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LaVerne Miers-Bond is a visual arts teacher at Marriotts Ridge High School in Howard county, MD. In the spring of 2016, I began a journey that would dramatically change the focus of my teaching and interactions with my colleagues. Arts Integration is something that I believe that I have intuitively done all my life. As an artist I naturally see the world through the lens of art, it is how I learn and understand everything. Finding arts integration is like finding my native language. In order to share this with journey with others, I have developed an eportfolio. I view this site as a work in progress that will be a resource for others interested in exploring arts integration and a living document meant to grow as I do. I also see this functioning as a professional portfolio including my personal artwork and examples of student work. The eportfolio format is a flexible structure that can act as a tool to communicate a variety of things to a specific audience. My students currently use this tool to track and organize their own work. Students document the evolution of pieces, collect mentor artists, evaluate specific groups of pieces in relationship to each other, compose artists statements, comment on each other’s pieces, offer mentor artist suggestions, and share urls with college representatives. Parents are able to see their student’s work, the artistic processes they are engaging in, what the student is writing about the work and how their peers are responding to it. Students establish a habit of documentation and self reflection that they can carry forward in their life past high school. As a professional development tool, the eportfolio acts as a one stop shop for gathering and sharing aspects of the user’s professional life. Mine allows me to share ideas, pedagogy, student examples and ideas with peers. It gives a broad picture of who I am as an artist and teacher and reinforces the connection between my creative and professional life. I can use it to communicate with students, parents and administration what is happening in my department and in my classes. Creating a window into the processes and products of art teaching, learning and making and the value of integrating the arts in in core content areas is, in my opinion, the most important function of this site.
1 Comment
Lazarus
2/5/2017 11:16:51 am
As a high school teacher as well, I can understand the power of helping a student create a portfolio that they can share their work with potential colleges. This is a great use of Eportfolio. It also allows you to be reflective of your own practice as a teaching artist. I loved that you shared some of your own work. It is important for students to see you walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Keep it up!
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AuthorArtist, Teacher, Gardener, Runner, Wonderer. Archives
March 2018
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