Education Wednesday

The end of the school year is always a bit depressing.

Mostly cause I hate having to take down everything in my classroom only to have to do it again in August. lol. Guess that is what happens when they use the room during summer school (no, there are no art classes in summer school)

Apparently I am a lot messier then I believe during the school year. While cleaning my room I kept finding things I thought was lost... papers I was looking for, paintbrushes, sponges, etc. I really need to stay organized better.

And my desk really needs to be neater then this. Although these pictures were taken during the last week of school when everything was being pulled apart, this is really what my desk looked like all year.

I call it creative chaos... others call it messy. I really need a maid at school and at home. Hopefully next year will be better. I am already coming up with ideas that would be helpful... hopefully.

Education Wenesday

I try to teach a very multicultural curriculum in my art room. Although I may not be completely versed in all types and forms of art history I tend to do a serious amount of research before teaching the topics to my students.

Here in Maryland, 7th grade students cover both Ancient and Modern China in Social Studies. I love the idea of matching what they are learning in their core classes to art that I had to jump on this chance.

Here I covered the history behind Chinese Calligraphy and we discussed the popularity of the Calligraphy Characters as tattoos. I gave the students a list of commonly used Chinese Characters and they had to choose three that represented parts of themselves like honesty, trustworthy, courage, etc.

The only hard part was to use the calligraphy brushes in the traditional manner. Trust me when I tell you that creating Chinese Calligraphy isnt as easy as one would think. This art form takes years and years of practice to get it right. After one afternoon of trying to do it told me that I dont have the patience to study Chinese Calligraphy.

But the students loved it!!! All my other grades wanted to do the project and didnt understand why they couldnt. My answer to them was that each grade does different projects just like in the core classes they learn different topics and study different things each year. Well, that didnt go over very well. But my 6th graders are really excited to do this project next year.

Education Wednesday

In trying to figure out how to incorperate my job as an art teacher into my personal art blog, I decided that every Wednesday is going to be "Education Wednesday" from now on!!!

YEAH!!!! (I know --- it is really exciting).

I thought as my first Education Wednesday post I would focus on something that is really upsetting to me about the American Education System and it is extremely important that everyone knows about this.

It is call "Last In, First Out". This is the system of education layoffs for teachers throughout the States. Instead of explaining it to you, I am going to show you.