Deborah Burnett Strother

Art Teacher
Brown County High School

I believe in a child-centered approach to teaching that builds on a student's strength and develops within each strong self-discipline and a love of learning.  I want to guide students and facilitate their learning.  I want to promote their curiosity and to enlarge their world view while improving their attitudes toward diversity in other people.  

In the 21st century children have great opportunities learn more about themselves and the world around them.  They have a growing assortment of equipment, materials, and technology to help them acquire more knowledge, more in-depth, more easily and with more enjoyment.  At the same time children are under more stress, more demands from society and have less time from caring adults.  They are, more than ever, in greater need of mature, caring adults, sensitive to their needs and able to help them become more self responsible.

I want students to understand that knowledge of visual art being produced in their lives and in the past is essential to better understanding themselves, their place in the world today and their place in history.  I want students to develop their own unique, personal expression through problem solving activities in a variety of media.  I want students to understand that artists are not necessarily born with a special gift.  They work hard to perfect their craft and to polish their skills.  All of us can express ourselves through one art medium or another.  Furthermore, an artist's skills are important, but his or her visual communication is more important.

 To fulfill my vision, I have set the following goals.  I will                                                                             

• teach basic vocabulary and concepts through a variety of lessons
• plan lessons using scope and sequence
• challenge students to solve problems using critical thinking
• enable students to develop perceptual, analytical and technical skills in production, criticism, art history and aesthetics
• arrange problems in a sequential way to develop self confidence at each step of the curriculum
• widen students' knowledge of art of today, the past and in other cultures through the use of lessons with wide scope
• encourage self discipline and organization through students' completion of projects and self evaluation of lessons, which are arranged with scope and sequence in five well defined units
• promote  a classroom community through the use of lessons that encourage working together and helping each other
• share my summer travel, seminars and research with students (see Exploring the World)
• listen to and comfort students when they feel a need to talk about personal problems

Objectives can be found by clicking on each separate course
I teach and looking at the lessons.

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