First Substitute Experience…

Well I am currently sitting in the hospital waiting to have my gall bladder removed either this evening or tomorrow morning but I thought I would go ahead and update the blog since this is my first experience with setting up a substitute for my art class room.  Thank GOD for wifi at the hospital!

Since this was not a planned absence, I was not as prepared as I had hoped but between my friends, the wifi, and my fabulous faculty at Rasor I think we got everything together for the substitute.  I had to modify some of my plans for new lessons because tomorrow my K through 5 students were scheduled for new lessons but instead we are doing prelim exercises to prepare for the new lessons we are starting next week when I return!  I am so thankful that someone along the way once told me to have lesson plans on my desk and that I followed that advice!

My team leader, Patti, has been amazing through the whole process in helping me find not only a substitute teacher but a sub that has ART training who can sub for me today through Thursday!!!  In addition she helped me get all the information on lessons to my sub! Thank you PATTI!  I could not have done it without you!  I continue to be amazed at how God put me in such a fabulous place! My administration, faculty and students are amazing and I could not have asked for a better experience!

UNT NAEA Art Education Panel Discussion

Last Friday I had the honor of being a guest on the UNT National Art Education Association Panel Discussion.  We had a pretty good crowd for a Friday night and they had very good questions ranging in subject from interviewing to professional development within the field of art education.  In addition to myself, their were four other guests including two other fabulous UNT ladies, Rebekah Luckett and Lauren Kolesar!  The panel ranged in expertise from new teachers and a graduate student to an experienced teacher turned private art school owner.  All in all it was great to be back at UNT and I was very honored that they invited me to come join in the festivities!  Here is an image from the end of the night:

Peer Assessment Strategy from Dr. Broome!

First off, if you ever get the chance to take a class offered by Dr. Jeffrey Broome…. please do it! I was able to have him for one of my art education classes at UNT several years ago and I am still finding things he taught to be useful!  While in class he mentioned that one way he did peer assessment in elementary art was to create several different awards that students could give out to peers during a classroom “gallery” or critique day.  I just recently made my little awards and I can’t wait for my first chance to use them!  I have four awards that each student and myself will be able to give to classmates.

The first is the Star Award, which is given to the student whose artwork they feel followed the project instructions the best.  The second award is the Home Award, which is give to the student whose artwork they would most like to hang in their house.  The Smile Award is given to the student whose artwork makes them smile.  Finally the fourth award is the Quality Check Award, which is given to the student who they feel has the best craftsmanship.

At first I was going to have just the students hand out one of each but after thinking about it I felt I should also give out a set of awards in order to ensure that each student receives at least one award.  In addition, once the “Gallery” days run smoothly I am interested in inviting my principal and vice principal to come hand out a set of awards as well.  I think the students would get a huge kick out of having them both in the room participating with them!

Here are some images of the little awards:

This is on my board in order to remind them why each award is given.

Here is an example of each award.  Ms. Schaefer had a BLAST cutting, laminating, and cutting about 140 of these squares out

A big RASOR THANK YOU TO DR. BROOME for the idea!

Early Release and PDH Fun!

Yesterday was my first early release experience at Rasor and man was it chaos!  Instead of having each class for 50 minutes during the day plus an hour conference block to myself, I had each class for only 30 minutes and no conference at all.  It was definitely speedy art! The kids did wonderful all day and listened very well which made it so we were actually able to get a lot more accomplished than I thought we would have been able to.  Having that schedule though gives me a whole new level of admiration for those art teachers who have 30 minute art classes every day, my hats off to them because they have to be very on top of things to pull it off!

After the first half of the day at Rasor, I headed to lunch with some art friends and then to Hughston Elementary for our PISD Elementary Art professional development.  This PDH focused on technology and using the cameras that were available at our schools.  It was basic information but important none the less in order to be able to show the students how to use them!  Here are a couple shots from yesterday:

Goofing around while taking photos…

Savannah found a friend

I think I’ll sit down for a quick rest…

Savannah, Grace, Renee, Debbie, and I (Several of the Fabulous Plano Art Teachers)

Contour Portraits with 5th Grade…

This past week I started the contour portrait lesson with my 5th grade classes and they are eating it up!  We started by having each student partner up with another and take turns drawing each other using blind continuous contour line, then continuous contour line, and finally contour line.  They are having a blast being both models and artists!  I loving being able to laugh in the classroom with the students, it just makes for a happy learning environment!  After all… Art is fun and we need to remember to instill that in our students.  So often times we get wrapped up into teaching the TEKS and objectives, which is all very important, but this makes it is easy to forget to just enjoy ART!  Here are a couple images from this past week:

Continuous Contour Line Drawing

Continuous Contour Line Drawing

Blind Continuous Contour Line

Blind Continuous Contour Line

The torch is in GREAT hands!

Tonight was the first Fall 2009 meeting of the UNT National Art Education Association Student Chapter.  I made a point to attend the meeting because as a former member and officer I will ALWAYS support the Student Chapter!  UNT has such an amazing group of young individuals who are passionate about art education and all it does for our students!  They are lead by two amazing professors who I know enjoy calling friends, Dr. Nadine Kalin and Dr. Jeffrey Broome.  On top of the fact that they are so dedicated they are an award winning student chapter and super active in their community.  I went as an alumni to this meeting which was a huge change from running the meetings with my best friend, Amanda several semesters ago.  I have to admit though that the student chapter is in amazing hands!  Kim, Megan, and the rest of the new officers are so on top of things already! They have so many fabulous events planned for the semester!  Seeing what they have up their sleeves in the next couple months makes me wish I could still be a member!  So bottom line, if you’re a student at UNT, art education or otherwise, check out the UNT NAEA website and get involved with this amazing group! They are going places!

A few additions to the room…

After the first week I decided to make a few changes:

Josh helped me hang an Art History timeline and my Elements and Principles of Art posters!  You can see the Elements here up high on the wall!

Colorful pockets on each seat with Behavior Cards.  Green means everyone is doing GREAT, yellow is a warning that their behavior needs to be changed and better choices made, red means they did not make better choices and a reflection will be sent home to their guardians.

They are a little difficult to see in this picture but I found the colors in spanish and put them next to my color cards! YAY!

In this image you can see my six new sketchbook bins that are of course color coordinated and labeled.  You can also see my portfolio organizational system below the desks and on the board I now have a designated section for each grade level to aid in not having passing periods between classes.

Hopefully these changes will help things in Ms. Schaefer’s Art Room go even more smoothly!  I am still LOVING my job!  If you are reading this and considering teaching art and especially considering Plano ISD I would highly recommend it!  It is a fabulous district and career to have!

A week of firsts….

This week has been a whirlwind but so wonderful at the same time.  It has definitely been a week of firsts for me!  First teaching experience, first school assembly, first back to school orientation, first carpool duty, first school voicemail, and the best yet…. first big girl paycheck.  That’s right folks I am officially a grown up…. I think that my parents are even more excited than I am about that!  In case you’re wondering what the first thing I purchased as an adult was…. check it out! I am so excited!!! I have wanted this since Amanda got one for her birthday!  Now that we covered that, all in all the week has taught me so much with the most important being that I am exactly where I am supposed to be.  Rasor is such an amazing school with great kids and faculty… I just cannot seem to get over how God put me exactly where I needed to be!  I am still trying to get down routines for preparing for six different lessons so of course I will be doing some work this weekend but not too much which is a pleasant surprise!  I am looking forward to another great week at Rasor!

Way past my bed time…

Well it is nearly 11:15pm and way past my bedtime for a weeknight these days, but I wanted to take just a moment to let you all know that I LOVE my job! I am so lucky to be in PISD, at Rasor, and on my team!  I could not have asked for a better teaching job if I dreamt it up out of thin air!  Everyone has been so supportive and welcoming!  In addition to that I have now met all my Monday and Tuesday kids and they are fabulous!  It is so fulfilling to actually be teaching and know that this is exactly what I was made to do!  I love it…. those three words pretty much sum it up!  Well I’m off to bed so I’m refreshed to meet my Wednesday kids tomorrow!  Go Rasor Rockets!

The Start of Something NEW…

Well this past week and a half has been so busy with new teacher meetings and teacher inservice but the first day of school is finally almost here!  It was crazy busy trying to get my room set up and things ready for the students to come back tomorrow but I am just about finished, yay!  I have fabulous friends, Joshua & Erin, who helped me set up my classroom and organize everything so a huge thanks to them!  I thought you all might like to see a few images of my classroom so… ENJOY:

My door and the cabinet behind it is alphabetized art prints!

My classroom from the back corner

….and the classroom from the doorway

My super cute stations center

My desk area and the bulletin board

This is what you do to prep for classes when you have no passing period

Yes that’s right, Art Teacher BARBIE made it into the Art Room!

My wall of storage, please note how they are labeled

My School

I am so excited and nervous for tomorrow to get here!  I can not wait to meet all the kids and actually teach!  Here’s to getting no sleep tonight!  Thanks to everyone who has encouraged me through out this process! I love being in PISD and at Rasor, it already feels like home!