PPD2 Tutorial

The PPD2 tutorial today really did help and make me feel excited about the areas I am exploring. As I am interested in so many areas as well as teaching, I want to start looking at how the two cross over. My interests lay in making, crafts, ceramics, illustration and photography, I want to see how they cross over and combine with teaching. At this very moment I am not sure I will ever have just one specialism, if I do discover that I have a specialist area I think I will always be interested in other things too.

I began to gain experience with Pyramid Of Arts working with people with high risk disibilities in a movement group at the end of last year. This year I am starting the Visual Arts high risk disability group, I feel I have gained such an insight and broadened my understanding even in the short time I volunteered before summer last year. I am looking forward to starting the group on 31st October.

Another thing I am going to do as part of discovering how art practice and teaching cross over is to volunteer in one of the art workshops in the college, in ceramics, pottery or arts and crafts, working with a range of people with different abilities and skills.

I am also in the process of becoming a mentor in a Secondary school through the University of Leeds. I have has child protection training and mentoring training and I'm currently waiting to hear about my placement. I will be a 1.1 mentor going into the school once every two weeks or once a week. It is up to me to arrange with the school about how many pupils I mentor and how often and when I come in.

I am in the process of applying for the Camp America scheme as well for next summer. I am interested in working with people of all ages from all different backgrounds and abilities. I am hoping the experience I am gaining this year will help me get onto the Camp America programme. I think it would be an invaluable experience and would broaden my knowledge about people, ways to teach and ways people learn. It would be so different in another country and I feel it is a step worth taking to broaden my outlook about teaching and practice.

I am also going to carry on making my own crafts, ceramics, illustration, photography and combining them to present ideas for work at the village fete. I need to think about other ways to get my work out there and sell? If I find any competition breifs that I feel are relevant for me I'm going to go for it and not be scared!

Finally, continually looking at everything around me; festivals, galleries, events, artists, journals, websites, onlines shops, books, what is happening in my areas of interest? I need to keep myself up to date and informed, talk to people and get in touch with people who are practitioners and teachers; think about different types of teachers and approaches to teaching and learning environments. What are the work placement oppurtunities?