Time

I am very critical of how time is spent in the classroom, as the most important thing to me and my students is that they have the maximum possible to work on their individual and group projects.  I feel uncomfortable taking up more then five minutes of their time, but there are always announcements, new materials and techniques, artists in the news, questions about art, and a million other things we could share in that short introduction.  I have to consider what would make the most impact on the class as a whole, and at the same time include required state and local standards, and required vocabulary.

Shortening my time with the group as a whole also increases the time I have with each individual student.  Considering 36 weeks of school, less at least 4 weeks for field trips, performances, field day and other athletic days, and absences, comes out to about 32 times in the art room per year.  Each time a student comes to art, they have about 35 minutes to work on their art.  (45 minutes, minus five for introduction and 5 for clean-up).  If I touch base with each student individually, that is 35 minutes divided by an average of 22 students, which is about a minute and a half per student per week.  One and a half minutes per week times 32 times per year is only 48 minutes for the entire school year.  In that amount of time I have to somehow make the child feel appreciated, assess and monitor their progress, and encourage their personal growth.  The young artists have to be independent.

In the past few years I have asked the students to fill out a planner for me to approve before they began a project, explaining their idea and needed materials, but I found it not to be worth the time, and this year I am trying something different.  Each student will have a checklist in their folder based on the TEKS (state requirements), and the new LISD fine arts curriculum.  It will help the students to be self-directed and it will help me keep track of what is being covered in class.  I will still expect students to write an artist statement when they are finished with their work and it is very encouraging that artist statements are in the new art TEKS.

Thanks for reading.  Here are some fun paper sculptures from the last few weeks: