Paulo Freire came up with the concept known as The Banking Model in his book known as “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.” The “Banking Model” touches upon the relationship of students and teachers, specifically how students learn and teachers teach in a classroom. The job of students in a classroom is to remember the information the instructor provides. The students don’t participate in another way, they just simply take in the information that’s given to them and memorize it for the test. The “Banking Model” within educational systems is common and it prevents students from developing certain skills that make them critical thinkers. It doesn’t give students a chance to voice their opinion or to bring out their creatibity, but to just absorb the information the teacher brings forth in a classroom. This leads to the disempowerment of students and empowerment of teachers, of course, at the expense of the students.

Personally, I experienced this “Banking Model” concept in high school. In my junior year of high school, my Psychology teacher had prepared slides and copy and pasted the information provided in the textbook onto these slides. She would just read through the slides each class and not explain it. The only positive thing my fellow classmates and I got out of this was that we were able to challenge ourselves by teaching everything on our own. The reason why it’s easier for the teacher to explain it because in certain classes particularly psychology, it’s easier to understand the concept using real-life examples to help us relate. Since much explanations for concepts in my Psychology class wasn’t provided it was hard to understand. Another negative was that it took a lot of extra effort and time. In the classroom, I was daydreaming and didn’t participate so much because I didn’t think there was a point to. If my teacher explained it as she went rather than just reading the slides, it would have saved time so that I can focus more on my other classes. I was always googling examples of the concepts that I learned to fully understand it instead of just memorizing it. It’s easier to memorize when you actually understand.

When I hear the word art I instantly think of museums. I don’t go often but when I do what I love about going is hearing other people’s perspectives on an art piece. It’s crazy sometimes what people can catch. Every art piece has some kind of meaning whether it’s obvious or not at first glance. Art is a form of expressing your thoughts and imagination in a visual image. The only personal art of mine is my doodling in class on the margins of my paper.

I don’t think a skill is needed when it comes to art. Whether you perceive it as an “ugly” drawing, it is still art and it still will have meaning of some sort. The reason for this is because art is used to express yourself and bring out your creative imagination. In my previous Psychology classes, it was always brought up how drawing can be used as a way for therapy. This is true based on my experience because when I doodle in class, it calms me down.

My favorite type of art is graffiti. I love walking around streets of New York and observe the colors and art behind graffiti. My favorite area in New York that has graffiti is Williamsburg. The graffiti there is remarkable because of all the effort and detail put into it and the meaning behind them.

I took these images below the last time I was in Williamsburg and I was astonished by the detailing:

Are you worried you don’t know how to make a blog post?

Well stop worrying because you came to the right place.

It just takes 5 easy steps and voila!

Step 1: log in to your CUNY Academic Commons account

Step 2: press on the avatar on the top right corner, go to “my sites”, and click on “Fall 2018 Art 1010 at Brooklyn College”

Step 3: on the left side click on “+ New” to  make your first blog post

Step 4: create your own personalized title and under that type your blog post in the big rectangular space, then select the category (9:30 AM class), and finally select the tag

Side note: if you’d like to add an image press “add media”

Step 5: press publish & you’re done 🙂