Back to School, but NOT back to Normal

This is my life now.  It's Sunday afternoon and I'm looking for images to use for buttons on my Canvas courses that I have to have finished before Friday.  It's easier for me to make transparent backgrounds and download and cut and paste on my mac than it is for me to do on my chromebook at school so I am trying to anticipate what I might want or need tomorrow morning.  I just got out of the shower and I'm in my jammies but I am looking for fun clothes for my bitmoji to wear.  Sigh. Actual clothes are not looking too good for actual me today.

School started back for teachers officially on August 7th this year.  I went in a couple of days earlier that week to pack up my classroom as I was told that I, like all the other exploratory teachers on my hallway, would have to make room for the fifth grade teachers who would be moving up to the middle school to make more room for social distancing in their respective elementary schools.  After I came out of shock from the disbelief of being displaced from my room and being overwhelmed from the thought of packing up and moving 15 years worth of art teacher stuff, I tried to get my head on straight and deal with it.  We are all making sacrifices this year for sure.

My county in NC has decided to go with a hybrid model of returning to school dubbed 'Plan B'.  For middle school, that means that we will have 3 separate groups of students.  Group A students will come 1 week, while Group B students will be learning online from home.  When Group B students are F2F in school, Group A students will be learning online from home.  Group C students are 100% virtual.  Along with other measures put in place such as all students staying in one room while teachers move from class to class,  scheduled breaks for bathroom and water and a shortened school day, we are hoping that this keeps all of us safe and well.  For me and the exploratory team, this means that our classes are 100% online and we will be 'seeing' our students during their 'virtual' weeks via Canvas.

OMG.  Canvas, y'all.  Not gonna lie, I've been a Google Classrooms girl for the last few years and I sort of dug my heels in about Canvas because IF IT'S NOT BROKE DON'T FIX IT and Google Classrooms was perfect for what I needed it to be.  But the powers that be have decided that we needed to use one online platform and be consistent across grade levels, the county, apparently the state of North Carolina and what seems to be the entire U.S. of A and rightly so. I mean, parents.  You poor things.  At least we get an inservice or two. But why oh why didn't I buy stock in Instructure, the parent company of Canvas I am just sayin.  

BUT holy cow the learning curve on this thing is steep.  I'm not a complete idiot.  I used to be the 'Webmaster' at my old school when the internet was still a baby and we thought life was great when we got T1 lines installed one summer.  I think I might be on the upside of it but all I have to say is thank goodness for YouTube Videos, Message Boards, and friends who are just a text away, or down the hall or across the classroom.  There have been so many questions and a lot of uncertainty.

 

But y'all.  I am kind of excited.  I have the best principal in the world and he is letting me teach different this year.  I had this idea in the spring when life was crazy and we didn't know what end was up and I was churning out projects for my kiddos to do on a daily basis that it would be super cool, if in the fall we didn't go back to school in a normal way (little did I know) that instead of teaching straight 6th, 7th and 8th grade art online, that I could teach courses that fit easily into an online model.  So, I will be teaching Photography, Anime' and Digital Art, Drawing and Crafts.  Students get to choose which section they want to be in for the semester and hopefully this will motivate them to participate, which we all found to be an obstacle this spring.  I hope that I will be able to share some great success with this new project of mine and that I will have made some lemonade out of the lemons we've been handed this year.

Like I said to some of my colleagues earlier today, none of us chose to be in this mess that we are in right now, the least of all our students.  I am bound and determined to give them the best experience they can have in this weird year that 2020 has turned out to be.  All I can ask is that you wish us well, send out some good vibes to the universe and say a bunch of prayers for us all.  We are going to need them, along with your support and a lot of grace.  We are all going to be first year teachers and administrators tomorrow (and in the next coming weeks), even those of us with 30 years of first days behind us.   

 

Wishes, Supplies and Back to School

The month of August is upon us!  A teacher friend of mine posted this meme not too long ago and it is so true! 

It seems that once August 1st. hits the calendar, summer is for all intents and purposes, over, no matter what day you report back to school.  Our 'official' teacher back to school day is August 16th. (students report on August 28th.), but my team has already been at work for a few hours this week creating our class lists for the first semester of the school year.  We are VERY grateful to be able to do this-it benefits all of us to be able to sort our students according to personalities and being that we teach them all, for all 3 years that they are in middle school we become very aware of classroom placement and it's advantages for everyone.

I've been asked to report early to our Central Office on the afternoon of the 15th. to be trained on how to train other teachers on one of the required district training days.  If you are a teacher and you are reading this, I'm sure you are smiling and nodding your head. So that is another day of my summer vacay gone.

Am I ready?  Yes and no.  It's been a good summer.  I pretty much got NOTHING on my list done that I wanted to get done, which is typical for me but I'm okay with that.  I went to the beach with my bestie for a few days which was awesome.  I had lunch with friends that exist only in cyberspace for the rest of the year.  I went to the movies.  I ripped up my carpet (I can't even...) and I have tried to embrace the change that always comes with each new school year.

I've missed my team.  I am so lucky that I work with a bunch of people that I call my friends.  So, I'll be glad to spend my days with them again.  I've missed my kids.  Mostly all of them.  I've missed being creative every. single. day. I've missed being on a schedule.  I've missed wearing pants. Ha ha. No, I haven't.  Really. No, I haven't.  

Every year, I try to avoid WalMart and Target this time of the year because of all the Back To School displays and this year is no different.  I did end up going to Target the other day (where I ran into teammate Nick, PE and Health teacher extraordinaire) looking for pastel crayola markers  which seem to be in short supply this year and I did find a few.  I haven't had to purchase as much stuff this year out of my own $$ because I've either 1. hoarded way too much in past years or 2. been frugal and stingy when passing out supplies over the last couple of years.  That being said, there are ALWAYS a few things that I can use in my art room that are either used up at the speed of light or too expensive for my meager budget.  I've created an AMAZON WISH LIST that you can access here or through the tab at the top of this page.  It will be updated throughout the year, shipped directly to Albemarle Middle School and greatly appreciated if you are so inclined to bless us with your generosity.  Thank you in advance.  

Here's to another great school year!

We're Back!

Y’all.  Summer. Is. Over.  I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the faster they go.  We just finished a week and a half of professional days and our babies come back this Monday.  As far as opening weeks go, I’ll have to hand it to my principal because these were some of the least painful workdays that I have experienced in my 26 years of teaching.  Yes, I started teaching when I was 7. We had the requisite full day of back to school meetings on the first day, accompanied by a wonderful lunch of barbeque (I’m in NC.  It’s a rule) provided by our amazing PTO.  We had a ½ day, that was more like a couple of hours with the district one morning to talk about the ASW testing that we are going to have to do this year (more on that in a future blog post) and the middle school art teachers (all 4 of us) went to lunch and then back to my classroom to do a little planning that afternoon.  We had a ½ day of health and safety training and another ½ day of PBIS training but other than that, we were free to work in our classrooms.  What a treat!

Having all this time to get ourselves in order has been a blessing.  Did I mention that about a week before we got back to work I dislocated my elbow?  And by dislocated I don’t mean ‘Oops, my elbow slipped out of joint’, I mean full on bent backwards at 90 degrees and the most agonizing pain in the history of pain. I’ve been in a sling with orders to keep it immobile which is easier said than done.  It gets better every day and I think I’ll be okay but this wasn’t the way that I wanted to start my school year, when there is always so much work to be done.  With the help of my amazing colleagues my room is ready to go.  

So, this was the inside of my elbow.  The bruise eventually made it all the way down to my wrist.  With the help of some arnica gel, lysine and bromelain, the bruise is almost gone.

An outside company was hired to strip our floors and when I walked into my classroom on day 2, all of my tables were up on end and my room looked like the hedge maze from The Shining.  Once our custodians got the tables, my desk, bookshelves and everything else in place for me, I needed HELP getting the rest of everything out of my supply closet.  Thinking about the rotten timing of my elbow injury and knowing that somewhere there was a reason for my suffering, I realized that I might need to be reminded how fortunate I really am.  It is SO HARD for me to ask for help.  I struggle with it.  It tortures me.  I’ll try to do anything in my power to not ask for help.  Pride?  Yep.  But also that feeling of not wanting to bother anyone with my troubles.  I had no choice in this matter because there was no way that I could do it all myself so I sent out an email asking for help and was richly rewarded.  Lesson.  Learned.  

See how shiny my floors are?  Still a little bit of fine tuning to do here but it's almost ready.

4 kids per table this year in most of my classes.  1 on each side.  I think that should work well.

My space in the background of the picture.  I might designate the round table as space for extra special' students.  It might be a nice reward.

My little reading area in the back.  The book shelf is full of art history books and artist biographies. To sit back there, you have to do a little bit of artist research or art criticism before you can relax in one of the comfy chairs and draw, read or color.

We had 2 open houses this week, one for 6th grade, which is always fun with the little ones coming into Middle School nervous and looking like deer caught in the headlights and one for our 7th and 8th graders.  Our ‘old pro’s’ came in with hugs and smiles, some looking like they grew a ½ foot over the summer.  There were also a lot new faces in the crowd of students that came to get their schedules and meet the teachers.  Some from the redistricting that was recently done in our county, but we also seemed to get quite a few students from neighboring counties and some as far away as the coast.  It’s always fun to meet new students and I hope that they will be able to get over their nerves quickly and know that they are a part of our family. I remember what it was like to be the ‘new kid’ when my parents bought a house in between my first and second grade years. I have a few things to do this weekend to be ready for Monday when the big yellow buses pull up in the driveway but I am looking forward to school starting back.  Even after all these years, the first day of school is filled with nervous excitement and anticipation.  I am wishing all my teacher friends out there a wonderful, successful school year!

2:00 a.m. ramblings on grading, assessment and the upcoming school year.

It’s the middle of the night here in the middle of North Carolina and I can’t sleep.  My mind is on school.  (NO!)  It’s August (Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?) and there are but a couple of precious weeks left in the summer of 2015.  With all of the Back To School commercials on the teevee and the Back To School sections that popped up weeks ago in my favorite stores that I am now avoiding, it is getting more difficult to ignore the fact that the 2015-2016 school year will soon be upon us.  I am not giving up on summer yet and I have one more adventure planned but my brain is thinking how to set up my classroom, what to do the first day, the first week, what am I going to do different than I have in years past, what can I keep the same? And I can't sleep. Sigh.

One thing that I struggle with each year is grading.  How do I communicate how I assign grades?  I have rubrics and posters that illustrate expectations and standards that are written on the board.  I show students exemplars that are teacher or student made. Still, it seems that the point is missed by many. Some might argue that it is impossible to grade an art project because it is subjective.  Most of those ‘some’ might be my students who might argue that I ‘gave’ them an inferior grade when they clearly completed the task at hand and that I am just making up grades based on my mood, or if I like them or how close to the end of the grading period it is. What my students (and their parents, ahem) should know that in many ways, grading is the hardest part of my job, which is why I have spent most of my career trying to figure out a way to communicate how I assign grades.

After a lot of thought and research culled from many different sources, I think that I have come up with a philosophy that fits in my classroom and the way that we work in the Bulldog Art Room.  

What my students need to know:

• Fair isn’t always equal.  Most of my classes have students in them with special needs.  We all need to work up to our levels of ability but what we all need to understand is we all have different levels of ability. My students (and their parents) might not understand that Susie sees an occupational therapist 2x a weeks to work with her on her fine motor skills and I take that into account when I am grading her work.  I am a visual arts specialist and I have been trained to do this.  It’s not just a magical assignment of arbitrary grades.  Coincidentally, when Johnny breaks his right wrist on the football field during the homecoming game, which is of course the hand that he writes (and paints, and draws) with and I take that into account when I am grading his work, too.
• We give grades to give you constructive feedback.  Like any other class, you should look where you have succeeded and where you may have fallen short and try to do better the next time.
• Just because you turn something in doesn’t mean that you get a 100%.  That’s all I have to say on that.
• I can tell when you rushed through something because you were being lazy or just tired of doing something.  I’m kind of smart that way.
• Yes, grading art is kind of subjective.  That is why I have my students put their names on the back of their work. My first impression of your work when I am sitting with it with a pile of other similar works is usually spot on.  But grading art is also kind of qualitative.  I am looking at the QUALITY of your work as well.  I look for how you used the materials you were given.  I look at the neatness of your work.  I look at how far you pushed yourself creatively.  Then I look at your name.   I try to be as objective as I possibly can.  
• If you are interested in more information about Qualitative Assessment, click here.

These are some of the things that I am going to be looking for from my art students this year:

• Comes to class prepared, daily.
• Works collaboratively.
• Learns how to manage time well.
• Follows school rules and having integrity.
• Shows creative, innovative thinking.
• Handles conflict appropriately.
• Has a good attitude.
• Has high standards for themselves and their work.
• Is committed to responsibilities outside of class.
• Is an effective communicator.
• Is flexible.
• Is a leader.
• Sees that a less than successful experience as an opportunity for growth.

This is from the NC Visual Arts Essential Standards:

From the beginning of time, the compulsion to create a visual vocabulary has been as innate in every society as the desire to acquire a system of spoken symbols. Visual art from past civilizations is frequently one of the few remaining clues with the power to illuminate which values were held most dear. Today, every aspect of our designed environment will serve to explain who we are to those of the future. The pattern of human growth in society is to develop a multi-sensory means of communicating symbols and values. A child discovers objects, those objects take on meaning, and this meaning is denoted and communicated through the various means of expression available to that child. The visual arts program is designed to develop visual literacy by promoting fluency in the various modes of visual communication. Students learn the visual arts by using a wide range of subject matter, media, and means to express their ideas, emotions, and knowledge. They evaluate the merits of their efforts and this assessment forms the basis for further growth that extends to all disciplines in school and to life. Visual arts education is a multifaceted creative process which includes the development of perceptual awareness and the ability to use materials expressively. Through participation in visual arts, students have the opportunity to recognize and celebrate the creativity and diversity inherent in all of us.

I’d love to hear from you and how you tackle grading and assessment in your classrooms. Until then, I'd better turn out my light and try to get back to sleep. It's going to be hard enough to get back to a normal sleeping schedule as it is. Good night, all!

School Supplies

I went to Hobby Lobby today and it seems that the pumpkins and pilgrims had been out for some time and the little worker elves were busy setting up Christmas decorations.  I suppose then that it is not preemptive of me to go ahead and post my back to school supply list.

You can find all the AMS class supply lists here at Teacher Lists. Just type in our zip code and choose Albemarle Middle School.

But, because I am visual here's what you need as an AMS Bulldog Visual Art Student for the 15-16 school year.

Visual Arts Supply List

1  1-2" 3-ring binder for sketches, notes and brainstorming.  Wait.  What?  Notes? IN ART?  WTH, MizzSmiff?

Colored Pencils.  Optional but STRONGLY encouraged.

Markers.  Also optional, but STRONGLY encouraged.

Sharpies or something similar.

Pencils.  EVERY DAY.  Bring a pencil to my class.  These are my favorite #2 pencils but honestly, please just bring a pencil to my class.  Please.

An eraser.  These erasers are my very favorite and once you use one, it will be your favorite, too.  We all make mistakes.  We all need a do over.  These erasers are the best and I use them all the time.  Yes, I make mistakes.  All. The. Time.

You also might want to get a pencil box or pouch to keep your supplies in. Label everything.  

In the meantime, don't think about school and enjoy your summer.  Go outside and play, even though it is hot out there.  It will be August 25th before we know it. I'll see you then!

Crayons

I teach Middle School and we don't use a lot of crayons, but I have to admit that I LOVE them. Did you know that crayola produces nearly 3 billion crayons a year? That's 12 million a day! There are over 120 colors (not including specialty colors) and blue is the favorite. I love everything about crayons. I love the colors, I love the names and I could get lost in the scent. Everything you want to know about Crayola but aren't afraid to ask. Who thinks this is the best Back-to-School supply, ever?

Today, I might just go get myself a nice box of brand new crayons. And then I will sort them by color in the box. Anyone else ever do that? Okay, just me. Never mind. What is your favorite Back-to-School supply? I'd love to hear from you!