My Crazy Career Path

I am currently in the middle of my 6th year teaching elementary art. While that doesn't make me an expert by any means, I think that the unusual journey I've taken in my relatively short career has given me a broader experience (and therefore more to share) than you'd expect after only 6 years. Why? Because I have worked in 4 different schools, each in different districts, in two different states.

I studied Art Education at Penn State, and was basically told the entire time that I would not find a job teaching art in Pennsylvania. At least, not right out of college. So after graduation, I accepted a job in Ashburn, VA (30 miles outside DC) and lived and worked there for two years. Shortly after I'd moved there, though, I rekindled a college romance with a guy that lived in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

Thinking he might be "The One", I quit that job and moved out to live with him. The first year I lived in Pennsylvania, I had to take a job in New Jersey, which was about 45 minutes away, and it was only a long-term substitute position at a tiny, rural, K-8 school. (Middle school- ick.) The regular art teacher came back from maternity leave and despite fitting in really well, there wasn't room or need for both of us :(

Luckily, I found another job, also still in NJ, for the next school year. This time, it was a tenure-track position, meaning it was all mine! To this day, it was the best school and best classroom that I've had.
Halfway through that school year, I realized (albeit not quickly enough) that that boyfriend was not "The One". We broke up and I moved out, moving closer to that school near Princeton, NJ (yay for 10 minute commutes!).

I made awesome new friends, met a new boyfriend and created a new life in Princeton. I was actually really happy... which only made it that much more heartbreaking when NJ Governor Chris Christie decided he was going to attack the schools and cut almost a billion dollars from state funding for education. Guess who gets cut? Non-tenured, specials teachers. The other young Spanish, Music, and PE teachers in my school and I were all laid-off for no fault of our own.

I applied to 35 districts in New Jersey and only one other district out of state. Guess where I got the job? Out-of-state, back in Northern Virginia where I started (just one county closer to DC this time).
I am now in my second year in this district, and am once again really happy. Life is so crazy, but it can be so good too!          

My Not-so-Eloquent Philosophy on Planning Lessons/Projects

In my relatively short teaching career, I have taught art in four different schools- each within a different district and two states! (More on the reasons why in a later post...) Although it was such a pain to start over at each school every time, it really helped broaden my vision of what different school environments and administration can be like.

Anyway... my point is, in only one of those schools was I required to actually type up my lesson plans. And even then, they were rarely read by any of my supervisors. So, I really am NOT in the habit of writing lesson plans. Now, I work in a very large "progressive" district where all of our lesson plans are already written... we just have to act them out... like reading a script for a play. While there are certainly many wonderful qualities to these lessons, I really love writing my own!

My first year of teaching, I was in a district that had absolutely no structure in terms of local standards and my principal was only concerned with me putting pretty things in the hallway. So, I got in the habit of coming up with all my lesson plans on my own. While this made for an extremely stressful and busy first year, it also set the tone for my overall philosophy about writing lesson plans...

Artists are creative people- duh- and obviously we chose this career because we want to use that creativity. I find ideas and inspiration for lessons all over the place... Current events, the weather, the school community, other artists, and especially from my students. I can't tell you how many times I have formed an entire lesson around something cool a student came up with that I thought was cool, so I wanted to share it with all of them! We are constantly hearing how art reflects life, so shouldn't our art lessons do the same? I appreciate the resources and ideas that my current distict gave me, it can feel limiting sometimes when I think that what I need to teach my 600 students fits neatly into a three ring binder.

Just a piece of advice though... whether you type up your lesson plans or not, always, always, always test them out yourself first. I'm sure most of you already know this anyway, because it only takes one or two times of not doing it, to learn your lesson.  I also use my creation of the project as a basis for how long it will take the students. Typically, it takes students about 4x as long to make a project as it takes me to make the sample.

And finally... even though inspiration can come from anywhere, there are still those times that we just cannot think of something cool to do. In those cases, check out Artsonia. Artsonia's "museum" is absolutely loaded with lesson ideas from real art teachers. Just type in a key word if you have some idea of what you want to do. If not, just type the grade level into the search box and go from there. Some of my most popular lessons were inspired by these!

Art Stars- Behavior Expectations

My Art Stars (Expectations) chart is something that I came up with after my first year of teaching. Throughout my first year, I kept a list of all the things that were not working in regards to students' behavior. By the end of the year, I realized that there were issues during every part of class, and that it probably had to do with my lack of clear expectations. This chart outlines my expectations for each part of class very clearly, and its format enables me to be consistent every time.

Students work together as a class to earn a star for each phase of class, from Arrival to Line-Up, and can earn up to ten stars each time they see me. (The stars a just little laminated pictures of star clip-art, that I stick on a piece of sticky tack that stays on the poster.) After they leave, I record their score and keep a running total on this chart:

At the end of each quarter, the class with the highest average gets a reward. I tend to change the reward every year. In the past, it has been a free-art day or picking their own seats. This year, they will win an extra art class, and they will get to vote on what they want to do in that class. (Don't ask me how I think I'm going to fit this into my schedule...) You might feel a little corny at first giving stars to the older kids... but I have even found this to be effective with middle schoolers! (Especially when choosing their own seats was the reward.) Now in its fifth year, it never ceases to amaze me how well students respond to this system.

*I made the poster by designing it first in Microsoft Word, and then had it enlarged to poster size. You can get really crafty, though, and just hand-make your own!

** Change the criterion in the table to make it work for your own procedures and expectations.

Happy Sponges- Quick and Effective Clean-Ups

As you may have noticed by now, "Happy Sponges" is the title of this blog. I chose it for the title, because this idea is probably one of the quirkiest things I do in my teaching. I have a feeling my students will remember what a happy sponge is even long after they have been in my art room.

Anyway, Happy and Sad Sponges are something I came up with after repeatedly reminding to students that they need to wring out their sponges before wiping down the table. (They have a tendency to think the-wetter-the-better, and end up dripping all over the floor and creating a lake on the table top... which ends up wasting a ton of time and paper towels in order to dry it up!) This idea alleviates that problem!

 I have cut up sponges to smaller sizes so that I can have one for every child to use. When I am expecting class to be messy that day, I will take 3 minutes before the students come in to prepare the sponges. I dump all the sponges into the sink, rinse them out, and wring them out really well. These are "happy sponges" and they go in the plastic bin with the smiley face on it.

Whenever students need a sponge, my students know that they are to take one from the "happy" bin and that they are not allowed to add any water to it. If it gets too dirty or too dry to use anymore, students place it in the "sad" bin. (Eventually, sad sponges will need maintenance to made happy again.) 

*I really only use this with Kindergarten through 3rd grade.

**I admit that this is not a completely perfect system in that it does require a lot of maintenance on my part, but I find it very helpful.