Activities
The Art Project
The art production component of this unit will introduce students to a variety of drawing skills that will encourage the creation of tattoo drawings to bring alive again the art of the past. Students will be instructed to combine a collage of texts and images that convey a graphic narrative that can be told and read both visually in the drawing. Also, students will reflect on the meaning of their works through journal writing. As students begin to use the visual arts as a tool for communication, skills such as learning how to describe and interpret meaning in the art will be developed. Introducing these practices will enhance the students’ ability to analyze and make judgments about works of art in the past and present.
Students will already have had multiple art lessons on how to shade using pencils. Students will also have practiced drawing the human figure using basic shapes, circles, ovals, rectangles, and triangles. The discussions and information from viewing and discussing images and text from the Book of Kells will now be implemented into a symbolic tattoo drawing that has the central theme of a story that the students want to tell.
The tattoo drawings should be a collage of images, texts or letters combined in a manner that can be “read” as a story or a symbol. As discussed earlier, the viewer may not always read the story the way it was meant to be heard or perceived, so the student will also write narratives explaining the symbols in the art work as well as verbally sharing the message of the artwork in an open classroom critique. Examples of this can be seen in the images below.
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Writing Assignments
Often, schools focus on the physical and academic environment but fail to address the emotional and social aspect of learning. I have seen the greatest gains in learner growth in my classroom when I purposefully integrate rich culturally relevant curriculum that develops students’ personal and social capability, and that guides them to learn and understand themselves.
That is why, through the writing part of this unit, I want to address ways my students can recognize and regulate their emotions and communication skills as well as develop a greater understanding of who they are through their own eyes and what it is that they want others to see in them. The intended outcome will be that young people leave my classroom with higher self-esteem and a greater capacity to manage their own lives and their relationships with others.
The writing assignments will be extensions from class discussion prompts that encourage my students to examine the psychological and emotional reasons why people get tattoos. They may be surprised to find out that tattoos were discovered on the Iceman and on Egyptian mummies! It is not their generation that created the art of tattoos. The popularity of tattoos moved from counterculture to mainstream in the 60’s with the hippie and biker culture in North America.
It is my target goal for the writing process to lead the student into self-discovery and a deeper awareness and mindfulness about what it is that they want to portray to others via their body art either consciously or subconsciously. If the student does not have a tattoo, then they will use this time to self-reflect why they might not be ready to make such a permanent decision. Teacher question prompts will be at the end of this section.
If they believe that they are prepared to get a tattoo, I would like for them to go through the writing process explaining why they feel that they are willing to commit to a tattoo on their body for life. Ultimately the learner outcome will be a more in-depth self-actualization of the reasons behind this life-changing decision.
Making the decision to get a tattoo should mean that you want to live with that image for the rest of your life. An important decision like this one takes deep contemplation to know what it is that you want to say through the visual images and texts on your tattoos. Tattooed bodies are means of communication that tell people who you are and what is important to you. Here a just a few of the questions that will be asked to the students: “What is important enough to you and will it still be important to you 10, 20 or even 50 years from now?” How does the viewer participate in your story when viewing the images and text on your body? “What do you want people to see and think when they view your tattoos?” “What person are you trying to portray with the images and text that you chose, and is that really who you are inside?” How does having a tattoo change the way you feel about yourself?” “How does having a tattoo (or getting one) change how you feel about yourself?”” Do people get tattoos as a fast way to change their outward appearance of toughness instead of working out at a gym to achieve strength and muscles?”
Also, as a writing prompt, I intend to show images of people with tattoos and ask the class questions such as these: “What do you think this person does for a living?” “Does this person have a family?” “What is his family like?” “Do you think he ever committed a crime?” “If you were going to have a tattoo, what would you chose and why?” These are deep and culturally sensitive questions; however, I believe if conducted properly, this can be an amazing venue to explore how they view themselves and others. Hopefully, in the student art and writing narrative, I will see that they gained a better understanding of how they view themselves physically and intrinsically.
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