Art Day: Intervention and Supplemental Opportunities

Last year, I had a crazy idea to meet one of my failing seniors in the library and work with him to complete the art projects he needed to pass and graduate. It worked! He successfully completed art right in front of my eyes. At that point I thought it would be great to offer this opportunity to more students. Lots of organizing and paperwork later, Art Day was born!

Yesterday, myself and 3 other teachers on my team, met at our school headquarters to facilitate a day of making art with failing students, many of them seniors. We each invited our struggling students and set up a room with 5 different stations for various projects in Art 1. We provided lunch, materials, and instruction. The result was awesome! The students really enjoyed working side by side and creating artwork. They are also now all passing and I am hoping Art Day will give them the confidence to continue working on their own.

On Art Day, we also had the opportunity to invite our advanced students to paint ceiling tiles for our headquarters building. Selected students from all levels of art were invited to paint the tiles and I am so impressed with their work! It was a really great day and fun to get both groups together for a day of artmaking.

Welcoming

Over the last week I have been preparing my classroom for students. Now, of course that doesn't mean I am putting up posters or arranging chairs and supplies. For me, it's all digital organizing. I've been pulling web content together from my Gold Course (houses all of the Art 1 curriculum pages) and making my own adjustments. One of these adjustments includes a welcome video message to my students which I hope will help ease their fears of being judged on talent in my class. A common barrier I run into with students is their belief that they cannot draw, and therefore will fail my class. I spend many phone calls convincing them that this isn't true. This year I created a video to address this concern right away, and it also let's them see my face on their first day.

I also created another Glass video about my Pattern Project. I am hoping to engage and excite students with these videos year. Tomorrow, my students begin the 2013-2014 school year. I look forward to our adventures!

Getting Prepared for Graduation

As the year comes to a close, I have been spending a lot of time getting ready for my students' graduation. This is a very exciting time for everyone at the school as our graduation is always a big event! Last year our graduating class was the largest in the state. Many of our students are some of the first in their families to graduate high school and we work hard to make it a special occasion for them. This year we have some innovative things going on such as a "Twitter Party", an Instagram Photo booth, live stream of the event, and (my part) a Senior Art Slide Show. I have spent the last month going through artwork from art classes that seniors have created. This means going back 4 years in some cases. It was fun to go through all the artwork I have collected last year and this year to put together a show that recognizes our graduating artists!

Check out a snippet from the show (names have been removed):

Show it off: Literary Magazine Online

Many brick and mortar schools have literary magazines, a publication that is produced monthly/annually that displays the best of student written work and visual artwork. We also have one as an online school. Each school year the teachers in the art department save the best student artwork and submit it at the end of the year for entry into our literary magazine, titled "Keystrokes". The English department collects written work from students. We create printed versions of the publication (limited) as well as an online version that students are able to share with friends and family. One of my Art 1 students from last year created the painting on the cover for 2012. For those of you who have requested to see more examples of student work from my school, check out the 2012 issue of Keystrokes for a closer look! 

Click the image to download Keystrokes