Award-Winning Private Social Studies Tutoring in San Marcos, TX

We went over previous notes from the student's AP Art History class. The notes covered 19th century landscape painting as well as the early history of photography. I helped make sure his notes matched the information in the reading, and did a quick quiz on landscape paintings which will be covered on the AP test.

We read and reviewed Cubism, Surrealism, German Expressionism, and Dada. These art forms are more conceptual and abstract, which is posing a bit of a challenge. We discussed the main points of those movements and selected which artists to focus on based on the image sets for the AP test.

Great session! We continued with her draft and planned our next session. During this session, we reviewed sections C and D. I also found examples of "good" papers with complete section B's for her to review and use as a reference.

The student and I worked on an essay assignment on indigenous American art. Specifically, we talked about why totem poles from the Haida culture should replace a piece of Spanish colonial artwork in the AP Art History image set. We worked our way through the prompt piece by piece, and outlined answers to the questions, to be fleshed out into an essay by him after the session. I emphasized the importance of visual formal analysis, so that he can look at any work of art and describe it in detail. We also worked on an assignment on a Bundu mask from the Mende culture, and prepared notes for him to turn in tomorrow.

I reviewed the student's paper one last time. I made a number of comments and suggestions to smooth it out and improve the flow even more, while also cutting additional material to get it just inside the page limit. I also suggested some significant corrections to his bibliography, including catching two missing entries, and gave him instructions to double-check it.

We discussed the main points of her course outline ranging from the early Christian era the edict of Milan, Councils of Nicea, Constantinople, Chalcedon; the work of Origen, Athanasius, Iraneus, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Barth; the great schism of 1054, the Latin West vs Greek (Byzantine East), Gregory of Palmas, Protestantism/Reformation, Martin Luther, Counter-Reformation/Council of Trent, the Enlightenment, Pentecostalism, etc. The student has a positive attitude toward the material. Again, the main win was her assurance that discussion/explanation of the material by/with me has helped her understand it much better and has prepared her well for her final exam.