As I walked home from work this evening, I realized just how often I serenade my students. Well, in truth, I’ll do just about anything to grab the interest and attention of a classroom. Yesterday my gimmick involved wearing the discarded bathing suit of a pre-k girl as a hat while marching my campers back from the pool.
I tend to bridge the personas of a very serious professor and comedienne.
Tags: education · music · practice · silly
Art camp is progressing more smoothly lately, both in behavior and in creative energy. I’ve noticed that with the growing camper roster, each child seems more comfortable trying new things and working beyond the baseline to make their artwork outstanding.
I theorize that within a larger group dynamic, the individual egos and self-consciousness of children slowly dissolve. The spotlight is shared, and thus they feel free to improvise and innovate without the stagefright.
It’s been almost a year since I moved to Boston from Philadelphia and I’ve found the job market for art teachers slim to nil. My search last year began in Philadelphia by blanketing the area with 180 resume packets. From the 180 packets, I had two interviews. I was offered a job from the second interview, but was urged to turn it down by family who thought I would be better paid in another position. While I may kick myself now about the decision, I realize that the journey I’ve been on has made me a better teacher.
After moving, I held three successive jobs; one as a substitute teacher, one as a special education paraprofessional, and I am currently an art camp counselor. Each of these jobs, while teaching me a completely new angle on education, has only reaffirmed my desire to have an art classroom of my own again. Perhaps I was foolish, or stubborn to accept positions only in education, the jury is still out. Luckily, as a semi-recent college graduate, I still feel comfortable living an extremely frugal life.
Yet, as the time for my current job search dwindles with the daylight hours, I find myself asking some familiar questions: How does one get her foot in the door when she doesn’t know a soul in her field nearby? Will I ever have that wonderful feeling of community in a school again?
It’s been roughly two years since I taught in anything other than a school setting. This Summer, I am teaching an art camp via a United Way community center and finding it a tricky transition.
Usually classroom management is a snap- I set ground rules and boundaries, have clear consequences for inappropriate behavior and rewards for doing exemplary work. When in a naturally unstructured environment such as a small neighborhood art camp, these measures go in one ear and out the other of my students.
My current sticky widget is inspiring my students to go beyond the first few steps before they become distracted by the 30 kids playing kickball mere feet from our classroom. There are (and will always be) students who aim to please and take each art project to new heights- but those few who decide not to try at all really kill the mood. I hate to force a project on students, I prefer to “invite” them to join me as we experiment together.
The students who choose not to try seem overcome with apathy and unwilling to imagine or play- a horrible thing to witness when it comes from a 6-year-old. I’ll take these children as my personal challenge… this will take some creative problem solving.
Silliness, thou art the answer.
Feeling industrious, I opted to read the latest issue of Art Education journal on my commute today, rather than the most excellent fiction I’ve been reading lately, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.
I was struck in a very personal way by:
Taking The 40/40 Challenge: Sixteen Painters Working Daily To Develop a Painting Discipline
by Camilla McComb
McComb chronicled the mental struggle when asked by her students, “Ms. McComb, do you paint every day?” A simple question at face value, but if I were asked the same question, it would churn up quite a bit of guilt and also a good deal of ambition.
Art teachers are asked to wear many hats. In my mind, we need to be foremost an educator, in order to effectively manage, teach and inspire students. Second, we must have a mastery of subject matter, very rarely do I consider the artwork created in my free time part of my career.
This hierarchy seems to have served me well thus far, but after reading that McComb considered this behavior in herself to be “perpetuating artistic fraud,” I had to do some soul searching and ask hard questions of myself.
In Camilla McComb’s case, she joined her students in a 40/40 Challenge, which was 40 paintings in 40 days, painting for one hour each night. Clearing the time, and the mind for an hour of painting nightly seems a monumental task in the busy, overstimulated “leisure time” of 2006.
I admire McComb for her ability to look honestly at herself and the work habits of her students while joining them in an endeavor to actively change how they create. I would love to see how the challenge would change if it became 40 sketches in 40 nights.
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