Lesson 9: Reflection and Wrapup

The picture of my nephew with his text was one small example of the type of memory representation that I had in mind when coming up with an enduring idea.  Another example I had thought of but was unable to visually represent: my wife went on a trip to Russia during high school and brought back a many souvenirs including a Russian soldiers cap.  I thought this would be a good object to represent he memory of her trip.  The image of the hat would be layered with words from stories I have heard her tell about her experience on this trip: toilet paper, hot water, beautiful, cold, etc... Others looking at this object may have obvious words to add such as: cold war, oppression, names of Soviet leaders, etc...  Putting these words on the image of the object would then allow others to make up their own meaning based on their individual viewing.   The lesson is easily adaptable, because the visual representation can be through photograph, drawing, sculpture, or whatever medium is chosen and/or available.

I think the enduring idea of memories would be a good lesson to implement because it encompasses so many other ideas in the process: different perspectives, emotion, objectivity/subjectivity, power fluctuations, etc...  Learning would be evaluated on the basis of the students' ability to recognize the aspects of different perspectives, the emotion conveyed in their representations, and the creativity exhibited.  Going through the lesson in a step by step process- telling the story of the memory and having stories told about the memory, would facilitate learning.  Although the lesson results in a visual representation of a memory, I feel that the story and the telling of the story is the most important aspect of the lesson.  Recognizing and being able to relate one's own story (and tell stories about others) is the essence of life.  Roger  Ebert once said that a movie isn't about what it's about, a movie is about how it's about what it's about.  This is my feeling about the visual representation of memories and the embedded telling of stories: it's about how one goes about it.  Learning to do this effectively embodies the ideas of power, emotion, and critical thinking about these and other ideas.

Lesson 9: Continued

I was hoping to have my nieces and nephew work on my lesson idea this past week, but they turned out to be rather uncooperative.  My nephew (12 years old) did give me an idea about a memory he had from when he was "a little boy."  Coming up on Mother's Day, this seemed appropriate:

This incorporates a lot of the ideas I had for this lesson on memories such as: combining a visual representation with text, remembering the sights, sounds, emotions, etc... of the moment (in this case the smell and taste of burnt waffles!), and using metaphor to transform emotion into poetic form.  This reminded my of my friend's father who always asked for burnt toast because that's how his late wife always used to make it.  I hope to have a conversation with my nephew tonight in order to implement some of the other steps in the lesson plan, flesh out the idea visually, and get his comments on the process.  This will bring into play the further contemporary art elements of collaboration and layering.