I was interested in a talk given by Judith Williamson, on visual culture and How to effect change / make change?
She talked about global warming and how we live our lives in a culture of denial. Her lecture highlighted the skewed relationship between what we know and what we do, examining how the gulf between knowledge and behaviour shapes contemporary culture.
www.friezefoundation.org/talks/detail/the_culture_of_denial
So I am trying to get the children to open their eyes to the present, and look at their own time through the eyes of the future.
To project their lives 50 years into the future, what will the world look like?
Asked children to be detectives; they will investigate the town with a microscope and document everything they see and find out.
To look at the area 60yrs ago;
How did people get around?
what type of transport did they use?
What communications did they have?
Did they have tel in their homes; daily newspaper; TVs; radios;
& then what about their lives now?
– have asked them to record the same range of detals.
Some other possible questions are:
What recreational/cultural facilities (like churches, youth clubs, cinema, swimming pool) are there in the town?
– What do they do & what did their grandparents do?
What disease was prevalent in the past?
What was the standard of living?
What was peoples housing conditions like? – what was the standard of housing like – was it easy to get a new home?
Lack of affordable housing is a key area of debate at the moment – what homes will they be able to secure in the future?
Session 5 class organized into groups of four (I asked the kids to move the desks into squares, they were joined together from being in a long line) and gave out four pictures to each table. They had to title the photo; describe it; and guess the year. I had a range of photos (fashion, culture, sport, important event, politics) from 1950 to 2000.
Once they had identified all the pictures on their table they had to get up & move to another table & investigate the pictures they found there.There was a little sense of chaos as the childrend then freely moved about and chatted with each other, but generally they all stuck to the task and were busy sharing knowledge.
Teacher was impressed with their knowledge of recent historical events & their detective skills in working out approx yrs for the photos and how/what the pic showed. For instance they knew Hillsbourough disaster (football fans & that it was the 20ys commemoration this yr; one know about the atomic bomb & how it had ended WWII; one know exact date of Sept 11th 2001 attack on twin towers – they remembered they was three and on holiday when it happened). They also deduced things like the war in Afghanistan
Feedback for session from teacher and teaching assistant was very positive.
Two very different styles of teaching. Students are very good, very well behaved.
On session 3 the teacher used google maps / earth (This was using the street view aspect) & asked the kids if they recognised it (about 4 said yes, & one had put a placemareker on to google maps). He then asked a few to show us where they live. I was confused as to why he was showing this as we were not doing maps (I’m doing a mapping project with the art class, but not with his history class), but a historical newspaper – kids being detectives & hunting out clues!
Don’t know where he was going with this. But kids seemed to enjoy it (anything to do with them & their lives). But it used up one of my classroom time slots!
This highlights the lack of clear communication with this teacher. He is quite dominating in the class; he controls the classroom more then the art teacher, making them sit quietly with a number of teachers techniques. Interesting to be able to observe these differnet teaching styles over a number of sessions.
Not only do you have to adapt approaches to the children and the class dynamics, but also find a happy medium ground between you and the teacher. I always like to work with people and activly collabourate, but i am finding this a little difficult with this teacher.
The mapping project with the art class is very different, he has some free time after our class slot has finished and this has allowed us to sit together and discuss the project and agree an outline plan for the following week. While with the history teacher I have no contact with other then within the classroom with the children. I can see that that he has a busy schedule, class turnaround times are swift and precise.
One thing I’m finding difficult is the very different agendas that the teachers have to myself. I tend to see projects like this as all accomplishing (I aim for them to be cross curriculum and involve life both in and outside school), while for the teachers it is just one extra work commitment on top of a load of other, probably more demanding, tasks.
I also find that the teachers tend not to reply to your emails very often and it can seem to be like sending messages out in a bottle, where you hope they have been received and understood.
