it was so important to write this, but I know that you are interested mostly in what you can extract for your students and what you are going to find useful from my lessons. This unit revolves around three of the great civilizations of Mexico. It is about civilizations and how the human race shares so many characteristics. How we can get students to investigate and learn the reasons that Civilizations evolve and answer questions like; "What is needed to become a civilization?" or "Why do we create cities?" or "What is culture or what is it that we need to be considered a great civilization?" Students will work on questions like: "What do we mean when we say to become civilized?", and "How is specialization of crafts and skills necessary to stay alive?" and "What can we say about our current civilization?"
In order to have students get a good grasp of the topic, I need for them to formulate conclusive answers that delve into the past. "How does the Olmec, Maya and Aztec civilization compare to ours today?" I hope to facilitate a pupil's curiosity and make it grow incrementally over a 9-week period. I will be encouraging a research setting where students evaluate the information through a series of steps, building slowly a thorough understanding of the subject matter, not to mention the vocabulary involved, computer-related and exotic-sounding words from Mesoamerica. Can they answer questions like: "Can you see evidence in this civilization that we live in that we are using some of their intelligence? Language? Cuisine? Art forms, architecture?" Tell me about it. Yes they can!
In the book, Linking Through Diversity, Walter Enloe, mentions points of what students gain from sequential projects that lead to the same intentional conclusion:
They will understand and define culture in a way that is relevant to them…They
will understand what a cultural artifact is and why it is important to know what
artifacts tell us about a culture as well as the limitations of what artifacts can
convey…they will understand that culture changes over time…they will evaluate
the ways in which cultures change, they will make decisions about individual
cultures based on multicultural understanding…To avoid conflict on local and
global levels, students must learn to take a multicultural approach to problem
solving… (Enloe 9)
Why do they need to learn this?
Students need to learn about their heritage. It forms a person's sense of belonging to something from the past and helps develop beliefs and thoughts of themselves as individuals. Along with learning about their ancestors, they need to practice skills that are generally isolated in "core" classrooms like that of study skills. In learning about the older civilizations, they will need to hone some new skills in art and practice procedural of critical thinking. Our civilization needs people that are able to synthesize and become skilled in order to continue to progress our state of existence. This is one of the key messages that I hope to lead my students to formulate for themselves.
To create a more informed and cultured child… it's funny to think that my students need to be taught to get "cultured" through these lessons. Yes, they do. It will also allow the students to have time and opportunity to find new ways in which to seek new information and figure out, for themselves, what kind of life Mesoamericans had. They will discover the many influences that these Indians have passed on to us and that are alive and well in their culture today.
Positively, between the discussions, new exposure to the topic and the different paths that I'll take them along, students will generate points and ideas that will be most eventful. I imagine contrasting and comparing topics such as language, clothing, food specialties, adornment, fads of today and yesterday, what it means to be known a "babe," beautiful or considered famous in Aztec and Maya opinions as well as what is "cool" or "tight" today. Whether they are Hispanic or of another heritage, I hope to provide a huge opportunity to have my students think a bit more about themselves and provide the arena in which they can start carving out a better identity.
Identity is what the junior high years are all about. My students are no longer babies but they are far from becoming adults. They are at the stage of weaning themselves and/or rebelling from their family units, discovering themselves, as well as learning social skills in making friends, interacting with new people of other countries as well.
How are they going to learn this?
A classic learning choice is in using our senses…
In learning anything, there is a matter of what I call the "shock effect." At first a student has to get over being afraid to learn something new like drawing. In this unit, the student will have to get over the shock of thinking that this is one of the hardest art courses that they've ever taken. I not only have set them up for new art skills, but I am also setting the lessons to include research, using new computer software, taking notes, drawing plans, taking tests, writing in a journal, doing math problems of sorts, and combining this with a rather complex history lesson.
Art is the ideal medium in which to present a rather lengthy set of lessons like these. Art as an approach can handle much more rigorous procedures or steps towards a means. For this age group it is a very appealing format in which to learn new information or concepts. Basically my class will consist in developing and reinforcing what they do ordinarily in English and Math class and combine it all to do a grand performance! They will be practicing many of the skills that they need to master, including researching, reporting, writing, presenting, calculating, measuring and appraising. It is through the skill of giving my students a "spoonful of medicine" at a time that makes them unaware of the monumental work that the projects will entail.
Most students choosing art as an elective typically expect a lot of interactivity from their time spent, expecting a time to paint, build and draw in class. These students, in general, feel comfortable doing a drawing activity. Our "Core" Teachers often gripe about finding these very students doodling in their classes. Typically, these students are called the visual learners. Normally the visual learner will cringe at the thought of writing and taking notes in an art class. They need to be stronger readers but hesitate from doing more to improve. Then, there is the student that never looks up at the examples shown by a teacher and/or is always doing something else while there is a lecture and note taking going on. These are generally your audio type learners. Many may have good reading habits but lack the ability to learn through visual stimulus. They will love working on a computer because believe it or not they have been listening to you all along! They use their listening skills more often to decipher and are multi-taskers at heart. Unbelievable but true, there are still students out there that need the written word in order to understand and perceive.
Ah yes, then we have the "jumpers"- These students cannot sit still, they need to get up periodically to test a teacher's patience. A kinesthetic learner needs to move around to develop thought, process ideas and yes, even write or read while standing! In reviewing the senses, I sometimes observe a student or two who will use a sense of feel to process their comprehension and learning. Although not often, they are the ones that spend the most time at the display board especially if the display has texture and can be touched or stroked. They'll touch, sometimes smell, and use their hands seeming to perform a connection that is compulsory. When absorbing new concepts these students benefit from using manipulatives.
Last but not least, I am now left with senses that we all share and use in different increments while learning … to use the sense of smell and to taste... I feel that there certainly are ways in which we all partake with this sensor in the business of experiencing and gathering expertise. Smelling and tasting are senses that enhance the manner in which we pull up memory, pulling it up on a second's notice and then filing it into long term memory. Sometimes these memories are so strong that they can create epiphanies in grasping a concept or procedure!
A human being learns through his or her senses. Not all our senses develop equally as an individual grows up…it has to do with exposure. For example: if a person doesn't exercise then that human can become kinesthetically challenged. If an individual hasn't spent time outside playing games, running, or pushing themselves to try something out of their comfort zone, that person can often be left with feeling totally un-coordinated, hesitating when expected to perform in a physical way. Similarly, individuals who have never studied or practiced drawing can feel inept when confronted with having to draw. This is mainly a lack of experience, not talent. As we learn through our senses, we have to practice letting the eye tell the hand what to do as it takes a pencil and moves across the page. In this way sight is connected to touch and even sound.
We all can do anything but certainly not as well as someone who focuses and spends a great deal of time developing a particular skill which can later become identified as a talent. In preparing this unit, I plan to provide a lot of these learning vehicles. Through the many different activities that my students will get to perform they will find that some lessons will be easier than others because I have included their "learning comfort zone."
It is my intention to see to that my students perceive a feeling of success and see improvement in activities that they are not usually good at because they just had more time to practice it in a non-threatening "safe place"— because it's an art class!
What is the outcome I wish them to achieve?
Produce and show sophistication in the knowledge they have acquired. Through a portfolio, power-point presentation, tests, journal plans and notes, my students and I will be able to review and examine their personal growth.
I will require my students to work in groups and individually in a successful manner. My pupils will perform in different capacities, a presenter, an assessor, a reporter, assistant, designer, technician and artisan. Through the practice of these skills they will write a report from a fieldtrip experience, create a power-point presentation of Olmec, Maya or Aztec civilization, perform a critique, create a 2 dimensional construction of the planes/curves of their face, create a 3 dimensional Olmec head, design and plan the incorporation of the Olmec head into a Day of the Dead commemorative niche, design a game, participate in a discussion, study modern Mexican artist, up keep their journal, test successfully from all that they've learned and finally render a design from studying hubcaps of a car.
What is the intrinsic value I hope they'll get?
I would like for my students to feel a real connection with their heritage, to develop a place inside their heartstrings that will have a good sense of belonging and be knowledgeable of their history.
When they speak of their country, I want them to be empowered with words, places and information that truly connect with their identity. With this resource my Hispanic students can really build a much more in depth distinctiveness from knowing and tracing their civilization's foundation.
For the non-Hispanics in my class, I want them to become aware that their roots can also be discovered, through books, internet and documentaries. These students will observe and develop a routine manner in which to follow and research themselves.
Another goal would be that all the students in my class receiving this unit will have enough time to compare and contrast their work. They will do this through group projects, collective studies, and reflective activities in order to respond and show that growth has occurred in their positive reception and comprehension of multicultural themes. They will learn to handle a new awareness that may start challenging their previous judgmental techniques in deciphering their current world and surroundings through the studying of a much older civilizations. This key feature of my expectations, I believe, will rise from the approval and admiration my students will obtain from shedding misconceptions and enjoying discourse! Junior high students love to have an opportunity to fight and argue an idea to death, ah um, discuss a topic to death!
The intercultural curriculum is one of which students are familiar and comfortable with being asked to think critically and to problem solve creatively. One of the most important questions is "How did it get this way?" because the history of every person and everything is essential to understanding fully that person or thing. To really "know" a frog is to know its ancestors, its evolutionary history (Enloe 9)
The preparation to the lessons and notes to take
Rationale/Objective: The lessons that the students will follow throughout require students to take several steps in sequence to complete a section. There will be two to three sections per lesson.
Students will need to process their experiences and information given through exploration and reflective classroom activities; they will take notes, plan and practice a new skill by themselves, and collaborate with others in gaining more insight, accomplishing tasks set to expand their perceptions, and completing each of the lessons in a satisfactory manner.
The information in my introductions of these indigenous Americans will be just enough for orienting my students to their studies. It is expected that in teams, they will do most of the research, so that their power-point presentations can be fully successful. In my presentations I will expect them to take notes in their project journals.
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