Personal Experience with ZPD

I think that I have very recently experienced successful learning via ZPD in my current Printmaking course.

To give some background: In my Printmaking course I am learning how to screen print, a discipline that consists of a very detailed and time-sensitive process in order to produce successful prints. It is my first time taking an art course that is so technique-oriented, and none of the screen-printing process has been intuitive to me. As someone who is completely new to the art of printing, I felt lost in the studio, especially because I am surrounded by peers who have taken several terms of printmaking before. During the first day of class, my professor sped through a very quick tutorial of the entire process, telling me, “Take notes, because I’m only going to tell you how to do this once”. I could tell that he was used to students already having some sort of background in printmaking and/or understanding the nuances of the printmaking studio; his instructions seemed patchy and lacked detail, as if he assumed that I could fill in the blanks. Unfortunately, I couldn’t.

Consequently, during the first two weeks of term, I was completely unorganized and overwhelmed. I was also very frustrated with myself, wondering why I couldn’t seem to remember all of the steps to the screen-printing process. While my peers were quickly moving ahead on their print projects, I felt stuck figuring out where to find supplies and how to use each piece equipment. On top of it all, I was scared to ask the professor for help. All of this to say, I think my professor initially presented me with tasks way outside of my ZPD: I had no idea of the basics or fundamentals of printmaking, and so I had great difficulty understanding my professor’s instructions. As a result, I felt like a failure for not being able to succeed.

Fortunately, this week, my professor saw my failed attempts at printing and decided to show me how to print, one more time. Importantly, he watched me carry out the printing myself – it was through watching me that he noticed and pointed out specific areas for improvement, which were incredibly helpful. It was a very brief period of one-on-one instruction, but that was all I needed. In working through a small chunk of the process instead of everything at once, my professor’s guidance proved to be much more effective than on the first day of class. I think that this was because I was finally working within my ZPD; I was finally able to successfully print on my own afterwards.

Example of Scaffolding in the Classroom

During my visit to NHS today, I had the opportunity to speak one-on-one with several students. One of the students, a junior, spoke to me about how he was enjoying his industrial chemistry class. He explained how a lot of the course involved hands-on experiments, which he found particularly engaging. Importantly, however, he mentioned how helpful it was for the chemistry teacher to demonstrate the experiments beforehand. The student disliked his previous chemistry classes because his teachers handed out directions for executing an experiment without any prior modeling or demonstration. As a result, the student had often felt confused and consequently felt less inclined to give his best effort in the class. In his current class, however, the student felt that the teacher’s demonstrations were an ideal bridge between abstract concepts in class and personally completing experiments on his own.

In this way, scaffolding and ZPD seem to be closely intertwined. Scaffolding may be one way in which a teacher can effectively utilize a student’s ZPD; for example, instead of immediately expecting the students to successfully complete the chemistry experiment, the student’s chemistry teacher used scaffolding (I.e. through his own modeling) to ease the students into what was a more complicated experiment process.

MKO

Because the “classes” that I end up observing are structured study halls, I do not directly act as an MKO in the sense of tutoring others. However, I feel that my background and knowledge in studio art allowed me to have a very meaningful conversation with one of the students today.

This student is very passionate about art and enjoys it greatly, to the extent that he has audited courses (I.e. attended various art classes without receiving credit). In looking through some of his work, I could sense his excitement when he realized that I understood a lot of the processes and materials that he worked with. This student even took the initiative to take me on a tour of the school’s art wing, explaining in great detail how much he loved the art classes and admired his peers’ works. I was personally moved at how genuinely invested this student was in his art studies; we even met one of his old art teachers, who remarked that the student had a contagious work ethic and positive energy.

While I wasn’t imparting any knowledge on the student, I am grateful that our common knowledge and passion for art allowed us to engage in deep conversation that would not have come up otherwise. In addition, as an art student in college, I was able to talk to this student about what studying art in higher education could potentially look like.

Additional Observations and Insights

As I mentioned in the above section, I was able to converse with one of the art teachers at NHS. Our conversation was both inspiring and heartbreaking. The teacher told me of the unique struggles that came with teaching art in a pandemic, including the countless times she would personally deliver supplies to students’ homes and generally make up for the school’s shortcomings with her own time, efforts, and finances. She admitted that there was certainly a fatigue experienced by many of the teachers; many of them did everything they could to accommodate the various needs of their students, but it was difficult to constantly to invest so much energy (and personal finances) for over a year.

This teacher also raved about how fulfilling it was to be an educator. She had previously been working in graphic design in Minneapolis, and never expected to be a teacher in Northfield. However, she said that she loved being able to help students become better people, all art aside. She compared her role as a mother to her children to her role as a teacher, illustrating how much she personally cared about the well-being and growth of her students. This reminded me of how Erik Erikson described teachers as being parental figures in that they must navigate a balance between guiding students, encouraging them, and pushing students to become better versions of themselves.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by admin.