Happily beginning this year as the lower school art teacher. Full time. Dream come true. You can read all about it here. It means a new year, a new position and the never ending game of curriculum development.
I do love this part of teaching. Designing a path to guide students along, developing investigative questions, bookmarking resources, and imagining experiences is a huge part of what makes my work satisying. There is nothing easy or short about curriculum writing. It is bread made from scratch, fresh pasta rolling through the machine, pastels carefully flattened, lovingly stuffed and tenderly fried. Creating curriculum is a homemade Thanksgiving meal all the way to picking fresh cranberries from the backyard.
I have all the ingredients spread out on my desktop. Tabs are open to grade level documents, science and social studies year long overviews, national art standards, AREO art standards, my own visual art curriculum (a place for storing images and links to resources) and, finally, the Pre-K-5 yearlong art curriculum overview.
I switch back and forth between documents along with web resources such as art blogs, pintrest, educational journals and google images. I bookmark relevant artists, living and dead, local and international, well known and obscure. I'm looking to make art come alive by exposing students to ALL the possibilities in art. We're not all Rembrants and vanGoghs.
So what role does art have for us? This is just one of many questions that my students will spend the year exploring. What is the role of art in society? What is the responsibility of governments in safeguarding art and making it accesible to all? What role does art play in documenting and resolving conflict? How can art record history and uncover complexities in international and national relations? How does art contribute to unity and reconciliation?
More importantly, at this age, how does art play a role in my personal life? These are big questions and we only have 40 min. once a week to figure it all out. In addition, or concurrently, there is the teaching of technique- yes, art is a skill like reading or writing or mathematics and it can be learned and improved. It needs to be practised.
There is also exposure to historic works of art, artists and movements. On my physical desktop, I have lists of movements, illustrative works, and the must-haves in the art world. There are painters, sculptures, and illustrators. There is art history and contemporary art.
Aside from the planning of units and lessons, there is the learning of names. 214 + or -. When I might have had 2 Aishas, there are now 4. There are at least 7 Mariame, Mariama or Mariannes. And a whole host of names I can't even pronounce. I make phonetic notations but some 50 kids later, I've forgotten what my shorthand means. When the child (or the whole class) corrects me, I look at my notes and nod my head. Yup, that's exactly how I've written it and it still didn't make sense. I spend my class periods calling everyone by their name everytime I talk to them and sometimes I just walk around randomly telling them who they are. Because nothing is worse than seeing them on the playground shouting out, "Hi Ms. Soumah!" and I can't say their name back.
I spend my lunch duty walking around talking to kids about their meals, their names and any other random conversation starters in an attempt to remember. I know it will come, and it is by far easier to remember in the confines of the art room- it's just generalizing to the wider school context that presents a challenge.
I know from perusing art teacher blogs that many have it worse. They write of no sinks, no classrooms (I did do a stint of art on a cart way back when...)They have 1,000+ students (?!!) and 3 schools to shuffle between. The most incomprehensible-- 20 min. classes.
I don't even consider making art, personally, if I only have 20 minutes (maybe something to consider if I had a table and a studio space to just pop in and out of.) But art, and learning, is about getting into that zone- "the flow"- where time is lost and it's just you and the medium.
I wish I had time to help my students experience this at every art class. Time to look at art thoughtfully and learn the words to respond to elements that are striking and the time to discover what they like and don't like. We can't do it at every class, but I am realizing it is something I can build in consistently.
It is a journey. When we discussed "what is art?" during our first class session, I was delighted to see many kids were already reading the room. "Well, it says art is not a thing," they pointed to the quote on the wall. "Art is a way."
