Mr. Harsh Video Reflection

After watching this video, I was in awe of Mr. Harsh's ability to engage his students in an interesting and in-depth lesson on aesthetics that is actually easy to understand. I hardly thought this was possible, as aesthetics is a concept that can be so difficult to grasp. Mr. Harsh had an incredible strategy for teaching his students. He explained to them the difference between practical experiences and aesthetic experiences in terms they could understand, and using real-life examples. For instance, to describe a practical experience, he poured cream into his coffee to improve the flavor. But he then turned this moment into an aesthetic experience by watching the cream hit the coffee and describing the visual sensation he witnessed. He then engaged the students by allowing them to describe the experience of witnessing a drop of food coloring hit a cup of water. I was incredibly impressed by the amount of students who were willing to share their reflections of this moment-- in my high school, the teachers tended to have to prod students to share any of their own writing. Mr. Harsh was reaffirming of the students' ideas and praised each who was brave enough to speak up. He was also conscious of explaining his lessons in both English and Spanish to adapt his lesson to all of his students. I do not think there is anything I would change about Mr. Harsh's lesson-- in fact, I will definitely take pointers from this video when I teach aesthetics in the classroom. He did a great job of allowing his students to understand a challenging concept in an interesting way. The students clearly were responding positively to his methods. I thought it was exceptional how he used aesthetic experiences to describe every day experiences, and then tied that same train of thought back into describing pieces of artwork, which is the ultimate goal of the lesson.

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