Popplet:
No Child Left Behind?
Inspired by: Thomas Hart Benton & Diego Rivera
For this project I chose a current issue to address. I want to start off by saying that I think it is a great idea for the government to support all children learning, but I don't think this is being accomplished through "No Child Left Behind." In my cartoon I displayed one of my thoughts about the measurement of NCLB. Students are measured on what they know regardless of their community they are from. Home life has such a huge impact on a student's education and it is something I think more people should be aware of. In my cartoon I displayed a stereotypical passing school that has a spacey room and access to electronics, while the stereotypical failing school has a clustered classroom with no access to new, fun materials. In the second image I showed the passing school as being in a nice neighborhood and safe, while the failing school is displayed in an unsafe community with both students not having backpacks. In the final image, I displayed a stereotypical homelife. The passing school has a family dinner, while the failing school shows a students babysitting a sibling making dinner for the both of them. These things obviously do not happen everywhere, but they happen and I think that is enough that it should be addressed and taken in to consideration. Teachers have to teach all types of students with different home lives and students have different home lives they are dealing with while trying to focus in school as well.Through this project, I was able to display two extreme stories for one message. This is something I would use in my classroom in order to get students thinking about something they are passionate about and want to express through a lighthearted cartoon.
The Lorax
Inspired by: Faith Ringgold
A story I grew up with and am very familiar with is the Lorax. I love The Lorax. I think the Lorax stands for the story of defending what you value. Not only does he stand for the trees and the environment, but he stands for a purpose. From this book I took so much; to stand up for a purpose, but also for what is right, your actions have outcome, so think about what can happen as a result of your actions. Because of the message I interpreted, I chose to show the Lorax centered and standing firm. I used watercolors to fill in all of the spaces, except the Lorax. I chose to color the Lorax in all crayon to correspond with his permanent presence. I used details from the picture to make up the border pieces. The orange tiles represent the Lorax, the purple, pink and red represent the truffula trees and the yellow corresponds with the Lorax's bright mustache. This activity is definitely something I want to use in my classroom because I think students love looking back to their childhood (even though they may still be children) and thinking of stories that stick out them and being able to put their own twist on them. This is also a great project to have students work on using different mediums.
Just a Penny
Inspired by: Jean Shin
This project came the easiest to me, not because it lacked meaning by any means, but I was able to work with another classmate, Abbi Sandweiss, with a found object and we were able to collaborate our ideas splendidly. Abbi and I chose pennies and a dollar as our found objects to show a story. Our story started with the penny. The penny is very often find as a useless coin in the United States because it is worth so little. We wanted to show a message similar to that of "The American Dream" and how many Americans tend to disregard small amounts of money as being poor, but also how starting small can grow into this "dream." Sometimes this dream can overshadow the dream of building a relationship with others rather than building up an account. Through the flag and the money you get a sense of relationship between the two. This is an activity I would love to use in my own classroom. By having students use a found object to display a whole new meeting really gets the students to start thinking about meanings of objects and how else they can be interpreted. This project would be a great resource to use when integrating subjects.