Week2: Reflection
I really spent a nice time with my
roommates and friends doing VTS. This group of peers is all graduate students
in Mizzou but with different backgrounds. Their major are computer science,
philosophy, marketing and journalism. The place we did VTS is at my house.
There’s a 42’’ HDTV in my living room, and I connected it to my laptop to show
the picture. My friends were just sitting in the sofa around the television.
All of them are unfamiliar with the artwork we talking about (I choose the
Dad’s Coming).
At the beginning, I introduced VTS briefly,
and then let them do the double take. I prepared a worksheet for everyone, with
several questions on it just like Mary did in class. After the 30 seconds
looking and writing the answers on paper, I started to lead them to discuss.
They quickly find the theme of this picture, and I lead them to find more
details to support it. The process is so successful, they found something I had
not noticed before, and they thought deeper and deeper to analysis this
picture. One of them offered a different opinion, she thought the family was
just spending a normal day and having a rest beside the sea. It is true that the painter captures a more ambiguous
moment of watching and waiting. It may lead audience come out with another
understanding. So we discussed the relationship between the meaning the painter
want to express and the meaning what the audience can read from the painting.
And most of us think one artwork should include these two kinds of meanings originally,
what we should do is to explore more from the visual images. When looking back
the answers written at first, they all found VTS help a lot to explore the
artwork. They got many useful information during the discussion, and one said
he should be with a group when next time go to museums, for the reason that it
is totally different from watching artwork alone. And another one said he had more interest in
art now, since it seemed not so far away from daily life. It is beyond
expectation that we took more than one hour to do VTS. I think they all like it
now.
Forgot
to say, we use our first language Chinese to do it, so it is far more
convenient and efficient than the first when I use English at class. I think it
is much better than first time as well. All of them think this is an impressive
lesson, and the philosopher who is a teacher himself gave me a good advice. When
someone said it maybe something, I always directly asked why do u think so or
what do you see makes you say that, it would make people who cannot tell
immediately feel nervous and don’t know what to say. He suggested me I could
use “Are these details make you say so?” instead to lead people think more
about it.
I really fall in love with VTS methods now, and can’t wait to learn more and make constant progress.
It sounds like you had a very successful VTS session with your friends! An hour of VTS? Wow! They must have really been interested in the discussion! That is amazing!
ReplyDeleteI do understand your philosophy friend's opinion about the second VTS question. However, the question has been researched very thoroughly and the founders of the method stand behind it. It is designed to keep students looking deeply at the work of art as well as using evidential reasoning. When students know each time that they must offer visual evidence from the artwork to support their ideas it helps them to construct strong arguments that they can defend. It also makes them question their assumptions. Often, when we look at something, we make a judgement based on intuition or feelings that we can't explain. We call this a "gut" reaction in English. When required to find evidence in the work to support our hunches, often realize that our original interpretation is unfounded. This really strengthens critical looking and thinking, which is what VTS was designed to do. As students get used to doing this in VTS, they are more likely to apply the skills in other contexts; to question or even challenge media images, advertising, and political images outside of the classroom. This, in turn, makes them much wiser consumers and citizens. So, for now, try to use question 2 as it was written with your students. After they have gotten very comfortable with the 3 VTS questions, you can experiment by rewording question 2 to see if it makes a difference in the kind or quality of student responses. This would be a very good action research topic!
I am anxious for you to start VTS with your class of students! I have a feeling that the experience will make you love VTS even more!
Great job!