Little+Schoolteacher,+How+Immense+is+Thy+Will,+from+Río+Escondido,+by+Leopoldo+Méndez

Leopoldo Méndez Mexican, 1902-1969 Little Schoolteacher, How Immense is Thy Will, from Río Escondido, 1948 = = = = Teachers' Responses

Peter Stover:
 * Time spent with students**: 2 one hour sessions, over a period of 2 weeks.

Art & Social-Emotional Intelligence
Students learn about the 3 main sections of the brain: limbic, mammalian, Neo-cortex and identify the 5 major emotions: fear, hurt, anger, sadness, joy. Naming the emotions was taught as a strategy to calm the limbic system and regain higher reasoning functions of the brain. This understanding was transferred to our investigation of art, in Particular the Mendez piece. Students identify the feelings that the image invokes & represents and describe what exactly about the image justifies their assertion. Students were asked to integrate the strategies and techniques used by the artist to create strong emotional representation in their own works of art, integrating w/ the spring landscape or drug prevention projects they had already started, creating unexpected juxtapositions, ironies, and contrasting emotional conditions.

Students’ Reaction/Response:
Students incorporated a striking sense of 'darkness' and dark values in their own images, which looks especially sharp against the color spectrum rainbows. They also attempted to incorporate the texture created by the dashed markings, and the use of dynamic diagonal lines. Reflections on or Implications for Instructional Practice: Excellent way to incorporate social-emotional learning, neural structure and functioning, and art discussion and creation processes. Unexpected contrasts, applications, and associations arose from allowing students to interpret the work within the context of a work already initiated.



Luke Albrecht:
We worked with this image for 30 to 40 minutes.
 * Time spent with students:**

I had students free write about the image. I first asked them to just write what they noticed about the image. They then had to describe what the image would feel, smell, taste, etc., like based on what they notice. I then asked student to think about independent and dependent relationships (which we have been studying: 6.EE.9 Use variables to represent two quantities in a real-world problem that change in relationship to one another; write an equation to express one quantity, thought of as the dependent variable, in terms of the other quantity, thought of as the independent variable. Analyze the relationship between the dependent and independent variables using graphs and tables, and relate these to the equation. ). They had to view the image as an instance of data--one input/output relationship. They then had had to identify something they imagined could change within the narrative of image and what effect that change would cause. The further challenge would be to model that relationship change multiple ways (verbally, graphically, algebraically, etc.). Briefly describe students’ reaction/response: Student got right on board with the free write and then tried the activity about independent vs. dependent.
 * Activity Description:**

Kelvin: “She is trying to get to someplace she needs to be or is going further from some place or someone to stop a conflict.” I asked why a conflict and the student told me the sky looked like it was coming after her. The student then drew a positive linear graph comparing time and steps. “y=footsteps x how long”
 * Students' response:**

Kaylee: I asked her why she thought the weather was going to steadily worsen and she replied that the bird creatures were pulling in a storm.



Samantha: “She is walking so if she stops the weather might become worse.” Samantha told me the storm will get worse because the birds were chasing her.



Deauria: “ It looks like wind, therefore it’s a storm. It looks like she walking nowhere. It also looks like the wind is putting pressure on her and she is moving backwards.” Her relationship was about how the storm gets worse, then the more the wind blows on her.

Students accepted this idea without balking. I thought they push back because this idea of image to math relationship would be too abstract or too outside the box. I need to have all the students give me more narrative of their process in writing next time.
 * Reflections on the instructional practice:**



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