Academic Aesthetic

Want to know a secret?  A deep, dark secret that I’ve kept off this blog for over a year now?  One that will shock you?

Well, too bad.  I’m going to tell you anyway.

Ready?

Here I go …

I’m not a part of my school’s Art Department.

Yeah, that shocks me, too.  Here’s a guy whose screen name on an umptillion of Web 2.0 sites is “The Art Guy,” who may or may not have been the first art teacher podcaster (at the time I started I couldn’t find another one … that’s far from the case now of course), who isn’t even a part of his own school’s Art Department.

How’d THAT happen?

It’s a bureaucratic issue, to be honest.  I teach in a computer lab in a K-8 Arts Academy.  If it was a high school, I’d be a Computer Graphics teacher.  Unfortunately there is no course number for such a class in middle school, let alone elementary.

Instead, I teach a class called Technology Concepts.  It’s a fun class to teach, if you’re as geeky as I am, but it’s not inherently an art course.  Therefore, I  have no reason (on paper, at least), to be a part of the Art Department.  Instead, I’m a part of the Enrichment Department.

It’s not so bad…

I recently was chatting online with a former coworker from a previous school, and she lamented my change of departments.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “You’re far too talented to not be teaching art!”

At that point I puffed out my chest and my head swelled with pride – and not just because she said I had talent.

“Oh, I’m still teaching art.  Do you honestly think I could stop teaching art if I tried?”

Of course she could not.

I’m an art teacher. I teach art.

Your definitions may vary, but in my book, ART is anything that involves creativity  I don’t care if it’s a painting, story, play, song, dance, or program.  An ARTIST is anyone who creates art, and an ART TEACHER is anyone who teaches students how to be artists.

I’m a teacher at a Creative & Performing Arts Academy.  Whatever subject is taught by any teacher, they had darned well better be teaching art as well or they don’t belong there.

Math is art.

Science is art.

Social studies is art.

Reading/Language Arts is art to the point that the R/LA Department should be part of the Art Department as well!

Conclusion

Does it sting a bit to know I’m not part of a department named for my degree and certification?  Yes, yes it does.  But it doesn’t change what I teach.

Art is universal.  Only the styles and media change.

And I’m an art teacher.

The photo above is the front wall of my school.  On the day I stopped by to interview for my position (one of the best career choices I ever made, in my honest opinion), I saw this wall and thought “If I was a few decades younger, I’d try climbing that.”

Indeed, with all of those bricks pushed away from the flat surface, this wall was full of hand holds and toe holds.  Perfect for climbing, except for the concrete and asphalt below you.

No, I never tried to climb that wall.  After a childhood accident where I fell off a porch railing and broke a wrist I decided not to climb things where I could severely hurt myself.  (I did later go cliff diving – repeatedly – but water landings aren’t so bad.)

Flash forward to our school’s end-of-the-year field day celebration.  A couple enterprising students looked at that wall and had the same thoughts I had – without the “Oh, we could probably really hurt ourselves” thoughts to go with them.

Fortunately these students were far from unsupervised, and stern words and looks managed to stop them before they got more than a couple feet off the ground.

So what does this have to do with education?

Everything.

My experience kept me from climbing that wall, and my experience kept those students from doing the same.  They hadn’t yet learned that the benefit of climbing that wall (“Look how high I am!” “Look what I can do!”) was overshadowed by the drawback of a potential injury.

Switch gears to a Kindergarten classroom, where the teacher has decided not to let her kids use oil pastels because the benefits of learning a new media do not (in his or her mind) outweigh the drawbacks of potential hard to clean messes.

Switch again to a classroom where students are not allowed to create blogs because the perceived risks (Do I have to list them?) don’t outweigh the perceived benefits.

I’ve seen many teachers, administrators, and parents that thought of climbing a brick wall with no safety gear in the same light as student blogging, cell phones in schools, oil pastels in Kindergarten, or even letting special needs students use scissors.

What’s the difference?

The difference is that we as teachers would be fools to ignore taking proper precautions before a learning activity.

I’ve blogged about this before.

I argue that it’s not the same thing if we keep safety in mind.  Let the Kindergarten students use oil pastels after setting out “placemats” (newspaper works fine) and reminding them that when a color is done it goes back in the box.  Let students blog in a moderated setting, perhaps even in a “walled garden” environment where only the students, school employees, and parents can see what’s being said.

When a student wants to climb a wall, for goodness’ sake give them a helmet, safety line, and something soft to land on.

Then cheer with them when they see how high they can go.

Presented by Roxanne Dean & Linda Jones, both from Baltimore County.

• Honestly, could anyone who knows me expect me to attend any other session?  It’s Art! It’s Technology! This is what I do.
• Demonstrating Voicethread used to teach a lesson on drawing a human face.
• “At this point they haven’t thrown me out.” Said RE: How many Voicethread pages she has.
• 5th graders drew self portraits then turned them into contour line drawings and learned about Andy Worhol.
• “Why do you think we need to do this in contour?”
• They reproduced their drawings on the computer.  No scanning or photography?  Would be nice to have the time for that.  In my case I may have to use something like this to digitise student work.
• Showing Art Content Standards.  Yes, this is an art lesson!  It’s not just token “Let’s color something and say we did art!”
• Showing lots of Pop Art.  Comment about how things that Warhol thought were important are not recognised by today’s kids.  Interesting snapshots of the culture at the time.
• So apparently Voicethread lets you record video with your voice.  That could be helpful for students who are ESOL or have certain disabilities.  Seeing someone’s lips move as they talk can certainly help to aid comprehension in some cases.  (It helped me in college, especially with some professors who had strong accents.)
• A cow is used to signal clean-up time.  Students expect it and are used to the routine.  Makes me wonder how I might implement a similar strategy – perhaps with a school mascot?
• Students used the paint brush tool in Pixie to redraw their line drawings.
• Copy/paste used to get 4 identical panels, then the panels were colored separately with the paint bucket.  (Watch out for cracks!  The colors will leak through!)
• While this was done with Pixie, I see how this could be done with other art programs.  GIMP, SUMOPaint, TuxPaint, Frames, even!  … Am I starting to sound like a broken record?
• “Zoho” used to embed art on a site for parents to see progress.
• Showing an example made starting with a photo.  Apparently the photo needs to be “glued” to keep it from fading.  I imagine layer settings could protect it in GIMP/Photoshop/SUMOPaint.
• “Photoshop is a little advanced for 5th grade.”  Not if my 3rd graders are making vector graphics in Frames.  Give me a day or two and they can do it.
• A conference is not worthwhile if you don’t find something you can take with you and use the next school day.  This presentation is all I need for MSET to be worth it, and it’s only the 2nd session!  Can we say this is an awesome conference? Yes we can!

Presented by Diane Boarman, Howard County

This is possibly one of the smallest rooms I’ve ever been in, and there are few if any empty chairs.  Meanwhile the walls are doing little to block out the noise of convention center staff moving things around.  Nevertheless, the show must go on.

• Created her first animation using Layers in Photoshop, but her school didn’t have Photoshop.
• Switched to placing images in PowerPoint.
• Suggests PlayDoh for claymation.  If the lesson takes a while the PlayDoh can dry out, even with sealing it regularly though.  Parafin based clays can be purchased at craft stores and never dry out.
• Make sure slides are imported in order – some programs have a fit and put slide 10 in front of slide 2 because 1 is more than 2, right?  Watch for that.
• Still suggesting Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.  On a shoestring budget I’ll use GIMP.org or SUMOPaint.com.
• Images not in the rectangle for a PowerPoint slide will not show up.  GREAT way to organise elements that will be moving in or out of the frame later.
• “Insert -> Duplicate Slide, then move something.” Repeat ad nausium, but it WORKS and students can understand it.
• What’s also good about this is if students make the switch to Frames these skills should carry over.  Frames is more powerful than PowerPoint but PowerPoint will get the job done with most of the tools you need.
• PowerPoint 2008 no longer supports photo editing?  Ugh, didn’t they learn when Apple cut features out of iMovie?  Hm, apparently they did but they learned the wrong lesson.
• Word Art to make titles for your animation – more flexibility than using the built in title generator in iMovie or MovieMaker.
• “Save As -> Select JPEG.”  Check “Save All” and change the name to prevent overwriting.  A simple “ver1,ver2, ver3″ is enough.
• “Save often.”  Good advice for almost any lesson.
• When you import your slides in set the timing for as short as possible and turn Ken Burns Effect off!  Honestly, that effect is overused and makes your animation into an earthquake simulation.
• You don’t need to use clip art – you can draw things with Autoshapes, also.
• Animations imported into PowerPoint will not be animated when exported as JPEG files.  Don’t bother playing with transitions in PowerPoint.
• “Do we have enough time?” We have 20 minutes left.  She breezed through.
• The video she’s showing is very amusing and a mix of live action and animation.
• Did she just call GIMP “Free shareware?”  She did.  It’s not shareware.  It’s just free.