I have a new fifth grade student who says 'I can't" a lot. He was absent last
week so didn't get to start a lesson on Keith Haring. The kids are doing
action figues in oil pastel. Well, after explaining the entire project to him
today, giving him samples, and as much help as I could, he sat for an hour
with three circles drawn on his paper. First he complained he couldn't draw
people without necks, so I told him to include necks if that was important
to him.(A lot of Harings pictures are "neck-less". I said the action of the
figure was more important) Then he said he didn't have enough room for a arm
for one figure, so I told him it was okay to run the figures off the page as
the finished picture will be very abstract. Ten minutes before class wasover,
I finally gave up, gave him an art book and told him to do a report on Op
Art, a project we just had finished (Which he had also missed). Due on
Friday. I doubt I'll see it and his grade will reflect. I think he's just
lazy. Since he';s from another school in the district, I'm going to ask the
art teacher there if she had problems with him and how she solved them.
sometimes, no matter how much prompting, encouragement etc. you give a kid,
the bottom line is they don't want to do it and don't think art is important.
This is a class full of kids like that. Hard to motivate. I'm planning on
figure sculptures next, so should be interesting to see what they do with it.
JH
