Final Project Reflection and Artist/Teacher Statement

This final project was really meaningful for me. At first, I was very skeptical about the project and I felt like I was way out of my comfort zone as an English major because I wasn’t used to having to perform and I wasn’t used to having to think about material in so many ways: how the audio track interacted with the body track and how the body track interacted with the visual track and how the visual track interacted with the audio track and how to present something without just saying exactly what I wanted the audience to know like I would in a paper. But my group was amazing and as we talked about what we wanted to take as our subject, we started talking about things that really matter to me, and I felt like the message that we wanted to share was powerful. So I became much more invested and interested in the project, and as our project developed and I contributed, I realized that this project was helping me think about this topic in new ways and it was requiring me to do the same kinds of things that I have to as an English major—thinking about meaning, analyze and think critically, consider the nuance of different layers, interpret a text—just in a different way: with my body instead of my words. Writing a paper on this topic would have been a piece of cake. Incorporating the interviews, the research that we did, and my own experience would have been right up my alley, and I would have been very comfortable with that. But I wouldn’t have grown the same way that I did. Working with Emily, Jana, and Meredith was so eye opening. Seeing how they processed information and made interpretations and came up with ideas helped me to think more outside the box and consider different perspectives and layers of meaning that I hadn’t ever considered before and never could have come up with on my own. I am really thankful for the opportunity that I had to work with them (and with Katherine J) so that I could see how someone different from me dealt with the same subject and material to create something meaningful and beautiful. So even though I was skeptical at first, the project became one of the most meaningful projects I’ve ever done, including projects that I’ve done for my more English-y classes. And I’ve learned the value of being asked to step outside of what’s normal and comfortable for me.

Sometimes I have tunnel vision in my major classes because I’m used to doing the same thing over and over. Read, think, write, lesson plans, unit plans, read, write, etc. This project really helped me consider the value of expressing the same ideas I would write about in a different format or medium. I think this is extremely valuable to consider. In my English classroom, my students will bored out of their minds if all they do is read and write. And if all we do is read and write, I will only be reaching students like me, and not every student will be like me. Varying my assessment and my assignments will be important to reaching every student and keeping my class interesting. Reading are writing are certainly important, and we will do a lot of it and even within writing, I can vary assignments so that it’s not just literary analysis all the time. But there is also value in considering how to have students express their ideas in other ways to help them flex their critical thinking muscles and consider connections they hadn’t before.

I could absolutely see myself using a project like this in my classroom, and depending on access to technology, this project might look a little different in my classroom, but I could definitely still make it work. This project would be interesting and applicable in many ways. Students could use this format to respond to a theme that they think is important in a book that we’ve read. They could start with what they think the theme means in the book, using textual evidence, and then add layers to the meaning and theme by interviewing other students in the class or in the school, other teachers, or even people outside of the school that they think would have something interesting to say about that specific theme. It would add an interesting layer of meaning to hear what someone thinks about a theme like “love” or “what it means to be an outsider” who hasn’t read the same book that they have and therefore will have a different perspective. I also think this could be an interesting final project that asks students to synthesize everything that they’ve learned over the semester, and if they had to sum up their experience as a lesson to be learned or a proverb or something like that, what would it be?

This project, and this class in general, has been so helpful for me in thinking about different ways to assess and consider the things that my students will learn in class and how I can make it more relevant to them and more interesting and authentic. And even though I had my doubts at the beginning of the semester, I am really thankful for what I’ve learned and experienced.

Thanks for a great semester!

Round Robin

By Maegan Sugrue

By Emily Dickerson

By Courtney Miller

By McKenna Colver

By Kindi Nybo

Textual Poaching: Sisters

Artist/Teacher Statement:

One of my favorite parts of my identity is my identity as a sister. My sense of what it means to be a sister has evolved as I've gotten older. I remember watching movies like White Christmas and singing, "Sisters, sisters. There were never such devoted sisters..." with my own sisters. We'd dress up and act out different songs and scenes and argue about who got to be whom. I remember watching Parent Trap and being able to relate a little when Susan and Sharon would argue and do things on purpose to bother each as well as when they finally started to like each other and made plans together and conspired together. At this point, my definition of "sister" depended on biology. Although we were good friends, my sisters were my sisters because we had the same parents and that's what it meant to be a sister.

As I got older, I've realized that being a "sister" doesn't depend on biology and DNA. Being a sister means being a friend no matter what, "in all kinds of weather" as Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen sang, whenever, wherever, whatever, always and forever. It means late night chats, borrowing and lending clothes, Snapchat streaks, confidantes, and anything else we need it to mean. This has helped me broaden my definition of "sister" and I consider my closest friends to be my sisters as well. To be a sister is to share a connection with another woman that strengthens, comforts, encourages, and supports. I love being a sister.

I really like the idea of using an assignment like this in the classroom to help students think about their identity and how that identity has evolved and been shaped by media and other influences in their lives. I think it would also be interesting to use this as a way to study characterization and examine how characters' identities form, what they're influenced by, and how they evolve and progress through a play or a novel.

Process Piece: Making the Bed

I decided to do a silent video of myself making the bed. I felt like a silent video would be more effective for this act of human labor than just audio because there isn't a lot of sound that goes into making the bed, and I felt like the act would be better represented through video than audio. The actual recording was 8 minutes long, so I also liked the idea of doing video so that I could use my entire recording (I cut a little off the very beginning and the very end), just speed it up to be under a minute, and still have the process be recognizable. I feel like if I were to do audio of something that was 8 minutes long and then speed it up or cut it to be under a minute, it wouldn't be the same. Which could be an artistic choice/result of the process, but I wanted it to be more realistically representative of the process. I recorded the process on my iPhone and then sped up the video x8 in iMovie. This was also chosen a lot out of convenience. I had just finished the laundry and I needed to make the bed and I hadn't done this assignment yet, so here we are.

Medium Specificity

What a Wonderful World

Artist/Teacher statement:

On Thursday, I was feeling bombarded by the negativity, pain, and turmoil that was going on in the world. I talked to my husband about it, and he simply said, "Just remember that Heavenly Father loves his children and he takes care of them." As I thought about that, I realized that the best way to combat the turmoil and negativity that I felt surrounded by was to create goodness around me--show love to those around me and do my best to be understanding of those that I disagreed with and assume that they were doing what they thought was right rather than assuming that they did what they did for negative reasons. 

As I contemplated this assignment, I was trying to decide the best way to communicate what I felt and the conclusion that I had come to. I play the piano, so I considered writing a song, but I didn't feel like I could communicate what I wanted to clearly enough. I considered taking a photo or making a collage, but I didn't feel like that would adequately reflect the bombardment that I felt in listening to and watching the news. So I decided to do an iMovie so that I could include as much text, as many photos, and as many articles as I wanted to in order to provide the scope of turmoil that I felt. I juxtaposed screenshots of articles and photos that reflected political turmoil next to pictures of historical pioneers and screenshots of articles that focused on kindness to express the importance of doing your best and making sure that the people within your sphere of influence are positively affected by what you do and say. I chose the song "What a Wonderful World" by Sam Cooke as both ironic and assertive that the world IS a wonderful place even though terrible things happen in it. I end the movie with the encouragement, "Believe there is GOOD in the world," with "Be," "the," "GOOD," highlighted to emphasize the point that we must be contributors in this world rather than worry about the negativity that we find. 

If I were to do something like this as an assignment in my classroom, I would want to pair it with reading argument-based writing or social reform-based writing. Examples would be Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech or Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." Students could choose a topic or an issue that is important to them and then create a movie to raise awareness for the issue or take a stance on the issue.