Rondout Valley High School Internship Day 2

Today was my second day at Rondout Valley High School. Most of the portfolio development class finished their contour self portraits. My mentor teacher went over grading with my partner and I. Portfolio development class is the closest thing that they have to AP Art at this high school. Since the students in this class will be using their portfolios for college, my mentor teacher grades them with an AP Art rubric. This rubric goes from 1 to 6. We went through the students' work and graded them on ideas, composition, fluidity, image choice, visual impact, and conventions. Many of the students were way behind where they should be at this point, mostly scoring 2's in each category. This experience made me realize how difficult it is to grade student's work. Sometimes you want to give students the benefit of the doubt, but the work does not measure up to the criteria on the rubric. In the ceramics classes, students finished their whimsical fish, which were at the green wear stage. The classes started the critique process, which is describe, analyze, interpret, judgement. Today each class covered the describing part. Each student showed the class their fish and spoke about the process, if they enjoyed working with clay for the first time, and if they were satisfied with their work.