Today I went to the classroom of Rachel Lyons to observe her high school media and technology classes for the morning. Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing arts is a Buffalo Public school and it is a magnet school. It encompasses grades five through twelve, though it only has about 900 students altogether. Rachel Lyons seemed like a very inspiring, down to earth and knowledgeable teacher. She has been teaching at this school for 11 years now. She mentioned that most of what she learned about technology and digital art, she taught herself. I found this quite amazing because she was teaching the students a wide array of computer programs including Photoshop, Adobe Flash and Illustrator.When I arrived at 8:45, her Intro to Photo class was just beginning. This is made up of mostly Senior non-majors who are filling an art requirement. The class size was pretty small, of about 15 students. The students were very nice to speak with, I discussed college plans with many. They were just finishing up a very cool project where they used Photoshop to combine an illustrated black and white picture with a digital color photo. I thought this was such a clever way to teach elements of Photoshop and the students got very creative with it.
The next to periods, until I left at 11:00 was a Computer Arts class for Art Majors. Mrs. Lyons explained that the majors' art classes got double periods and then switched half way through the year, so they were still getting a whole year of curriculum. This class was mostly Juniors and they were working on a Adobe Flash Animation project. The objective were to expand skills with Adobe Flash, work collaboratively in teams and to tell a fairy tale with a modern day spin on it using animation. It was a group project and it was also the last day they had to finish it. Unfortunately, some students weren't working as if it were the last day to finish it. This was one of the issues that the teacher mentioned comes up when working in groups, that some students do not contribute as much as they should and rely on other group members. To address this issue Mrs. Lyons made "Teamwork/Effort" part of the rubric criteria and let the student know that their peers would also be evaluating them on this. Despite this, the students came up with some very funny stories that were illustrated quite well.
It is clear that the students that go to this school get accepted for a reason, because they are talented and they have drive. They were mostly all very well behaved with great personalities, and I can't wait to get to know them more as I continue my observations.
