Last week our class got the opportunity to have an offsite learning experience at the Two Rivers Art Gallery. I had never been to the gallery before and as soon as I walked in, I could feel the overwhelming sense of power and beauty enclosed in this space. These feelings were only intensified by the quotes on the wall introducing the featured gallery at this time, HOPE. This exhibit was focusing on the importance of coming together as a collective group united by hope that the conditions of life must soon get better than they have been for the last 2.5 years. I don’t have a very good eye for finding the true understanding and meaning behind art, but one thing I could tell immediately after walking into the gallery space was just how much heart and soul each artist poured into their pieces. It was clear that these artists were drawing on past experiences, both good and bad, their family background and home life, their race and culture, and so much more. Even though I could tell these things just by looking around the exhibit, having Sofia there to act as a guide helped to drive this point home for me; Sofia is lucky enough to have information directly from the artists about the true meaning and reasoning behind the pieces in the exhibit and the placement of these pieces. This made me realize everything in this exhibit was placed with intention and purpose which was to make you feel something. I can say that as I walked out of this showcase room, I felt overcome with emotion with the most prominent being an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the experience I was just lucky enough to have.
During our time in the HOPE exhibit, before Sofia told us about what the art truly meant, she asked us questions in the hopes of sparking intellectually deep and engaging conversations between us that got us to the answers before she had to provide an explanation herself. What this made me realize is that conversations like this can be tailored to specific groups and situations, which can be done by shifting the types of questions asked so that they match the grade and skill level of the students you are working with. During my time in the program so far, the importance of having numeracy talks with students has been heavily stressed, but having this offsite experience today showed me another subject area in which these talks could be utilized. Also, being offsite for class today reminded me that a learning experience can be enriched through hands-on experience that takes place beyond the four walls of a classroom and that requires no notes to remember the lesson. I hope we continue to have these experiences in our teacher journey and I can’t wait to use this knowledge to plan offsite learning experiences in my practicums and beyond.
