Child Artists

Here is a great article written by George Szekely, who was also the keynote speaker at the CAEA Conference this year. He has a great way of honoring the innate power of a child's creativity and his words keep us from the belief that children are lesser contributors to our world.

MILTON GLASER DRAWS & LECTURES from C. Coy on Vimeo.

Seriously...

This week has been quite a doosey. After a weekend full of angst over how much work I am expected to do over the weekend, a panic attack over my online class that is quickly getting out of control, and a Sunday composed of a collection of busy work, laundry, and facebook updates displaying an array of curse-words, I entered the week thinking about how to get a ridiculously long lesson plan ready to hand to my university supervisor before she watched me make art look like torture for 24 high school students and then meet me in Fort Colins to sit through a 45 minute talk on student law that I probably could have conducted on my own via the wonders of google before driving the hour and a half back home, during which I realized that Ihad no idea what I wouldbe doing in class on Wednesday. Come Wednesday then, my mentor teacher ventured to ask what I might possibly do to make my teaching the least bit motivating and engaging. After a full planning period of me balling my eyes out in the photo lab, we came to the conclusion that the answer to all of this is simply to stop.

So many people have been telling me that student teaching is essentially a load of bullshit that one must muddle through in order to get to the stage in teaching life that you actually begin to learn how to do it. The terms, "jumping through hoops," "busy work," and "the worst part of life" have begun to ring with sparking clarity these past few weeks for me. i've done my fair share of thinking and reflecting on which end of the meaningful living to wasting time on the "stuff you have to do" spectrum I ought to reside during this period of my life and the truth is that in all integrity, the running far from the wasteful crap area of the scale is what I would prefer. I have a strong aversion to giving into the pressure of waiting to do meaningful things in life until that glorious later. For many years of my young life, I've been dreaming of the day that I'll be a real teacher, dreaming of the day that I get to hang out with kids all day and make art, and now that I am in the place in my life where that dream is so so close to a reality, it is frustrating that the very institution that sets out to give people this dream is the very thing keeping me from the very stuff that makes one consider dreaming such a wonderful thing.

One way or the other, I still have choices to make for my own life, my own actions, my own attitude, and I've found it neccesary to revisit the all-to familiar lessons that have been making up the stuff of my life for a while now.

Being the self-reflective person that I am, I know that when I get to a place of feeling overly-pressured about how I spend my time and energies, I become crippled by the all-too- great sense of seriousness of these actions. The artistic growing up that I went through under the care of the painting department at CSU brought me through the fire of figuring out how seriously I should take myself as a member of said artistic community. By the end of mty time as an art student, I realized that, given my perceptibilty of internalizing too many things, I'd been influenced into living my life based on an assumption that ones' worth in the grand scheme is determined by a ability to find worth in the "almighty they" of the art community. Worth is defined by the percent of ones' soul sold to overworking the self. I somehow got tricked into thinking that the more posturing, the less heartfelt connection and enjoyment to life would result in happiness and success in life as an artist.

And I am realizing that perhaps that thinking has also somehow got muddled up with my approach to teaching. The conversation I found myself engaged in with my mentor teacher between streams of tears brought me to the realization that my students cannot see me as a person who cares for them as people when I am caught up in a system that is asking me to give more value to aligned objectives and assessment methods than the authenticity of a life well lived. And perhaps in my left-brained, performance-based approach to life is allowing me to get carried away with things that are not meant to carry us away. But either way, I am finding myself in a battle of determing how to be true to my own values rather than my perceptions of other people's expectations. And maybe a part of the apprehension is an all-too poignant awareness of the role these people and their expectations play in my ability to get out into the real world and live this life of a teacher totally apart from them. I am afraid that if I begin to live it now, I'll not be allowed to fully embrace the autonomy of "doing it my way" later.

So, this morning, stting at a new favorite haunt, breathing in the wonderful fall air, I wrote down a few good thoughts that I want to live by as I complete this course:

1. Although objectives, assessments, methods, and rubrics are important in thier own right, they are an underlying structure and should be second only to the heart of really what is going on when we come together as people in a classroom.

2. How can I teach my students about living from the heart if I can't find the space to be able to teach from mine?

3. My mentor teacher told me something very good on wednesday. She said, "Heidi, you know all of this stuff-- you know everything about teaching and you know everything about yourself, but you can't seem to figure out how to live it out." Her assertion of this reminded me of the freedom that we do have in simply living out who we really are. As as person who is still a student under the authority of instructors with a role of making all the things I still lack clear to me, it has become easy for me to search for an external "fix" to "doing things right." I rarely find the space to practice just living out what I already am. When I began studying art education four and half years ago, I approached it with the goal of becomming a person full of the things that a teacher has inside of them so that teaching is as simple as being myself. And now, here I am, teaching, but forgetting this idea. Or perhaps not believing that I yet have it in me to do it because I am still being asked to write it out in page after page. I'm still being asked to intellectualize rather than simply do it and do it well.

so, here's to fleshing it out. I've decided this week to stop going through the motions of intellectualizing everything and simply making it my one and only priority to just DO IT. And for the first two days of my student teaching exeprience, I am having a blast!

Rembrandt Autobiography

I'm working on developing a unit on shading, texture and value, and came across this nice video on Rembrandt.

Yesterday marked the end of my fifth week at Silver Creek. I am more than half done with my secondary placement and big chunks of my brain are hoping that elementary will be less pressure, more fun. This not to say that high school is not fun and that I am not enjoying it, but I miss the easy acceptance of my elementary kids from BASE Camp. High School management seems to revolve around attitudes, boredom, and legal issues and it is exhausting trying to sort all that out on top of simply learning how to instruct.

Last week I came to a turning point. Perhaps it s simply in part due to my getting the hang of things or starting to teach my own lessons. But I came to this place of realizing how much of my activity centered around all that I had to do. Rather than thinking about what it takes to really get kids hooked, what I need to do to get them interested and learning, I was thinking about how to meet all of the requirements of students teaching. I have been so focused and stressed about filling out paperwork and completing lesson plans with everything worded and measurable that the thought of connecting with my students felt like one more task, one more thing that my overloaded brain needed to work out.

But over the last week, I've been rearranging my priorities. I've decided that if yesterday was the last day that I had to teach, the last day I had to be in contact with these kids, I would want to make sure that they had a meaningful experience with art. The question of whether or not I had every objective lined out clearly was not high on my list of priorities.

Now, I realize that I am still in the place where I am being tested and that I am being asked to submit to the authority charged with the task of awarding me my lisence. And I realize that they are always under the responsibility to submit to the requirements of the state and that these are the tasks that I must complete to move to the next step in my practice as a teacher. But I do not want to waste the time that I have in contact with thess young people still under my care, despite all of the other things that I must do. I am reminded that if I seek the things that are true and right and best, all the rest, the nitty gritty, will come together as well.

As the week came to an end,even though my sleep level was well below acceptable levels most days, I began to notice more and more kids greeting me in the hallways, excited to see me, wanting to share thier lives with me. I am seeing those relationships begin to grow and flourish. As I observe the ways that I interact with the students, I see that my conversations are less connected to my stress level or an assumed sense of responsibility and more connected with a desire to really be personal and genuine. I want them to know me-- and I learning to be more comfortable with that line between teacher and friend becoming less fragile. This not to say that I am throwing that sense of professionalism out the window, but allowing myself to be a person to them rather than working on maintinaing a staunch position as AUTHORITY. And this is the place where I am finding myself as a teacher. And I am beginning to see in myself the qualities that I admire the most in the teachers that have inspired me to teach.

two weeks

Second friday of the school year. I've officially made it through two weeks of student teaching. I am more tired than I thought I would be. Teaching is often harder than I think it is going to be. There is always too much to say and too little memory. There are always moments that you realize there was something you should have said before all 36 students started talking again. And there is always that point when you realize that you really just need to slow down, be calm, and put more faith in yourself. There are so many opportunities to let your intution take over and go with whatever happens. And there have been numerous class periods that make me hope that someday I will be good, confident, personable, timed, and clear.

I just took over an hour to make and eat my dinner and now I sit in a clean house, dishes done, contemplating what I want to do now. Eleven and a half hours ago, I got in my car and drove through the country to my first day of school-- my first day as a teacher.

Today was a really good day. After meeting with my mentor teacher last week in the midst of the chaos of moving, I was feeling more overwhelmed than ever. Today, however, after getting a few nights of good sleep, knowing there were plenty of groceries at home, and having most of my belongings settled in, I felt ready to take on this crazy life of teaching. Over the weekend, I discovered the one good thrift store in town and scored a nice assortment of professional attire for my new appointment for a price even a student teacher can afford.

Although I didn't get as many lesson plans written today as I hoped I would, I went through the process of figuring out budgets, calculating numbers of students, and ordering supplies. I got the quick and dirty run down on doctoring photocopies to make handouts from books without written directions, but great illustrations. And I had a lot of great conversations with my mentor teacher about how to plan engaging lessons and what to do with kids who finish too early.

Something I've been thinking a lot about is the issue of time management and balance in my life. Even though many student teachers have told me that this thing takes over your life, that it is the most difficult thing of all, and that student teaching is an all-consuming monster, I've really been looking forward to this time as a chance to determine my own balance of time. My way of life up to this point has been dictated by the expectation that 12-14 hour days most days of the week are normal and appropriate. I feel a little like I might need to go through detox to change this standard in my life. I want to change it because I really find that having time to make a delicious dinner for myself and allowing myself time to enjoy it is so good for my soul. I feel better about my relationships when I have time (and energy) to do dishes and keep things clean. And I consider a restful sleep to be something worth fighting for.

For all of these reasons, I feel lucky to have the model that I do in my mentor teacher. I asked her how late she stays at school after the bell rings at 2:15 and expected her to say 4:30 or 5. "I try not to stay much later than 3:30 or 4," she said, and added, "I try really hard to keep work at school and home and home." Other teachers, she went on to say, allow school to take over their entire lives and end up staying until 5 or 6-- and they really are teachers all of the time. "This is a job," she advised me, "that can easily consume your entire life."

So here I am, at 6:29, enjoying freedom from guilt about what I need to be doing for school. I have time to think about what I might choose to do with myself now that I have a few personal moments. Part of me feels like I may be forgetting something, but another part of me tells me that this very act of forgetting is just what my soul needs.

This morning at our staff meeting, the principle reminded us all of a very important thought:

"You cannot take any better care of others than you do yourself."

So here is to a great semester ahead full of learning and adventure!