Designated Doodler

Here are the important tips about teaching art that you won't find in your first year teacher's survival guide. 1. Only leave out on the table the supplies that you want each grade to use. Little kids are like bloodhounds that can find a marker in a crayon stack, and it only takes one marker to mess up a project! 2. Never give your kids the color black, unless you are using it specifically, or their work will be 90% black. I'd also go ahead and pop out all of the black cakes in the watercolor palettes. 3. Demonstrate how to do absolutely everything, from using a glue stick properly to how to do the project, step by step. 4. Start the year off by immediately telling the kids that they will always, ALWAYS, only get ONE SHEET OF PAPER. Unless you want to singlehandedly destroy the rainforest, do not hand out paper like it's candy. Instill in the kids that their work is precious and should take time and care. And if they make mistakes, they need to think of ways...

You'd think that a person who got twelve hours of sleep last night wouldn't be daydreaming about a nap, yet hereI am. It just looks so dark outside, despite sunset being three hours away. My class starts at 7:00. It's so incredible being able to teach others art...painting. And although it hasn't started yet I can picture all of the paints arranged neatly in their plates, the fidgety faces staring back at me, worried about their paintings that don't exist yet. But then I talk and their expressions relax. I move and they move and our canvases go from white to finished. And the best ones, the best paintings, are done by those who can shut their brains off. Turn their anticipation for perfection off. Stop thinking. It's probably why I'm an artist. It's the strongest drug. Let go of everything, just move, and when you're done you have this beautiful expression of thought. But you can't think too much when making it. It's a delicate process th...