Timeline
https://prezi.com/view/wdqQIBDKfHpZBd3BgImS/
Course Work
Book Building
VISA 4990
This catalogue was a project that was both incredibly frustrating to complete and some of the most fun I have ever had. It was definitely a lesson about how I will need to keep up with technology and different tools. I taught myself how to use InDesign from YouTube videos and trial and error, and I am quite proud of what I came up with. I anticipate that when I become a teacher there will be new programs and devices that I will need to better support my students and classroom, having taken on a project like this makes me confident that I can work through these.
Curating with Purpose
VISA 3910
This was an assignment from my curation class where we had to consider everything that would be needed to put together a full exhibition and activities to go along with it. I ended up planning an exhibition that revolved around postpartum art therapy and an artist who did a collection of work during her postpartum. There was a coinciding art therapy class for new mothers that would happen at the gallery. For this I had to consider budget, moving art, setting up new walls, hiring artists and therapists, who would take care of the children and what supplies we would need. Unknowingly this was a great precursor to lesson planning and all the considerations that need to go into a lesson and the preparations needed.
monograph-1-2 Head-and-HeartHands-on Learning
VISA 3020
One of the great things about the visual arts department is that it has so many opportunities for hands-on learning. When I took Gallery Installation in my third year I had a chance to learn a lot of skills that I would not have gotten in a classroom and would definitely not have gotten from just theory. For our assignments, we had to build a floating shelf, packing crates, and frames from scratch. We got to spend so much time in the wood shop and experience how to problem-solve in a space I was not originally comfortable in. Going through this experience made me see the value of having students go into a space to learn and make mistakes while doing the activity where they have support to fix them.
Volunteer Work
Kindergarten
I started my volunteer hours in a kindergarten class which is actually not what I expected. Going in I had the idea that I wanted to teach in high school, I was a little scared, but I quickly changed my mind. The classroom had fantastic energy and the younger children were so excited to learn about everything and get to come to school. I got to work with a wonderful kindergarten teacher that I will always look up to she had a wonderful classroom setup, and routine and had a wonderful way of connecting with each student. Her way of working with the students and the students themselves changed my mind about wanting to work with younger students.
Grade 11/12
Right before Covid, I had the opportunity to volunteer in a high school art class. One of the classes that was offered that semester was a grade 11/ 12 pottery class, where they did work on the pottery wheel. I did have experience with pottery and pottery wheels which allowed the teacher to give me a small group to work with at the pottery wheels. This was such a fun experience to see these students work together and explore how the pottery wheel works. They were not given instructions where they had to get a completed bowl at the end so they had no pressure. As a group, they supported each other and problem-solved, with small amounts of guidance from me, they got to test out different techniques and just try. I got to see how students were able to work together and work in a lower-pressure environment.
Young Artists Conference
I had a chance, along with a couple of friends, to be one of the artist instructors at the Young Artist Conference. The planning process of this was something that really stuck with me as well as how that plan actually played out. It was the first time I was really involved with having to design the activities for students and think about how students would approach this, how we would adjust it for various skill levels and all the backups like what would happen if there was bad weather and what students who were done early would do. We had a direct step-by-step plan that was implemented totally differently with the two sets of students that we had and was only really a guideline by the time we actually got to the lesson.
CV
larissabeatty_cvConferences
Kamloops Archives Museum Tour
I got to do a tour of the Kamloops Museum with my galley installation class and got to see a lot of the behind-the-scenes points that do not usually get seen. We had the museum curator leading the tour and got to hear about programs that they have started bringing in that involved bringing kids and families to the museum in a more interactive way. The one that has always stuck with me was one where they did a look at skateboarding in the community and brought in a halfpipe that kids could try out in the space. It was interactive, engaging, and a way for kids to see that the museum didn’t have to be a boring space.
From the Trenches: Campaigning Change
With Dr. Imogen Lim
This was incredibly impactful for me as I saw a different perspective that I feel we don’t have the opportunity to hear as often in the interior. Dr. Lim shared part of a history that I did not learn much about in my own K-12 schooling. Her openness to share not only taught me things I was unaware of but made me want to discover more. It also gave me more confidence in bringing these histories to the classroom and ideas on how to do that. At the end, she told us to take students to sites and places to teach them these histories and connected this idea to Indigenous pedagogies of being on the land. This gave me a new perspective on the FPPLs and how to approach them as a whole as well.
EDI Project
This talk was based on a student research project about equity, diversity, and inclusion in her high school. It was looked at through a research lens with TRU faculty and is now under consideration at the school on how to make the school environment more positive in terms of EDI. Even though the research was focused on a specific high school I can see how some points that were brought up could also be applied to younger students. Looking at the features of the spaces that students felt safe in versus ones that they did not I can see how they could be integrated or minimized in a classroom setting to help students feel safer and more welcome.