Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for our teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.

Last week I talked with Dr. Theresa Haugen about advocacy in the art room and how we can advocate for our programs, for the arts and for the benefit of our students. Today’s conversation will be somewhat adjacent, but we’re coming at it from a different angle. Kyle Wood will be joining me in just a minute to talk about what we can do to give back to the field of art education.

So with Thanksgiving coming next week, I’ve been thinking about all the things that I’m grateful for, and I’m a big believer in how gratefulness can lead to positive action. Because when we express our gratitude and we feel uplifted, but we also feel indebted like we want to pay something back or maybe in this case pay it forward. So that is going to be the framing for our conversation today, what we are grateful for within this community of art educators. And there’s a lot to be grateful for, but also the actions we can take to give back to art ed if we want to pay it forward. So let me bring on Kyle and we can start talking about some of these ideas.

Kyle Wood is back on the show joining me again. Kyle, how are you?

I am doing great. I am well into the fall and just I like this time of year because I feel like kids are getting settled into routines and things are getting smooth, especially with the younger grades.

Yeah. For sure. And I love the fall. Outside of the classroom, I love just the weather. I love stepping on crunchy leaves. However, it’s been very damp lately, so the leaves are not as crunchy. It’s a little bit disappointing, but I am with you on all of the school things, like this is the time where things do start to run smoothly. You feel like you have routines down, you feel like you can really dive into stuff. So glad to hear that’s going well for you. And I don’t know, I guess our whole conversation today is just going to be about gratitude and thankfulness and paying it forward for lack of a better term. But I guess I would love to start before we get into that, of just how things are going for you. I feel like you’re a very regular guest at this point, so I’d love to know just kind of what’s going on with your classroom, what’s new with your teaching, what’s going on or what’s new with your podcast?

Well, I mean, I guess to start with gratitude, I’m thankful that you keep bringing me back because I love having these conversations because as an elementary teacher, I’m the only one in my building, and it’s so nice to have this conversation, this connection where it’s like I can nerd out with a fellow art teacher who gets into this stuff, and I love those opportunities. The art teacher at my children’s school was just texting me about stuff and wanting to get together to do some PD together and planning that out.

I’m really grateful that I’m reaching that point in my career where I am not sitting alone at the conference and I am starting to meet other people and know other people and make those connections and know who I can talk to learn about the things that I don’t know about yet, but I’m curious about and all of that. So I’m in a very happy place with a lot of stuff professionally, and I have the sweetest family in the world. My kids are the greatest human beings that I am so lucky to know, and I want to be just like them when I grow up.

I love it. No, I love hearing all of that. That’s really good. So hopefully, I feel like for 98% of the audience that’s really going to warm their heart and then 2% of the people are going to be like, “This is too cheesy,” and they’ve shut it off already, but that’s okay. We’ll move on with our gratitude and our things that we love and appreciate those things today.

And I guess let’s start, like you said, you’re in a good place professionally, and I feel like you’ve worked hard at that. And I think that’s something that a lot of us should be doing, could be doing more of, is trying to build that art teacher community, trying to build those connections. And like you said, when you’re all alone in your building, that’s very, very difficult. And so any place we can find connections, any place we can find community, I think that’s really helpful. So I would encourage as many people as possible to go out and do that. But just looking at your career, like you and I have both been doing this art education thing for a while, but what are you thankful for when it comes to all of your years in art teaching? What are you thankful for in your career?

Okay. So the thing that really brought me to a different space was actually … He wasn’t officially a mentor, but when I first started teaching in the district that I’m teaching in, I was split between schools and the art teacher who was in the other school had been there for a decade, experienced, knew the ropes, and he showed me a lot of tricks to make lessons better. But then we just got along so well that we started experimenting with stuff. Before Zoom was a thing, we were sending messages back and forth to each other’s classrooms and trying to video conference between classes. And that led to pilot programs that we started doing and then we collaborated on a video project. And just to date myself and how long I’ve been doing this, back during the Obama administration, they had the White House Student Film Festival, and my kids got to go to that because of the work that we were doing.

I don’t think I ever knew that.

They only did it for three years, but the first year they did it, we were an official selection.

That’s awesome.

It was a super cool experience. But what I was getting at there was just being open to make a connection with another art teacher and work collaboratively. And I was starting and new to the district, but before that, if I’m being 100% honest, I had a little bit of an overly inflated sense of my own skill. By third year teaching, I was like, okay, first year I got through it. Second year I feel like I kind of know what I’m doing. Third year, it’s like I got this down. And then having to start over in a new district and seeing what other people were doing was a little bit humbling, but being able to accept that help from another person and accept another person’s insights and viewpoints was a tremendous growth moment for me. And it led to so much growth that I never would’ve thought was possible back when I thought I was good at this job.

Yeah. No, I like that. And I think the willingness to help from the mentors perspective is something I’d like to talk about a little bit more later on. But I think that is something that is vital to keep moving this profession forward. And I think that along those same lines, just the willingness to share, the willingness to help other people who are also facing the same things is something that I appreciate when it comes to art education. It took me a while to realize, hey, I should start going to state conferences. I should start going to national conferences when I can.

But then once I did, I saw how many opportunities were out there to connect, to learn from other people, to just see what other people were doing and allow them to share that with me. And that was, like you said, so incredibly valuable, such a growth moment when you finally realize that there’s so much out there and there’s so many things that people can share. And once you tap into that, it makes everybody better. And so I think that’s something that we should do more of as well. So yeah, I don’t know. Any other thoughts on that? Just the idea of connecting or the idea of sharing out what we have?

Well, I think the other thing that I’ve come to realize is that I was really intimidated when I first started going to those conferences. I didn’t know anybody. And outside of the couple of people in my district, I know obviously, but when I went to the conferences the first time, I think I saw one person that I kind of recognized. And it was very intimidating because the first time I went to those conferences, I was thinking these people are all so much smarter and more experienced than I am. And I think the thing that I realized is just like so many other avenues in life, everybody has something to offer and we need to recognize that and appreciate that in others, but also recognize and appreciate that in ourselves.

And sometimes I feel like we don’t give ourselves that permission to brag a little bit and to recognize that we’re good at this, we have something that can help someone else. And it’s really not even boastful. It’s generous to be sharing your expertise once you’ve learned that, okay, this is how I get a kid to stop throwing the paper towel in the sink. You’re listening, you figured that out, please email me because I need to know.

No, I think that’s right though because we all have good solutions for different problems. We’re all creative people. We teach art, we are creative, and we’re going to come up with creative solutions. And it’s good to share those out. And like you said, it’s not bragging. It’s not saying, “Look how great I am.” It’s saying, “Hey, I might’ve figured this out. It may work for you too.” And just being willing to share that. And like you said, it goes both ways. There are so many things we can learn from from other people, but we also have a few things that we can share ourselves.

And I guess that brings me to my next question, which is just the idea of helping other people out. Because people who feel gratitude, people who are appreciative are more likely to pay it forward. And I’m definitely of that mindset. I like to spend a lot of time appreciating what I have. I like to spend a lot of time thinking about how we can share, how we can pay that forward. So I have a list of ideas, but I’ll put the question to you first. What are some ways or how can we pay it forward professionally? How do we give back to the field of art education?

So I always start by thinking in terms of the smallest sphere and then work our way out as we become more comfortable. So it starts in your classroom and once you feel like you’re comfortable in your classroom, because first year you’re in survival mode and you don’t need to take on that pressure to help other people at the same time.

Absolutely.

Get yourself afloat first and that’s perfectly okay. But I think starting by just making those connections, finding your people, even on a small scale, doing the lesson swap and sharing those hacks and stuff like that, it makes a big difference. Being that person on social media who, if you’ve seen my stuff on social media, you can see how uncomfortable I am in front of the camera. I am not that person who has that bubbly personality and can share stuff, but I’m like, “Okay, here’s how you can rehydrate a brick of clay and it’ll work for you.” It may not be fun to look at, but this’ll work and that’s okay too. Whatever you can put out there that’s going to help someone or put a smile on someone’s face. Sharing the art teacher outfits I see all the time and stuff. Nobody wants to see pictures of my outfits, but it’s nice when I see like, wow, you coordinated really well. And anything that brings a smile to someone, I applaud.

But I suppose we should probably get into the more formal aspects, like taking on that mentorship role. I talked initially about my buddy Chuck, who listeners of my podcast have heard come on so many times because he’s my person who’s always like, “Okay, someone canceled. I need to record an interview in an hour, be ready to talk.” And he’s always there with a yes. That makes such a difference. Taking on those mentor roles when you feel like you know what you’re doing, being able to give that lifeline, give that feedback, and do it for others.

Yeah, I was just going to say, I have loved that role and the opportunities that I’ve had to do that. I remember when I first started teaching, my wife started at the same time. We both had mentors, we were the mentees, and she had somebody in our subject area that they became fast friends. My wife learned everything. They’re still friends 20 some years later, which is amazing. And I had somebody who didn’t know anything about art and barely talked to me, and it felt like a huge missed opportunity. And so when I had the chance after you talked about after I got my feet wet, after I felt like I kind of knew what I was doing. The opportunity came about to mentor someone.

And I feel like that’s just such a valuable thing for both of you because not only are you able to share your knowledge, share your experience, share your ideas. You’re also able to put yourself in their shoes and able to remember what it was like to be a first-year teacher and think about, oh, these are the things you struggle with, and it helps you to reflect on your own teaching and think about why you’re doing what you do. And I think that can be worthwhile for both of you.

And I think along those same lines, I really enjoyed the opportunity to have student teachers in my classroom. And I feel like that’s a great opportunity to, again, impart some knowledge and some experience, but also it’s good for students to hear a different voice and hear a different thought on projects, on creativity, on every aspect of the process. Having those additional voices is something that I think is valuable for everybody. I don’t know. Have you had student teachers before? Have you gotten to experience that? What are your thoughts on having student teachers?

So I haven’t had full-on student teachers. I’ve had the practicum students who are doing observations and teach a couple of lessons. Every time after they do that because in Illinois at least we get certified, maybe it’s changed since I went through the process. I had to do elementary and a high school placement and we had to go to different stuff.

Yes. Same here.

So I haven’t seen someone through the whole process. I’ve had two practicum students do observations, both positive experiences, both very wildly different students personality-wise and different ideas. And the thing I found was I not only felt really good about being able to give some guidance and give some help to someone who’s just trying to figure out this world of education. I also learned a lot from them because of both what you said about being like, you have to be very deliberate and thoughtful in terms of how you explain what you’re doing. And then you start to realize like, oh yeah, maybe I should be doing it this way, the way I’m telling them to do it. But also you have another artist in your room who has new ideas that you have not even considered. And the thing that worries me most is the thing that I’m blind to. I’m already working to correct all the faults that I know about, but there’s so much that it never even would’ve occurred to me. And I love that.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it makes everyone better when you have the chance to really analyze what you’re doing and share those ideas, see new perspectives. I think that’s all really valuable.

Another thing I was thinking about, and something you mentioned as far as PD is just sharing lessons and ideas. I think that’s a great way for us to, again, just pass on that knowledge and that experience. I love to share lessons. I love to share ideas. People may use them, they may not, doesn’t really matter to me, but I really love putting those ideas together and just putting them out there because if that can help even a few people, then I think that’s really valuable. And I think everybody has the opportunity to share.

Obviously not everybody has a podcast where they can do random episodes of their favorite lessons, but everybody has the opportunity to share in their school or in their district or at the state level. Just there are different times in professional development, different connections you have with teachers that you can share your ideas or even if it’s on social media, just passing ideas back and forth. We can add to what each other are doing. We can bring new ideas, we can bring new perspectives. And I think sharing that out can again be helpful for everyone. I guess I just talked for two minutes about it, but Kyle, any other thoughts about sharing ideas, sharing lessons and what that can bring us?

No, I think you’re hitting it. I just want to say I am so thankful to all of you who share your stuff on social media. That’s how I use social media. I’m not good at posting stuff regularly. I’m not good at talking.

So you’re lurking. Are you a lurker?

I use it as a research tool. I generally don’t use it for a lot of happy, relaxing interaction. I use it like I’ve got a class coming in here in an hour, and I hate everything that I have ever done and so I need something new. And then I see a colleague of mine has posted a delightful Jeff Koons inspired balloon dog drawing, and I’m like, yep, that’s what I’m doing next hour. I love seeing that stuff, and I’m so grateful for everyone who puts out a good YouTube channel or the AOE obviously has great YouTube content that I have stolen from. And I love the stuff that, especially videos, I am such a big fan of the videos where I can actually see and understand the process. So thank you to all of us who do that.

Yes, big thank you to everybody who puts anything, any resources like that together. Like I said, we are making each other better. I’ve also thought about paying it forward through advocating just for art ed in general, like going to school board meetings and talking about accomplishments or what your kids are doing. Just any chance you have to brag on your kids. Let’s say they make it into, I don’t know, a White House student film festival. You got to get out there and promote that and advocate that because it helps talk about how the arts are helpful, why they’re so important.

And it doesn’t need to be the school board, but you can even just educate your colleagues in the building about what you do with art, what your kids are accomplishing with art. Take those things to your assistant principal, your principal, anybody else in your district, and kind of talk about the cool things that you were doing, what kids are getting out of your classroom, and just let people share or share with people and help them to understand what we are doing in art and why it’s so valuable. Do you do things like that? What does advocacy look like for you?

Okay. I have talked at school board meetings. Usually not … I’ve been to school board meetings when they’re doing like, okay, a recognition for this or whatever.

Yeah.

But in all honesty, I think in my experience, the most effective advocacy is actually asking for help, is actually asking for stuff. Because you build relationships with people when you’re working together for a common cause, and when you reach out to a local charitable organization, there’s a local educational association that has given me grants for stuff before. And then I take pictures of how I use that grant money, and they can use that at their fundraisers. And they love it because the art stuff that they fund always photographs beautifully so they can bring stuff in. And then there’s happy smiling kids using these things that they bought for the program. And so they become the advocates instead of me talking to the community saying, “Look at this great thing I’m doing.” It’s a trusted organization saying, “Look at this great thing that’s happening because of your support.” And then everybody feels good and invested in it.

And along similar lines, I have found that parent volunteers are the greatest advocates for my program. And so when I was younger, I used to be hesitant to call in volunteers because I thought asking for reinforcements is showing that I can’t handle the job.

Right. I have the same feeling.

And I felt like it signaled a lacking in me. And the thing I realized, especially once I became a parent, is those volunteers are not coming in because they think you can’t handle passing out water dishes. They’re not coming in because they are loving to wipe up slop and spills. They’re coming in because they want that moment where they see their kids smile as they enter the room, and you are giving them that opportunity. You are giving them that warm fuzzy moment and that memory, and they are going to look at whatever you’re doing in the classroom with a very generous eye. And then that creates that positive chatter.

And I have had parent volunteers who have written to my admin saying, “This lesson that Mr. Wood did,” because I only call in the parent volunteers for my home run lessons. It’s not my hardest lesson. It’s the ones that I know will go smoothly and everyone’s going to feel good about. But I’ve had parents right to my admin saying, “This was the coolest experience and I’m so glad.” And that’s the best advocacy when you get other stakeholders to recognize that value. So just bringing in other people as partners and letting them feel like they’re a part of the success, they’re going to want to brag about your program because they’re a part of it then.

Yeah, that is wonderfully said and Kyle, another reason I appreciate always having you on is because you end the episode so very well, I don’t even have to say anything after that. So I appreciate you putting all of those thoughts together and just kind of sharing your perspective on all of these things. Can you stick around for just a bit longer and we’ll play a quick game of This or That?

You know I’ve always got time.

Okay. We are now going to play a quick round of This or That Art History Edition, because Kyle, you have the Who Arted Podcast. So I could not think of a better topic than art history. Are you ready to go?

I am ready. Although I got to say this is the highest pressure I think I’ve ever felt talking to you because I feel like you’re going to … You know my weaknesses, you’re going to expose me for the fraud that I am.

No, no, no judgment here. No judgment here. We’re just running right through these. I need to know who you prefer. Let’s start with Keith Haring or Jean-Michel Basquiat?

Oh, I’m going Keith Haring.

Right.

Honestly, no shade to either, but Keith Haring, I absolutely love because the older I get, the more I just appreciate something that is earnest and positive. And Basquiat, there’s so much good in his work, but there’s also just so much layering to it. And Haring’s is so direct, and I love that. I love the directness and the earnestness, and there’s something I can’t get enough of.

Okay. Self-portraits or landscapes?

To teach or to create?

From art history, would you rather see people’s self-portraits or would you rather see their landscapes?

Oh, this is going to depend on who it is because that’s so much … I’m going to say the self-portrait. At the end of the day, I like something that reveals somebody’s true nature and their character. And whether it’s like a representational or an abstracted, I probably favor the abstracted and more conceptual.

Okay. All right. Manet or Monet?

Oh, Monet. Monet. Monet was my entry point into art. I still, to this day, remember second grade art awareness, seeing Monet’s work, and I went home and I remember saying to my dad, “I know what I want to do. I want to be an artist.” And my dad looking at me and just being like, “You’re going to be poor,” which he is such a good sport about every time I tell that story, because the fuller story is he was just warning me, “Most artists struggle. And for that, I support you in it.”

That’s good. All right. Napoleon leading the army over the Alps, Jacques-Louis David version or Kehinde Wiley version?

Oh, I’m going to go with the Wiley. Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. I think Wiley is one of those artists that I am starting to feel like I’ve seen his work too much, and so I’m starting to pull back from it a little bit.

Oh, interesting.

But I do like what he’s doing with a lot of the backdrops that are becoming so much more. There’s a lot of creativity in it that I appreciate, the different way of presenting the subject.

All right. Surrealism or impressionism?

I am still going to go … My heart is always with impressionism. My head starts to go a little bit towards surrealism, but I’m going with impressionism.

All right. I love that we have discovered your one true love in art history, and it’s Claude Monet. This is fantastic. All right, and finally, Frida Kahlo or Diego Rivera?

Ooh, I’m going to go with Frida. Frida’s work is a little bit more interesting to me and Diego, while I appreciate a lot of ideas behind what he was doing, I feel like there’s too much that I’ve read about him as a person-

It’s tough to get over that.

Well, the artist and biography thing, I’ve always looked at a little bit like, okay, is the artist’s biography intertwined with their work? And when I look at the city of industry murals and then I read about how he was treating his workers, it’s hard for me to get past that. Whereas other stuff, I can separate them mentally. And Frida, I mean, obviously you can’t separate her biography from her work because her most famous work was very autobiographical.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Cool. Well, that is all I have for you. No wrong answers on This or That, but somehow you and I agreed on all six of these, so I’m excited that we’re aligned on all those. So, cool. Well, Kyle, thanks for playing.

That is tremendously validating. Thank you.

Well, thank you for playing, thank you for coming on the podcast, sharing all of your ideas. I appreciate all of it as always.

Oh, it’s great. Thank you for having me.

I will go ahead and wrap it up because as always, Kyle and I talk for way too long. But I enjoyed our conversation. I enjoyed playing This or That at the end. And of course, more than anything, I hope we are able to give you some ideas that might work for you somewhere throughout the conversation today. And I hope you can take a minute to be grateful about what art education has given you and what you might want to do if you were to pay it forward.

Art Ed Radio is produced by The Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you as always for listening to the show. We would love for you to share this episode with anybody who might find it worthwhile. And if you’re loving the podcast, please leave us a five star review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We appreciate the ratings and the reviews. Now next week is Thanksgiving week. We will revisit an episode from the archives. Then we’ll be back the first week of December with another mailbag episode with Amanda and me. So if you have any questions you want answered, email me at timothybogatz@theartofeducation.edu, or podcasts@theartofeducation.edu. We’ll talk to you then.

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz. Today we are going to talk about advocacy strategies for the art room, and my guest will be Dr. Theresa Haugen. Dr. Haugen is an art teacher. She’s a curriculum specialist and associate professor at AOEU, and she’s involved with the Center for the Advancement of Art Education here at AOEU. A lot of people may not know about the CAAE, but it is an amazing resource for advocacy in art education. They’re working on advancing research and empowering educators, and they have a lot of great resources and tools that are available for everyone. So my favorite is the Visual Arts Advantage report. It’s kind of a comprehensive look at the arts that utilizes a ton of research and is wonderful for advocacy.

They also have research on specific topics like visual literacy and fine motor skills, and they run the State of Art Education survey, which AOEU has been doing for quite a few years now. Just getting responses from thousands of art teachers across the country to see what we all have happening in our art room. So all of that information for you is to kind of set the stage for today, and we’ll explain those things a little bit as needed in the conversation. But if you hear us today talking about the CAAE or the State of Art Ed survey, that is where we’re coming from. So a little context for you, but I want to get started on the actual conversation, the actual advocacy strategies. And Dr. Haugen is here, so let me bring her on and we will get the discussion going. All right, Dr. Teresa. Haugen is joining me now. Dr. Haugen, how are you?

I’m good. How are you?

I am great. I’m really looking forward to chatting with you today. We’ve worked together for a long time. You were on the Everyday Art Room podcast once upon a time. You’ve never been on Art Ed Radio though, so I’m very excited to have you here. So appreciate you joining me. We have a lot to talk about with advocacy, advocacy strategies. Before we do that, can you just give listeners an introduction, talk about what you’ve done as a teacher, what you do for AOEU now?

Absolutely. It’s funny, when I started in high school teaching, listening to Art Ed Radio and not realizing at some point I’d be on it.

I know! It’s exciting.

It’s exciting. So I came a rather unconventional to get to art education. I went to school to be a graphic designer. I worked as a graphic designer. And then back in graduate school I started working more with curriculum instruction department. And then, so I’ve taught both college and high school. In high school I did a lot of digital because that was my college background was graphic design. There was a lot of photography and graphic design, but I also taught painting and drawing a little bit of ceramics. Not wheel throwing, that’s not my forte, but everything around that. And then I came to AOEU as both associate professor. So I love teaching, as well as a research specialist in this Center for the Advancement of Art Education, which is through the Art of Education.

Yeah, and so can you just mention real quick the Center for the Advancement of Art Education? Can you just talk real briefly about what that is and what you do there?

Oh, absolutely. So what the Center for the Advancement of Art Education does, is it provides academic research and resources and support for innovation. We’re really looking at art education as a profession, what trends are there, trying to be on the pulse of what’s going on. And then also trying to kind of forecast where we want to be.

Yeah. Okay. I like that. That’s a good explanation. Thank you. And I guess we should just dive right in for the discussion on advocacy. I am personally a huge fan of advocacy because I think it works toward the sustainability of your art program. Making art and creativity and the great works that your kids are creating, making those visible. Making your program visible, making it feel like an essential part of the school, showing that art is something important for your students, art is something important for your school. And I guess I would just love your perspective on that too. For you, why do you think advocacy is important?

Yeah, I think that covers a lot. I mean, that visibility piece is so important. I think advocacy is our path toward validating our art discipline, and it creates meaningful change when we need that change. So as you mentioned, it takes all that fabulous work that happens in our classrooms. We know all the great stuff that we’re doing and all the great stuff that’s happening, but sometimes I feel like we’re the only ones that know that. So we want to make that visible. We want to make it known. We want to have our voices heard. So we know that too often, art programs are lacking funding and support. And we need to be seen and we need to make that learning visible.

Yeah, absolutely. And I guess my follow-up question to that is, how do we make that visible? And I would love to hear from you just what you’ve seen or what you’ve done as far as what kind of forms that advocacy can take. Just thinking about successful initiatives that you’ve done or that you’ve seen, what does advocacy look like for art teachers?

The great thing about advocacy is that it takes so many forms. It can be presented at a national conference. It could be advocating at the district level for change, or could just be taking a few minutes a day to create art and share that with your students. I feel like because we have that broad range, that people’s skills and abilities and interest and really personalities can sort of fit in where it fits in. So there’s a lot of opportunity there. I’ve presented at NAEA, I’ve done national conferences. I’ll be in Louisville excited about that.

And that’s a great way to connect to art educators directly and encourage them with initiatives. But there’s also ways that we can do it on a smaller scale. So during the pandemic, I spent a lot of time just looking at new art mediums. I did some coffee painting. I started knitting these chunky yarn hats. I’m not even a hat person, but I started doing these hats. So not a big surprise, a lot of those that were holiday gifts, but it was kind of a way to try new things. And it was great then to go back to the classroom and say, we’re painting with coffee today, my student, what? And some loved it, because it smelled so much better, they said than the paint.

That’s true. You can get some nasty-smelling paint sometimes. So that makes sense.

Yeah, especially when it’s been in that cupboard for a while and then you pull it out, starts separating and mix it. But those are ways too, so we can advocate in smaller ways if we need change in our classrooms, we go to districts obviously and advocate for those. I haven’t done anything beyond kind of setting a budget and really pushing for new equipment. But I’ve come into schools where I was the teacher that was going to move the digital program into art from the career tech side. And so there was a lot of advocating for, yes, we really do need a camera with these kinds of settings, and a couple lights would be really helpful. And so kind of advocating on that end too with the principal or up at a district level certainly is helpful.

And then it can also just be something quick though. I had a day where I was volunteering an art project for some first grade students for a friend of mine who is a first grade teacher, and they still don’t have any art in that particular elementary school. So they’re told, “Just put some art in your day, add it into your curriculum.” It doesn’t have that art background. So after I spent a day with those students, I sent an email to the principal and just thanked him for allowing me to come in. And then I sent him our visual arts advantage report from the Center for the Advancement of Art Education, which highlights the amazing benefits of visual arts. I don’t know if he actually read it. My job is to get it into his hands.

Yeah, I going to say can’t control it after that, but you can definitely do that. I also wanted to ask you too, I know you work a lot with grad students along with your work with CAAE. So can you talk about that, I guess, through an advocacy lens, like what you’re seeing your master’s students doing and how that relates to advocacy?

Oh, absolutely. So I teach our 600 level courses, which are two courses that students take at the very end of their master’s program. And in those courses, they complete a capstone project. And they’re my favorite classes to teach because the students come in and they find a passion area, something that they’ve always either wanted to implement into their classes, small changes that make big differences. Students that are looking at classroom management issues or they’re looking at adding a little more choice, or they’re trying to develop more sketchbook time or whatever that is,

And they make these projects. And then we talk a lot about that advocacy piece, whether it is talking to their districts about things that they have discovered in their project or going to a conference. But the other big piece of it is how do they advocate it within their classrooms? How do they bring that knowledge back to their students? How do their students benefit? Or if they do an art-based project and they look at their own process, how do they share that with their students? And even if it’s just the excitement of making art, that validates it. So that advocacy piece becomes really important. So it’s really fun to see them. I love the findings. I always tell them the unexpected finding is always my favorite. The one where they’re like, “Whoa, I didn’t expect that to even happen.” And then what do they do? And they’re so excited to share it because it’s their work, it’s their finding, it’s where their heart is.

Yeah, I love that. And I love giving people a chance to just share what’s happening in their classroom or like you said, share what they’re passionate about. Because I think that goes a long way. And when you are passionate about something and can speak up for it, that goes a very long way. So I really like that. Before we move on, any other thoughts, any other strategies or ideas of how teachers can advocate?

I do have one advocacy step that I think is really important and I’d love to share it.

Yes, please do.

One of the projects that I’ve taken on with the Center for the Advancement of Art Education is our State of Art Education survey. And this survey is an annual survey. We get a lot of response, so it makes our findings really valuable and really powerful. And this is the time to take the survey. So there’s a link you can go into our magazine and find that. I believe on our social media. It’s on our community page. And you can take that survey because getting your voice in that mix is really important. We want art educators to tell their story. We want to know your challenges. We want to know where you find joy. We want to know where you need support. We want to know what’s important. And so the more voices that we capture, the more powerful that message will be and the more impactful that narrative will be. And then you can use those stats when you go back to districts to ask for equipment or resources or whatever it is to show here’s where this need is and here’s why it’s important.

And I was going to say, we actually did an entire podcast earlier this year when the 2024 results came out. We did an entire episode on how you can use the results from the State of Art Education survey to advocate for yourself, advocate for your program. So if anybody’s interested in that, we’ll make sure we link that in the show notes. We will make sure we link the survey, the new survey in the show notes so people can take that as well. So like you said, I think it’s a great opportunity for people to speak up and a great opportunity to see what’s happening in other classrooms and figure out how you can use that information to help yourself.

I love that combination. Oh, sorry.

No, go ahead. Go ahead.

I love that combination of showing them the 2024 results and the survey link, so that if you’re new to Art Ed or at least new to the survey, you can see what it is and that impact before you even take the survey.

Yeah, absolutely. And then I guess I want to follow up on something you said when we were talking about strategies. You talked about sending an email to that principal, giving them a little bit more information. And I guess I would love to get your perspective on just who the intended audience should be or who the intended audience could be for our advocacy efforts. Where do you think we should be directing our attention or directing our efforts when it comes to advocacy?

I think that it needs to… A lot of it depends on what that advocacy is. If we are looking at just validating art as a practice, our students are really our audience. But I also think that we need to really think about the community and parents and really make advocacy, I call it making an advocacy habit, meaning nobody’s looking for more to do. No, art teacher’s saying, “Really wish I had more to do. I just don’t know what to do with all my extra time.”

So true.

So use the audiences that come to you. If you see parents out in the community, talk to them about something impactful that happened in your classroom. Or if you get coffee every morning at your favorite coffee place, maybe ask if they would ever display some student art. There’s ways to do it so that it’s not really eating up a lot of your time, but really expand that audience to more than just your district decision makers. Not that they’re not important, they’re very important, but advocacy can reach even further than that. And really just the more you talk about it, I think a lot of this comes from I am also on the board of a nonprofit. My son has a syndrome that is ultra-rare, so no one’s heard of it, including doctors. We go to doctor appointments and they don’t know what it is.

Yeah.

So, I’m so used to, “I want to get the word out, I want to get the word out.” And art is the same way. I mean art education isn’t ultra-rare, and yet I feel like there’s so much that happens in an art class that people just don’t know about. So really, I would really expand that audience or our intended audience is to really almost anybody who wants to listen to how fabulous this is. But to think particularly about parents or community people that might be partners down the road. Sometimes you got to set that advocacy piece as we’re talking to them. We don’t necessarily have to plan a big project, but we can bring it up or if you’re at a conference thinking about adding to it. But also how many times in a meeting do you want to speak up because you hear them talking about other disciplines and you don’t hear art address the same way?

If you’re that person that can speak up, if it petrifies, you do it when it’s comfortable, but speak up and say something. I sat in a meeting once and somebody from the administration was talking about one of the students who had found this drawing class. And he had never taken art class and he took this drawing class and she was saying how powerful it was that he learned to draw and credited him with his skill and tenacity. And I remember sitting next to the art teacher who had him in class and said, “I think the art instruction helped as well.” This never really came up. So I think we do need to speak up and say, listen, there’s a lot going on in our class. We can help and we can help each other. And we do more integration that way too. We can integrate subjects, we can do more art integration by just speaking up in meetings and letting people know that we can be a partner. We’re not just an extra, we’re not just an add. We’re not just there to keep the students busy until they get to the other class.

No, that’s a really good perspective. And like I said, we all have great things happening in our classroom, but people are not going to know if we don’t share. And like you said, I mean that can take a lot of different forms, but we do want to get the word out there. And so the more opportunities we have to do that, I think the more we should. Now, we’ve talked a little bit about strategies, we’ve talked about audience. I would love to just hear from you about the best resources when it comes for advocacy. Obviously, we have a lot on AOEU. You do a lot with the Center for Advancement of Art Education. Can you talk about both of those a little bit, but then also other outside resources that you see, anything else that you think is worthwhile for teachers to know about when it comes to resources and when it comes to doing advocacy?

Yeah, absolutely. There is a lot of resources out there, so it’s good to know where they are and where to find them. So absolutely, the Center for the Advancement of Art Education through AOEU has really valuable research information and statistics to share. So one of the things we know about education is we’re very research-centered, which is wonderful. We like research, we rely on research and statistics and it’s powerful. It’s a powerful way to advocate. So those materials through the center, people can find. While there was the Visual Arts Advantage report that I had mentioned earlier, it just talks about the benefits of art and how it can… Students that have these experiences in art do better academically in other subjects as well. That it expands much beyond the art classroom.

So there are some, and I think there’s a fine motor skill report, there’s one on literacy, so there’s some options there as well. If someone would need a report to give to somebody in their district that’s making a decision. The Art of Education University also, I mean really great magazine articles. This podcast, the new community page are great ways to seek out or find advocacy information. If you go on the Art of Education webpage and type in advocacy, you’re going to get all sorts of great resources coming through the podcast.

Yes, for sure. We’ve been doing this for a lot of years, so the archives are full of a lot of great articles and podcasts for sure.

Yeah, and years of experience. I mean, that was one of the greatest things when I started working at Art of Education was that here are all these art teachers that names I’ve seen. People that have been around for a while, taught for a long time, and then just have really great ideas. So that’s another really great resource is other teachers just going on. There’s the social media sites obviously. There’s the great people on Instagram. Again, don’t compare yourselves too harshly, just look for great ideas and implement when you can. Talk to other art teachers, ask questions. I remember being the new art teacher and I was so afraid to ask other art teachers lots of questions because I didn’t want to look like I didn’t know what I was doing or that I didn’t have any confidence.

But the fact is, we’ve all been there, so seek out, ask questions. Some teachers are so helpful, they’ll hand out… Give you curriculum. Some are kind of keep it to themselves. I have to be honest, I saw that more at the tech college level. In college, nobody wants to share their lesson plans or their curriculum. People are very tight with that, but I haven’t noticed that as much with the high school teachers that I’ve taught with anyway. They’ve been very generous in what they’ve shared and I, in turn that I’m very generous. I want to give back too. Right?

Yes.

So I think that there is a huge resource there. And then there’s the Art Education Research Initiative and the Center for Educational Research and Innovation also have research projects that are available to read and to share. And then there’s always the NAEA website, state and national associations. Americans for the Arts is a wonderful advocacy focus. Kennedy Center always has fabulous resources. They do have advocacy tools as well.

Who are we forgetting? Is that…

That feels pretty comprehensive to me, to be honest.

I feel like there’s so much out there. I’m sure there’s ones that we’ve missed.

No, there really are a lot of great things. And as I said earlier, we’ll link to as much as possible so people can decide what’s going to work best for them, what’s going to be most useful for them. And in just a second, I want to talk about how we get started with advocacy. But before we do that, I want to ask you, you mentioned just a bit ago, no art teacher is asking, “How can I do more? How can I get more on my plate?” And so I would love to hear your advice for people who are maybe feeling burnt out right now or maybe they think that the extra effort that it takes for advocacy is not really worth it. What is your advice for people who are feeling like that or are thinking along those lines? How can doing that work, doing that advocacy, how can that be beneficial for us as teachers?

That’s a great question because we know that through our 2024 data, well actually from years past through the State of Art Education survey, that burnout’s real. And it’s there and people are experiencing, and we’ve had it right. We all come as art teachers with that experience. So we know that feeling.

Yes.

The end of the day and you’re just wiped. So the last thing we need is someone saying, how come you’re not pushing harder for your program? We need that extra stress. So what I would say is advocacy can actually help alleviate some of those feelings of burnout. And by that I mean we get the workload, but if we talk about what we do, we let people know what we do, it builds our motivation, it helps us recenter on our purpose and really our why. We talk about how great our kids are doing and what they’re learning and the great things that they’re doing. And we’ve all had those breakthroughs, that student that we work with, and then all of a sudden, just like one day-

Yeah, it clicks. The light bulb comes out, whatever phrase you want to use. That is the greatest feeling in the world.

They engage and they’re excited and it’s like, oh my gosh, I don’t know even know exactly what that was, right? So sharing that with others makes us feel good. It makes us feel less alone in our efforts. We’re trying to create critical thinkers and creative problem solvers. So engaging others also helps us feel like we’re not alone.

So we’ve kind put all of this together here. I feel like we’ve kind of put together the advocacy puzzle at the moment, but I know for a lot of people, their head is swimming right now, because there’s so much about strategies, audiences, resources, we’ve put that all together. And so I guess I’d love to close with some advice for you or some strategies, or just some simple steps that you think people can take if they’re just starting out on the advocacy journey. What would you say to people who want to start with advocacy? Do a little bit more with advocacy, just trying to take that next step when it comes to advocating for themselves or for their program, what is your advice for them?

I’d say make advocacy a habit, not an extra effort. Don’t think of it as one more thing to do. Just absorb it into your day. If you’re meeting with a parent at a conference, you can bring some talk in there, some discussions. Really talk up your program. If you see a parent running errands, you can certainly mention how well their child is doing in their learning strides. So there’s little things you can do in that, but you can also, speaking up at the faculty meetings, we mentioned that, or speaking up about benefits at any kind of community gathering is always great. But the other thing is to really look at what’s going to make your day easier too. If bringing in some extra materials or equipment or something will make it just easier overall for your students, or it will really help them engage in the learning.

Then just find one thing that you can, because takes some time sometimes to figure out who’s my decision maker and then what’s really going to encourage them. So maybe find those statistics that will help and just try one project and see how it goes. I mean, the worst thing they can do is say no, and you don’t have it anyway.

You didn’t lose anything.

Right. To go out and ask. And I’ve learned if you just keep asking, eventually you’ll get a yes. So it is a lot. I’d say just kind of weave it in where it’s comfortable or just find one project and just try that instead of trying to sort of take it all. You need to be this advocate for everybody and everything. It just needs to be something that’s meaningful, something that will help you in the classroom, something that’ll benefit your students some way or something that’ll just help you. It’s totally okay to advocate for yourself and what your needs might be or what you want to do to help your students so they’re not overwhelmed.

Well, yeah, and I think that’s why I say advocate for yourself or advocate for your program, because if there’s something taken off your plate, something that makes your life a little easier or makes teaching more enjoyable for you, then that is going to make your program better. You’re going to be a better teacher if you are enjoying things more, if your life is a little bit easier. And that trickles down to everything in your program. And so if it is just advocating for yourself, there are benefits for your program as well. So if that’s the approach you want to take, I definitely think that that’s worthwhile. So anything else you want to share? Anything else you want to close with before we go?

Well, I will not miss this opportunity to mention the state of our education survey again. Well please take that survey. Your voice is so important, and although we get a thousand plus responses, be a part of that and really see what that might be able to do for you.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And again, I’ll probably talk again about how important that is. We’ll link to that to make it as easy as possible for people to take that, because there really are a lot of benefits for getting as many people as we can in there. So Dr. Haugen, thank you so much for joining me today. I love this conversation. I love you sharing all of these strategies, all of these ideas with people, and really appreciate your time and your insight and your expertise. So thank you.

Thank you for this opportunity just to chat with you. It was fun. And to get the word out about how people can really push their programs.

Thank you to Dr. Haugen. She has so many great ideas, and I really enjoyed that conversation with her. She mentioned the State of Art Ed survey in the conversation. I also mentioned it at the beginning of the show. I will link to that in the show notes. So you can take that if you would like. I think it’s still open for another week or so. If you have not filled out yet, we would love to have you do that. I’ll also link to the episode that we recorded earlier this year, talking about how you can use that survey when it comes to advocacy. Also, we’ll link to the website for the Center for the Advancement of Art Education in case you want to learn more about that or more importantly, access some of the resources.

Now, just a quick closing thought. Dr. Haugen talked about advocacy as a habit and how that habit can help alleviate some of those feelings of burnout. And I think that’s a very important point because when we advocate, that lets a bigger audience know about all of the great things happening in our classroom. And we all have great things happening in our classroom. And that advocacy can help our own motivation, it can help us focus again on our purpose. Help us remember our why. So if you’re wanting to do this, if you’re wanting to advocate, think about that. What is your why? What do you want to advocate for? How are you going to do that? That advocacy and that engagement and the recognition that comes from those efforts, that all helps us feel less alone in what we do. It helps us receive recognition for ourselves and for our students, and for our art program.

Art Ed Radio is produced by The Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crofton. Thank you as always for listening to the show. Please share this episode with your friends or your colleagues, or anyone else you think might find it helpful. And if you are loving the podcast, please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We appreciate the ratings and the reviews.

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz. All right. Welcome to November. Welcome everyone to the November Mailbag. It is the first episode of the month, so we are here to answer all of your questions. Amanda Heyn is back this month joining me. Amanda, how are you?

I’m so good. I really missed last month, but thanks to Janet for filling in. My mom also missed me being on the podcast, although she really enjoyed listening to Janet too.

That’s good. Your mom is a loyal listener. Wait, does she listen to other episodes or does she just listen when you show up?

No, just mine.

Okay. I assumed as much. I don’t know why she would listen to me if she’s not an art teacher, but we appreciate her listening.

We do.

Yeah. Shout out. I guess we should say, when this episode airs, it is election day. So, I want to tell everybody, please go vote. I don’t care how you vote, but please go vote. My wife is a social studies teacher and it’s very important for her that everyone is civically engaged. So, message from her to everyone, please go vote. Amanda, did you vote already?

Yeah, of course. I voted early as coincides with my personality. I brought my kids. I think it’s really cool for your kids to go with if you have kiddos, your own personal children. Obviously, don’t bring students to the polls, and they had really cute future voter stickers-

Oh, nice.

… at my polling place. So, the kids really liked it.

That’s good.

It feels good to be, like you said, civically engaged. Did you vote?

Yeah, I voted by mail. Nebraska has been doing that for a while, and so my wife and I both vote by mail early. So, we can get our ballots and just research each issue that we don’t know enough about. Because when you go to the polls, if you don’t remember exactly how you’re supposed to vote, it’s tough to look things up. You feel like you’re taking too long and it’s very stressful for me.

Yes, I like giving myself a mental cheat sheet. In Wisconsin, they have a thing where you can… I don’t know if Nebraska, I don’t know if this is everywhere, but it’s like you can look up what’s on your ballot. You put in your address. It’ll show you your ballot ahead of time.

Yeah, you can do your prep work. But yeah, I enjoy just doing it at my kitchen table. So, I always vote by mail, and like I said, you can track your ballot, make sure it’s arrived, make sure it’s counted. Yeah, I appreciate all of that, so I was happy to do that. Beyond elections, we’ve moved past Halloween. It’s November. What else is going on for you?

I have a fall garden update.

Everyone was so ready to be done with gardens. Are we still talking about gardens in November?

Nobody can see this, but I brought all the plants in my new fall garden, all the things.

Oh, my gosh.

Maybe they can do an ASMR. Can you hear this?

Have you flipped through the tags? Yeah.

Yeah, little tags.

Sounds terrible. But tell us about that.

I hired my friend to redo a garden because turns out if you plant a tree over a garden, then your garden turns from a sun garden into a shade garden over the years. So, we had this garden that was planted before we moved in. This is getting really long. Anyway, there’s a lot of different Hostas in there because I was like, “Please give me a plant I don’t need to do anything to and it will just grow.” I just really like the names. There’s some different green tones or hues I guess we would say. My favorite one is called guacamole. It has darker green around the edges and then an avocado.

Okay. Okay. I like it.

I also really like Jack Frost because it’s shiny. The leaves almost look fuzzy or they have a sheen and I’m really into it.

So you have a very specific aesthetic for this new garden.

Oh, she made me a ranking system, because I was like, “Look, I don’t know anything about how to take care of plants, but I do know what I like and what I don’t like.” I’m picky aesthetically. So, she made essentially a Google Quiz for me and I had to rank all of the pictures of all of the plants and it was very fun. Then the last step is we’re going to do a river of tulips in the middle of this garden. I’m so excited.

I like this. So, are we expecting in the spring it’s going to be looking great like you plant now and it’s coming in for the spring?

That’s the hope. I have been watering it on the schedule she told me to. I’m being very diligent.

I was going to say, this all sounds very elaborate.

No, but it’s not. I was like, push the easy button. I can’t be pruning things.

Yeah, yeah, I understand.

So anyway, you’re welcome to everybody who came for garden talk, and I’m sorry to all the people who do not.

All right. Can I share one quick story? Because this was a fun one for me. I was at the grocery store last week and just go up the aisle and I just hear off the side, I hear this voice go, “Art, art, art!” I was like, “What?” I look over and it is a former student of mine. She had just a lot of intellectual and developmental disabilities, but she remembered me from 2008, 2009. She remembered me as her art teacher. So, I was like, “Katie!” So I went over and talked to her and she loves checking out people’s thumbnails. So, every day when she came into art, she would have to inspect my thumbnail.

So, I went over and just gave her my thumb and she looked at it and her mom got the biggest smile on her face that I had remembered that. So, she checked out. So, I talked to Katie for a while, talked to mom for a while, but really just warmed my heart that this kid remembered me from… She’s got to be in her 30s now. Yeah, she remembered and shouted art at me when she saw me. So, I love that.

I would love if people shouted art at me and remembered me like that.

Absolutely. So, that was a feel good moment for me. So, I appreciated that. That was very cool.

That’s awesome.

I guess the other thing that we should talk about before we open up the mailbag are the show notes that we always talk about because you all should see the look on Amanda’s face right now.

Here’s the thing.

Can you tell us why we need to talk about show notes?

Yeah, because I realized I don’t know what the show notes are. Every time we do a mailbag, I personally say at least three times we’ll put it in the show notes and then I realized I don’t know where to find the show notes. Are the show notes on our website? Do you click a button? Are the show notes in the podcast player? This is extra embarrassing because I like to consider myself like a podcast connoisseur.

You are a podcast listener. You definitely are.

So I just thought, “Well, maybe A, either everyone thinks I’m an idiot, which is fine, or B, maybe other people don’t know where the show notes are. Maybe I could just be a little vulnerable and maybe you could just tell me where the show notes are and maybe that would just help other people find the resources.”

Yeah, I’m going to go with B and we appreciate your vulnerability. You can find the show notes on our website if you ever go and listen via the website. If you open your podcasts app, when Art Ed Radio pops up, it’ll come up with a list of episodes underneath there. You’ll probably see the logo and then you’ll see the list of episodes. When you click on the episode, it’ll give you the description. It’s one paragraph long, talking about what is there, what the episode is about. Then below that are all of the show notes, all of the resources, all of the links. So, you may have to scroll just a bit, but it’ll say resources and links. Then for these episodes, we have six or eight or 10 resources and links usually. You can find everything right there in the app.

Wow, that’s so amazing. What a time we live in. Thank you for explaining that.

What a time to be alive. All right. Then can I add one more thing? We should probably do this before we’re 9 or 10 minutes into the episode, but I have been made aware that we have a lot of new listeners to these podcast episodes or the mailbag episodes, a lot of new listeners to the podcast. So, I got a couple messages saying, “These episodes are great, who are you?” So I thought we should introduce ourselves.

So, I am Tim Bogatz. I’ve hosted this podcast for eight years now, something like that, maybe nine years, 450 episodes worth. Yeah, I was an elementary teacher, art teacher for a couple of years. I was a secondary art teacher for a lot of years. Then I’ve been working full-time for the Art of Ed for the past eight years. So, yeah, this is what we do. We’re coming at you every week with podcast episodes. So, Amanda, can you give all of our new listeners a quick introduction?

Yes. I am the director of community engagement at AOEU. I have been also working here for an eternity. I have done a lot of different roles here. I wrote for the magazine. I edited it. I oversaw PRO Learning, our PD platform. I’m heavily involved in the NOW Conference and now our new community platform. So, that’s really exciting. We hope you all join us over there. We’ll put a link in the show notes.

I was just going to say, I will link in the show notes to the community.

Yeah, how to do that. I also am a former art teacher. I taught elementary art and loved it. What else? I love confetti. I’m a Scorpio. What else do you want to add? That’s it for now.

You love gardens. I think that’s good. So, anyway, welcome to all of our new listeners. It’s great to meet you. I hope you enjoy these episodes and we have a lot of emails and questions to get to. So, Amanda, can you officially get us started?

Yes, let’s go ahead and open up the mailbag.

All right. Our first question comes from Tracy. Tracy says, “I’m on bed rest for the next two months and I need as many suggestions as possible. I would love to know your favorite art-related movies or shows on Netflix or any other platforms so I can add them to my list. What art shows have you enjoyed watching?” All right. Amanda, I feel like this question could not be any more in your wheelhouse, so I would love for you to answer this first.

Yeah, how much time do you have? I do want to answer it first. First of all, we’re very sorry to hear that you’re on bed rest. I can’t imagine any situation where that’s a good thing. So, we are sending you all the positive vibes. I do have recommendations broken down by platform for you. I love TV. Okay, so my first recs come from Netflix if you’re Netflix user. The first is the Abstract: The Art of Design series. It follows a bunch of different designers. There’s an episode on Olafur Eliasson who does these incredible light installations. I really love him. That episode is called The Design of Art. So, that’s good. The whole series is good, but if you’re looking like super, super art, like fine art specific, I would suggest that as a place to start.

Okay, the next one I’m going to butcher, but I believe it’s Vjeran Tomic: The Spider-Man of Paris. If you just look up the Spider-Man of Paris, you should get to it. But this interviews an art thief about a robbery he carried out at the Paris Museum of Modern Art. So, he legitimately did an art heist and he is being interviewed for this documentary. The reason he’s called the Spider-Man of Paris is because he literally scales buildings. So, there’s also all of this first person footage of GoPro of him scaling the buildings and doing parkour, essentially the rooftops. It also interviews some of the individuals he stole from. So, it mainly tracks this one heist he did, but he also was a cat burglar, going into people’s apartments and taking art off their walls while they were home. It’s so fascinating.

Okay. Did he GoPro his crimes? Did he record his crimes?

I don’t think so. I think it’s after the fact that this is adding to the ambiance of the documentary.

I got you.

So it’s not like first person art crime.

Which I would totally watch by the way. But no, this whole thing sounds fascinating. I like it.

It keeps you on the edge of your seat because is he going to fall off the roof? But obviously, spoiler alert, he does not. Okay. Then if you haven’t watched the Bob Ross documentary, it’s called Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed.

Right? It starts off so happy. You bring it up on the Netflix queue and you’re like, “Bob Ross”. The first word you see is happy and then all of a sudden betrayal and greed.

Yeah. If you love Bob Ross, you should watch it. It’s really interesting about how his estate has unfolded over the years. I’ll just say that.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Should I just keep going?

Yes, I would love to know what else you got.

All right. Amazon Prime, you can sometimes get to PBS through this. I think this also might just straight up be on YouTube, but there is an old documentary called Between the Folds, which is about origami, which I know you’re saying that sounds so boring, but I promise it’s so good. It’s about the intersection of origami and other disciplines. So, they talk about the future of medicine and origami and there is a fine artist who does more sculptural work and it’s just my own children are obsessed with origami. We’ve been to the National Origami Convention in New York City.

So, this is a required viewing in our home, but it’s a really fun watch and it’s just under an hour, I think. So, it’s an easy one. Then on Hulu, I have a couple of education-related shows, so these are not art shows, but if you’re not watching Abbott Elementary, what are you doing?

Great, great.

Great. Just about an elementary school, in the style of The Office with the confessionals and stuff, really fun. The other one I hesitate recommending because it is like take the M warning seriously. Okay, do not watch this with kids around. The M warning is there for multiple reasons, but it is called The English Teacher. Again, I just think it’s a very realistic take on the state of education in general. I find myself laughing out loud at a lot of it. But again, if you don’t like swearing, if you don’t like other mature themes, not for you.

Okay. Is this a funny show though? I don’t know anything about it. Okay.

Funny show.

You made it sound like it was filled with murder and sex. It’s a little bit of murder.

There’s no murder. There’s a lot going on. So, there’s a lot going on, but I am enjoying it.

Okay, sounds good. All right, thank you. I will run through mine really quickly. Mine are almost all from Netflix. This is a robbery about the Gardner Museum heist. I believe there are four episodes, a great documentary there. Then that can probably send you down a whole different rabbit hole of books and podcasts about the Gardner Museum heist. Fascinating. I think I’ve consumed it all. It’s very good. There is also a documentary about art forgery called Made You Look.

That one’s good.

Yeah, it caused quite the stir a couple years ago when it came out. I think we did an emergency podcast all about it. So, yeah, that’s a very good one if you have not seen that. There’s a new one I have not watched yet, but a couple friends have recommended it to me called The Andy Warhol Diaries. So, I don’t know anything about it, but I’ve heard it’s good, so it might be worth checking out. I also love Blown Away. I don’t know how to describe a competition show about glassblowing and I don’t know how many seasons they have now, but there are multiple seasons. So, if you’re down for a binge-watch, then you can definitely do that. Also, if I can plug another podcast, back after season one, I interviewed Momo Schafer, one of the contestants from Blown Away.

That was a super fun interview. You can check that out too if you’re looking for extras. Then there’s a documentary about Cai Guo-Qiang called Sky Ladder, and I actually talked about this a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about sci-fi artists, but he does all sorts of great explosions and drawing with gunpowder and fireworks and great documentary about all of his stuff. So, definitely would recommend that. I would also say just go to the Art21 website. If you’re not familiar with Art21, they do dives into contemporary artists and contemporary work. There are dozens. There’s maybe hundreds of episodes and other things to explore resources. Super easy to just get lost in everything that’s there and probably sparks some inspiration for your classroom too.

I don’t know if that’s of interest to you right now, but there’s definitely a lot there. Then finally, I don’t know if you’re looking for books or not, but I’m reading a book right now called Get the Picture by Bianca Bosker. She’s basically an investigative journalist, but she just decided like, “Hey, I want to incorporate myself into the art world. I want to break into the art world,” if you think of super fancy, very elitist art shows and galleries and whatever. She decides, “I want to be a part of this world and I want to see how this goes.”

So she dives in as a studio assistant, as a museum guard, as an art buyer, and takes on all of these roles to figure out everything that’s happening in the art world. It’s a fascinating concept. She’s a great writer. It’s a very, very good book. I’m about halfway through right now, so I don’t know how it’s going to end, but so far, it’s great and I would highly recommend that.

That’s fun.

Yeah, it’s a good one. I’ll link to it in the show notes.

Okay, great.

Also, if anybody’s listening and you want to add anything to the recommendations list, please just shoot us an email. Maybe we can hit a few more things next month if we get some more recommendations. All right, our next question is from Amy. Amy says, “I have parent-teacher conferences coming up soon. They always go fine for me, but I’m wondering what your best response is to parents always saying, ‘I could never draw a stick figure.'” I feel like we’ve all heard this one million times.

Oh, my gosh.

Amanda, what is your best response to that?

I think I might just say, “Good news, we never draw stick figures in art.” When people tell me this, I just gently remind them that all things art takes practice. I talk about how it’s a common misconception that people are just born being good at art. Yes, people have natural inclinations for things, but you don’t just exist and know how to do everything. I think I just try to apply this logic to any other discipline. You know what I mean? Music, I could never play twinkle twinkle little star. I bet you could. I bet-

If you worked at it, I bet you could figure it out.

I also like to talk about with parents that art is more than drawing. Yes, drawing is an essential foundational skill that I do believe impacts other disciplines, but there are many, many skilled ceramicists and sculptors and fiber artists that don’t rely on “go-to realistic drawing” to make their work. So, I try, it maybe depends on if it’s the third time I’ve heard it or the 30th time I’ve heard it that even. But I think it can open up a fun and interesting conversation.

Yeah, I think so. I think it gives you the opportunity to just talk about what you want to talk about. If you think about the best athletes or coaches or politicians, when you ask them a question, they don’t really answer that question. They just talk about whatever they want to talk about, get their talking points out. So, that’s how I think about it, especially at conferences. So, like you said, just use that opportunity to either talk about the program or just hype up the kid that’s there and talk about how well they’re doing. So, yeah, whenever I hear that, I usually give a fake laugh. I’m like, “I’ve never heard that before. Oh, so funny.” But then, yeah, just use that opportunity, like you said, to talk about how art is way more than drawing.

We do drawing. Yes. I’m very good at teaching drawing. So, your kid will get better at that. But more importantly, we are becoming more creative. We’re doing problem solving and critical thinking and just talk about all of the other opportunities that are there in our class and how there are so many more things that we can do and then just talk about, “Hey, your kid is actually pretty good at this. The more they work, the better they’ll get.” They’re going to do all of these really cool things and just talk about all of the opportunities ahead and so many more things to do that go beyond just drawing there. So, I think a lot of parents say that because they don’t know about art, they don’t know what else to say. So, just use that as an opportunity to, in a very friendly way, just educate them and tell them a little bit more about what you’re teaching and what their kids will have the opportunity to do.

I think that’s a really good point actually. What they’re expressing is admiration for what you do. I can never do that. I can’t believe you can do that. So, I think assuming good intentions and then opening up whatever conversation you want to is a really good solution.

Yeah, excellent point. Assume good intentions no matter how many times you hear that. But yeah, just keep it on a positive note and I think that’s the best approach to dealing with that.

Yeah.

All right. Our next question comes from Sebastian in Maryland. Sebastian says, “My kids seem to be really good at destroying art supplies. Think broken rulers and snapped pencils and crushed crayons and pastels. We’re doing bookwork right now until I figure this out. I’m going to start with just pencil drawing and we’ll work our way back to more supplies. Is that the best approach? How do you deal with destructive students?”

Well, that’s a very positive way to frame it, to be really good at destroying art supplies. Also, that sounds really hard, and I’m sorry you’re dealing with that. It can be really disheartening, especially because we know our budgets are not often what we want them to be. So, if you have kids purposefully breaking the supplies, that is not okay on many levels. I do think it’s worthwhile thinking about what that behavior is trying to tell you. Behavior is a form of communication. So, what are they saying to you by destroying the supplies? It was interesting. This made me think of something that happened when I was student teaching. I was working in a really, really rough school with kids who didn’t have a lot of opportunities outside of the classroom for emerging activities.

The first time that my cooperating teacher got out paint with these kiddos, they were in kindergarten and probably half the class within two minutes had smeared the paint all over their hands and arms. We were like, “What is happening? What is happening?” In this case, they weren’t trying to be destructive, but they were being extremely messy, which was a problem. We realized, okay, these kids have never finger painted, right?

Yeah, they have no idea what the texture, the feel of this is.

Right. So, okay, take a step back. What tactile experiences can we give them in order to get that out of their system and let them experiment and explore? And then we teach them, okay, this paint, you use a brush to bathe in. So, I wonder if more novel supplies might captivate them or things that aren’t as easy to destroy or things that are meant to be squeezed or stretched or manipulated, right? So I don’t know what level you are working with. This obviously would be different if you’re talking about lower elementary versus middle versus high school. But if it’s elementary, pattern blocks, right? You can’t really destroy those, but you can make some really cool interesting designs with them or model magic or weaving.

For some reason, weaving always got my squirreliest kids to be quiet. That seems counterintuitive, but that worked for me. I don’t know. I also wonder about dry erase markers and personal dry erase boards. So, they’re drawing and then they can erase. I don’t know. I’m just thinking about what could captivate them. Also, all of this is with the caveat that it is important to teach them to respect materials. I like how you’re thinking about bringing it back to basics and working your way up from there. I do think if they are breaking the pencils every time, yes, they don’t get to use pencils. I think you’re on the right track. But I’m just trying to say think a little bit more outside of the box as to what might captivate them enough to engage them in the right way.

Then, the last thing I thought about is I think it’s a good idea to reign it in and then open up supplies as the students can prove they’re ready, but what does that look like? Could it be a gamification challenge? How do they unlock different materials? Can you connect it with video games? What parameters can you put in place? When they meet this challenge, then they get to use these supplies. So, I don’t know. The last thing I have is your mileage may vary, but with some kids who are being destructive, it sometimes works to appeal to the greater good and sometimes it doesn’t and they don’t care.

But sometimes kids don’t realize if I break this pencil, that means six other kids don’t get to use a pencil that day. These aren’t just your supplies, you’re not just here, and then in a bubble, you leave. The whole school uses these and so you’re actually destroying them for everybody. So, I don’t know. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Well, I think we’re at the point where we’ll try whatever, I want to speak for Sebastian, but if we’re down to just pencils at this point, I’m sure he’s open to a lot of different ideas. So, Sebastian asked, “Is this the right approach to go back to pencils then slowly open things back up?” I would say, “Yes, that is the right approach.” So short answer. Yeah, you’re on the right track. I was just going to talk about when I first started, erasers were a huge problem for me. We had the erasers because kids just love to rip them in half and they love to have them just disappear. They would get crumbled. They would get torn. They would get cut up.

Poked.

Oh yeah. Stabbing so many pencils. It’s such a disaster. So, it took me a long time to figure out how to actually make that work for my classroom. I tried a lot of things. I put together a bunch of kneaded erasers. So, I had a ball that I just carried around. I would break off a little bit for a kid when they needed it. Then they had to give it back when they were done. That actually worked okay. I cut erasers in half or in thirds, so they could not do that themselves. So, they have a smaller one to work with. If I knew kids were destroying it, I would pick up the pieces and then the next time they ask for an eraser, I would just give them a tiny piece. Then when they complain, oh, it’s the same one you had last time, what happened to it? So that helped a little bit.

Having individual sign-outs can work, that was not great for me because I didn’t love keeping track of that, but a sign-out sheet is good. Or if kids have to get up and walk across the room to pick up supplies, they’re less likely to use them a lot. It really cuts down on a lot of waste. Along with the individual sign-outs, a lot of times if you have everything together at a table and just one person in charge, whether that’s a bucket of supplies and just have one person to monitor the supplies and then when things don’t come back or things get destroyed, you can at least narrow down who’s doing it. Then I would just say if you can make clear consequences for destroying materials, a lot of times that can head off some things too like if you know who’s doing it.

You can figure that out through supply monitors or through sign out sheets or whatever else. I mean, consequences can be anything. First time’s a warning. Second time, you call home or talk to whoever’s at home. Third time, you lose those privileges. Make sure you have your processes in order and kids know what the consequences are for destroying things. Hopefully, taking it slow as you get back in will help you with the problem you’re trying to solve here. All right, go ahead. Go ahead.

Quick idea. Well, if you’re at the secondary level, I know a lot of teachers do art kits and this is dependent on your budget if you can do this or not. But essentially kids get two paint brushes, a pencil, a Sharpie, and eraser, and those are theirs for the entire quarter or semester, however long you have them. Once they run out or if they choose to destroy their own supplies, then sorry, you’re out of luck. So, teaching them ownership in that way. But again, that’s very dependent on a lot of factors, but just wanted to throw it in there.

No, I like that. I usually did that with my advanced courses. I usually did not trust my intro kids to hang onto their own stuff. But yeah, like I said, Sebastian, you know your classes better than anybody. You’ll know what’ll work for them. All right. Amanda, we’re to our final question. No, we are not. We have two. Oh, my goodness.

Two questions. I know.

Thank you. Okay, this comes from Kelsey Whaley in Shelbyville, Tennessee. Kelsey says, “Hi. I am a former high school art teacher and recently stepped over into the K-eight world to be with my own children at their school.” Congratulations, Kelsey. That’s a dream come true for a lot of people. I never thought the little kids would be for me, but I’m absolutely loving it. The hardest part about my day is keeping each class on the schedule with so many conflicts each week or getting pulled. I see each class for 45 minutes one time a week. So, if we miss Monday for instance, that whole day of classes gets behind the others. How do I keep them together? What do I do with the other ones while the ones behind catch up? At what point do you just move on? I’m loving your podcast weekly.

Thank you so much. All right. Well, Kelsey, thank you for the kind words about the podcast. My advice would be to talk to classroom teachers and see if there are things that they can finish in their classroom. Now, this obviously depends on if you think those teachers would be open to it, you’ll know best their personality, the curriculum they have to teach, whether they’re going to allow interruption. Very much it just depends on those classroom teachers. I think everybody who teaches elementary knows exactly what I’m talking about. But yeah, you’ll know best if that’ll work, but if you think it would, let them finish things up in their classroom. But I think it’s a good goal to keep classes aligned.

I think that is a lot less prep work for you. Just keeps things a lot more simple for you if you can keep your classes at the same place in the same order. If some classes are getting ahead, I would just look for one day lessons to keep them engaged for a day or early finish activities, whatever else you can do to just keep them engaged, keep them making art for a day or so while the other classes catch up. One more time, plug the show notes. You can search for one day lessons on the AOEU site. We’ll put a few of our favorites in the show notes. You’ll find a lot there.

Even if you just pull two, three, four of your favorite, that can get you through a lot as you try and get those classes aligned. Just give them an extra day to work while the other classes catch up. Find something fun for them to do that’s still creative, still worthwhile, and I think that’s probably your best solution to try and keep them aligned. So, Amanda, you have more elementary experience than I do. So, what would you say in this situation?

Yeah, I agree with trying to keep everybody together. It’s just so much easier. If I were you or probably by my second or third year of teaching, I was able to do this, but look ahead at the calendar for the next two to three months and figure out how many times you’re going to see each class in the timeframe and then you can adjust the lessons accordingly. So, if you see one class eight times and another seven times and another six times, you can handle that in a few ways. I think the easiest in a case like that would be to plan something cohesive for the six times that you’re going to see all the classes and then tack on some extension days for the other times or other classes that you will see.

So, that might mean extending the lesson. It might mean giving more of a free choice day, or I often used an extra class period to try to experiment with something that I’m not sure if I want to add to the curriculum where I’m not sure it was a good idea to do a grade level.

A test run of something basically.

Yeah, use it as a test run. I think another thing to do with extra class periods is to find a way to use up those materials you don’t have enough of to use with an entire grade level. People are always giving you 27 plain wooden spool. I thought of you, I was at a grad sale and thank you, but I can’t really do a whole lot with this. So, developing some fun projects to use up those materials is another way. Another option is just to build in an automatic catch-up day once every couple of months. So, you already know that you have an automatically built-in buffer for classes who might need to finish things or even kids who might need to just finish things. Okay. I have two more ideas, really quick.

These are good. We like all these ideas, take your time.

You can also have a set of five pre-planned extra lessons that could work for any grade level. So, think no to low prep drawing centers, read a book, do a project, whatever, and then you can just pull those out as needed. Maybe it’s as simple as you’re reading a book and then you have a drawing prompt and you’re using computer paper and markers. So, it’s just something you can pull out at a moment’s notice. The final thing I would say is don’t worry about cutting a project short or modifying it for a class. So, maybe one class doesn’t get through all the steps or maybe you make a certain class’s paper smaller so it takes less time. There’s a lot of ways that you can experiment and be flexible with this.

Wow, all great advice. Thank you. Appreciate all of those ideas and yeah, good luck. Would you like to bring us our final question, Amanda?

I would. So, our last question comes from the Art of Ed community. So, if you haven’t joined yet, what are you waiting for? You don’t even need to wait for us to answer your questions. You can just go there and post your burning questions and you’ll get excellent advice the very same day. We’ll stick the link again in the show notes, but you can also go to community.theartofeducation.edu, which I think I might’ve said wrong in the horror stories. So, sorry about that.

You know what? They’ll find it in the show notes. It’s okay.

They’ll find it in the show notes, right. Okay. So, come join us. It’s free. There are 3,000 teachers in there already, and it’s just like they have really good vibes.

It’s an amazing place to hang out. I really enjoy it.

It’s like social media, but only the good parts. So, anyway, come hang. Okay, so someone posted a really great question that had to do with project due dates and I thought it was going to be a good one to talk about here because there’s a lot of nuance and things to talk about. So, I got a really thoughtful discussion going, and essentially, they were asking other people to share how they handled late work. So, did people deduct points? How did people handle kids who rushed through to meet a due date versus students who took extra time but put in more effort? They were wanting to find a middle ground.

This was really great because another community member was like, “Oh, my gosh. I’m having the same issue.” So it can be really helpful to get your question answered, but also just to validate your feelings that you are not alone. Many people are dealing with the exact same things you’re wondering about.

Yes.

So I would love to give a little recap of what people said and then I want to know your thoughts.

Okay.

All right. So, the consensus was most community members had due dates, but then varied on how they accepted late work. So, some marked the work missing right away and gave it a zero if it wasn’t in by the due date. But then they let kids turn it in to change their grade at a later date. So, they use the zero to catch kids and parents if they’re paying attention, but then the kids had a chance to remedy that. That is how a lot of the teachers at my own kiddo schools handle things. I really appreciate it because the way that my kiddo’s language arts teacher put it is, “What is the goal here? If the goal is learning, then we give them a chance to learn.”

Some teachers took that idea a step further and said they only gave full credit if the student had a reasonable excuse for turning it in late. So, for example, if a kid is goofing off every day and choosing not to work in class, that is not a good excuse for taking three extra weeks, right? And then some teachers set a soft due date and then waited to set a hard due date until they gauged how most of the class was doing, which I thought was an interesting approach. Hey, we’re going to try to wrap up by Friday, but then if half the class is not anywhere near done, maybe that becomes a Wednesday.

So, you give them a last chance, which I thought was a good idea. Then of course, some teachers gave a due date and if the kids missed, they missed. The rationale there was that kids are going to be accountable to deadlines in “real life” and school is a pretty low risk place to learn that. So, I just appreciated the wide variety of perspectives. It was a really supportive and wonderful conversation. So, I think we can put a link right to that discussion.

Okay. Okay. We’ll do it. We’ll do it. All right. People are going to have nightmares after this episode. They’re going to try and lay in bed and all they hear in their head is just show notes, show notes, show notes.

So like I mentioned, just what I just said in our previous question, I built in that catch-up day, didn’t really deal with late work as a perpetual problem as an elementary teacher, but I’m curious to know what you did in your classroom today.

Well, the all of the above approach as I listened to you talk about this, yeah, I did that, I did that, I did that. I would just start off by saying I feel very strongly, I will not rant about this, but I don’t think that kids should lose points for turning things in late. It goes back to that and that question as I believe what your kid’s language arts teacher said, what are we grading? So I think teachers should ask themselves that. What are you grading? Is it academic and artistic growth or is it compliance? Are you grading what they’re learning or how good they are at following directions?

I guess when I was a young teacher, once upon a time, we were having this debate in a staff meeting and my principal said, “There are consequences in the real world if you don’t turn things in on time.” Then one of my colleagues just raised their hand and said, “What are the consequences for you not returning that email that I sent three days ago?” I was just like, “Oh.”

Burn.

Yeah. So, that was an excellent point. That very much clarified my thinking on that. Oh yeah, this is not as big of a deal, that real world excuse, that doesn’t work for me. So, yeah, I always went with pretty flexible deadlines and I would have kids help me decide when things are going to be turned in, especially my advanced classes. We’d just talk as a class like, “Hey, I was thinking about having this due on Thursday. Will that work for you?” or say like, “Hey, we’re going to do end of the week. If you need more time than that, raise your hand.” If 80% of the kids raise their hand, okay, we’ll see where we are at the end of the week and talk about next week. So, I think just communicating with them, that’s fine. Then you’re always going to have some kids who are super slow with things.

I always told them, “I don’t care when you turn it in, I want your best work. I don’t care when I get it, but I want it to be your best work.” So that gives them the time to get it to whatever level they think they need without a lot of extra pressure. I think that puts their mind at ease and then you don’t get kids rushing through things. I would never say everything’s due on Tuesday. I would say, “Hey, we’re going to move on after class on Tuesday. Whatever you have left is on your own.” Then same strategy of putting things into the grade book.

They can turn in a work in progress for partial credit or I’ll put in a zero and then I just had a standard email that I would just send home and say, “Hey, you may see this in the grade book. It’s because this work’s not due. They can turn it in at any time. We’re moving on in class, but it’ll be this in the grade book until they turn it in.” So it’s just literally a form email. I copy and paste every single time, so I don’t have to write that. But it’s super easy to just send a few emails home for kids who have that partial grade or that zero in the grade book, but it is a good way to keep track of what is still outstanding, what hasn’t been turned in.

So, anyway, I don’t know if I said anything new there beyond the suggestions that we already had from the community, but I feel like that was a pretty successful approach for me when I was running things. Okay. Thank you for that question, Amanda. Appreciate it. Now, before we wrap things up, I would like to try something new. Are you ready to play a game?

Oh, my gosh. Yes.

Okay. We are going to play this or that, which I’m sure you’re familiar with. I’m going to give you two options. You tell me which one you prefer, and we’re going to do Thanksgiving Food Edition. I really like this because you have some takes on food that I think are sometimes just unhinged. So, I would love to just get those out in the world for everyone else to appreciate as well. So, are you ready?

I am ready.

Okay. First one with this or that, Thanksgiving foods edition, turkey or ham?

Turkey. Ham is not a Thanksgiving food.

Okay, sounds good. Mac and cheese or green bean casserole?

Oh, my gosh. Okay. Green bean casserole because I cannot eat gluten.

Okay, fair.

I’m going to die if I eat the mac and cheese. I also do really love the green beans. I don’t know. I just love it.

I feel like just saying I will die if I eat the mac and cheese is probably a good enough answer, but no, that’s fair. Mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes?

Oh, my gosh. This is like choosing a favorite child. I’m going mashed potatoes. I like the sweet potatoes, not if they have marshmallows.

Yeah, that’s weird.

If they have too many eggs, they get to be a texture that I don’t appreciate. Sometimes they have eggs in them.

Yes, yes.

But mashed potatoes are good even when they’re bad.

All right. Pumpkin pie or apple pie?

No, no pies. I hate pie so much. I hate fruit. I hate hot fruits. I hate gelatin. I am not eating a pie. I’ll eat a pecan pie if it is almost just nuts. None of the goop really. Imagine nuts held together by maple syrup in a pie crust. I like that, or a French silk pie. Do you eat a pie? Do you eat pie?

I don’t like pie. No. I will eat a French silk pie. But other than that, no.

This is a pie-free podcast.

Pie-free podcast. I love it. All right. Okay. On your pecan pie, if we can convince you to eat one, would you put ice cream or would you put whipped cream?

Oh, I would put whipped cream. The ice cream is too soggy and I don’t like the mix of temperatures, but I also don’t really like a spray whipped cream. It has to be real. The spray whipped cream is a little too shiny for my liking. I’ll eat it, but I don’t prefer it. Cool Whip is a hard pass in case that was a follow-up question.

It was not. I have one final question. I have not talked to you about this before, so the phrasing may off, but I think I’m right with it. Cranberry sauce from a can or literally anything else?

Literally anything else. Why would you eat cranberry Jello? Why would you eat Jello? Look, I love my mother-in-law so much, but there is this recipe called pink Jello, and it is opaque Jello. It’s at every family function. One time my older kid, when he was three, he put it between two halves of a hamburger bun and he ate it and I almost died. So, anyway, no cranberries. No, thank you. No fruits. I’d eat a pumpkin pie over a cranberry anything.

Okay. That’s what I thought you were going to say. So, that’s why I put literally anything else.

Is that a food you’d eat?

But I’m glad that worked out. What’s that?

Is that a food you’d eat?

Oh goodness. No.

I didn’t think so. We’ve not talked about it, so just double-checking.

Yeah, no, thank you. That is good.

With the ridges from the can. I can’t.

Well, I think we will wrap it up there. Amanda, thank you for bringing community questions. Thank you for your vulnerability when it comes to show notes. Thank you for all of your great advice. So, it’s been fun. Let’s do it again next month.

Sounds great. Bye, everybody.

Thanks again to Amanda. It was a very fun episode. If you have questions you would like to send in for our next mailbag, please email timothybogatz@theartofeducation.edu or podcasts@theartofeducation.edu. So much talk today about the show notes. So, again, if you can’t find them, just go into your podcast app or wherever you’re listening, click on the description of the podcast, and scroll down. You should be able to see the resources and links. If not, look for a button on your tab that says more or see more. That will take you right to them. This week we will link to our Netflix recommendations info on parent-teacher conferences, one-day lessons, the AOEU Community, resources on grading, probably a few other things as well.

We talked about a lot today, but we’ll link to as many things as possible that we think may be helpful for you. Hopefully, those links and those resources can hold you over until we’re back next week. Art Ed Radio is produced by The Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. We will be back next week with an episode on advocacy in the art room and Dr. Theresa Haugen will be my guest.

Thank you for listening to this episode. We hope you enjoyed it. Please be sure to subscribe to Art Ed Radio, so we can join you again. Please jump over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen. Give us a five-star rating. Maybe even leave us a review. We’ll talk to you next week.