keeping my head above water

May 3rd



Apparently we only have 23 days of school left - so says the countdown on the whiteboard in the cafeteria. I joke with people who ask, " the school year's almost over, how many days left..." I always blurt the approximate number of days out and then say, "not that I'm counting or anything.." rolling my eyes. Honestly, before last week I wasn't counting. Not yet anyway-but last Friday we had a HUGE art event at our school. It occurred to me that school was winding down, and despite the half page long list of dates that the Fine Art Department had to get through, I convinced myself that the rest of the year would be smooth sailing.



My teaching style, I'm coming to notice, is pretty high strung, spastic, and an overall whirlwind. In the last few weeks I've noticed that whenever I enter my room at 7:30 a.m., no matter how low my AC is turned down, I'm sweating. Not just slight perspiration, but a steady sweat. I jump into preparing my room for the coming day, and when class starts I constantly ask my students if they're hot, while fanning myself wildly. Since the year is coming to an end, I am more reflective on my teaching practices. The most difficult part of reflecting is when I begin to choose work for my art shows. I have each grade's work shoved into a huge paper portfolio. They're fat and ripe, ready to be taken home by the children. When I spread the student's work out over the tables to choose pieces for art shows, I expect to be filled with joy and pride. This year, however, I was disappointed. My third grade has proven to be my strongest group, with the most projects that are the strongest, visually and for their grade level. I'm disappointed with my 1st grade. Kindergarten is hard to judge because their teacher often hounds me to give her their work to hang in the classroom, or it gets sent home. Now I don't believe every piece of artwork needs to be, "show quality." IE: the subject is apparent, the piece is neat, visually striking, with a good composition, etc. I like to choose many of my lesson plans for http://www.artsonia.com/, arts & activities, dick blick or an other website. Most of these plans are made for the children to mimic the overall effect, whereas each piece tends to look a bit uniform after a while. If you were to hold every child's work up they would all resemble the same place, or portrait, but with little touches that are their own. Occasionally I will give the children a drawing assignment where they get to create a work entirely on their own. These pieces usually aren't show quality, but sloppy, unfinished, and usually a work in progress. I would like to incorporate more of these type of lessons into my yearly curriculum. I would like the students to be more self directed, and less teacher directed. I guess teacher directed would be the best way to describe "show quality" work. It's something that I direct, step by step, feeding them the instructions, repeating myself over and over again like a broken record. I'm my own worst nightmare, because I get easily frustrated with the students when they don't remember what I said, but realize that they can only retain a certain amount of instructions at a time, and heaven knows I can't prepare myself enough to have the directions on the board.



AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHh



Do you hear this? I am just ranting about all of my flaws, all of my insecurities, all of my inabilities. I know that these are just goals I have to make for myself. After all, I am only a second year teacher. I need to take it easy on myself. Deep breath. I can do this. I can finish out the year.



I never got to elaborate on that HUGE art event. Friday April 30th was the 11th annual ACSI art festival held at Jupiter Christian School. It was really fun for the kids. There was a Popsicle stand, sidewalk chalk drawing, bubbles, three guest artists - including a local illustrator, ceramist, and calligrapher, and lets not forget the face painting and make and take art section. It was a lot to organize, but after it was all said and done, I was really glad to have made it happen. The kids LOVED it!