Norlita Marsuki

Subject Head (Aesthetics)

Orchid Park Secondary School

Norlita Marsuki started her teaching career in Boon Lay Secondary in 1991 as the Art Coordinator/ Senior Art Teacher and Discipline Mistress. In 1996, she furthered her studies and attained B.A. Arts (Art) from Curtin University of Technology, Australia, majoring in Painting in 1998. During the next 14 years, she spearheaded and built the Visual Arts culture in Sembawang Secondary School through the ArtXplosion@SembARTists/ Aesthetics Framework and Co-Curricular Framework, alongside with her colleagues of key personals, teachers and art student-alumni. She was responsible for the Curriculum Designs, Pedagogy approaches and Assessments for Visual Art in her capacity as the Subject Head for Visual Art and soon after as the Head of Aesthetics, overseeing the teaching and learning of Design & Technology, Food & Nutrition, Music and Visual Arts. As the School’s Year Masters since 2004, she had the opportunity to work with many cohorts of students. In 2008, she had undergone the training and attained the Diploma of Departmental Management from National Institute of Education-Nanyang University of Technology (NIE-NTU), Singapore. In the same year, she was conferred the President Award of Teacher. Inspired to further sharpen her saw, she completed her Masters-in-Education (Art Education) from NIE-NTU and as a practising art teacher-artist, she had her first solo art exhibition, Artist-in-Residence: Norlita’s First Contact 2011 at the Arts & Music Conference (AMEC) and launched of Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts (STAR) in Academy of Singapore Teachers (AST). Currently, she is teaching in Orchid Park Secondary School with her dedicated team of colleagues in the running of the Applied Learning Programme (ALP) entitled ARTopIA, a 2-tier Visual Arts Programme in the school and as a STAR Champion, she is excited to explore and experiment a few art inquiry processes with her colleagues and students.

Learning Journey to National Design Centre (27 Feb 2015 / 3-5.30pm)

The visit was indeed an eye-opening experience for me. There were so many great learnings but the 2 favourite encouraging reminders for me that I enjoyed most were:

1) In order to us to develop a 'Growth Mindset', we must be able to tolerate risk and failure, must have the 'Can do attitude', to be self-directed and being able to take initiative, etc. I believe it was indeed very true that no matter how intense and comprehensive the educational system has developed, reviewed, restrategise to better support us as effective classroom teachers and curriculum designers to provide the holistic development of our students, but if we are not willing to do the extra mile to want to make the tiny steps to change ourselves in the various key areas, how are we going to 'grow' and impact wider and greater for our students' and teachers' fraternity good.

2) The Community of Makers in Singapore, The Maker Circle's perceive the idea of 'Making' as the following:

Making is an adventure.
Making is about believing in yourself.
Making is about the love of learning.
Making encourages, inspires and motivates everyone
Making highlights possibilities and impact live

I thought the idea of Making has become a great VALUE on its own - such a novel to be able to allow the process of making to be a part of our growing, developing to better Man and providing great service to the other larger community.

BACK

23 March 2015:

Learning Journey to Young Audiences Charter School at Kate Middleton

Visiting this ‘little yet great’ school was indeed an eye opening experiences for me. The School Principal Mr Folwell Dunbar received us with great warmth and had shared with us the beautiful collaborative projects that his colleagues, supporting staff, parents and partners had worked in these few short years since they have moved to this 1950’s structure.

The school may be placed at an industrial area with very limited ‘human community’, yet one can feel the vibrancy and energy of artistic learnings once you observe and feel the energy from the colourful experimental artworks and that high level of students’ engagement once you stepped in to any classrooms.

When our schools in Singapore are working on selecting and matching of a few subjects been integrated together for a certain short period of time say for a week or a term, YACS plans for that to happen for their children for every single day they enter their classrooms. I know very well how and what it takes for a small group of teachers to come together and co-construct a series of lessons that overs content, skills and at the same time deepened their personal mastery, social skills and others. Here in the school, the programmes are both co-owned by the teachers of within and beyond their subject areas alongside with the teacher-artists.

Their different set-ups of learning environment in every classrooms reflects how they need to carefully strategize their small spaces and corners to bring out the best outcomes in terms of how best their children will be able to learn. I have indeed become inspired and surely would want to share these with my younger school colleagues especially when we are on our way to recreate our art teaching and learning spaces within and surrounding of Orchid Park Sec Sch.

In fact, when we entered a class on ART (Art Reflect Time), I saw a very successful and encouraging session where teacher was able to engage her students to express and articulate their observations of an artwork via a simple worksheet of ‘I See, I Know & I Wonder’.

Her students were much disciplined and I am sure they had gone through many positive reinforcements and clear routines that allowed teacher to be able to be a very good classroom teacher-teacher-artist cum facilitator. The lesson is very interactive and students were super excited to share their thoughts on the artwork yet at the same time, they were learning on columns and rows, which they had learnt in their Maths lessons too. I love the idea of how the children were introduced to the concept of measurement (cm and m) in both Maths and Art. Teachers created that lesson when they saw the opportunity to further deepen their understanding by creating (the highest level of Question Technique) their use of cm when constructing the Little Ant House

Upon reflection, I must say that we are indeed extremely lucky to be have schools with A class standard of facilities back in Singapore. We are so used of getting vendors through Gebiz system that we are almost taking things for granted. We are so accustomed to requesting for budget and then getting them to be used of our students that when I think of how Mr Dunbar, his teachers, parents and volunteers come together on their own to build a small little puppetry theatre over a weekend next to a small available space for their children. I think we must be appreciative and be thankful of what we have back home. They have similar challenges like us and yet they remain positive in their quest to provide the best for their young.

24 March 2015

Learning Journey to Isidore Newman School

Isidore Newman School is indeed a real beauty. It has many great learning facilities to better cater the different needs of the various age groups from the young toddlers, children and young teenagers. The morning spent with Ms Victoria, one of the 3 art teachers there with a walkabout at the school compound with the Dean of the Aesthetics Department were another eye opening and wonderful experiences for me.

I simply love the use of every single wall, floor spaces in the Art rooms. The shelves store small and big sketch books, all readily access for the students to document their explorations of ideas, simple sketches and experimentations of the various dry and wet media.

I could see how the understanding of the 4 Studio Structures for Learning are practised in Victoria’s series of lessons (Lois Hetland’s Studio Thinking 2:The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education, 2nd Ed, pg 5)

Demonstration-Lecture
Students-at-Work
Critique
Exhibition

The division of use of spaces in Victoria’s class allow teacher to (1)conduct her introductions or setting of tasks for that lessons on the carpet at a corner near her computer and table, then to another working space which is the centre high table with stools to do her Demonstration-Lecture. Once illustrating of concepts are done and understood by students, they (2) move to their own working tables (named by different colour coding like Red, Blue, Purple, etc) to start or continue their modelling process (in this instant, they were working on making deeper marks on their soft metal surfaces/ copper tooling project). Victoria stopped her class for quick update in her observation and provided quick feedback to her students on their artmaking and finally, looking at the spaces fully utilized along the walls of the corridors, we can enjoy the (4) exhibited artworks.

When we walked through the administration building, it reminded me very much of the spaces that I had seen in movies with the 60s era high school background like ‘Grease’. The spaces have really been well-taken care of. I love the old but polished wood floorings and walls with rows and rows of framed certificates and displays of awards. Interestingly, once I walked along the corridors, I began another exciting discovery at the end of the different walkways when there are many other creative modern technology spaces created for the students and staff. The new art exhibition gallery space that has inbuilt sound system, a full theatre for the musical/ drama plus and a great football field and surely the vibrant and colourful artworks displayed freely.

I think this private-run school has all the necessary advance technologies equipped for their students. I would believe the students would surely benefit from the wonderful learning spaces created by the school staff and teachers for the toodler (a child-care centre), children and youth. I, too, would want to recreate similar if not better arty learning ambiance in the art rooms back home in Orchid Park Secondary School alongside with my art teachers and students who share same art spaces with me.

26 March 2015

Pre-Conference: New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA)/Investigations

Seated around with the owners, managers, curators or programme coordinators of the various private or government owned museums and galleries in the different states had allowed me to better understand a few of their good practices, concerns and challenges when organising small or larger scale art exhibitions. One of the many points mentioned was how they were concerned with how the labels that they created and placed near the exhibited works would be seen or viewed as sufficient or appropriate for the different audience. One questioned how they should find ways to better understand their viewers or at least know the targeted audience for that particular show. Another suggested how her company tried to present 2 differentiated labels for each of the artworks showcased to 1) directly representing the artist or that it was written by the artists or curator to aligned the works to the theme of the show and another 2) a much simplified descriptions or statements written by the community meant for the community itself. This is one thing which I would like to value-add and share with my colleagues because currently in school, there are so many art learning spaces like the Art Spiral Gallery, Art Hub and 3 to 5 staircase cum art exhibition areas that display our Batik, Painting and Fashion works. We can think and plan on how we can also get our students, teachers and visitors to better appreciate these works, perhaps by creating additional A4 sized Art Tasks template to describe the background and details or thinking process which our students had undertaken prior to their art making experiences.

My next unforgettable experiences would be my personal time appreciating and interacting with the masterpieces paintings in the various exhibition halls. The works were amazing!!! My eye were simply walking and journeying the marks created centuries ago. I am indeed very blessed to be able to paintings by French Wassily Kandinsky (1886-1944), Spanish Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), American Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), French Georges Braque (1882-1963), French Edouard Manet (1832-1883), American Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), French Claude Monet (1840-1017) and many more!

Learning Journey to New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA)

3 things that I have learnt:

I am amazed that the students as young as 8 year olds are able to make decisions to pursue their dreams and make the Arts as their future career. Being a government arts school, it was a great structure that such courses are made available for them. It is almost like our version of SOTA meant for the Normal Academic group students for the entire school. With so many different courses ranging from Painting, Printmaking, Sculpture, to Music and Dance being offered, the young students would naturally be engaged when the subjects they are learning are their chosen, favourite subjects.
The school fee is free! The yearly amount of about $23million each year is given by the state to manage the school. Thus, that would allow the students to stay focussed in their arts and academics without the need to worry to pay large school fees each semester. What they are required would only be to pay for the department fees which I feel to be very fair since they would be using the perishables in their respective areas of study.

2 things that I would like to apply:

I am thinking of transferring the idea of exhibiting the students’ process artworks similar to what I have seen along the wall spaces outside the different fine art studios back to our very own Art Hub, the large walls and notice boards outside the spacious corridors near the Art rooms that we have in OPSS. Instead of the usual finished work that students have done or perhaps from the digitised images of our students’ work, I would like to pin up the body of works of our students to show their understanding of the themes they had attempted to interpret, their various investigations, observational studies or secondary research.
Next possible application would be on how the Art teachers in my school can further stretch our art DSA students (Direct School Application) in their cognitive, affective and skills domains via a diverse art talent art programme throughout their 4-5 year stay.

1 thing that I would bring into the classroom:

The neat and well use of space within their school library where the books and 3D teaching and learning resources are categorised and attractively displayed to entice the students to open and read them would the thing that I would bring into my art room. I can start to create a few corners in the art rooms with art books and resources being labelled based on the art forms and its’ intent usage e.g. Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Batik Works, Fashion Designs, images to support Studies of Visual Arts, etc. Both teachers and students can benefit from it. I will put up interesting quotes from the past, present and future 2D & 3D artists or from various non-art fields, hoping that they can further inspire our teachers and students.

26 March 2015

NAEA Conference Day 1

Art Exhibition & Workshops

I was just so impressed by the vibrant set-ups, the sounds of instructions or requests, the beautiful displays of artworks and art products, the colours and many more when I walked into the large exhibition hall where rows and rows of booths alongside with great smiles of the ever-ready personnel all excited to share, introduce or explain their products. They showed how the potentials of these dry or wet medium or technology or teaching resources can be explored with our students. It was so great to see some samples of art works done by the primary and secondary schools at the different states.

Designing Curriculum for Engaging students in Art-based Discussion and Questioning by Karen Kosner, Coordinator of Visual Arts, New York City Department of Education

This Best Practice Lecture has triggered a few thoughts for me with regards to how I plan a unit of SOVA lessons. It is true that we tend to teach those images of artworks that are expected to be taught to our students. Once we refer to the syllabus, we will quickly get the images from the Internet into powerpoints. Flash it to our students and then go through the steps of Feldman’s Approach of Describing, Analysing, Interpreting and Evaluating. Of course there are many other approaches of how we can trigger conversations on the artworks we have selected for our students.

However, I like what Kosner has added. She reminded me the importance of making these discussions to be Accountable Talk which has The Big Rules for the students when engaging in a discussion.

My list of takeaways would be that:

I must dedicate sufficient time for conversations focussed on masterworks.
These masterpieces/ images if possible are ones that they are able to be see in our Singapore art galleries of museums.
These selections of images should be aligned with the current art making instructions that I have set for them.
Better if these selected images are ones that relate to another subject areas like Social Studies or History curriculum.
Once I am able to do that, it is recommended that I continue to develop a routine or set of rules for these conversations to taken place.
Train my students to be able to do the following Guide for taking about Art:

-They are to look at the artwork and follow what their classmates are saying about it.

-They listen with the intention of responding to what is being said.

-I am to suggest that students begin their responses by using phrases like, ‘What I thin k is important to the artist is …’, ‘I think the artist wanted to show…’, ‘ I think the artist wants is to see…’, ‘The part that caught my eye…’,’One thing I wonder about..’, etc.

-I can encourage that students keep a conversation moving along by connecting their responses to those of their classmates and using phrases such as, ‘I agree.. disagree… because..’, ’I understand how you can say that and I want to add…’,’When___ said …., it made me think…’, ‘Can you explain what you meant when you said…’, etc.

-I can make students aware of what they can do to help sustain the conversation by asking their classmates to say more, ask for clarification if something sounds confusing or summarise what has been said and then to add their own comments.

I would want to try levelling up the discussion to a higher level. Instead of listing what they see, gain content knowledge, use art vocabulary, there would be many other benefits because our students learn to value other’s opinion and perspectives since they have to listen carefully, they increase their communication skills, practise thinking independently, comprehend as well as critique, learn to value evidence and hopefully will be able to apply what they learn to their own artwork.

Design Issues Group: Inquiry-Driven Learning: Design Thinking Processes in Visual Art by Delane Ingalis Vanado

My favourite phrases would be the following:

“Today’s art programs must cultivate a balance of intelligences which enables students to think for themselves and synthesize creative problem solving with craftsmanship, while not apart from wisdom (Craft et al., 2007)
Students’ Balanced thinking skills and dispositions can be enhanced by pedagogies and environments that employ process-based inquiry as in design thinking.
Focus on dispositions/ Mindset. Managing ambiguity, perseverance, willingness to grow/ learn, openness to experience, willingness to take risks/ learn from failure
Inquiry-driven learning = Creative+Critical+practical
Design Thinking = Empathy-Define-Ideate-prototype-Test
Design Thinking is a mindset and a creative process – utilizes deductive, inductive and abductive thinking process to solve visual and real-world problems (Ingall Vanada, 2013)
Inductive- generalise existing ideas. Deductive-narrow down existing choices. Abductive-create space to generate new ideas
Develops a Balance of students’ creative, critical, and practical thinking skills and dispositions.
Teachers are Designers of Teaching and Thinking.

Indeed a mind boggling for every single slide that she had shared.I must really attend her next sharing the following day...

Curriculum & Instruction:

Curriculum Slam! Assembling Comprehensive Contemporary Art & Design Curriculum

It was indeed an eye opener to be able to see snapshots of the best practices from various schools and higher institutions and within a short span of 10 minutes within a certain number of slides , these speakers were expected to share the key points, challenges and benefits from the different approaches that they had undertaken or experimented with their students and colleagues.

There were many favourites but one of them will be on Madeleine Stom’s The Lunch Party: Collaborative Performance in Elementary Art. I am amazed by the creative way she scaffold her young learners. They learnt how the other artists (a good list of 2D and 3D artists given) presented similar ideas but in different manners. These children were given the opportunities to play, mould and build their idea of lunching where they could create plates and cutlery and explore the world of clay and its glazes. The best is when the works were presented and documented. They also had a few critique sessions to discuss on the developmental and final stages of their works. That would something that we can try out with our lower secondary level students but perhaps we need to localise it since there are multi-racial unique sets of cutleries here in Singapore. It is the best way to learn on form, shapes, patterns, colours, textures, lines, sizes, scales and many more.

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Middle Level: Transforming Your Learning Environment Using Studio Habits of Mind

by Jacobo Lovo, Fristin Jacobs, Kristine Ottosen, Lauren Navarro,

Bruce-Guadalupe Community School, Milwaukee, WI.

One new idea which I have really learnt and understood was the meaning and its importance of a “Big Idea” in our planning of lessons for students. It refers to “enduring ideas comprise concepts that have drawn the attention of humans through the ages. Enduring ideas are life issues that extend beyond specific disciplines and that have lasting human importance.” (Steward & Walker, Rethinking Curriculum in Art, 2008). In summary, a Big Idea is made up of only the main point, is broad and abstract thus requiring further inquiry, is universal in application, is timeless thus carry through the ages and is transferable and so can be applied to other situations. I think this is very important factors of teachers from different subject areas want to design collaborative or interdisciplinary projects for our students. Instead of forcing fit the elements of learning Art to any topics, e.g. Art will do all poster works to complement any school or national events, there can be a more meaningful infusion. Here I am referring to all the initiatives that we must include when we provide the holistic development of our students.

So, let’s imagine that I am to design a lesson on Sculpture. I may try to link as much as I can to ensure that my students will learn more than just the skill set of constructing a sculpture. They need to know the Big Ideas and essential questions driven by Studio Habits… What I really like about Studio Habits of Mind (SHoM) is that the processes need not be linear or sequential thus that allow me to be flexible. In terms of possible collaboration as suggested by the presenters, I can create a keen team (perhaps for next year’s PLC) that made up of a few teachers from various departments to come together, find the value to use SHoM in class and make connections through parallel curriculum. Teachers and students can use common vocabulary words thus creating cohesion in the lessons despite having the cross curricular lessons. We can find an alignment and them to understand the community our students are living in and exposed to, the backgrounds of the family backgrounds, their different or similar cultures and practices, etc. These will further develop their sense of empathy alongside with other Character development to the various issues relating to National Education and Global Issues.

Teachers as Designers: Inquiry-Based processes in Art + Design Ed by Delane Ingalls Vanada, Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

This was Part 2 of mind boggling but interesting phrases which Delane had used in her presentation that still continue to make me think a lot about our roles as the designers of learning:

“new models of “design thinking” in art and design education can inform practice and support various catalysts of dynamic learning (Ingalls, Vanada, 2011, p.1)
How might we prepare teachers to be designers of thinking…designers of creativity…designers of balance?
Courage to fail. Wrestling with ambiguity, risk-taking, fostering resilience, grit, ‘failing forward’
Fostering Collaboration : the key is empathic listening, dialogue, learning joint interests and shared passions.
6 creativity by Design principles:

Aesthetics as much as practical originality and big ideas
Attention to purposes 9process) as much as results
Mobility more than fluency – Quality thinking= Balanced+Depth+complexity
Working at the edge more than the centre: Reward risk taking, accepting confusion & ambiguity
Being objectives as much as subjective. Successfully intelligent people consider different viewpoints, seek intelligent criticism
Utilizing intrinsic motivation more than extrinsic motivation.

Learner-centred pedagogy
-connected learning/cross-learning
Balanced environment: creative-critical-practical skills+process
Inquiry driven (process and concept-based)
Decentralised power. Teacher designs classrooms and learning so that students ‘govern’ and self-direct.
Educators are designers; they create new curriculum; they create new learning tools…they create new methods and tools of what they can use in the classroom; they think of new ways to test. So they create designs solutions all the time. (Annette Diefenthaler, CEO, Design Thinking for Educators)

Try this exercise and observe the experience of our students really thinking through the tasks set by you.

28 March (Saturday)

Advocacy: WHY Choice-Based Learning? by Elizabeth Rubenstein

Rubenstein was sharing with us on how she finds it very importance for herself to continue learning. Whenever possible, she would make time to travel to attend various educational platforms and listen to the invited speakers and ‘gurus’. What I hope to do is to really make time, check out and read these up as suggested by her and perhaps to make sense on what are really available out there. I am sure there are many great ideas, valuable educational philosophies, pedagogies, teaching strategies or best practices that I can learn and apply to our own classroom and school context.

Some suggested books, articles, sites or works written by various educators whom Rubenstein suggested that I should check out are:

Studio Habits of Mind
Tom and David Kelley Ideo, “Creative Confidence”
The D.School
Hasso Plattner, Institute of Design at Stanford
Design Thinking
http://www.k12tab.org
Tina Seelig, “In Genius”
Daniel Pink, “Drive” & “A World New Mind”
Caren Walker, UC Berkeley
Dr Dan Siegal, “Brainstorm, The Power & Purpose of the Teenage Brain”
Dr Styart Browm, “Play”
Nikhil Goyal, “One Size Does Not Fit All”
Sir Ken Robinson, “Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education”
David Rufo, Syracuse University
Tony Wagner, “Creating Innovators”
Teaching for Artistic Behaviour (TAB), TEACHINGFORARTISTICBEHAVIOR.ORG
Louise Music, Art is Education, Alameda County, Arts Learning Program

Curriculum and Instruction: Designing Art Units Using the Understanding by Design (UbD)Framework by Daisy Mc Tighe and Julia McTighe

Listening by both mum and daughter team was indeed so inspiring! Their presentation was easily understood and was far more user-friendly than listening to someone else who had applied UbD in their classrooms.

The Premise of UbD

Work backwards from Desired Results

What established goals will be addressed?
What will students come to understand about art and art-making?
What knowledge might invite students’ interest and curiosity?
What knowledge and skills will students learn?
What evidence will determine if students learned?

In one of the many colourful slides that they shared, the above has successfully kept me sat up straight. The questions are key questions that I should always ask myself whenever I plan for my weekly art lessons. It is only through these questions been clearly identified and answered would we be able to ensure that we would be able to plan our scaffoldings well.

Components of UbD

3 Stages:

Stage 1: Identify desired results

Long term transfer goals
Enduring Understanding
Essential Questions
Knowledge & Skills

To what extend does the design identify enduring understandings based on transferable, ‘Big Ideas’ at the heart of the discipline? Does it frame the targeted understandings as specific generalizations? Do the questions spark meaningful connections, provoke genuine inquiry, deep thought and encourage transfer? Or does the design identify the curriculum goals or objectives?

Stage 2: Assessment Evidence

Performance Tasks
Other Evidence

To what extend do the assessments provide? Is it fair, reliable and has sufficient measures of the desired results? Are our students asked to exhibit their understanding through authentic performance tasks that are aligned with the goals? Are there appropriate criterion-based scoring tools to evaluate student products and performances? Is there a variety of appropriate assessment formats to provide additional evidence of learning?

Stage 3: Learning Plan

Instructional Resources
Sequence of Lessons

It was a real craft on our side to be able to create various activities to allow our students to be able to answer the bigger questions like, “How do artists work? How do artists use materials and techniques to communicate their ideas?” to another phase where they are able to realise “that artists and designers experiment with forms, structures, materials, concepts, media and art-making approaches”. How do we do that? I believe it is only when we set the different set of art tasks for the various groups that in the end they would be able to showcase those understanding. The images they shared would be able to express what it would be like if our students were able to create these during their lessons and exploring the various medium to express similar or different ideas.