starting a new chapter of life...well a new part of a new chapter. more like a new chapter in a new volume of the library that is my life. oh god shut up!
anyway, i am going to be starting a new job as a high school art teacher on Monday and it's kind of making my brain hurt thinking about it. I mean I have worked with kids, well, since I was a kid...taught kids since high school, and even study how to teach them while in college. and then right after college i went into teaching. but none of this involved teaching visual arts. i have done visual arts, well, forever really, but studied them since high school and minored in them (as much as you can minor in anything at Bennington College) in college. So really when you look at it everything seems to be in place to make this a pretty perfect situation...except for the fact that I am now going to have to recall all that shit my teachers tried to teach me while i was doodling or daydreaming (i'm very good at that!) and teach it to a bunch of kids who will be doing the same thing......hmmmm. at least i won't be sitting on my butt in front of a computer all day doing NOTHING.
one problem i am having is i really can't stand when i run into people who just want to talk about how the feel about art and how it effects the world. i have the same problem with theater. i love it but for the love of Buddha when people start talking about it in deep conversations i just want to punch things.
...so i am searching the internet for things to teach these kids and searching my brain for things I learned in high school. and i really tried to block most of high school out, so i'm coming up short.
There are so many simple, relatively inexpensive printmaking methods that are both fun and interesting - like monoprinting and relief printing - and of course screenprinting is always a hit, but a bit harder to carry off.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite art classes in high school was "mixed media" which is what it sounds like - just a mishmash of a bunch of different techniques and forms - we were basically given these very basic artmaking tools and then told to slam 'em together however we liked and that was magic.
I also LOVE LOVE LOVE cyanotype - which is more accessible than a lot of other chemical/developement processes!
Funny funny writing! I'm smiling big. Art is the doing, but the teacher has to plan a little!
ReplyDeleteAnd don't forget this link from Heather:
http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/