Field Observations at Hunter
College High School
By Jessica Gordon
Hunter College High School:
The School at a Glance.
Grade levels: 7 to 12
Graduation rate: 99%
Class size: 25
9th-graders who read at
grade level: 100%
Enrollment: 1200
College admissions:
Ethnicity %: 40 W 6 B 4 H excellent
50 A
Neighborhood: Upper
East Side
Admissions: By
exam/selective, entering
7th grade only
Free lunch: 15%
Hunter College High School:
Background Information
• Hunter College High School officially begins in grade
7 (admission by exam) but it is housed in the same
building as the middle and elementary schools.
• Art and Music are required courses throughout the
high school years, and meet 4 times weekly (40
minute periods) usually with at least one double
period. Art is taken for one semester and music for
one semester every year.
• Each art class has roughly 25 students.
The Curriculum
“The goal of Visual Arts instruction at
Hunter College High School is that
students better understand how art is
made, appreciate the roles art has
played through the centuries, and
realize how much enjoyment they can
have in both making and looking at
works of art. The Arts faculty believes
that in order to realize students’
creative potential in the making of
art, students must understand the
history of art. The making of art and
the understanding of creative
concepts, aesthetics, and criticism are
essential to one another and should
not be separated.”
The Curriculum
• As the arts department motto suggests, all the classes (aside
from electives) are a mixture of art history education and
studio art practice. Most classes include outside of the studio
trips (to museums, galleries, etc).
• The advanced level art classes begin in grade 7 with “World
Art”. Grades 8, 9 and 10 are foundations classes. Grades 11
and 12 are electives (printmaking, painting, drawing, ceramics
and photo).
• The classes I observed (Grades 8 and 9) were foundations
classes (Art I and Art II)
The Curriculum
ART I-art history concentrates on the art of Greece and Rome as well as the European
art of the medieval and Renaissance periods. Special emphasis is placed on the art
of the High Renaissance. Students participate in slide lectures and discussions
about ways that art reflects and influences the dominant culture. Students visit a
relevant museum collection and complete a term project.
Studio art focuses on the formal concerns of positive and negative space and the
hue, value a saturation of color. Students continue to develop their drawing skills
through the techniques of shading, volume, one and two-point perspective, and
portraiture. More advance painting and printmaking techniques are introduced.
ART II-art history explores the European Baroque, Neo-Classic, Romantic, Realist, and
Impressionist movements. Students participate in slide lectures and discussions.
They visit a relevant museum collection and write a term paper, and take art
history exams.
Formal concerns in studio art include two and three-dimensional composition,
under painting, glazing, figure drawing and technical drawing.
“Expanding the Frame”
Every semester, there is at least one museum
or gallery trip. Usually this trip is taken by
students individually rather than as a class.
Each course has a different assignment, but
generally the students are asked to view
several artworks and respond to them in a
written assignment.
Classroom Management
In general, classroom management was kept
to a minimum. Ms. Rich was very relaxed with
the students, allowing to sit wherever they
liked, speak while they worked and listen to
ipods during class. The students were by and
large exceptionally well behaved and
motivated, requiring only minimal
management.
Vocabulary and concepts
* Each class has a list of vocabulary words and
images which the students are required to
learn and tested on. The vocabulary relates
both to artistic practice and art history.
* As each foundations class has an art history
component, there are required readings and
exams for each session.
* The exams are usually short answer and are
graded by Ms. Rich.
Studio Practice
• Most of the art classes are dedicated to studio
practice, and the art room is generally open
and available to the students all day.
• Students who complete assignments ahead of
schedule may begin the next assignment,
revisit a past assignment, or work on artworks
of their own choosing.
Homework Assignments
• Weekly homework assignments are given to every
class. They are usually aimed at allowing the
students the opportunity to explore and practice the
skills which are being taught in the class.
Assignments are graded by Ms. Rich and returned to
the students with typed comments on their work.
They are allowed to resubmit any assignment they
have done. Finished assignments are generally
displayed on the classroom wall to inspire the
students as they work. All the student work is
displayed.
Assessment
• The students grades are based on their scores
on quizzes and exams, homework grades and
assignment grades.
• There is no formal assessment tool. Grades on
student art work are based on Ms. Rich’s
personal assessment of how much effort was
put in to the work.
The Art Classroom
• The art classroom is
filled with student art
work from the current
year and previous years.
There are a few posters
from art shows, but
other than this the
room is almost
exclusively used to
display student work.
The Art Classroom
• There are 4 long tables
where students sit.
There are no assigned
seating arrangements.
Ms. Rich has a desk at
the front of the room
from which she
presents lectures.
During class time she
walks around the room
helping students.
The Art Classroom
The Art Classroom
8th Grade
• During my observations, the
8th grade class worked on
three projects. One focused
on negative versus positive
space, on eon perspective
and one on mosaics.
• All of these projects
consisted of an art history
lesson which linked the
concepts of the art
historical period of interest
to the studio practice.
8th Grade
8th Grade
• Greco/Roman architecture
and sculpture were studied,
with a focus on concepts of
positive/negative space and
perspective and on the
practice of creating mosaics.
• Following the art history
lesson, students were asked
to complete several
assignments based on these
concepts.
8th Grade
• The Perspective project I
observed was to create an
imaginary space for the
students favorite cartoon
character and draw it from
either one or two point
perspective.
• The cartoon character itself
did not have to be drawn in
perspective, but was drawn
with colored pencil, cut out
and glued into the created
space.
8th Grade
• The mosaics project
was to create a self
portraits using small
plastic tiles.
• There was not much of
a conceptual aspect to
this lesson, more just an
examination of Roman
mosaics leading in to
the creation of mosaic
self-portraits
8th Grade
• The Positive/Negative space assignments
were: 1) A homework assignment where the
students set up a still life and drew only the
negative space. 2) Looking at themselves in
profile, drawing the negative space and then
turning these drawings into silhouettes of
themselves and 3) Using black paper strips to
create self portraits depicting only the positive
spaces.
9th Grade
• The 9th Grade focuses
largely on the
Renaissance (its artists
and design concepts).
• The projects that
stemmed from this art
historical lesson were
about shading and
contouring and creating
the illusion of depth in
the picture plane.
9th Grade
• The first homework
assignment for the 9th grade
class was to copy this famous
M.C. Escher work.
• Ms. Rich feels that by copying
an existing artwork, students
become more comfortable
with new skills and techniques
without the pressure of
creating their own
composition.
• This type of lesson was
generally used in the art
classroom in lieu of an
exploration lesson.
9th Grade
• The assignments I observed
for the 9th grade class were: 1)
to draw a roll of toilet paper
using the techniques of
shading seen in Renaissance
paintings, 2) to draw a self
portrait based on techniques
of contouring and shading and
3) to create an image of hands
plying apart tissue paper (to
which actual tissue paper was
later added) to examine how
depth can be portrayed in the
picture plane.
9th Grade
Final Thoughts
• Although I found the idea of linking art historical concepts to
studio practice unique and interesting in theory, the links
between the art history and the studio practice were often
weak and/or not clearly stated.
• Students seemed motivated to create art and often created
well thought out, skillful artworks, yet the parameters of the
set curriculum seemed to stifle creativity more than
encourage it.
• As a result of this, many students hurried through the
assigned work in order to have time to work on their own
projects.
THE END
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