Learning Enviornment

     For me, a conductive learning environment also needs to be a conductive creative environment. Therefore, I have many things I would do in my classroom to generate both a good learning and creative setting. First, I would prefer larger tables for the students' work space. Desks are good when students are individually working on a math assignment or copying notes for history class, but for art they need a lot of room to work. Also art is not just a solitary thing. It is important to interact with fellow artists, get inspired, get feedback, and work off each other. So in an ideal world, I would have tables large enough for them to have room for their own work but also large enough to fit multiple people to a table. I'll probably connect the tables together. I work with a lot of materials and will hopefully have a good stock of supplies for the students to access. So around the room and in a supply closet I will keep all the supplies organized and sorted so the students know exactly what is offered to them and where it all goes. To help with creativity, I will line the walls of my classroom with famous artwork from different eras as well as local art that is happening now. I also think it is important to have posters to remind them of the basis, like a color wheel chart, a list of the principles of design, and a list of the elements of art. 
    I will be getting a degree to teach art to from Kindergarten through 12th grade, and frankly when I graduate I will take any job I can get. However, as of now my preferred age would be high school.  My case study is as follows:

     You have started to dread your fifth period history class. It is made up entirely of seniors who are counting the days until graduation and seem to care very little about learning. Most of the students are obviously members of one clique or another. Whenever they think your back is turned, they start passing notes and text messaging. Worse, three boys have started disrupting those engaged in learning. No matter what you say, they laugh at the students who present their group projects to the class.
     Yesterday, Tony, Jeff, and Morris started roughhousing; then all three of them refused to sit down and follow the class procedures that the classroom community agreed upon at the beginning of the year.  Although you have been using a set approach to handling infractions of rules, you decide it is time to change these procedures. 

     There are a lot of issues in this case study that need addressing and there is no one simple thing a teacher can do to rectify all of these problems at once. So I'm going to address each problem separately and respond with what I would do as the teacher in this situation.
     First of all, the type of senior described is exactly the kind of student I want to reach out to the most; the kind of student that motivates me the most. I believe art is such a great way to engage students again. Even the ones who do not have an appreciation for art and are just taking the class because they have to, I want them to start viewing it in relation to themselves and connect in new ways. I want the students to be pleasantly surprised by how they can apply it to their own lives. Because my classroom will be interactive and collaborative, the students will be forced to be engaged and offer up their thoughts and opinions on things. There will be very few times where my back will be turned, teaching in an expository way. If there are only the three seniors that are checking out and not wanting to join in discussions about art, I will call on them so they have to join and offer up what they think. If the entire class is not interested, I will come up with topics that are interesting to them at this time in their life, whether it be something in pop culture that is happening in the media, or the pressures of choosing the right college and fears of moving out (or maybe the excitement of moving out). Any of these things they can turn into an art piece. They can express what they feel about the topic that does spike their interest in techniques that they learn in class. This way, when they truly care about their topic or what they are saying in their piece, no one will laugh at the others when presenting because they themselves will have a project that is personal to them too. This is the type of environment I want to create in my classroom; one that is safe and honest where everyone, despite what clique they are in, can truly be themselves. If they start roughhousing and not using their work time wisely, I will threaten to push up the deadline saying, "well, you obviously don't need the time, so we can turn these in early right?" I will remind them that even though it is an art class, this grade still counts towards their GPA and they need to pass the class to graduate. If this still doesn't work, I might threaten them with busy work to fill their time that they seem to have.