Black History Month, a TAB project

TAB: Teaching Artistic Behaviors. I am on a journey now, into the TAB universe. The TAB classroom is choice-based. It personalizes learning and makes differentiation so much easier. Students take responsibility for their learning and self-assess their progress, and state and national standards still get addressed. Basically, students get to choose what they work on, according to your guidelines and with your careful facilitation.

I’m sure I’m going about it in the stupidest way possible, but let’s not forget that my path to success has always been a windy one (a Jeremy Bearimy, if you will).

So,

I provided my Art 2 with a short list of Black artists with interesting visual styles. I tried to curate it a little bit, not to censor or keep anyone off the list, but to give them a good starting point rather than a novel to sift through. However, the list consisted of only names. I didn’t include any sort of description of the person or what type of art they do so the students would have to discover that on their own, without skipping anyone for a pointless reason. 

I tried to keep it varied, including painters, illustrators, graffiti artists, current artists, artists from other decades, well known, lesser-known, men, women, and other. 

The list:

Faith Ringgold
Jacob Lawrence
Betye Saar
Jonathan Green
Radcliffe Bailey
Romare Bearden
Billy Graham
(the artist, not the preacher)
Kehinde Wiley
Margaret Taylor-Burroughs
Horace Pippin
Aaron Douglas
Alma Thomas
Corey Barksdale
Jerry Pinkney
Lina Iris Viktor
Jean Michele Basquiat
Ezi Wear
Xane Asiamah
Jordan Casteel
Jamea Richmond-Edwards
Ebony G. Patterson

The students can use a computer, tablet, or phone to Google the artists. The main requirement that they have on this project is to choose an artist that they like or whose style they’d like to be inspired by and go from there. The rest will play out in the same way as our last project, which was completely open-ended. The students could choose their medium, size, substrate (surface), and subject. Most limitations came from what we have available in the room. Otherwise, anything appropriate is allowed. This is Art 2 so they’ve already learned the basics of how to use the tools and how to clean up after themselves, so that’s why I’ve skipped some of the early instructional parts of TAB with them.

It’s all experimental from here. They are my guinea pigs and I am a mad scientist. All I really want is for them to become explorative and learn that they have no limits on learning. In the reality of only having tried this for the past 2 weeks with no formal training, I’ve received mixed results, basic artwork, and plenty of students not doing much of anything. The few students who were already good and interested in pushing themselves are going to thrive in this environment. I *have* seen many students who have never done anything at all in my room start working on their own art, and that is my goal for the rest of them. The process itself should create some self-motivation within these kids, but I’m seeing a lot of hesitation. I think it’s part laziness and part confusion. We’ll get there. I hope.

 

“The dot above the ‘i’ contains Tuesdays, July, and the point where ‘nothing never occurs.'”

#Goals

For posterity, here are my new work-related goals:

• Transition all of my classes *and* classroom to a TAB environment (more info to come)
• Read books on TAB
• Get my certification to teach AP art
• Attend an art education conference
• Continue to thrive at my current school, becoming more active and involved, OR, if we move (which is kind of a goal), make a positive move into a great art teaching position

And non-work-related goals:

• Read non-school-related books, avg 1/month
• Sell *more (?) art
• Enter *more (?) art shows
• Participate in more plays and musicals (avg 1 full production/yr)

 

It’s been fun reading back through this blog about past unknowns and now I’m living that future. If that makes sense. 5 years from now, that will happen again and again in another 5. I can only hope that I keep climbing uphill.

I’m Back, Baby!

A short but long-ish recap of the last 5 years:

Hey, it’s been a while, but I’m back! It’s been close to 5 years since I started this blog, chronicling my misadventures in the exciting world of substitute teaching. My children were in kindergarten and second grade. I was juggling babies, married life, school, several jobs with no set schedule, and the resulting anxiety. In my last post, you could feel the weight of the uncertainty mixed with a light veil of depression. My first long-term sub position had ended (the last 3 months of the year, 6th grade English) and I was back to being ocean trash… a piece of micro plastic in a vast sea, swooshed around by the currents, waiting for a turtle to swallow me up forever.

-The job led to an interview that did not lead to a job. I gained a number of contacts (who would later become my daughters’ teachers and principal) and a lot of experience.

-Substitute teaching continued to fill me with existential dread and crippling anxiety every day for months on end. It wasn’t the jobs, they were generally fine. I worked everything from special ed to kindergarten to drivers ed to music to 5th grade math to gym to Spanish 2 to graphic arts. I basically couldn’t live with the system calling me at 5:00 and going to a place I’ve never been, meet people I’ve never met, work with kids I’ve never seen, and having about 20 minutes to look at a plan, if they had one, and figure out how I was going to teach it and/or get through a day. I kept doing it (sparingly) because I wanted my own classroom and I wanted to teach.

-At the end of the next year, I was called for another long term job at my former Catholic elementary school (the last 3 months of the year, again! 3rd grade classroom). The job led to an interview that did not lead to a job. I gained a number of contacts (who were at one time my own teachers as well as fellow classmates) and a lot of experience.

-At the end of another summer in retail, 2 weeks before the first day of school, I was asked by a teacher friend if I’d like to take on a long term sub to start the year at her school. It was my “dream job”– high school art. This school’s art department (the largest in the state!) had one of their teachers move to another school at the last minute. I dove right in. I was given 7 sections of Art 1 with freshmen. I didn’t know at the time that this was kind of a horrible nightmare of a schedule, so I took it in stride all the same. The head of the department complemented my teaching, which boosted my confidence as I prepared to interview to take on the position permanently

-Long story short, I am now right in the middle of my 4th year of teaching in my own art classroom. I’ve taught 9th-12th grade, all inclusion classes, Art 1, Art 1 for graphics (a pre req to the computer graphics course), Art 2, Art 3, and Developmental Guidance (life lessons for freshmen). I’ve participated in teacher work stoppages (kind of like a strike), a strike, protests at school and at the state capitol, teacher talent shows, spirit weeks, teacher art shows, and the daily grind.

-Statistics show that many educators leave the profession within their first 5 years. So far, I’m sticking it out, although I believe that’s one of the many reasons I didn’t start my career until my 30’s. I’m ok with change, but it’s also so easy to stay complacent.

-See new posts for why I decided to start blogging again and my goals for upcoming years! 🙂