My students are talented #2 : school flyers

Looking into my blog I've seen a note published in December 2022 about some of my students works BUT I've never shown what some of my others students were doing at the same time: 

Well, no, this isn't my students' work this is from a profesional graphic designer.

Based on what my pre-Baccalaureat students had made.

Please let me explain.

Some flyers introducing the school diplomas needed a update. It has been asked to my colleague and myself to make a project with our students about that but there was yet an idea: making something like the new flyers for the post-Baccalaureat diplomas:

I made a kind of a workshop so some of my students could tell what they were thinking about those, which datas they were able to catch and finally to ofeer my ideas.

I resumed there observations and thoughs in a survey (for which my previous experiences in user design allowed me to precise some ideas). First thing is that they were missing informations with this kind of dynamical graphism: there were looking after datas they couldn't find while it was written on the document.

And I asked them for proposal:

Alrigth these are not designer's sketches but that's not what we  ask them.

We can see an horizontal lines structure.

Like on a lot of apps or websites where you scroll.

The graphic designer was able to understand and to use that. It's a sublimation as I really thought he would have a hard time exploiting my students sketches. In the end we have the graphic architecture, the hierarchy and the content my students were asking for!

And what about my colleague?

She doesn't even made anything with her students. I couldn't be at the next meeting but she was and she simply said that my observations were right..

#mystudentsaretalented #lesson #communication #schooling

My students are talented

This blog isn't about that but you do know now that I'm teaching Applied Arts as a general subject in profesional high school.

A colleague came in September with the idea to push further the "solidarity boxes" for Secours Populaire Français (social help association) by MAKING them with our students.

There are 2 groups: first the Carpenters who made and decorated a wood box and then the Architect Assistants to whom I gave a slightly more ambitious instruction to design it entirely!

Additional constraint (as we don't have extensive financial possibilities): the material will be recovered cardboard.

The process I set up was to work on the structures, first empirically, then in a guided way, and finally to think about a box that is not just a rectangle and that assembles without external input (glue, adhesive, staple...).

 

Then arrives the design either by experimenting directly on the cardboard either by searching on paper before testing in volume.

And finally the making!

The programmation teacher helped me with this step (he has the group twice 3 hours a week when I only see them 55 minutes weekly, kind of more usable to carry out such production).

You know how I'm lucky? He went ill between his 2 lessons so I took his place by myslef. Problem is we should have had 4 hours to finish and here we are with only my 2 hours available, that's such a precious time we missed to perfect some pieces.

Globally the whole work done is more than satisfaying and some boxes are admirable (because of their rendering, of their quality, of their design process by the students with minimal intervention by us teachers).

After that the boxes were filled (a nice word, something good to eat, something that smells good...) and given to the local comitee of Secours Populaire:

You can imagine we were proud of them!

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Teacher For Real

... or may I wrote Real Teacher because here I am:

Close to 10 years ago I went for the first time to the exam to become a design teacher for in national college, just to know how it was, and of course I failed.

I tried a few times and always failed.

So I became an Applied Arts (mostly design) teacher as annual contractor and a colleague told me to pass the exam for what I was teaching and not for what I wanted to teach as it is simplier.

Indeed I passed it this year and today is my first day as a public teacher. A real teacher.

This is kind of a probation year but I'm not afraid to make it and to reach the next school year as an official public teacher.

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Less-on #9: Anonym

It's been a while since I've published the best quotes from my students.

Probably since someone told me that if my students see that they could think I make fun of them which is absolutly not the point (I'ld even say these are moments I smile)!

The exercise was to compose an "anonymous letter" like in the movies: cut out letters in newspapers, advertisements, leaflets... and use those to write a strong short message.
"Careful Sir, it’s heavy!

_ Indeed!" :

And the award goes to the hate message on a tile

At least the meaning and the form are perfectly coherent!

The letters would have been green I could had believed in a naturophile pun.

"You know sometime 1 and 1 doesn't do 2, sometimes 1 and 1 gives 11."

Jean-Claude VAN DAMME

Volume message in your mailbox!

I have no clue where does this 3D J come from but you can see how efficient it is!

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Schooling goes worst and worst...

I know this sounds like an old chap' sentence but this is really what I feel with my students. Let me explain.

I start the school year by asking cultural questions to my new students to know who they are: last book (even a comic or a manga), last movie (not a TV show), last exhibition... This is about the BORGUESE culture and oftenly I have no answer to a lot of these questions. Even the books they should have read during school have been quitted and reading when you are a child seems a CSP+

thing.

Then I ask some questions about populare culture: their favorite musician, their favorite sport personality (e-sports are accepted) and their hobbies (even if it's video gaming, TikTok scrolling or night-Snapping).

And this year I've been surprised how many of them had no answer! This is a proof we are in an growing acculturation and it dosen't seem to be a problem for anyone.

I think this is beyond what school can do: most of our children have been educated by screens. Even at primary school they have a smartphone... For what? They have no one to call! They have no survey to search on the web! They are just consumming pictures and most of those are not well intentioned.

There is no more thought.

And that's problematic because some activities are used to develop neuronal connections but they are no more fashionable so our children are less able to think.

When I can see this the worst is in my actual pedagogical sequence about profesional graphic identity. You know: create a logo. So you need to draw letters so we start by a typographic analysis.

Here are 15 typos and the first question is to identify the 3 scripts.

Everyone can't know what script means so I tell them vocabulary: script, linotyp, computing. Simple way to say that: script is when you write by hand.

Most of the students quit when they have to search for the answer of a question...

Most of the ones who answer choose typos used in computing!

This is the kind of letters they see every time everywhere.

Who still write postal cards?

So I had to remember them when they were practicizing writing lines in primary school because now they are writing like a screen.

There is a lot to say about screens at school, I've read some neuro-sciences surveys, I won't tell too much.

My fear is I don't know how to speak with these children with 10 seconds attention, without cognition basis before asking complex problematics I have to introduce in lessons, and who have not enough cultural basis?

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Happy New Scholar Year!

A new scholar year just started and this blog has been in hollidays with me!

This time I've lost 2 groups of 'difficult' students, a strong thought to my co-worker who have it hoping she will manage to handle them!

"Thank you so much for this homework which gave me another point of view about art.
And thank you for your encouragements for the training period, we will see again at the next art lesson."

For my part I'm worry about some Vocational Baccalaureat new students.

Let's say it shortly: the government needs more money to give to the CEOs so it cuts outs financial programs for specialized helping schools so the children who need these are send in Profesional Certificates so students who would be good at that are now in Baccalaureat.

This is not new.

But this year I have some students who are not able to draw parallels, not even straight lines... A mark every 2cm? First is at 1,3 second at 1,8 then 4... I had to teach to 3 of them how to use a ruler. You know the plastic double-decimeters have some empty space before the zero mark? They were measuring from the plastic limit. And they had a hard time to understand how to use the centimeters marks.

I'm not asking to boycott anyone but the worst students this year all come from the same school... a private one! And they also have baccalaureat classes so did they throw them to use?

I'm supposed to work the project process with them but they are as good students as it seems so it will be a funny year!

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September of Books

 Mid-September is also the time for the literary re-entry.

May this be part of the French Cultural Exception? I'm not sure.

A few hundreds books come in the bookstores at the same time of the year, and that's now. So I'v read one.

Okay, I have to admit this is a 3 years old book. It was lost on a table at my parents home (my sister likes this kind of litterature).

I don't.

I have to say that the title was also attractive to me, a souvenir of a not too old trip in the US.

There is on very good point on this kind of book. It's 561 pages but the 11 firsts are dedicated to the presentations of the title, the author, the editor. The rest is written quite big with like 20 lines of 8 words a page.

For real:

Yep.

But the story was not my taste. The Willing Suspension of Disbelief doesn't work when too much details keep me out from the author's fantasm like he was a superheros in a thriller movie. 

For example one of the main characters is a policeman and he went with his wife and his daughter (who is too old to benefit the young child pay-off) travelling all over the world every year. He has an artistic culture I can't believe for a policeman. A lot about jazz music so of course that calls Boris Vian's ghost who wrote a lot of books quoting jazz references because he was in love with this music. He was writing this easily, light and sometimes funny.

In this book I found this heavy, permanent and too much.

Mainly the characters are unable to take a logical decision. Well I can understand that what you would call a novel, if they are logical there is no drama.

The same policeman is in the east of France one night and in NYC the newt morning. Is it even possible to have your passport - visa - plane ticket in such a few time?

 

In resume I don't really enjoy this kind of book.

That's like a Tarantino's movie, at the end I need to see again a good movie from the genre he decided to "swede". Frison-Roche, Umberto Eco, Maxime Gorki. I don't like this idea because I don't read a lot of fiction so I'ld prefer to discover a new one rather than re-reading one I know.

My dad let me another book to read so this will be my first choice for the end of this month.

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Back To School

Today is my pre-school day.

Tomorrow we start the lessons. And even at the end of last week I was aware of which classes I would have. That means I was unable to prepare my progressions through the year, and so the sequences that follows, and so the lessons that make these (even the very first, you know, tomorrow...) as I didn't knew which levels in which specializations. That's badass.

Let's improvize.

We have been doing it all the previous semester, with our Minister telling "we are ready" when we had nothing ready.

That also means I'm back in Vienne, a city I didn't had time to visit all. Waiting for the jazz festival this summertime.

Jazz festival, I wrote this year will be about improvisation.

And back to my challenge to run a marathon in the spring. So let's be back in the race.

Ahah! Back in the race!

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Less-on #8

Here comes a poetic pun. There could be until the holidays.
One problem with this semi-locked-out permanent reorganizations at schools is that I can have a really short time to make a new lesson and I'll do this fastly. So it could appear that I've changed my mind through the way to prepare it.
For example I start making exercizes related to a lesson then I think that this could be better for the students to search for the datas by themselves (there is no evaluation so this is a training that can't penalize you with a bad grade if you fail it). So there is no more written document and I change some questions. When you write a sentence and by reading your whole text you want to modify some parts it's possible you re-write badly by forgetting to change the end of the previous sentence. Here I forgot to change some questions that mean nothing without the text I didn't sent.
For all of that, right now, I can't ask them to avoid this kind of... amazing answers:

GRAPHIC DESIGN
- From when to when did the De Stijl revue was published ?
...........................
- Who drew the cover fot the number 1?
in september of 2013
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Face2Face

The school reopened like for real.

To respect the health rules some hours need to be changed, partially depending on how much students are coming. Now I have 2 hours in school with a class reuniting 2 groups I had one hour a week each. So the students in school will have 2 hours, so I've been adviced to ask the same time to the students stayed at home.
Except that when this lockdown started we asked the students to keep working like they were in school. For example to do their math at the time they would have math lesson. So I refuse not to do our part of this contract by asking them to do more than than they should do.

Another problem is that I previously had 2 hours with a class on Monday 8-10am then another class 10-12am. The second one is coming back to school not the first one. In school they need a new schedule so I have my lesson with them at 8am.
I've been adviced to work with the first class (at home) after but they have a math lesson at this hour...

I feel like this will take us even more time, to do even less work.
Let's see that in a month!

Less-on #7

I told you about students clicking just to be seen online but who won't make any work you've asked.
Actually there is one big step further I have to salute:

Me: Design a stand for a professional exhibition, inspired by the 5 pictures on the left in the file.
Student: Hello, But I don't understand lesson.
Me: You have to design and draw a stand to show the products from Sismo Designers.
I send a source board with some pictures of their products. Under that there is a show-truck they made (so you can see how they design a stand). 2/3 of the page are pictures of stands so you can take inspiration about the concept, the shapes, the space management...
Is that more clear?
Student: I don't understand you applied arts lessons.

I don't know what to answer (I mean, that's not a student who usually works).
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Less-on #6

During this confinment time we have been asked to evaluate the students without grades.

Some times I've been overbooked to take back the works I've asked (some on the school platform schedules, some in the mailbox of this platform, others in my academic mailbox  and a few ones on my personal mailbox I've done to noone) and in these cases I wouldn't correct or answer personnaly to every student, or maybe later.

Some students concluding that we were mostly asked to see if they were still "inside" the scholar system by checking their online connections but without grading the works and without penalizing the non-work, they took it for them.

I don't have the colours to make all the schemas.

I haven't seen this the same day when I could have answered that even with a few colours he could still do a lot. The worst is that this student could be a good one, if he does work.
So, what could I answered to this?
I answered nothing, I'm doing my best to send them exercices they easily can reproduce to see the main points of the year, I will not hunt them to make them work.
Still, sending back a file just to have sent something back, hoping not to be catched, you rock it!
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Lock Out #1 week #1

Yesterday night I've received the notice to go back to Arts class.
Yep, Arts because no one cares about Applied Arts. Let's see us incorporated into the "artistic lessons".
 
I do understand some points (like no group, physical distance...) and some I don't have.

For example "[...] practice is not to be reduced exclusively to using a pencil and a sheet. Adaptated educational forms based on modest means and according to the health protocols, gathered by the teacher, may be for a single use, can allow to work even modeslty three dimensionals, to mobilize color, various formats, picturing..."

Less rich than a sheet and a pencil... Just a sheet? And we do origami about folding packaging or folding clothes so it fits into the Applied Arts program?
How would I pick up and use it from a session to the next one?

On the other hand how should I study color without giving them any material, this is another hard point to solve.
"It is up to each teacher [...] to decide on an appropriate strategy", I do am happy to still have 2 weeks to think about all of this.
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Less-on #teachers

Two weeks ago the French President said that all the school will close on Monday.
On Friday afternoon we were told that not exactly: the school will no more host students but teaching must go on. Our school minister told we were ready, may he was but teachers were not. That was yet a promising week-end to prepare the lessons for Monday morning.
On Monday night the President said that we were no more allowed to move out from our home. So no more work from the school.

That's the moment when you search on the Internet to find some ressources because you won't be able anymore to make the lessons as you wanted to (no direct explanation when a student can't figure by himslef an exercize for example) you have to invent new ways to teach.

That's when you say thank you to the other teachers who uploaded their lessons on the net.
But sometimes you see bad things you can't use directly:

écriver when the good verb is écrire, rappel is a substantiv word but in this sentence it should have been the verb rappelle.
Because even the teachers can be out of the right. And I like the other teachers as much as I like my students (in case a student arrives in here so he/she can see that there is no wickdness when I publish these posts).

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Telecomuting in containment

This pandemy has a few advantages: world production and pollution are getting down, there is soap in my school toilets and it seems that a lot of people are now aware about how to wash their hands (I've read that we have the lowest rate of gastroenteritis in years because of that) and now people do know what teachrs have to survive to manage their children all the day long!

Do you success to tele-work with your children at home?
Neither do I! And I don't even have children at home, not even the students as they are at home, at their home not in mine, and that's yet so complicated. Poor teachers with students by web AND children at home, with one computer at home... and someone else who also have to work at home!


I pay tribute to every person working during this period, yes every person, except the government who is aberrating [yes I invent words] all the day long like when they want people to work in sectors which are already in a low degree of sanitation while confinement is the one rule to prevent the spread of the virus. Like when they decide to end the free choice of hollidays and the working time limit therefore they should help the health services... Rhaaa I knew I sould not speak about them, let's talk about me, this is my blog about myself!

Jump the link:

Less-on #parents

I have been noticed that it's not a good idea to share on the net my students works. Today I go a step further: here is the e-mail from a parent!

Yeah, I know, you're right, I soulhd not, but I can't help myself, I need to express it out loud.

The text says: What the Hell, my child always send every work to every others teachers and now he's telling me that no, the work you've done has to be sent before tomorrow, that's what is written in the numeric school. Another student send my child a message that you told it would be bad for my child and he also had the work in the same time than everyone and last Monday (March 16th) you said for Wednesday (March 18th) and this Monday (March 23th) at 8am you said for Wednesday (March 25th) in your messages.
[sorry I'm not sure to understand the meaning in French so it's hard to translate it in English]

So there is a student joking on his friend, pretending I told him something bad about the second one. We won't ask the first student. We won't ask if it's a joke. We will yell at the teacher.
Some people say that now the parents understand how hard is the teaching job, I'm not sure.
Even if... They would have forget 2 weeks after everything come back to normal.
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