Podcasting With Your Students (Ep. 383)

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.

I am excited to talk to today’s guest, Meera Ramanathan. Meera is an art teacher from San Diego, and she presented at the Now Conference last month. She led an art making session on Cola March, which was very well received, and she also gave a presentation on podcasting with her students that also proved to be incredibly popular. I thought it was worth exploring more. Meera’s students worked together to publish the Elementary Art Talk podcast, which honestly is quite a bit of fun to listen to. But people at the conference we’re very curious to know how Meera got started with this, how she runs things, just some of the logistics behind creating a student podcast in case they want to try it themselves.

I thought that warranted some further discussion, so Meera has graciously agreed to join me for the episode today. Let me bring her on right now.

All right, Meera is joining me now. Meera, how are you?

I am great, Tim. How are you?

I’m also great. So excited to have you on the podcast. You had a great presentation at the Now Conference last month. I know a lot of people want to know even more about what you’re doing there, so I’m excited to talk about all of that today. Before we get started on all that though, I would love to just get an introduction from you. Can you tell us maybe a little bit about you and your teaching, anything else that you want to share with everyone?

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me in the NOW Conference. It was a great experience and I’m just glad to have this opportunity to continue the conversation.

Yes.

So yes, my name is Meera Ramanathan and I’m the project resource teacher for visual art at Zamarano Fine Arts Academy here in San Diego Unified School District. I teach students at the elementary level from UTK, which is universal transitional kindergarten all the way through fifth grade. I have a wide audience. I’m originally from India and I moved to the United States in 2004. I have a master’s degree in fine arts drawing and painting with a specialization in textile design. I like to use fiber art a lot in my teaching. I was also a preschool teacher before I decided to get my single subject teaching credential. I taught four-year olds for nine years before going back to school here in San Diego to get my single subject teaching credential in visual art.

I’m very passionate about introducing my students to artists from different parts of the world. Having that multicultural curriculum where my students get to see what different artists in different parts of the world are doing, introducing them to different techniques, different artworks, is very important to me. I like to give them a lot of opportunities to create, and present, and respond, and connect with their own life just so that they have multiple avenues to feel successful. Because very often you have students that come into the classroom saying, “I can’t draw.” My goal is to show them that there are different avenues in which they can feel successful. It can be responding to art, like tell me what you see, what do you notice, what makes you say that?

So, giving them those different opportunities to feel successful and also fostering that sense of community and building human beings that are empathetic, just compassionate and tolerant through art is very important to me.

No, I love all of those ideas, and I would love to chat a little bit more about the respond idea that you had mentioned, because I know you started the Elementary Art Talk podcast with your students last year, which I love listening to. I think it’s so much fun. What can you tell us about the podcast? What should people know about it?

I started this podcast, like I said, titled Elementary Art Talk podcast in December 2022, and I opened this up to the fifth graders in my school. I have four fifth grade classrooms and I invite one from every class to come participate in this podcast. It’s been really wonderful because again, that responding aspect is so important to me. I started this in December 2022. We’ve recorded 12 podcasts in the last school year, and I’m really eager to continue doing that in the new school year as well.

What I do is I invite about four or five fifth graders to come participate in this every Wednesday afternoon because that’s early dismissal in our school. I have the students come to me after school to participate in this, and I’ve selected an artwork for them to talk about. We all sit together and I give them a little basic introduction about how this works and what they notice, what they wonder, and we use different strategies like VTS, visual thinking strategies. If there’s more than one artwork, we use the compare and contrast, but it’s just a really nice opportunity for us to get together in a small group and talk about an artwork in a lot of detail. It’s been very successful. I have the fourth graders already asking me last year if they could participate when they are in fifth grade, which is-

That’s awesome.

… coming up in a week. So yes, I have all the recordings posted on my Art Teacher website, and it’s been really exciting and a great learning experience for my students and myself.

Okay. Let me ask you though, where did you first come up with this idea? Where did you first get the idea for doing a student-led podcast? I know they’re excited about it now. Were they excited back then? What was the reaction? Once you formulated the idea, once you presented it to them, what was their reaction when you first introduced the idea?

Sure. I’ll tell you a little bit about how I started the podcast. I went to the California Art Education Association Regional Conference at CSU Long Beach in November. It was such a neat experience. In one of the sessions, the presenter had… We were about 25 art educators, and we were all in this room, and the presenter had put up an artwork up on the screen, and we all talked about that artwork using visual thinking strategies. What I noticed was how we felt safe in that space and how we all opened up because there were no wrong answers. That’s the beauty of VTS. You’re looking at an artwork, you are noticing, you are discussing what you notice and what makes you say that. We were noticing these details and we kept noticing more and more details as the session progressed.

It was beautiful because there was this one art educator that noticed things that I wasn’t noticing, and there were things that we were all noticing. So there were things that were common to us and that were different. What I loved about this session was how we just kept going on. There was just this one artwork, but we were coming up with these stories. I felt so successful and safe, and I wanted to bring this experience back to my students as well. This was the starting point for me. When I pitched this idea to my students, they wanted to know if it would be on YouTube, and I said, “No, this is an audio recording.” They wanted to know if it would be on Facebook and social media, so I had to tell them, “No, it’s not, but it’s just an audio podcast.”

Well, that’s where they live. Fifth graders don’t listen to podcasts, but they watch a lot of YouTube.

Right. I had to just tell them that this was basically an extension of what we do in the classroom, but they had opportunity to just talk about it in much detail, and it would be a small group. They were really excited about it, just having to come after school, which was a cool thing for them, and meeting other students that they would normally not meet. It was really nice. We were in this group with different fifth graders, different combination every week. So, giving them that chance to see other students from the other fifth grade classroom was really neat. For them just to listen and be like, “Oh, wow, we might not agree all on the same thing, but it’s still respectful to listen to someone else’s viewpoint.” I think it’s such a nice life skill for them to have. Of course, using the art vocabulary, looking at all the visual supports that I have in the classroom and incorporating that in the conversation has been really neat.

Yeah, that’s great. I also want to ask you, when you were first starting things out, first starting to work with the students, how did that go for you? What went well at the beginning of the process? What were some of the struggles that you ran into, either I guess for you or for working with your students? What were the successes? What were the struggles at the beginning?

When I first pitched this idea, I wanted to make sure that my admin and the fifth grade teachers were on board because we’re all a team. When I pitched this idea to my principal, he gave me the green signal right away. That was step one. I work in a fine arts academy, so it’s really nice to have admin support and to just explain to them the reasoning behind why I wanted to do this and what I had learned from the conference and why I was eager to get this started with students. Once I got the admin support, I talked to the classroom teachers. They have a better understanding as to which students could potentially stay back because they knew the students’ schedules much better than me because it was a Wednesday evening.

They were like, “Okay, maybe these students stay in prime time, so these students stay back in school anyways,” that kind of a thing. Getting them on board was really important. I have a really supportive group of fifth grade teachers. And figuring the technology out, and looking for appropriate artwork. I wanted to have artworks that had a good narrative, something that the students could look at and build a story around it. It had to be appropriate and something interesting for fifth graders to look at. Those were the first couple of steps that I maneuvered. When I first started this, the first two episodes, we were sitting, and it does take a little steering the students in the right direction. You wanted to pertain to the artwork, and we didn’t want to go too off track. So, sort of giving them… I wanted this to be student-led. I didn’t want to talk too much. I just wanted it to come from the students.

I wanted them to have the ownership, so using VTS and explaining to them what it is that we’re doing, giving them an example beforehand. But while we’re in the podcast, sometimes the students would… Even though we were in a small group, they’re 10 and 11 year olds, so they would sometimes start to giggle and it’s like, “Let’s just bring you back in. Let’s get the giggles out before.” Every episode was, I would make notes, and it’s a learning experience that would help me move into the next episode. So it’s like, “Turn your cell phones off.”

If there were any announcements from the office, I made sure by the third or the fourth episode, I was asking them, because sometimes it’s inevitable, but if there was something that was planned, I would make sure that I went into the office to find out if there were any announcements that they were going to make, and just making sure that the students knew what we were doing, steering them in the right direction and pertaining to the artwork and listening to each other, being respectful. Those are some of the things that I remind the students every now and then. So, yes.

Yeah, no, I love that. I guess I’m curious too, just about what your students have learned from the process. I know you’ve talked a little bit about the skills about being empathetic and understanding, and also just the skills of learning how to have this conversation and how to record things and all that. What have your students learned both in that direction and just from the art history side of things throughout this process? What are the big takeaways for them? What do you think they’re learning the most about?

I think they’re getting confident on how to talk about an artwork. If they were to look at an artwork, even in a magazine or in maybe a chapter book that they’re looking at and it has an artwork, what can you say about it? What is happening? So really delving deep into an artwork or a photograph or anything that they’re looking at. I think getting that conversation started by themselves has been the biggest takeaway from them, and making those connections with artworks also has been great. I’ve been looking at artwork from different parts of the world, and we have a very diverse group of students.

For me, seeing what connections they can make with that artwork and with their own life has been really neat to see, and connecting that artwork with something that we’ve done in the classroom. Maybe it’s been a technique, maybe it reminds them of an artwork that artists that we’ve looked at for inspiration in a previous lesson. That has been really nice to see because what is the continuity that they’re getting by looking at these artworks and just sitting together. They might not agree with someone else’s viewpoint, but still being able to listen to what someone else is saying and going with that flow, just listening to those multiple viewpoints, that has been really nice to see.

And just being exposed to different kinds of artwork from different parts of the world, talking about the technique or what might they have used. Maybe it was a paintbrush or maybe it was a pallet knife that this artist used. So, just trying to figure it out, making meaning out of what they’re seeing has been really, really nice to see.

Yeah, I think that is great also. Now I want to ask you, you said you have 12 episodes. I want to ask if there are any particular highlights that stand out to you from any of the episodes? Do you have any recommendations that you think really are good or an episode that you think everyone should listen to?

Sure. Episode seven, I had a painting from India. It’s titled Fruit Sellers. There are these two women dressed in Indian clothes, in a sari, and they’re selling fruits. I just wanted to use this just to see what I get back from the students. What was nice to see is how this conversation really evolved. Why are they wearing these clothes? Where do we think this painting is from? Where do you think this artist is from? While we were talking about this, one of my students who’s from Nigeria, she said she made this awesome connection that when she had visited Nigeria with her family, there are these sellers that are on the street selling fruits and vegetables because it’s very common in different parts of the world for people to sell things on the street, have a basket, and they hold it in their head and they’re just setting up shop on the street.

And then if there’s not that much crowd, they move on to another part of the street to attract crowd. We were just talking about this, and she just made these really neat connections with what she had seen in Nigeria. She was sharing that when she visited, she would have sellers that she bought fruits and vegetables from. I just thought it was really neat because I had no idea the student had visited Nigeria or she was familiar with this concept. So listening to these connections that students make and just listening to them be excited about what they’re seeing is just so nice to see.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s really cool. I love it when students are able to make connections at any time, whether it is through the artwork, discussions, writing, any place. I love the fact that they can do that in this podcast as well. I think that’s something really cool that you’re doing. Then I guess final question, I think when a lot of people hear about the idea that you are doing a podcast with your students, they’re very intrigued by the idea and they think, “Oh, is that something I could do?” I guess my last question for you is just do you have any advice for teachers if they’re thinking about maybe trying this with their own students, setting up some kind of a podcast in their art classroom? What would your advice be for those teachers?

I would say just do it. Just get started. Figure out the technology. I use ScreenCastify, so it’s really important that you work with the technology that you’re comfortable with because you’re going to be using it every week. Is that something that you can handle with ease? Find a recording software that really works for you, and of course, get your admin on board. Get the teachers on board and talk about what this does for the students because they are at the center of all this, how this is going to help the students because it’s not just about displaying pretty artwork. You are just giving students a different avenue to be successful.

It’s so neat to see these students who maybe are not too interested in creating, but they just come alive and they’re looking at all these intricate details when you give them the opportunity to do that. It’s the students that are at the heart of this, so get the admin and the teachers on board and get the students excited. Maybe play them snippets from podcasts that they listen to and just show them that this is the effect that it can have. You’re giving them an opportunity for student voice. That is so neat. And come up with a nice variety of artwork.

I think it’s completely doable finding artwork and making notes every week just so that you can reflect back on and keep changing things depending on what went well and what did not go well. I think it’s just great if you can do that, because listening to students talk is just wonderful. Then especially in a small group, and just seeing how they think and how they’re articulating what they see can be just so exciting as an art educator. So I say, go for it.

Oh, yeah, that’s great advice. Meera, thank you so much. I appreciate you telling us all about the podcast. We’ll share with everybody so they can listen if they would like. Like I said, I appreciate all of your advice for people who maybe want to start one on their own, so thank you for all of that.

Thank you for this wonderful opportunity, Tim. It was so nice talking with you.

Thank you so much to Meera for coming on. That was a wonderful conversation, and I appreciate all of the insights she shared about everything she’s doing with her students and their podcast, and I appreciate her advice as well. Now, if you want to learn more from Meera or follow her on social media or listen to the episodes that she’s created with her students, we’ll put everything you need, all of the links you need in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed the insights and the conversation here, and if it inspires you to do something similar with your students, so much the better.

Art Ed Radio is produced by The Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you for listening, and we’ll talk to you again next week.