There is a powerful, life-giving phenomenon, called the Humboldt Current, in the Pacific Ocean of South America. Its positive effects reach for miles to unlikely places and in unlikely ways. These are my education goals for the children I teach on the North Dakota prairie -- fall in love with learning, then go change your world…

Saturday, September 29, 2012

The Career After This One

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I want to teach art. 

If you ask any garden-variety elementary student what their favorite part of school is, you are going to get one of three answers.  They will either say recess (the all-time #1 choice, the world over), PE (a distant second), or art (a very close third).  The second runner-up on my (very scientifically administered) poll is shared by boys and girls alike.  Kids like art.  They just do.  I think there are a number of reasons for this.

·      They get to be messy
·      They get to watch their beloved teacher spaz out when they get too close to her new cream colored sweater with paint covered hands.
·      They get to be creative (which is frustratingly sparse the rest of the week).

And the number one reason kids love art…

It is truly an intoxicatingly relaxing hour at the end of a nut-so week.

Plus, what kid doesn’t adore their art teacher?  And who couldn’t use more adoration in their life?

I am as fond of Friday art as the Darlings. I live for it and look forward to it all week.  I have always maintained that I have the soul of an artist and the hands of a plumber (my apologies to plumbers everywhere.  It’s just that you do not need graceful hands to do what you do).  I long to be a genius at painting and drawing (this will be my first request in heaven), but I am forced to settle for clumsy, mediocre stabs at best.  I do not care.  I don my metaphoric beret and create regardless.  I scribble and splotch and sculpt and print.  The end result is not pretty nor is it admired by others outside my immediate family who will admire or have food withheld.  It is not, after all, the finished product that gives the rush, it is the process.  We master artists all know this. 

Art is the counterbalance to a week filled with sled-dog learning.  I, the teacher, am the musher filling six-year-old brains with standards and test language and benchmarks.  That black cloud hangs constantly.  I do not love that component of teaching, frankly.  I am a little too free-spirited, I am afraid.  Ever hear of the Waldorf educational philosophy?  Google it sometime.  It sounds like Nirvana to me.  “Children, what interests YOU today??”  I could so totally copy and paste myself into that teaching dream.  And they probably make a gazillion dollars.  I only make half a gazillion, so the extra money would be really nice.

But alas, my paycheck comes from a different world that is fond of the Black Cloud and wants to keep it alive and well, so standards and testing language it is.  We plow through bravely and gamely and I try to explore as many of their whims and rabbit trails as time and tight schedule will allow.  But I noticed very shortly into my teaching career that an entirely different mood prevails on Friday afternoons.  It is like someone pipes oxygen into the building and all occupants take a deep, cleansing breath and exhale good vibes and peace.  It is the first glimmerings of a weekend break being taken out for a trial run.  It is the whisper of a change of pace.  It is the brain and body’s attempt to renew and restore.  And it is as necessary and needed as number concepts and phonemic awareness.  There is no real learning without a brain break to process it all.

And so, teachers the world over (I am guessing.  My scientific pollsters all quite on me) pull construction paper and paints and googley eyes out of overly stuffed closets and cupboards and make those crafty things that mothers live for.  You don’t really believe that refrigerators were invented for food preservation, do you??  There is nothing sadder to a teacher than watching the paper plate solar system mobile that took three art sessions to finish get folded/shoved/wadded into a too-small backpack for the journey home, never to be looked at again until Christmas break when mom cleans the darn thing out.

Here’s my second confession.  I hate crafty art projects.  No, it’s true.  I really do.  Most are pointless.  But mothers need them to prove that their children were really at school and that they have the makings of a budding Norman Rockwell, so I comply and send the stuff home with my Darlings.  Some of it is cutesy balootsy, but I long to teach them the Seven Elements of Art as well and introduce these children of the prairie to the great artists of this world.  Kandinsky is this week.  Monet and other impressionists will follow and a few American geniuses as well. 

Last Friday we tackled printmaking.  With apple season in full swing and all the glorious educational opportunities associated with them, I dug out the white construction paper and tempura paints.  I had found this idea during a google search last year (what in the name of Johnny Appleseed did teachers do before the internet??), and loved the results.  It is cheap, it is easy to prepare for and explain to six-year-olds, and it just feels like a fall thing to do.  PLUS, it satisfies craft-starved mothers AND introduces a true component of fine art. 

I fished around on my art cart until I located my brayer on the lower shelf behind the once-pretzel-filled plastic tub of paint shirts and set the Darlings to carefully pressing straight down on their paper with paint covered apple halves, “No dear, don’t smear.  Bring it straight up!”  Da Vinci could not have done better.  They were beautiful.  And I was rapturous.  Happy, peaceful children, soft piano music piped through the Bose speakers, and creativity flowing like mucus during a flu epidemic.  I sat at the kidney table guiding and watching and decided to do a little creating of my own.  Before you could say Mona Lisa, I had painted the leaves from the apples with green tempura and was busy filling in around my own prints with green leaves.  Now the children clamored to add leaves to their prints.  I brayed.  They pressed and we all ooh’d and aah’d over the results.

Title teachers and library specialists and my neighboring teachers popped in to ask a question or borrow a book or claim a child for services and all stayed a bit longer than needed to observe the creative process and relax in the atmosphere of peaceful bliss.  I was in Creative heaven.  I eventually became aware that the children had finished their work and had wandered to the bathroom to wash tempura off green, red, and orange hands.  They had even put their paint shirts back into the tub and were tidying up the classroom.  Good grief.  I should be more in charge. 

With my volleyball-playing-homecoming-attending daughter gone for the night, Mr. Dahl whisked me away for dinner.  As we sat waiting for our order to arrive (and wow, was I hungry!), I realized that I still had red paint stuck in my fingernails.  Glamour redefined, I guess…

Today I introduced eight children who live on the prairie, in the middle of nowhere, to the works of the father of abstract art, Wassilly Kandinsky.  I had an out-of-the-ballpark lesson plan well thought out and well prepared.  I had read through his biography, had a sample of today’s project I had done a few years back, and had all supplies laid out.  I am not usually this organized.  I am generally about three steps behind my planned schedule and on a search-and-rescue mission for brushes and stained paint shirts well into our art hour.

Today was different.  I think maybe it is because I was excited to introduce information into my student’s lives that is of interest to me.  The lesson went well.  The kids were interested in this man’s life and were impressed with his works.  “Whoa!!” was a constant cry as they flipped through the binder I had prepared of some his more famous works.  They liked this dude with the penchant for bold colors and use of geometric shapes.  They could identify with him.  He thought like a first grader.

I instructed them on how to trace geometric shapes onto their watercolor paper with crayon, add lines and dots, then cover the entire page with watercolor.  I stared in delighted wonder as their crayon resists began to emerge from colored backgrounds.  These were genuinely beautiful!  As usual, the students were theatrically gushy.  “I cannot believe we are doing this!”  “Thank you, Mr. Kandinsky, for showing us this!”  “Whoa!”  “Mrs. Dahl, look at THIS! …whoa….”  Whoa, indeed.

One of my most challenging students sat diligently tracing, coloring, then painting in careful, short strokes.  He was oblivious to the chatter and movement around him.  When he had applied the last bit of paint to cover all virgin white paper, he triumphantly held his paper up to me with a grin the size of Ohio.  I stared in amazed wonder.  His use of line and color sucked the air out of my lungs.  I nearly wept.  He was as gifted as he felt he was at that moment.

Being a classically trained musician, Kandinsky would paint with classical music playing in the background.  We did the same.  Vivaldi’s Four Seasons opened up the gates of creative flow for us today. Our corner of The Dungeon was the picture of peace itself.  The mood was quiet and joyful, the children engrossed in their work.  Mrs. Dahl was so buoyant she had to be scraped off the suspended ceiling tiles.  Three o’clock came.  Fifteen minutes until the bus bell would ring.  They were so close to finishing… “keep painting, my children1”  Miraculously, I had them all lined up at the door with backpacks on and filled with Friday letters and corrected homework by 3:14.  I dared not look around.  I knew Trevor was steaming west from Grand Forks.  I wanted to get out the door quickly and begin my weekend.  Spaghetti for supper, I think.  How long to clean up this tsunami?

Earlier movement across the hall in the second grade room caught my eye.  Were they really cleaning their desks out at only 2:58?  The room looked spotless.  How does she DO it???  The last minute flurry of questions, location of near-forgotten items, and jabber filled our last few moments and then the bell rang and they were gone.  I could no longer delay my honest assessment of the state of the Tree House.  It was bad.  REAL bad.  It was filthy, cluttered, and paint-splattered.  I grinned.  It was just as I most like it.  Our chromatopography leaf experiment was brewing nicely on the side table, drying art was laid on newspaper beside the shelves, cups of muddy water with brushes sticking out of them, like trees in a Louisiana swamp  dotted the work tables, the remnants of cut pages for, “Ten Black Dots,” lay in a pile next to my reading chair, and the reading easel was covered with books I had not yet put back on the shelves.  My desk and chair had open textbooks and ungraded worksheets scattered in untidy piles, with neon sticky notes directing me to “grade” or “file” or “make copies.” 

I was completely centered and happy at that moment.

I walked across the hall to the “Perfect Room.”  Doggonit, she even had Mondays work sitting on desktops, just ready and waiting for her lucky students to step back into the Wonderful World of Witt.  My poor lambs will stagger in on Monday and be greeted with careless stacks of papers, our science experiment still bubbling, and a half-torn leaf from the Plant That Won’t Die -- a donation to the previously mentioned science experiment.  I really need to let go of the perfect image dreams.  It ain’t gonna happen in my quasi-hippie world.

One of my all-time favorite books, “Willow,” by Denise-Brennen Nelson, tells the story of a young art student who is incapable of following status quo.  Her passion for creativity ignites the stone cold heart of her crotchety art teacher, transforming her from head to toe.  I can relate.  If it were up to me, Friday art would also happen Monday through Thursday. 

Little Sally Sue was distraught when she learned it was time to go home.  “I don’t want to leave!  I wish we could live with you.  We could do art everyday!!”  Yes!!  A protégée.  She’s got the sickness…

So, yeah, I can just envision THAT conversation with my husband, “… what would you think of my going back to school?”  (him) “Would you work less hours?”  (me) “No.”  (him) “Would you make more money?”  (me – meekly) “No.”  (an incredulous him), “Would there be ANY advantages??” (me – in a whisper) “No.”  “Then why in the world…?”  “Cuz…. I just really like Friday art and… (grasping for straws here) you love me??”  I could play the bucket list card, I suppose. 

Yeah, I don’t think that is happening…  PLUS, I would be something like one hundred and thirty seven before I could wrap up another degree and embark on Career the Sequal.  But hey, a bucket list is a bucket list, right??

I guess I’ll have to settle for Friday adoration.  It will save me money on cream-colored sweaters…

The Versatile Apple!

Color copies turns this riot of color into "designer" paper for our class book


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