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.

I want to do just a fun, quick episode today. We are almost at winter break and honestly, nobody has the time or the attention for an hour-long podcast the week before break. So we’re going to move through things quickly today, and I’m going to ask the question because I want to know what type of winter break teacher are you? I was thinking about this. I was thinking about how everybody deals with winter break a little bit differently, and I came up with three different types of teachers and how they deal with winter break. And they are the overachievers, the relaxation specialists and the creatives. And we’ll talk a little bit more about what makes up each of those types and maybe what you are, so think about that.

But before we get started, before we dive into the three types, a couple of housekeeping items. Number one, no podcast the next two weeks. As everybody’s on winter break, the podcast is going to be taking a break as well. So no episode on December 24th or December 31st, but we’ll be back on January 7th with the January mailbag. So Amanda and I are looking forward to seeing what questions come in and seeing what we can answer for you. So if you have questions, email me timothybogatz@theartofeducation.edu, or email podcasts@theartofeducation.edu. Got a couple of really good ones already, looking for a couple good additional questions and we’re excited to come back with the podcast on January 7th.

Also, in January, we are going to be doing Art Club. This is going to be Thursday, January 9th. And Art Club is part of the AOEU online community, so the Art of Ed Community, and part of that is Art Club, which is a monthly meeting. It’s a meetup where teachers get together and share ideas, learn some fun new tips and tricks, and make a little bit of art too. So our January Art Club is going to have Amanda and me on as guests. We’re going to be making art, we’re going to be doing some drawing. We’re going to be doing some giveaways and talking about the NOW Conference, so you are not going to want to miss the Live Art Club event. It’s going to be held on Thursday, January 9th from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Central, and you can RSVP and mark your calendar in the Art of Ed Community. And if you are not in the Art of Ed Community, please go join. We want to have you there. We’re doing so many cool things. You can find it at community.theartofeducation.edu. We’ll link to that in the show notes and we’re hoping that we can see you there.

Now, let’s get back to talking winter break. Like I said, I want to know what type of winter break art teacher are you. Are you an overachiever, a relaxation specialist or a creative? And so, this is what I was thinking about with overachievers. The overachievers, and this is not derogatory, I wish I were an overachiever, to be honest, but these are the art teachers who cannot sit still. They can’t relax over break. Like their break is a time for productivity. It is a time for accomplishing things, getting things checked off the list, getting that to-do list done. And so, they might be starting planning for semester two. They might be at school, organizing in their classroom. They might be doing PD hours or courses or workshops or whatever to make them a better teacher. I know some teachers who are writing grants, applying for grants and trying to get art shows set up over break.

They might be looking for new teaching strategies or tools to implement after the break or reading about professional practice. There are a lot of great things that they can be doing to make themselves a better teacher. Now, again, that is not me. I need to take some time off from school when it’s break, but I know there are those people who really want to get things going for themselves. They want to set themselves up for success. In the second semester, they want to really just take that opportunity to get better at what they do. And like I said, props to them and it’s something that I cannot do, but I respect everybody who is doing that.

Type two, this is the relaxation specialist. And so, I’m thinking of those people that are trying to relax, so those are the people who are consciously stepping away from school-related responsibilities. And they’re stepping away from school, they’re focusing on themselves or their home or their family or whatever they are, whatever that may be for them, they are focusing on that. They’re focusing on rest, they’re focusing on rejuvenation.

And so, what does that look like? It could look different for everybody. They could be doing some traveling, whether they’re going on a quick vacation to relax, they’re going to a cabin, they’re going somewhere warm, whatever the case may be. They’re trying to relax, they’re trying to get away from things. And it could be spending time with their family. It could be catching up on Netflix. It could be reading books for enjoyment, something unrelated to art or to teaching. It might be practicing mindfulness or doing some other self-care routines. Maybe it’s hobby time, cooking or puzzles or whatever may be. I was going to say gardening, but it’s winter, so very small percentage of us are doing any gardening. Maybe you’re just out trying to get out in nature, even if it’s cold. Maybe you’re taking walks or getting outside for an exploration of some sort, connecting with nature. And there could be a new skill that they’re trying to come up with, a new hobby that they want to try and they’re finally having the time to do that. Something that helps them get away from school, something that helps them relax.

And so, I think there are a lot of forms that can take my question about relaxation and being an overachiever, is can you balance the two? Because I know there are a lot of people who want to get work done in order to set yourself up for relaxation. Like you want to relax, but there’s something nagging you. There’s that to-do list that needs to be done before you can truly relax. My wife is like this. I’m well familiar with the idea that you got to get those things done, and then you feel better that you can sort of compartmentalize that. You can put that to-do list away once it’s finished and then you can fully relax without having that worry.

And a lot of times, the same way as a teacher, I really like staying a little late on the last day before break or taking a few days before break to kind of prepare. And I would do that to get everything set up for the first day back. Like seriously, everything set up for the first day back. And then once it’s all ready to go, I have my lesson, I have my supplies, I have everything that needs to be done, ready to go to start semester two. And then after that, I do literally nothing. Like I forget that I have a classroom, I forget that I have a job. And then, we put that all away until we go back to school. And then I get back to school, I’m like, “Oh my goodness. Thank you to past me for setting all this up.”

Because you’re just able to relax. You’re able to chill out for a while and then you know that when you go back into school, everything is finished, everything is done. And honestly, it can be a little tough when it’s four o’clock on that last day before break, like break has started. Everybody’s out of there. Everybody’s been gone for a while, and the custodian comes, like, “Hey, hey, what are you still doing here?” And like I said, that stings a little bit, but it’s so worth it to be able to put that away and have a real break, but still be prepared for what’s coming when you get back to school.

All of that being said, we’ve not touched on type number three, our teacher type. Number three are the creatives. I’m thinking of the people who spend their break diving really deep into their own artistic pursuits. And so, maybe they’re working on some small projects, maybe they have a bunch of sketchbook stuff that they want to do. Maybe they’re trying to explore some new media or maybe they’re finishing some long-term projects or some paintings or creations that you’ve been working on for a long time. Maybe doing some winter art shows, or if you have an Etsy shop or an online shop, doing what you need to do to keep that going.

And maybe you’re collaborating with some other artists or doing some community art things, making gifts for friends, making gifts for family or doing a quick sketchbook challenge or trying to dive into that creative habit that you want to get started in the new year. Or one thing that I love to do is just visiting museums, visiting galleries, just because we all love to visit museums, whether it is just to feed your artistic soul, or whether you want some inspiration for what you’re going to create, that’s time well spent. And so I think having that free time that we don’t have during the school year is so nice, and being able to just dive into the creative endeavors that you don’t have time for otherwise and taking advantage of that opportunity is great.

So as I kind of described those and as I think of those, I would love to know like what type of winter break art teacher are you and what type do you wish you could be? Or if you are a creative, are you happy being a creative? Are you happy embracing that time? Or do you wish you could relax a little bit more? Or do you wish you could be a little more productive? I think I’m somebody who really likes to relax. And then after I have done that for a few days, I like to dive into a few creative pursuits. And so, I think I maybe have a foot in both, sort of straddling both worlds there. And so, I’m curious to know what other people’s thoughts are. And I think that might be the case. Like are you part of one? Part of another? Are you somebody who gets all their stuff done as an overachiever and then dives into their artistic pursuits? I think that’s definitely impossible. So I think you could in fact be all three. So I would love to hear from you. Email me if you have some thoughts that you want to share. I think we’re going to start a discussion over on the AOEU community, the Art of Ed Community. So if you want to jump over there and join the discussion, I’m curious to see what people have to say.

And I will also just add the disclaimer. Like none of these types of our teachers are better or worse. They just are. And you may fit multiple. You may not fit any of these. You may approach your break completely different from any of these. And it’s just something that I was curious about, something that I wanted to start a discussion on. Now, I will have a couple of resources in the show notes that can kind of help for anything, if you want to pursue your creativity a little bit more, if you want some help relaxing and stepping away from things, I think that could be good. So we’ll check out maybe some art challenges or some online prompts, if you want to dive into the creativity, maybe some mindfulness ideas or de-stressing routines. We’ll see what we can find, what we can put together. And honestly, if you’re an overachiever, you probably already have your to-do list, you don’t need any suggestions from me, but we’ll put in what we can.

Hey, a couple other things that I was thinking about. I wanted to give book recommendations for a couple of the three types, and I also want to talk about what famous artists are doing and how they may approach their break, so I wanted to explore those a little bit. So again, overachievers, you probably have your book list, you probably have your to-be read, so I’m not going to throw anything at you.

But if you are a relaxation specialist or you want to relax a little bit more, my book suggestion would be a book called The Art of Doing Nothing by Veronique Vienne. And it’s a great exploration of just kind of how to embrace doing nothing, like being idle, being still, and finding the joy in super simple, just those moments in life where you’re not hurried, you’re not feeling like you have to do something. And there are essays on the art of breathing, the art of meditating, the art of bathing, listening, waiting and there are just all kinds of great insights in there and some really practical suggestions for mindfulness and finding contentment in your everyday activities, whether you’re just sitting in a warm spot or sipping a cup of tea or opening a book that you’ve been wanting to read. So just the idea of doing nothing can be an art form in itself, and I think that’s a really worthwhile message. So again, that’s called The Art of Doing Nothing by Veronique Vienne.

Now, if you are a creative, my book recommendation for you is a book called Art Before Breakfast by Danny Gregory. This came out a while ago, and actually Danny Gregory was a keynote presenter at an old NOW Conference, and he was fantastic. Took us inside his New York City apartment, talked us through his creative day and all of the creative endeavors that he went through throughout the day. And that’s kind of what this book is about, just helping you incorporate creativity into your daily routine. And so, there’s some stuff for beginners, but a lot of the exercise, a lot of the ideas are valid for experienced artists like us, and it really shows you how to find joy in creating every day.

So there’s some humor, there’s some good anecdotes, there are artistic exercises as well. And so, even if you’re just taking a few minutes to draw or sketch or paint or do those things each day, it really helps you get into the idea of being an artist, of being a creative for the break. So getting into those habits is a great thing that you can do while you’re away from school. And I think this book can be motivating. It can give you a little push to, I guess, nurture your creativity, for lack of a better phrase. So just finding a few moments to create can be really worthwhile, and I think that’s good. So again, that is called Art Before Breakfast by Danny Gregory.

All right, and then two close things out, I had a few ideas of just what different artists, like famous artists would be doing over their break. So I decided to research just a few famous artists. I thought I could find some anecdotes. So just a few for you. Claude Monet in the wintertime, he really liked painting snowy landscapes. That’s probably not a surprise for anybody who knows Monet, but all around Giverny, just seeing how light was affecting the snow or highlighting the frost in the landscape. He loved painting. He’s definitely a creative.

Okay, Georgia O’Keeffe, she was more of a relaxation specialist. She loves nature. If you know anything about Georgia O’Keeffe, you know that she loves nature. She loved to find quiet and solitude. And a lot of times over the holidays, she would just kind of be exploring the deserts. When she was living in New Mexico, she would just kind of explore what was out there, explore nature, and that would kind of inspire some of her paintings, but she loved to get away from things and relax over the holidays.

All right, Frida Kahlo. Again, if you know her, you’re probably not surprised. Lively parties from Frida Kahlo. She loved getting people together, lots of music, lots of conversation, lots of art. So Casa Azul, her home, she’s creating a ton of vibrant work and just creating a vibrant environment for everyone to sort of embrace that joy of the holidays, embrace that creativity.

All right, van Gogh. He spent a lot of the holidays writing letters to his brother Theo. Again, not surprising. But he’d spent a lot of time kind of reflecting on artistic goals. He would be creating a lot of sketches, sending those to Theo. So he seems more of an overachiever, just still writing, still working, still going through things over the holidays. So maybe it’s creative, maybe it’s overachiever, maybe it’s a mix of both.

And then I thought about Dali as well. And of course when it comes to the holidays, Dali’s going surreal. That should not surprise you, either. He would design super eccentric, super elaborate decorations for his home. He would do illustrations, like he would be creative with his work, doing some holiday-themed illustrations and creating some really fun stuff when he was on his holidays. So just a few fun thoughts that I thought I could add to the discussion of what some different artists liked to do over their holidays.

Now, as we wrap things up here, like I said, quick episode, a few reminders for you. We’re going to continue this discussion of what kind of winter break art teacher are you. We’re going to continue that over on the Art of Ed Community. So make sure you come join us, come be part of that discussion and get ready for Art Club at the beginning of January. And if you’re not part of the community yet, community.theartofeducation.edu. We also put it in the show notes. Come join us there. It’s going to be awesome. Next two weeks, we’ll not have anything in the podcast feed. So no episode on the 24th, no episode on the 31st, but Amanda and I will be back January 7th with our mailbag for January.

And then finally, one thing going on over break, the NOW Conference. We have a December 31st deadline for $20 off the NOW Conference registration. So if you’re thinking, oh, I need to sign up for the NOW Conference, I haven’t done that yet, we want you to do that. Do it before the end of the month here in December and you can save $20 off the regular price of the NOW Conference.

All right, congratulations, everyone, on making it to winter break or almost making it to winter break. I know we’re close, but you have put in a semester of dedication and your creativity and your hard work as a teacher have made an impact. We know that you have put a lot into your classroom, and now that we’re going into break, it is time to do something for yourself. So whether you’re planning to relax and recharge, whether you’re going to dive into some personal projects or spend some quality time with the people you love, just remember that you have earned every single minute of this break. So celebrate the season, celebrate yourself in whatever way feels best for you because you deserve it. So a big thank you for everything that you do. So just enjoy this time to the fullest, enjoy your break as much as you can, and know that you are appreciated and know that you are valued.

Art Ed Radio is produced by the Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast so we can join you again. And if you love the show, please jump over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you listen. Give us a five-star rating and leave us a review. Now, I also said in the episode, we are taking questions for the January mailbag. If you have any questions about what to do after break, how to start a new semester, how to reset your classes after break, anything else along those lines, we would love to hear them. Email timothybogatz@theartofeducation.edu or podcasts@theartofeducation.edu with any questions you may have. We are looking forward to reading them and possibly answering them on our next episode.

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. We’ve been talking a lot about the Art of Ed community here. And just over the past few months here, and it’s been an amazing experience to be part of that Art of Ed community, and it’s one of my favorite places to hang out on the internet. And today’s conversation, which will be with Janet Taylor, will be about a great few posts and discussions that have been taking place in the community. I want to continue that conversation. A couple of weeks back and Janet had a series of posts about the challenges that we are all facing, and what we are struggling with. Or specifically what makes us feel like we’re riding the #strugglebus.

And teachers in the community were sharing so many of their own issues, whether it be with organization or assessment or art history or teaching Gen Alpha. But along with sharing our struggles, people are also sharing the ways they solve those problems, and they’re offering help and suggestions and some great stories. So this episode is going to be all about finding solutions and sharing practical advice, not just from us, but from the art teacher community. Art teachers across the country, we’re hearing from them and hoping that what they share can help you feel a little more confident and a little less alone. So we’ll highlight some of those conversations because we’re all dealing with a lot of similar issues. There are those times when we are riding the Struggle Bus. So whether you’re looking for some ways to solve your problems or you just want to commiserate a little bit, this is a discussion that might be worthwhile for you. Let me bring on Janet now. Janet Taylor is joining me now. Janet, welcome back. How are you?

Hey, Tim. I’m okay. How are you?

I’m doing well actually. So things are good. I am literally about to leave on an airplane to go interview Carrie Mae Weems for our Now Conference for the Keynote Presenter, so I could not be more excited about that. So in general, life is good. We’re going to record this podcast.

I was going to say, yeah.

I’m driving straight to the airport, so I’m looking forward to it.

Yes. It’s a great day for you,

And it really is. I’m looking forward to it very much. I need to ask you though, we are having the podcast here related to riding the Struggle Bus, and it is early December. You are teaching high school. Are you on the Struggle Bus right now?

I feel like I’m always on the struggle bus.

Okay, fair. Okay.

Okay. Not really. Not really. That’s not fair to say. That’s not fair. Okay. Yeah, you said it’s December. So here’s the thing. I don’t know how that happened, but it did. It was actually December. And Thanksgiving was late, so that break was late. And then all of a sudden, it was literally December when we came back. And then the way winter break lines up, I literally said to my kids yesterday, I was like, “Hey guys, we have a week and a half of solid work time left, and we still haven’t even done an entire unit. And we have the art show next week.” So yeah, we’re doing great. We’re doing great.

Okay, good. No, it’s wild to come back from Thanksgiving and then all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, finals week is two weeks away.”.

Yes. Oh my gosh. There’s so cleaning of the studio and prepping, you know what I mean, to close out this semester too.

Yeah. Yes.

We’ll get there.

It’s a lot. But yes, we always do. We always do. Okay, so I talked in the intro about how much I loved reading, just all of the conversations that came along with Struggle Bus Week on the community. And so I wanted to go through all of those with you. And I figured that you and I could talk a little bit about each of the topics and what we struggle with. And then I’d love to share some community ideas too. So if I can just start with the art history one. That may have been the first one posted. It was the one I was most excited about because I always love talking about art history. So let me ask you, Janet, to start, what do you struggle with when it comes to teaching art history?

Everything. Oh my gosh. Okay. So I love art history. I have always been super fascinated by it. I love how it’s like when we were in college, and funny enough, Tim, remember when we were in college together and took classes probably in the same, and Tim and I didn’t even know each other at that time, but we went to school at the same time.

We should tell everybody this. We were both at the University of Iowa at the same time, never knew each other.

Both making art.

But then what, 20 years later, we start working together at the Art of Education and find out that yeah, we actually went to school together. Still can’t place each other in any classes. We were theoretically there at the same time, taking the same classes.

And had same professors. Yeah, weird. But do you remember that intro class that was like, what was it? Western art history of the Western world or whatever that was? Yeah, that survey course where you had to memorize… They’re just like, here’s a slide, here’s a slide, here’s a slide.

Yes. Those slides that you had to memorize. Yeah.

Okay. That is my experience, and that I feel like was my experience in history growing up. Everything was just about names and dates and tying all those things together. Now I’m, as an adult, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, this is so cool.” And I still somehow my brain cannot retain that information. It’s like a sieve. It’s a sieve. So I struggle with it. I’m always on the struggle bus. But can I tell you my current issue actually with-

Yes, please do.

Okay. So my current issue that is ongoing for me is that I teach mostly jewelry metals, metalsmithing, and it is very difficult to find contemporary artists or metalsmiths, who do conceptual work. Because when you search in Google or Pinterest or whatever.

Is it all Etsy? Is it just people with Etsy shops come up?

It’s Etsy or it’s mass-produced horrible enamel pins.

Oh goodness.

So it’s very, very difficult for me to connect contemporary artists into my metalsmithing classes. So that’s a real struggle bus for me right now.

Yeah, for sure. I have not even thought about that. But yeah, that seems like just the biggest pain. It needs some alternative avenues. I would say that art history has never really been a struggle for me just because I love it so much, and that’s how my brain works. I can remember this. My brain does a pretty good job of retaining that information. But I would say my struggle is related to what you talked about is how to teach it and how to make it exciting. Yes, I get excited about it, but how do you present it to kids in a way that’s exciting? So they’re not feeling like they have to memorize slides and memorize dates. And you just need to put some thought into how are kids going to connect with this? How would you relate it to what you’re doing in class?

But I think if you put some thought into that, it comes pretty naturally to most of us. So I don’t think that’s too big of a struggle. And then when you get excited about, or there are always new artists that you want to find that you want to share with your students, but then you get into the struggle of if I’m going to put this artist into the rotation of who I teach about, who has to leave? So we’re not just overwhelming them with a giant list. So those can be tough decisions sometimes, but generally I just get excited about new artists and then just out of nowhere, like, “Hey, everybody, have you seen this artist?” And just show them out of nowhere, and that’s fine too.

So whatever works. But a few really good comments from the community I wanted to share and see if anything resonated with you or gave you any thoughts. So Dylan Trumbull said their struggle was which artist to spotlight. Michelle LaRocque said, “Choosing from the unlimited list.” So I feel that for sure. Ashley Hinton, along the same lines said the overwhelming amount of options. And then Jessica Stuver said, “I don’t know if it’s a struggle as much as a constant concern, but I always wanted to make sure I’m teaching art history that shares a lot of diversity.” And I applaud her for thinking about that. I think a lot of us take that perspective as well, just making sure that we show a diverse set of artists. I remember one of the first podcasts we ever did was called No More Dead White Guys, and just talking about getting away from those “Canons of art history.” Because it’s such a broad spectrum of artists that are out there. And there are so many more that you can share. So anyway, Janet, thoughts on any of those comments from the community?

Yeah, totally. And again, as somebody who struggles with retaining all that information, I often will toss out multiple artists per unit that connect with what media or the technique or whatever it is. And really just let the students analyze, compare, contrast, et cetera. But then pull what they want to connect with from that artist. And I think that helps me so that I don’t feel like I have to necessarily focus on an artist. I don’t want my kids copying an artist, but also I’m exposing them without feeling like I’m limiting or constraining that amount as well. So I don’t know, that’s one way that has helped me. And I’ll tell you nother person that has on your, I was going to say on your Struggle Bus, but not your Struggle Bus, your rocket ship or whatever to art history. It was Kyle Wood.

He’s great.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And he talked in the community a little bit about his arts madness, and I always love that, how he approaches that. Yeah.

Very cool way to introduce a lot of artists, but I love that idea of showing a lot of different people and just let the students drive that and let them figure out what they’re interested or what resonates with them. And so giving them those options. All right. Any other thoughts? Are you ready to move on to topic number two?

Well, can I give a quick little teaser about one of our presenters for the Now Conference?

Please do.

Okay. So we have Ruth Byrne coming back for the NOW conference, and I’m super excited. She’s just a brilliant teacher and a lovely person, but she’s actually going to provide us a way to help students connect with and analyze artwork. So if that’s something that you struggle with, with the conversations around the artists or around the artwork, she really makes it really accessible for young, all the way up through high school. I could see it definitely using it in mine too.

Yeah, she gives a great framework that you can work from, and I think it will be a very helpful presentation. So I’m excited for everybody to see that one. Okay. Moving on to conversation or topic number two on the Struggle Bus. And I think this is the one where you excel. Janet, what do you struggle with when it comes to assessment?

Nothing, obviously. No.

I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding.

No, you’re the go-to expert for this podcast when it comes to assessment. So I feel I’m asking [inaudible 00:13:05]. But no, what do you struggle with when it comes to assessment?

No, everything we do is always a challenge. Nothing is easy. But I would say time is always a concern for everybody. It’s a concern for me when everybody’s like, “It takes me so long. How do you do it?” And I was like, “Yeah, me too.: It just is. Things take a while to deal with. So time to grade, timely feedback to get that stuff back to students. I still have some grades I’m still working on. All of that. So I don’t know. Again, maybe, I don’t know if this is really an assessment issue or more of just a general lack of time in the day issue because I feel like everything is treading water. But like I said, I’m on the Struggle Bus. That’s how we started this podcast, so might as well continue on that.

No, for sure. It’s tough. And there’s pressure because we hear all the time about how important it is to give timely feedback. But on the same level with that, when do I have time to give that timely feedback?

Exactly.

Finding the hours in the day is really tough. And I would say that’s my biggest struggle too, is just staying on top of everything. When I taught elementary art, I luckily didn’t have to do much. I just had an overwhelming number of kiddos and people understood. And so we just have end of quarter grades and that’s all we had to do. And that was not bad. But when you’re in secondary and you’re still seeing hundreds of kids and all of these projects, finding the time is always an issue. And I think a lot of people talked about that in the discussion we had.

One thing that I really love doing with my advanced classes is just sitting down for one-on-one conferences with kids in the middle of projects at the end of projects. And just being able to do an assessment via conversation, just face-to-face talking about what’s going well, what’s not, just whatever the rubric may be. And those are incredibly helpful. But you need to have decent classes that allow you to do that. You need to have small enough classes that you have the time to do that. And so I realized that’s not going to work for everyone, but I would just say anytime you can make some time during class to give some feedback or give some assessment, that can be an incredibly helpful.

And I would say when we’re looking at this conversation from the perspective of the community, I think the theme that we saw along the time was the difficulty of dealing with rubrics, especially if you have hundreds of students. So Matt Weidman, Frank Montaz, they mentioned specifically having time to grade or finding time to grade. And I want to highlight a really good comment from Frank. He said, “One thing I learned after almost 10 years was that if I catch myself writing the same thing as part of my feedback, it should be part of my rubric. I rarely write anything anymore, but I highlight and underline a lot. It’s a sign of a well-written rubric if you can just circle where you are in there.” That’s good. And then Frank said, “Finally, I will say that my mid-process check-ins are more beneficial to students than final assessments.” Which is a great point. So a lot to digest there, but anything that you want to comment on?

Yeah, just that’s like a mic drop moment that he said all that. But another thing that I have learned too is that if I can’t give timely feedback back to my students, if I’m doing exit slips or bell ringers or any of that, and I am not getting the information back to them, or it’s not informing my instruction, because I can’t read it fast enough or whatever, then I don’t do it. What is the purpose of that? That’s not fulfilling the purpose that it’s meant to do. So stop putting more work on yourself and focus more on the, you said conferences, but I feel like we are doing individualized feedback and talking to students all the time.

Yeah. For counseling.

Yes. And so that is the feedback loop. That’s assessment right there. And so I think just shifting the focus off of the paperwork end of things and more on the interaction feedback I think is a big way to save time and focus that, like Frank said, your rubric. If you underline, circle, if you put that work up in the front that your rubric is solid, that takes a little bit of time. But in the end, you’re not sitting there writing a ton or having to give all that feedback to the students.

Yeah. No, I appreciate the idea of the mindset shift that you just mentioned, where we need to think about it less as the paperwork and more of this thing that we are consistently doing with our students. And another thing, I feel like we’re off to a whole different podcast here that we could be talking about with all of these topics, but one thing that I’ve learned from you, Janet, when it comes to assessment, is just the importance of those in process, midpoint critiques, midpoint feedback, not only for students like Frank said, but for us as teachers to modify or to supplement what we are teaching. And they are super important, and like I said, not only beneficial for students, but for us as teachers as well. Because they can inform our instruction in so many different ways. And so I think if we worry less about what we’re doing at the end and a little bit more about the consistent interactions, consistent feedback that we are giving and getting, that can really transform how we think about assessment, I think that can be really helpful.

So like you said, a lot of really, really good points there, and we could talk a lot more about that. But let me go ahead and move us on. Our next topic for the week was organization. So what do you struggle with the most when it comes to physical organization? I will give you a second to think about that, because I struggle with all of it. But I want to give a genuine shout-out, Michelle Parvin and Robin Murphy from the community. They’re like the extreme type A people. They have that all figured out. Michelle had a day in the life video with AOEU that shows off her classroom organization. Probably worth watching if you need some inspiration, you need some ideas, we’ll link to that. But yeah, I always admire those people who have all of the organization things figured out because that has been a lifelong struggle for me. So what about you, Jan? Where are you when it comes to organization?

Okay, this is where I am constantly on the struggle bus. Truly. Yeah. So I’m a piler, I pile things, I have sticky notes, I pile the sticky notes. It’s really, really bad. But I have to say, so I walked into my classroom last year. Brand new classroom, beautiful. It just was amazing. And you get in there and you realize even though it looks perfect, not everything always works for you and your students, right?

It’s not always functional for what you need in an art room. Yes.

So I do really actually enjoy coming up with systems and figuring out what’s going to work best for them, seeing what works, what doesn’t. I also really love getting feedback from my students about what is working and what is not. So I changed it up this whole way. I did tool delivery, set up whatever in my classroom, and something didn’t seem quite right. And then my students were like, “Oh, yeah, I didn’t like it this way. I liked it that way.” And I’m like, “Okay, then let’s figure out something in between that’s going to work for both of us.” Or whatever it is.

So I get it. It’s really, really hard and it’s a constant battle, and there’s always so much mess, and there’s always so many pieces of artwork laying all over the place. And oh my gosh, like I said, this is the time of my art show coming up next week. And it’s like I just walk in my classroom and it’s just piles and piles and piles of stuff everywhere. So I don’t know, Tim, are you? I’m a little bit of a hoarder when it comes to materials and things.

I would say at the beginning of my career, I was a hoarder. Just like you never know when these toilet paper rolls are going to come in handy, better keep all of them. Oh, this might be a great project someday. Then as I got into further into my career, like, “Hey, I’ve been here a decade and haven’t used [inaudible 00:22:17]. Probably don’t need to keep them around anymore.” So that helped once I realized that I could get rid of things. And I’ve talked about this ad nauseam on the podcast, but just labeling everything, pictures on everything, helping kids be self-sufficient when it comes to getting materials out, putting them away is probably the biggest game changer for me with organization. I would say just judging by community responses, storage space was a huge one. Jessica Stuber, Jennifer Jasper, Ruth Byrne, they all mentioned finding storage space for 3D projects.

Heather Hacker and Amber Maddock both mentioned supplies, especially when you’re out of space or if you have multiple classes working with different materials. And it’s tough though, because you can’t really give any blanket advice for that because everyone’s room is different. And I was lucky enough to have cabinets with space on top of them, and I could just store everything on top of the cabinets. And I’m tall, I can reach it, whatever. It’s not a problem. But then I realized, “Oh, that doesn’t work for everyone. And everyone has these different spaces, and it is really, really difficult to figure out how everyone can do that. So I would just say, if you’re listening to this and you have any great hacks on storing 3D projects or other in-progress works that you want to share, please head on over to the community and toss that into the chat. We would really appreciate hearing all of those. So Janet, any more thoughts on organization before we move on to our last topic?

No, because like I said, I’m on that Struggle Bus every day.

Can’t give any advice because I’m busy unpiling my sticky notes right now.

Seriously as I’m jotting it down. No, it feels nice that we’re not alone though, doesn’t it? That’s the thing about the struggle bus. It’s not all the time, but also we’re not the only ones. It’s an ongoing issue.

Yes. Absolutely. I said that at the beginning of the episode. Maybe you’re looking for advice in this episode, maybe you just want to commiserate and [inaudible 00:24:24]. This is tough for me too, so I can appreciate that. Our final topic of the week was Gen Alpha. And that is a fun one, so love for you to think about what you struggle with when it comes to teaching Gen Alpha. The first thing, which I think was probably my favorite comment from the community was from Jessica Stewart again, who said “Probably their continued obliteration of the English language.”

Okay, so can I tell you? I was driving with my daughter the other day and her friend. And I said something like, “What’s up with the Skibidi Toilet thing?” And they just started cracking up. And I was like, “I still don’t know where this came from, what it means.” And they just couldn’t answer either.

No, okay, this is my problem with Gen Alpha slang. I could rant about this, but I’m just going to leave it quick. I appreciate Gen Z slang because it makes sense and they can explain it quickly. Gen Alpha is the most nonsense stuff that you’ve ever heard.

It’s like surrealism.

It is.

Data.

Just a terrible use of slang. And then you ask them, where did that even come from? And they have no idea.

They don’t know what it means either. It’s like they don’t know where it came from or-

But it’s fun to say, so go with it.

Hopefully I pronounced that correctly.

I believe Skibidi Toilet was correct. But beyond the slang, what else are you struggling with when it comes to Gen Alpha?

Okay, this is a biggie for me. So these kids are digital natives. That’s all they do is digital. It’s an attachment. An additional appendage is their device. But they don’t know how to type on a keyboard or change the size of an image without it being distorted on a slide. It just blows my mind that they cannot do these very simple basic computer tasks.

Yes, okay. So, oh my goodness, the typing. It’s crazy to me. These kids are on devices all the time. And when it comes to typing, they have to hunt and pack with their two fingers. And it’s fascinating to watch. And I don’t know, my default thought on that is like, “Oh my God, how do they not know?” But at then the same time I realized that we as adults just assume they know because they are digital natives. And I think everyone in their life has just assumed, “Oh, they know how to do that. They’re on devices all the time, but nobody’s ever taught them.”

And so I think it is a weird disconnect between they’re on there all the time, so we assume they know how to do everything, but yet because we assume they have not been taught. And so it’s a weird setup. Again, I feel like that’s another discussion that we could have that could take a while. And I would say one comment that I saw in the community that kind of resonated with me, I don’t teach Gen Alpha, but with volunteering and coaching, the thing that I always see is the constant touching of each other. They always have to have their hands on each other.

Oh my gosh.

I do not get it. And so we’re always having conversations about, “Hey, without permission, you cannot touch people. And you have to give people space.” And you just talk about that constantly. And oh, it’s difficult.

I teach high school. It is a real problem. So I was thinking about this the other day because of course, I was like, “Stop touching, hands to self.” I’m like, “Gosh, what is the problem with? This is seniors.” But okay, so this is my little soapbox theory, whatever you want to call it. I wonder if it’s a pendulum swing from having social distance during COVID where they do not know how to socialize at all. And now they’re socializing, but it’s just, I don’t know. Sometimes I’m like, is this some weird developmental milestone that they missed out on? And so now it’s got to show up before they become adults. So we might have this for a little longer. I don’t know.

There are a lot of teaching moments there, and we probably need to take advantage of those teaching moments. That’s a good point. I do want to highlight, though, beyond the nonsense that we’re talking about, there are actually some really serious points, really good conversation in the community about that. And I would say just the ones that really stood out to me or the themes that stood out to me consistently. Just the of Gen Alpha’s apathy, their work avoidance, a lot of middle school and high school teachers commenting that students never read directions anymore, and they’re almost helpless if you’re not holding their hand every step of the way. And that seemed to be a huge source of frustration for a lot of teachers. Robin Murphy talked about how her resources that used to work so well, all these things that she spent all the time putting together, these teaching resources, basically don’t work at all anymore. Todd Liebman, he put this very succinctly when he said, “Students are spending more energy avoiding the work than it would take to actually complete the work.”

Oh my gosh, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

No, that was a very, very good point and very well said. Dawn Krueger said that Gen Alpha is struggling with self-regulation in general, volume control in particular. Lee Gorton also said volume and impulse, but then she also said, “I got to say I’m a huge fan of their weirding of the language. And I’m in love with the brain rot, and I’m here for it.” So I appreciate that.

Full circle.

I need to more to that mindset and kind of be entertained by the language rather than annoyed by it. So I appreciate that perspective. And then Deidre Forgione said, “My freshman boys cannot keep their hands off each other. It gets a bit inappropriate at times.” Like we said, with these teaching moments, she said lots of reminders about personal space and consent. So again, it’s annoying to have to remind them constantly about that, but it is something that we need to do. So any of those things that you want to chat about a little bit more, Janet?

I think the not following directions, the apathy, the work avoidance, I feel like yes, those things still kind of wrapping together. And I don’t know, I felt like things were finally getting better. But there’s still, I don’t know, what do you want to say? Snags groups. There’s always a few that is still really stuck in that place. And it’s just a really disheartening part of teaching them right now. You know what I mean? The other stuff, it’s annoying, it’s ridiculous. I can laugh about it and roll my eyes or pull my hair out a little bit, but sometimes I think that just the apathy or that lack of motivation is just the hardest to really manage. Because it’s like I’m doing a tap dance and you’re still not entertained. What else can I do to get you to do the work? And these kids are just not, and this is a generalization. This group of kids that I’m saying that are struggling with this specifically are not motivated by grades or not motivated by credits.

Not to be too flippant, but not motivated by anything. Yeah.

It used to be, okay, I can do these fun things, let’s do it. Whatever. But sometimes I feel like I am working really hard for you to pass my class. And I’m not sure why I’m working so hard for you to not work at all.

Yes. Well, I think that’s the difficulty we all face, because it’s fun to laugh at slang and worry about kids touching each other too much. But those are really on the periphery of what we do. But then when it comes down to why we’re really there, doing the learning, doing the work, putting in the effort, and no matter what we do, you’re not making a lot of headway there. That can get frustrating. That can be a struggle that’s really difficult. And again, we don’t have the answers. This is new to so many of us. And the things that we’ve learned and things we’ve done before are not necessarily working. And so that’s why I appreciate being able to have these conversations, being able to share these ideas and just seeing we obviously don’t have the solutions, but if we’re all putting our heads together, we’re all having conversations within this community, I think it’d be helpful for a lot of people.

Yeah, it’ll be really interesting. Because that kind of stuff is the things that we worry about really I feel like are the long-term implications of that lack of motivation or apathy. What is going to happen when the students are not students anymore? What is the next generation of our workers and people?

Yeah, for sure. And again, that’s another one that we could dive into a ton. But no, it’s something to think about and to reflect on, and I think that’s why a lot of us worry about these things. So I think it’s good to put it out there and to have those conversations, but we can leave it there for the day.

Thanks to Janet for coming on. I hope you enjoyed the conversation, and we hope you enjoyed hearing from the community. And if you are not there yet, we would love for you to join us. It is, like I said, an amazing online space. It’s filled with positivity and professionalism, great conversation, great ideas. I love the discussions are happening. I love the connection. So if you have some time, please come check it out. We’ll link to the community in the show notes, or you can find it at community.theartofeducation.edu. I hope we see you there.

Art Ed Radio was produced by the Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Please be sure to subscribe so we can join you again. And if you love the show, please jump over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen. Give us a five star rating, maybe even leave us a review. We are also taking questions now for the January mailbag. If you have any questions about what to do after break, how to start a new semester, how to reset your classes after break, or anything else that you want advice on, we would love to hear them. Email Timothy Bogatz at theartofeducation.edu or podcasts at theartofeducation.edu with any questions you may have. We are looking forward to reading them.

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. Welcome everyone to the month of December, and as it is the first episode we are doing in December, it is time for the mailbag. The always popular mailbag episode with the always popular Amanda Heyn, Amanda, how are you?

Oh my gosh. Always popular, thanks. Now I’m great.

Okay, good, good, that’s a pleasant way to start. And you really are very popular, more people listen to these episodes than anything else we do, so.

Oh my gosh. Thanks everybody. I feel like there’s a Wicked joke in here, but I’m not a theater kid, so I don’t know it, but make one up in your head.

That’s fair. That’s fair. For those of you that are just tuning into a first mailbag episode, I’m Tim Bogatz, and I host this Art Ed Radio podcast, I put on the Now conference for AOEU, taught a couple years of elementary art, a whole bunch of years of high school art, and now I’ve been working for AOEU for quite a while. So, Amanda, can you give us a quick introduction?

Yeah, I’m Amanda Heyn, I’m the director of community engagement here at AOEU, I’m a former elementary art teacher, and I have also been here for a long time, over a decade, which is wild.

It is, it is. It’s great, it’s been fun to grow with AOEU from starting off as a cute little blog that we both wrote for once upon a time, when you used to edit my articles back in the mid-2010s, and yeah, it’s been a while, but it’s been fun. So, okay, director of community engagement, can I just say I got a little sneak preview of the community 101 course, and I got to take the course… I got a new badge for it, which is wildly exciting, I don’t know why those badges are so exciting in the community.

Because they’re fun.

It’s really, really fun to see that on my profile now. So, I felt very special to not only access the quiz a little bit early, take the course a little bit early, but I got my badge early, and I love it. But can you talk a little bit about what that is and what we can do with it?

Yes. Sure. Okay. So, if you don’t know about the community yet, AOEU launched a community, I think we’re two months old now, and it is only the good parts of social media, and only for art teachers. So, if you want to come join us, it’s free to join, you can go to community.theartofeducation.edu. Come on in, come hang out, it’s very fun. And we just, or I guess I should say we are just about to launch a new community course, which opens, if you’re listening on the day this comes out, tomorrow, it’s on December 4th, and it takes less than half hour and it just shows you everything there is to know about the community so that you can make the most of your time there. So, it starts by asking you to identify why you joined us and what you hope to get out of it, and then it goes through everything you need to know.

How to find friends, how to find people near you, how to create posts, how to add images to your posts, how to attend events, and where to find what we’re doing there. We have a really fun monthly event called Art Club, and then we do pop-up studios where you can just come and hang out and make art with us, online, and so my hope is that it just shows you everything you can do in there because there’s actually quite a lot. On the surface it’s kind of like, oh, this is similar to Facebook or something, but there’s really so much more.

There’s so much more there.

Yeah. It’ll tell you also, teachers are busy and they have a lot flying at them, so how to set your notifications, and what do you want to be surfaced to you and what do you not, and how do you want everything organized. So, anyway, I’m biased because I made it, so I think it’s great, but I’m glad you thought it was great.

It was. It was super helpful, I even learned a couple things. I’ve been messing around in there since the beginning, but I even found a couple things that were helpful for me. So, yeah, if you have time to go through it, I definitely think it’s worthwhile.

Yeah. And huge shout out to Jen Leban, our online community manager, because she was an instrumental part in helping me create that, and you’ll see her face in the videos too.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Anything else with the community that you want to share? Anything exciting coming up?

Yeah, we’re just giving away $5,000 in the community. So, we’re doing something fun and excited called the Winter Wishlist Giveaway, and we are giving $200 to 25 community members this holiday season.

Nice.

Which, when I got the approval to do that, I was like, hey guys, I have an idea, I think this would be really fun. And it got approved, and I’m so excited. So, it’s very easy to do this, can I tell people how to enter?

Well, I had a two-part question, if that’s okay.

Of course you had a two-part question. Yep.

Number one, do I qualify for this? Number two, if I don’t have a wish list already, can I just make one and post it?

Great question. Do you personally qualify? No.

Okay, fair. I didn’t expect to, but I was hoping maybe.

But if you don’t already have a wish list, yes, you can create one for this. And Jen is so good, she’s a former tech coach, so if you haven’t created a wish list and you don’t know how to do that, we have directions for you with neon pink boxes of exactly where to click and exactly what to do, which is wonderful.

So, it is three steps you need to join the Art of Ed community, which again is community.theartofeducation.edu, if you’re already a member, great, you have completed step one. When you come into the community, you’ll be prompted to complete the verification process. So, this is filling out a quick form, it helps us keep the community really safe, and we know that there are just art teachers in there based on that verification process. And then, fill out your community profile, which again is easy, you put up a picture, you write a sentence about yourself. And then you are going to drop your wish list in the winter wish list post, and that’s it. Now, we’re talking about this, it’s already launched, and it’s not, this is actually, you as a podcast listener are getting first knowledge of this. This is going to go up on December 5th. So, depending on, I’m sorry, that is incorrect, December 6th.

Okay. You’re trying to get people’s hopes up, and now it’s the wrong date.

Well, I know. Also, I’m really bad at calendars, so you can’t see this, but I pulled up my phone, confirming Friday, December 6th is when it’s going up. So, you can get in on that, we’ll leave it open I think for about a week and a half, so you have until December 18th to get your wish list in there, and then we will randomly draw 25 people, and that’s going to be really excited.

Perfect. So, everybody who’s listening can get a head start on their wish list, get that made, and then it’ll launch Friday, they’ll be ready to go.

Right. Also, I don’t think we said that it’s an Amazon wish list. So, it’s not just any wish list you want, you can just write a list to Santa and take a picture and post it, Amazon wish list and we’re giving away Amazon gift cards, just so that is clear.

Okay, sounds perfect. Okay. Now, I do need to ask you before we get into… Because we never can just dive into the questions, we have lots that we always need to talk about. We played this or that at the end of the episode last month, because it was November, we talked about Thanksgiving food, and so I just need to follow up on, A, how was your Thanksgiving? B, did you avoid the cranberry sauce? And C, I did not ask about gravy, and I wanted to know your thoughts on gravy, if you have a moment.

Okay, well this is a three-part question. How was my Thanksgiving? Good, great, we hosted a small Thanksgiving. Did I avoid the cranberry sauce? Yes, because as the host you get to dictate what people bring, and I’m not-

Did anybody miss the cranberry sauce, if you did not allow it into your home? Did anybody, oh, where’s-

I don’t care. I don’t know and I don’t care.

Fair.

I don’t know. Go to a different house if you want cranberry sauce, I think was the idea there.

And then gravy?

Did I want to say anything about gravy? Not really. It’s like meat jello. I don’t like anything about gravy, I don’t know why people eat gravy, it’s just thick meat sauce. I don’t know why it’s a food.

Okay, okay. That’s fine.

Do you want to say anything about gravy?

No, I have very similar thoughts, it’s like liquid meat, it’s very strange to me, and I don’t want any part of it. Everything is fine without it. If you need gravy to make your food better, maybe your food wasn’t that good to begin with.

Oh, burn, I love that take. That’s a hot take.

It probably is, but that’s legitimately how I feel, maybe just get better food and then you don’t need gravy at all.

You know what I do you like about gravy, though? The tiny little ladle. I kind of like the gravy vessel.

The gravy boat?

Yeah, the gravy boat. It’s like, what other food has its own… Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Singular purpose? You’re never putting anything else in a gravy boat.

That’s true. That’s true. I feel like you could put ranch in a gravy boat.

But you don’t.

No, you definitely don’t.

You don’t.

And also-

Sure, you could put a lot of things in a gravy boat, but-

Yeah, ranch boat just doesn’t have a ring to it, gravy boat really does.

No. It really does. So, anyway.

It’s good. We’ve derailed this podcast already though-

Yeah, let’s get back on track. Do you have a good story to tell because we announced our feature presenter?

Yeah. Well, I don’t know if I have a story yet, but Carrie Mae Weems is going to be our feature presenter for the Now Conference in February, I could not be more excited. And as this podcast releases, I am packing my bags and literally tomorrow headed to Syracuse, New York to interview Carrie Mae Weems. So, I’ve never been to Syracuse before, more importantly, never talked to Carrie Mae Weems before, but I have so many great questions that I want to ask her. I have been a fan of her photography and her work since I first saw it, god knows when, 30 years ago? So, yeah, I’m super excited to talk to her about her work, her career, her life, her experience with the arts.

She’s going to be an incredible featured presenter, and I cannot wait. So, anyway, yeah, you can check out everything about the conference. We talked to community already, but yeah, the ArtofEducation@edu/now, check out more about Carrie Mae Weems, and about all the other great stuff we’re having at the conference. Cannot wait to go talk to her, so that should be a fun one.

That is fun.

So, do you have anything exciting like that in your life?

Well, no, the most exciting thing is I blended cottage cheese into a soup recently.

Oh my god.

If we can go back to food for one second. Well, I just had a birthday, it’s the last of-

I have so many questions.

Okay, well, I’ll be very brief, because I know we’re very far into this and we haven’t even opened up the mailbag. Okay, just had a birthday, it’s the last year of my 30s. I’m 39. Which, if you’re the same age, you know that now you have a second full type job and that’s eating protein so you don’t wither away. And so, this bowl of soup I made had 20 grams of protein, and I will say, everybody on my team, I did this for you guys because I said I ran across this recipe, you said it was going to be horrible, credit to Jen Leban, she said it was going to be good, and I said, I will take one for the team. It was delicious.

Okay.

That’s a big sigh.

Okay, well, I’m just trying to filter my questions down into just a couple of them. I have 30. But question number one is why? But you kind of answered that, because we’re doing the protein. Question number two, what happens to the cottage cheese when you put it in soup? I find cottage cheese to be disgusting, up there on the level of grossness with gravy. Do the individual little curds just melt when they’re in soup? Is your soup chunky?

No.

What happens to it?

Okay, well, first I think it’s important that I say I use the Vitamix, so I use the most powerful blender known to man.

Okay.

And it was so creamy, it tasted like it was full of cream, but it was full of protein.

Okay. All right.

It was squash soup and it was great and everybody should do it.

Okay. Well, being lactose intolerant, that’s still disgusting to me, but not as bad as I originally thought. So, I think that’s good. Okay, can we go ahead and officially start with the questions? Amanda, can you do the honors?

Yes, I can. Let’s take a minute and open up the mailbag.

We have some great questions, I’m very excited about them. First one comes from Shania, via email, and Shania says, “I have a good handle on organization, my room looks pretty good, most of my supplies are organized, but I can’t figure out how to organize my crayons. Looking for advice on what you do to organize your crayons and make it easy for kids to keep them organized because I don’t do a very good job of it and I think a better system would help. Thank you in advance, and thank you for everything you do with the podcast, I love listening.” Thank you Shania, and my short answer might be just don’t organize your crayons. So, we can get into that, but Amanda, your thoughts?

Yeah, my initial thought was like throw your crayons in the trash, which, I understand, Shania we’re going to get to some helpful things, I promise.

This is the least helpful podcasts of all time.

If you’re tuning in for the first time, usually… Well, the beginning usually is like that. But okay. No, I’m kidding, I was more of an oil pastel fan, and I did use construction paper crayons quite a bit in my classroom, but I didn’t use crayon crayons a lot. However, I will say, I did have them in my room and I did have them organized. First thing I want to say, I know some people do color coding with drawing supplies, like they’ll have all the orange crayons and all the red crayons, and all the… And I personally found that unnecessary. I love organization, and my room was like a tight ship, I am the teacher who said, do you have a label maker? And they looked at me like, what are you talking about? No art teacher has ever asked for that before.

So, I had a very organized room, but to that level was just unnecessary to me, and to your point, Shania, it’s just hard to maintain something like that. It takes a lot more effort to maintain that. So, I just organized my crayons into shallow bowls or plastic containers that could nest inside of each other and kept those in a big tub. So, this is what I did for a lot of my drawing supplies, honestly, I would just pull the tub out, and then I had the right number of smaller containers in that tub that were for the tables, my kids shared. So, I think I had three buckets per table group, and I had four table groups, so I had 12 containers of crayons. And then, at the end of the class, the kids just put all the crayons back into the smaller containers, and then I assigned a student to pick up those smaller containers and put them back in the big container.

I feel like this is a lot of explanation for this very simple system. But really having a method where you can distribute and clean them up really easily I think is the biggest thing to think about. It’s just so easy when it’s like, this is how we do supplies, and this method carries through to all the dry media in the class. So, I might think about that too. Are there other supplies that you have organized in a way that’s working for you, and can you apply that to your crayons?

Yeah, I think that’s a decent approach. I would say just keep it as simple as possible with your crayons. When I did, I didn’t use crayons in secondary, but when I taught elementary, I was a traveling art teacher, and I just had Ziploc bags, the big gallon bags, and all of the crayons were in there. And I had a half dozen, you just toss one to each table, and let them do their thing, and when it is time to clean up, that’s super simple for them. Please put them back in the bag. And you save so much time not worrying about organizing those things. And I think that’s one of those, like you said, one of those tools that does not need to be color coded. And honestly, when kids have all of those colors available, when they have all of those colors right at their fingertips, they’re maybe using some colors that they wouldn’t otherwise, rather than having just like, oh, I need yellow for this, and that’s stuck in their head, they can look and see different shades, or maybe they’re going to mix a few yellowish colors together.

And it just gives them the opportunity to explore a little bit more, and not be focused on one thing, but maybe see what some of the other options are, and it can be good for them to try some different things that they maybe wouldn’t have thought about before. So, anyway, I don’t want to tell you to not organize things, but I think you should figure out whether it’s worth your time to organize them, because honestly, it works fine to have bowls, or bags, or just piles of crayons, and that’s one of the materials that lends itself to a little less organization, I would say.

Yep, totally.

All right. Okay, next question. This comes from Stephanie in Minnesota, and Stephanie says, “I’m in my second year of teaching, my principal has asked me to do lots of things for decorations, and bulletin boards, and other stuff around the school. I always said yes because it was my first year, and I’m a people pleaser, and I hate confrontation.” LOL. Familiar. “Now she wants me to do these welcome back bags for when kids come back in January. They’re super cute, and I love the idea, but it’s 300 bags, and I would’ve to work on them over break. I don’t want to do it, but also I don’t want to say no. So, I guess I have three questions, should I make the bags? If I say no, how do I say no? And if I say no, how do I not feel bad about it?” All right, Amanda, I feel like you are going to answer this with a lot more tact and a lot better advice than I would, so I would love for you to take this one, if you don’t mind.

I would not mind. Also, my eyes were just getting wider and wider as this question went on, because… Okay, so here’s what I would say, you should only make the bags if you want to make the bags, and I heard, Stephanie, very clearly you say, “I don’t want to do it.” I think that is a direct quote.

It is a direct quote from the email.

Also, you didn’t ask this, but I think this is an unreasonable request to put on a single teacher. If these welcome back bags are something the school wants to do, and yeah, sure, that’s a very cute idea, then at minimum that needs to be a shared responsibility, and honestly, that sounds like the literal perfect job for the PTO, like this is a PTO project.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, if I can just jump in real quick, I would love to second that idea that it is a very unreasonable request, just asking you to do 300 of anything is far too much.

Right. Yeah. Okay. So, onto question two, that does unfortunately mean you’re going to have to say no. I’m excited about this for you, this is a new era for you, Stephanie. Okay? This is good practice, and this is an easy one to say no to because it is unreasonable. So, I hope you get really good at this because as a second year teacher, people are going to keep asking you things, and you cannot do everything. And I will say, your principal might be disappointed that you say no, but those are her feelings and those are not your feelings, and that’s a really important distinction. And it’s okay for you to set a boundary that makes you feel good and is good for you, and it makes somebody else feel a different way. You don’t have to take on other people’s feelings. And thank you for coming to this armchair therapy session.

Okay, so how do you do that? Question three, how do you do it and how do you not feel bad about it? Personally, I’m a fan of no is a complete sentence, and I also understand that that doesn’t work in a professional setting, it doesn’t often work in a power dynamic situation like this. So, if it were me, and I was a second year art teacher, I might say something like, “Thanks so much for thinking of entrusting that important job to me, I’m not going to have time over break to devote to that project, perhaps the PTO or student council would be willing to help.” So, that’s one way to go about it.

If you feel really uncomfortable though about not helping, you could also offer an alternative solution that feels okay to you. So, you could maybe say something like, “I’d be happy to host a short after school session with other volunteers for 30 minutes in the art room on X date.” Time bounded, pick a date that works for you. And whatever you choose, I promise that when you say no, you’re going to feel so relieved and that is going to prompt you to do this over and over. You’ve got this, you can do it, and we are with you.

That’s great advice. I’m going to summarize and give my answer just really quickly, I agree with you on all those points, but I was just thinking, I’m a huge basketball fan, and I was just thinking about how players come back each season with something new in their game, like new skills or abilities. And I feel like for Stephanie here, in year two, she’s coming back with the ability to say no to things, and so Stephanie, good job upping your game here. But yeah, just short answer to each of the three questions. No, don’t make them, you don’t need to make them. Number two, the way you say no is just say, “That’s more than I can take on right now.”

I like that.

You can give an alternative solution if you need to, Amanda gave you some great suggestions. Just really say, “I don’t have time for that right now,” and that’s okay. And if you’re feeling bad about it, which I can empathize with, take just a minute to think about, or honestly even make a list of just all the great things that you have done over the past couple of years for your kids, and that you’re continuing to do for your kids, and that will tell you that you are doing enough and you don’t need to feel bad about not doing this extra work.

Yep.

All right, next question is from Tom. And Tom says, “I have a parent that is upset with my grading and I would like some advice. I teach elementary, about 400 kids, and we do report cards every quarter, where kids can be graded one through four. I gave one of my kids a two because honestly, they don’t even try that hard, and the parents were super upset. I’m going to have to give the kid another two for second quarter and they’re going to be upset again. I see a few phone calls in the future and maybe even another meeting with me and the parents and the principal. How do I get them to realize it’s third grade art and it’s not that big of a deal, or should I just give the kid a one and not even worry about dealing with the parents?” That’s a big one.

That’s a good question. Can I ask a clarifying question?

Yeah.

I’m assuming here one is the best, and two is worse than one. Yeah?

I assumed yes.

Context clues?

Tom, you’ll have to write back in and let us know if we were wrong about that. But in all the grading systems I have seen, yes, one is going to be the best there, two is just a small step down.

Right, okay. Okay. Can I take this one first?

Please.

Okay. First of all, Tom, I really empathize with you, because a eerily similar thing happened to me. I think it was my second or third year of teaching, and I gave a child an S for satisfactory in the behavior category on the report card I was asked to fill out, because his behavior was in fact satisfactory-

Satisfactory.

… not excellent. And the parent called me and proceeded to yell at me for 30 unhinged minutes. I would’ve handled that phone call much differently now, at my age, than when I was 23 years old.

Right, right.

Anyway. It honestly ended up being a really valuable learning experience for me-

Yeah. Well, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think that can be a learning experience for a lot of people, for Tom and for the kid and for the parents. And I would say, if you’re just taking the easy way out and giving the one so you don’t have to deal with it, I don’t love that, I don’t think that is the way to go. I think you need to give your student the grade that they have earned.

Yes.

So, anyway, I am sorry to jump in, but I know, Amanda, I’ll let you get back to it, I know you have some thoughts on what grades are telling us here.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, I really love what you said, the grade that they’ve earned, and I think, Tom, I think this is the key to avoiding this issue in the future, is you have to figure out what the kids are earning grades for in your classroom. So, I’m going to assume a few things based on what you wrote in, so it seems like you’re giving one grade, it’s a 1, 2, 3, 4 for art class. And this is a way that it works in some elementary schools, I have worked in a school that worked this way. It’s one number, right?

Yeah. And I think it is obviously better practice to have multiple lines on there, or one for meeting standards and one for behavior and just knocking that out, but if you just have one grade, a lot of schools still do that. And so, that is the reality that a lot of people are working within.

Right. So, in your note, you said you gave the kiddo a two because they don’t try very hard. So, my question would be, do you want that one number to reflect if a student is meeting the art standards, or do you want it to reflect their behavior and effort? So, if it were me, I would use that number to reflect if they’re meeting the art standards, and then I would use the comment feature in the report card if you want to say something about behavior, because to me it’s really tricky and confusing for everybody, for you, the child, the parents, to wrap knowledge and skills and behavior and everything happening in the art room up into one number.

For example, if a student is producing stellar artwork, but they’re really chatty or tardy every day, is that a two or is that a one? Or if a student is behaving like a perfect angel but they don’t know the primary colors, what number is that? It’s very unclear. And so, I think this is a really good chance for you to think about what specific things factor into that number and how they factor into that number.

Yeah, I think so. I think both the what and the how, and just also think about why? Why are we grading things this way? And if you don’t have a ton of autonomy, maybe talk to your principal and just send them the situation, like what do you want this report card to communicate? And just ask them that question. And maybe that will give you the guidance you need because you need to think about what those grades are communicating to the student, to the parents, and if we put that question to you and you say to yourself, oh, I don’t know, or if you say, oh, it communicates all the things, I think it’s worth spending a little time to clarify exactly what you’re getting at with your grades, and exactly what you’re trying to communicate with that number that you put on the report card.

I think also if you have other art teachers in your district who are working under the same system as you, definitely ask them, and if you don’t, if you have other specials teachers, if music is also graded 1, 2, 3, 4 or PE or whatever, see what those teachers are doing too, because having consistency in that way can also help you out. My other piece of advice here is that a report card should never be the first time a parent is learning their child is not meeting expectations. This was my case, I hadn’t expressed to this parent that their child was not acting excellently, they were acting satisfactorily, and it was a surprise to them.

And I wasn’t a parent at that time, and I am now, and I really appreciate when my own children’s teachers communicate with me upfront, it’s a much more collaborative positive experience. And so, if a student is struggling, my suggestion is to communicate that before an official grade report. And having, like we said, a rubric, or a document to explain your grading practices also really helps with those conversations. So, something to think about for next year is, I like to determine whatever the system is and then send that out at the beginning of the year so the expectations are super clear to everybody.

Yeah, absolutely. And you talked about a lesson learned for you, that was one that I had to learn my first year of teaching high school, I had parents upset because they came to conferences and their kid’s halfway through first quarter and failing, and they’re like, “Why haven’t I heard about this?” And I was like, that’s an excellent point. That’s something that I didn’t even think about as a new teacher, and that was a learning experience for me. And like you said, Amanda, as a parent, you’d like to hear about those things because it can be a collaborative effort to get kids on track and get them doing what they need to be doing. And real talk, not every parent is going to be excited to hear from you about that, not every parent is going to be collaborative, and I think that’s more common, and probably a little bit worse than it has been in years past, but I think it’s still something you need to do is communicate home and just share with them what’s going on.

Most of the time, parents are going to be on the same side, they’re going to be wanting what’s best for the kids, but they will appreciate that communication and they will want to help you. And so, I would encourage you to get that communication going as quickly as possible. I know it’s tough to find time to do, but I think it is something that’s important enough that you do need to find time for it.

One other point is absolutely, some parents are just, they’re looking for a fight, or they’re not-

Their children can do no wrong, we’ve all dealt with that, we know.

Yeah. However, if you have things documented, then that helps you with your principal, and that helps your principal advocate to the parent. And so, it’s just covering your bases can be really helpful no matter if it goes well or poorly.

Yes, absolutely. Great point.

Okay, can I switch gears a little bit?

Yes. I know you had something you told me you wanted to add, so yeah, let’s go for it.

I do. So, I wanted to highlight a discussion going on in the community, which was kind of fun. So, recently we asked, every week there’s a big question of the week that people can pop in and answer throughout the week, and it was, do you have a morning routine? And tell us about it. And I loved reading the responses there because I feel like sometimes what we do outside of school can really make or break our day at school. So, I would love to bring the community’s thoughts forward here, and then, Tim, I want to know about your morning routine when you were teaching and what it looks like now.

I was going to say my lack of a morning routine, because I hate the morning.

As do I.

Yeah. All right. Yeah, do you want to go through those and then I can share mine at the end?

Yeah. I do. Okay. So, some of my favorite answers were about how everyone is incorporating AOEU into their morning routine. I don’t know, I just wasn’t expecting this, it was just so heartwarming. So, one person said, “Once I get to school, I like scrolling through my elementary art pages that I joined on Facebook for inspiration. Now, I can come here.”

Awww.

You can start your morning with us and the community. And then someone else said, “I drive to a store, get a big coffee, and I listen to Art Ed Radio.”

I’ve had people tell me that before, how Tuesday mornings are their favorite because Art Ed Radio comes out, they listen to it on their commute, and I just appreciate that so much. So, yes, heartwarming is the right word, so thank you.

That’s great. Yeah. Thanks to those of you who start the day with us. Okay, then another common theme was prepping the night before. So, one community member said, “I typically try to lay out student artwork the night before and set up for my class in case I’m running late, so at least I’m ready for that first class.” Someone else put it this way, “Morning routine? Definitely not. I get all of my prep done the night or day before so I can stumble through my morning like any true night owl.”

It’s me.

It’s me also. Yeah, I think this is so smart. I think sometimes those five minutes at the end of the school day, you are exhausted, you don’t want to do anything, you just want to leave, but if you can just rally yourself for those five minutes and do something to help set yourself up for success the next day, it just makes the start of that next day so much better.

Yeah, future you will thank you.

Yeah. Some people talked about their home and school routines, so coffee, dog out, breakfast, and then had a very repeatable way to start the day at school, like I always take my stools down, then check my email, then pull up slides. And I like this too because it takes the guesswork out, and you can come in on autopilot and know you’re going to be ready. Another person said they do a temperature check, of walking around the building, greeting students as they enter, which, as we see all the kids in the school, that’s a great way to gauge how students are doing. And then, of course, there was a lot of love for coffee, which, fun fact, I don’t drink coffee, you don’t drink coffee.

I do not drink coffee. Neither of us are coffee drinkers.

No, weird anomalies. And lots of parents of small kids in absolute chaos, scrambles, which I definitely remember the days of. And I think the one that made me laugh the most was someone said, “I’m not an early morning person, my bed likes me to stay as long as possible. Perhaps it has some separation anxiety.” Just really appreciated that. Okay. So, Tim, what did your morning routine look like when you were in the classroom, and what does it look like now?

Okay. So, pre-kids, pre me having my own children, it was me staying in bed as long as possible. Yeah, that was very much it. I would shower the night before, shave the night before, just everything ready the night before, sleep in as long as possible, put on my clothes and brush my teeth, and head out the door. And eat breakfast on the way to school. Yeah, sleep in as late as I possibly could. And then, after I had kids, I did not want to saddle them with my bad habits, and so I got up a little earlier, we got a little bit of the, what do they call it, the chaos routine down? And it’s busy in the mornings when kids are younger, but we’d get them up and off to school, and again, I still wouldn’t do much for myself, it was more about getting the kids ready and getting them out the door.

And now, it’s very much about, my kids are both in high school now, and so they take care of most of their stuff, and it’s just a matter of the dog and I will get up, and wake both of them up, and we just kind of say hi… Nobody’s a morning person around here. So, everybody just grabs their own section of the newspaper, and glances at it as they are eating breakfast, and then everybody’s up and out the door. So, I don’t know, I guess my lack of a morning routine is my morning routine. And so, I’ll just get them out the door and then I’ll pull out my laptop and start working. Yeah, the people who are like, oh, I take a nice stroll, and I have my coffee-

I do yoga.

… and do my breathing exercise… That is so foreign to me, just nothing in my life would make me want to go for a relaxing stroll in the morning. I could be sleeping during that time.

Right.

So, yeah, the lack of routine is probably my routine for the morning. So, what about you?

Yeah, when I taught, I was a big fan of prepping the night before because my bed also likes me to stay in it as long as possible. So, very similar. I would shower, I would do my hair, I would lay out my… I would do every possible thing at night, because I’m a night owl, that’s when I’m productive. So, I would do those things at 10:00 PM so that I could literally get up and be out the door in 20 minutes. And I had it timed perfectly, and I knew exactly, if I left it this time, I wouldn’t hit traffic. And the same goes for at school, I would prep everything the night before. I often had breakfast duties, so that was part of my morning routine. So, any supplies we needed. And I would, this is how neurotic my brain is, I wouldn’t just prep for the first class, I’d prep for every class. I was-

Oh, I did that too.

… prepped for every class before I walked in the door. And then, now, I do things out of order, I get up and I literally reach under my bed and grab my laptop, and I just start working before I even get out of bed.

Oh my.

And I get myself and my to-do list organized, and what do I have? What meetings do I have? And then, my husband takes on most of the morning stuff with our kids. My kids, they’re in elementary and early middle school, so they still need some prodding and some help in that way. But he takes most of that, so if I have time, I’ll help a little bit with getting them out the door, and then I get ready, and make breakfast, and then I go to my office down the hall. Or if we’re being real, go to a blanket nest on the couch because now it’s cold in winter, and sometimes I do my best work from there, so.

Okay. I can’t imagine pulling my laptop out first thing. I can’t believe-

I understand it’s psychotic.

… we’ve never talked about this before. Does that help your brain relax, when you make that to-do list?

No.

Because I feel like I would pull that out and it just be immediate stress. Also, I can’t imagine having my laptop in the bed… Do you just work until you go to bed? These seem like very bad habits.

They’re really not great habits. I don’t work until I go to bed, no, but I do put my laptop there so that-

You just go with your laptop?

… I’m prepping for the night before. I’m prepping for the day, the next day.

I see. I see.

So, I just slide it under. Okay, does it make me… Is that a good way to start the day? Objectively no. Do I wish I was a movement, foam roller… There’s some really healthy… Meditation. That’s not me. And actually getting up and understanding exactly what I have to do and getting organized does make me feel relaxed for the rest of the day.

Okay.

My brain does like that. So, we’re all about being vulnerable here, if anybody has ideas of how I could have a healthier morning routine, I’m all ears. But this is honestly not bad for me, it’s working.

Okay. Okay. Good, good. Glad to hear it. Okay. Real quickly, before we go, do you have 90 seconds to play one more round of this or that?

Yes.

Okay. Let’s do it. All right, thanksgiving was super fun, it’s December now, it’s snowing, so we’re going to go winter edition. Eventually we’re going to have to make these art teacher questions, but there’s just so much else going on with life that I feel like we’re going to do winter edition. So, are you ready?

Yes.

Okay. This or that, hot chocolate or apple cider?

Oh, hot chocolate. Apple cider is like dirty pie water. I don’t want it.

Dirty pie water, I really like that. Okay, sledding or ice skating?

Sledding. Sledding is big, and I would actually prefer a tube.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Could have done sledding or tubing, but no, I like ice skating. Okay, snowball fight or building a snowman?

Snowman. I don’t like when the snow crystals get in my jacket. I don’t want to snowball-

Like going down the neck of your jacket?

Yeah.

Yeah, terrible, terrible feeling. Snowball fight, if it’s dependent on the type of snow, if it’s hard, icy chunks, let’s not fight with that. But yeah, you need the right type of snow for a good snowball fight. Probably for a good snowman too. But anyway, that’s a whole different discussion. Wool coat or puffy coat?

Oh, puffy coat. I have a coat that’s name is Papa Puff, because it’s so thick, and I love him.

All right, I love that. Peppermint or cinnamon?

Peppermint.

Okay. You look like you’re thinking very hard about that one.

Well, I think peppermint. Cinnamon’s fine.

Okay. Okay. And then, this is probably the biggest one for teachers, what’s better, winter break or unexpected snow day?

Ooh. Winter break because it’s so long. That’s the only… A snow day is… I live in Wisconsin, and a snow day is truly incredible.

It is the greatest feeling in the world.

It’s so great, but winter break is so nice. It’s so cozy and it’s so nice.

Yeah, I don’t even know if I can answer that one because they’re both so magical, so wonderful. So, that’s good. All right, well, Amanda, thank you so much for joining us, I appreciate the advice, appreciate the insights on the community, and I appreciate your thoughts on snowball fights, and peppermint, and snow days. So thank you.

You’re welcome. See you next month everybody.

Thanks to Amanda for coming on. We’ll have a lot of links in the show notes, and after last month, we all know where those show notes can be found, so please dive in. We also talked a lot today about the Art of Ed community, and honestly, if you’re not there yet, we would love to have you join us. It is an amazing online space just for art teachers, it is filled with positivity and professionalism, great conversation, great ideas, and I love signing on there, and always look forward to the discussions that are happening. So, if you have some time, please come check it out.

Art Ed Radio is produced by the Art of Education University, with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you for listening to this episode, and every episode, we hope you’ve enjoyed them. For a deeper dive into what we talked about today, again, find those links in the show notes, or you can check out theartofeducation.edu. Also, be sure to subscribe so we can join you again, you get the next mailbag at beginning of next month, and if you love the show, 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.

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.

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.

Welcome everyone. It is the week of Halloween and we are very excited to share some very spooky stories with you from arts rooms around the country. Joining me for all of these spooky stories is Amanda Heyn. Amanda, how are you?

I literally couldn’t be more excited.

Maybe a bit.

Nobody can see this, but I’m wearing a giant headband with a bunch of eyeballs on it just to get myself in a spooky mood.

I think it’s perfect. I think it works really well. I have some Halloween decorations in my background, but it’s not nearly as cool as your headband. I wish I had an eyeball headband as well.

I’ll buy you one.

Is the eyeball headband, is that your Halloween costume this year? Usually you do more than that, so I’m guessing no.

No, this is not my Halloween costume. My Halloween costume is Medusa.

Oh, nice.

Which I’m really excited about. My family usually does a family costume, but my oldest is 11, so I was like, “Hey, do you want to do a family costume?” And he was like, “Yeah.” And I was like, “Okay, be cool.” I was like, “Okay. Yeah, cool,” while I’m jumping up and down inside. So we are going to all be characters from Greek mythology. So my husband has a beard.

Oh, cool.

So he’s kind of limited to Zeus or Poseidon. So we’re going Poseidon and then I’ll be Medusa, like I said, and then my eight-year-old is going to be Hades, god of the underworld. He has a fire hat that we’re making and a fire sash, which is turning out really cool. And then my eleven-year-old is going to be Ares. Is that right? God of war? Yes.

Okay.

And so he’s already created this incredible helmet shield spear. It’s looking very cool. I don’t know how he thinks he’s going to carry multiple large objects trick or treating, but that’s his problem to figure out.

That can be a problem for another time. I like going all out on the costume. That’s good.

I’m excited. What about you? Are you dressing up? Are your kids dressing up?

No, my kids are too old for that now. Generally, they will have their friends over and just set up a fire pit in the driveway and pass out candy, which is great for me because then I don’t have to pass out candy, so I appreciate them having their friends over. It works very well for everyone involved.

That’s fun.

I like it. So I guess we should probably share some stories. We have some great stories here. We did this a few years back. We did an art teacher horror stories episode and it was so much fun. So I’m very excited to dive into these again. And are you ready to share your own story at the end of the episode too? I shouldn’t just spring that on you. Do you have a good one that you can share?

I do. Yes.

Okay, good. We’ll have people stick around. I have a couple ideas. I feel like, I don’t know, most of my good stories have been shared on this podcast before.

I feel like it’s been a while.

Well, we’ll see. I’ll decide which one I want to share.

We’ll pull out our own horror stories at the end.

Sounds good. So Amanda, can you tell everybody two things? Number one, where we sourced all of these stories from, and secondly, the categories that we are going to run through.

Yes. So we put out an all-call on social media, so we have some Instagram, we have some Facebook, and then we also put out an all-call in our Art of Ed community. And so we just have, as you would say, Tim, a plethora-

Excellent word choice. Thank you.

A plethora of stories to share with you today. And as they were coming in, they just naturally fell into the following four categories which we’ll be going through. So we have ghosts and apparitions, animals, gross stuff and bad behavior.

Very nice. I had a couple that I didn’t know whether it should fit into gross stuff or bad behavior. They’re really both, but we’ll see how-

We’ll figure it out.

That goes when we come to it. And I will say that Amanda and I divided and conquered here, so I don’t know what stories she is coming with and she has no idea what I’m coming with. So we are hearing these for the first time and I think it should be good. So, all right, are we going to do ghosts and apparitions first?

Yeah, we’re going to set the scene with the scariest stories first. Well, you decide if these are the scariest. The most traditionally scary stories.

All right. I will say my ghost stories are a little unsettling, but not actively scary. And one’s actually kind of funny, but we’ll see how it goes. I’m sorry if that ruins your plan for really frightening things but we’ll see how that goes. Would you like to go first or do you want me to go first?

I would love to go first.

All right, let’s do it.

All right. Ghost story number one is from Sarah on Facebook and she said, “In late May or early June of 2023, about half my kindergarten students, about a dozen out of 24 blurted out that they saw a man coming through the window into the art room and all of them pointed and exclaimed it in unison. Their eyes were glued and watched this, invisible to me, person walk along the edge of the room against the cabinets and out the hallway door. ‘He’s gone now,’ the kids casually remarked and went back to coloring like nothing had happened.” Isn’t this wild?

That is crazy.

“I, on the other hand, was totally shaking and really debated whether I even wanted to come back the following day.” It gets weirder. Are you ready?

I guess.

“Unbeknownst to me, there had been an elderly neighbor man who had passed away in his house two doors down from the school about the same time that this happened.”

Oh, no.

“He lived alone and tragically was discovered about a month later due to a welfare check when the landscaper didn’t get responses after several attempts to contact him.”

Oh, my God.

“Not sure if there is a connection between the apparition and the gentleman down the road, but what happened in my room has been the most unsettling thing I’ve experienced in my own room, and I’ve worked in that school since 2007.”

Wow. I am unsettled and I was not even there. That’s a-

I didn’t even believe in ghosts, but now I do. What? Twelve kids saw the ghost?

That is crazy. I’m very curious about the reaction of the other 12 kids. Did they just keep coloring while this strange ghost man just walked through the room?

I don’t know. Isn’t that amazing?

That’s also crazy because you hear so many ghost stories where it’s this long-standing ghost, somebody who’s been there forever, but this is a brand-new ghost. This just happened and there’s, instead of some vague thing from the 1930s, no, it’s that dude from two days ago.

I know.

That’s crazy specific and crazy recent.

I think I would’ve been like, “Can you draw him?” And then what if they drew him and then what if it matched the guy?

Yes. Oh man.

Oh, my gosh. Do you want to tell me one of your ghost stories?

This story is also from Facebook from Rebecca, and Rebecca said, “This is not in the art room, but on the stage painting sets with an art student. We were there on a Saturday evening trying to make up time so she could graduate. I’d brought my dog because we’d be there alone and I thought I’d feel safer with her there. Not. She refused to come into the auditorium and actually laid on the ground and whined when I called her to come in. I’ve never felt comfortable in there by myself since.” That is-

Spooky.

Oddly vague. The last one, very specific. This is just this vague threat that her dog doesn’t want any part of. And being a dog owner, I will say that would freak me out as well if my dog… I trust their judgment and that’s bad news if they don’t want to come in somewhere.

Spooky. Are we ready for another ghost/apparition?

Yes, let’s do it.

This is from Vicki on Facebook. “I walked into the kiln room and there was an old lady sitting in there keeping warm.”

Oh, my.

“Frightened the life out of me. Turns out she was the wife of an elderly art teacher who had mental health issues and didn’t like to be left at home. In the summer she stayed in his car, but in the winter she sat in the kiln room.”

Oh, my.

So not a ghost, but a spooky vision. What if you just had somebody sitting in your kiln room all the time? That can’t be good for you.

I was going to say, is the apparition, is it just there some of the time? Is it there all the time? I don’t know. I’ve got questions on that one.

Well, no, it’s a real person.

Oh, my gosh. Okay. I-

That’s why I said it’s not-

Did not understand that.

A real ghost. It’s a real lady. But that’s still scary.

Just hanging out in your kiln room, that might scare me more than a ghost, to be honest.

I know, that’s what I’m saying.

Oh, yeah, that’s a rough one. Do not like that.

Okay, next ghost story.

Our final ghost story here is-

Well, I broke the rules and I have one more after this, but it’s fine.

Oh, my gosh. You have all the good ghost stories. “Once when I was teaching Art on a Cart, I experienced paranormal activity in another classroom. The students totally freaked out, but I had to keep my cool.” And she says, “Internally, my knickers were in a knot.” Which is a great phrase. “But when the teacher returned to her room, I pulled her aside and told her what we had witnessed. ‘Oh, that’s just George.’ And she went on to elaborate several incidents of paranormal activity in that room. That was the first I’d heard of it, and I had been in that building for 14 years.”

George. Oh, my-

Just George.

I want to know what happened.

I know.

Like what?

I want more details on that. What was George doing?

Oh, my gosh. We’ll never know. This is going to close out ghost stories. It’s very short. It’s one sentence that makes me have 100 questions. Jean from Facebook says, “The freestanding locker where my actual human skeleton is stored-

Oh, okay.

“Makes noises something is moving inside it.” What do you mean your actual human skeleton?

But like I said, that leaves me with a lot of questions on that one.

But then I was like, “When I die, do I want to be a human skeleton in an art room?” Kind of.

Man. I had a synthetic human skeleton in my classroom. It was six feet tall, but a real human skeleton, I’ve seen those in college classrooms. I don’t know if I would want one in a public school.

Can we have that? I don’t know. I loved it. All right. Shall we move on to animals?

Let’s do. We had so many animal stories.

Oh, my gosh.

So many bats, so many snakes, so many rats. Just, they’re all over the place. I picked out a couple of favorite ones.

Great. You want to start?

I have two quick ones. I will read them together. One is from Jenny. This is via Instagram and one was from Miss Keck, I believe it was, also on Instagram. The first one is a spider giving birth to hundreds of babies-

No, no, no, no.

In the middle of class-

No, no.

In the middle of the room.

No, no. No, thank you.

No, thank you. That’s all we need to say to that one. No, thank you. And then the second one is, “Washing paintbrushes the other day, I thought it was a glob of paint in the sink, but instead I picked up a gecko.”

Do you know, geckos and salamanders live more places than you think they would. I live in Wisconsin and my aunt sent a… I just think of them as tropical and she sent a picture. She lives way up north where it’s very cold and there was a salamander in her wood pile.

I was going to say, I live in Nebraska, middle of the country, we have salamanders. I had no idea. The first one I saw ever I was like, “That’s weird, we’re in Nebraska. Why would a salamander be here?” But we’ve had some over the years. It’s very strange.

There are nine kinds of salamanders that live in Wisconsin. I bet you didn’t know you were going to get fun facts this episode also. All right, my first animal story comes from Lisa on Facebook and she says, “I walked into my supply room and there was a taxidermied bear in there. The first-graders were learning the Going on a Bear Hunt song and the teachers hid the bear there and gave the kids clues to find it.”

Oh, my.

Imagine, you’re half awake and the morning, you come in, and there’s a full bear.

Just a full-size bear in your room.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my. That’s pretty good. So I had taxidermied turkeys when I first moved into my high school room. I don’t know if they use them for still lives or what, the turkeys, but I knew they were there and they didn’t take up that much space, but a bear showing up out of nowhere.

Also, how much did that weigh and where did it come from and who had it? And why?

Again, so many questions. I could see a small black bear.

Sure.

Maybe. Maybe. But, no. No.

You would need a moving van or how did it… I don’t know.

At least two people. But again, so many questions about so many of the… All right. Another Facebook story. “This was a live bat clinging to the bulletin board, but I didn’t realize it until I touched it with my back to the board as I was explaining The Scream on the board.”

Oh, my gosh.

“The class, now graduated a few years ago, still remembers that lesson. The bat does not remember, however. When I touched it, it was startled and flew straight up into the ceiling fan. And then-

Into the ceiling fan, did you say?

In quotes, she just said, “Clean up blood in the art room.”

Oh, my gosh. That’s a bat story. Lots of bats in classrooms. One found a possum in their kiln room, but that’s a next level horror story.

Literally raining blood from above. That’s bad news.

Our next submission comes from a community member. So, quick plug, if you haven’t joined the Art of Ed community, you can head to community/theartofed.edu, I believe. There’s also a tile. If you sign in to your AOEU account, you can click right in. It’s free to join. We would love to have you. All right. So Jordan from our community says, “In my first year of teaching, I had a student with autism who would arrive to my classroom three to five minutes early. In the chaos of cleanup at the end of class, before he showed up, I was not aware that he had already entered my room. While walking around the room, I noticed a Ziploc bag of mulch sitting on one of the tables.”

I’m afraid of where this is going.

“I thought it was bizarre, so I asked what the deal was to no answer. Upon closer investigation, I noticed that there were things inside the bag that were moving. It was a bag full of ants. Eventually my student came around and shared that it was his bag of ants and he was saving it to show his mom after school. I tried to explain to him that it was inhumane to keep them in the bag because they couldn’t breathe. To which he responded, ‘Don’t worry, I poked holes in the bag.’ My eyebrows must have hit my hairline. Thankfully, I was able to convince him to place the bag outside the door where a student aide collected it.”

Okay.

A bag of ants.

I feel ants.

I have a lot of questions. How did you get so many ants in the bag?

How do you collect all those ants? Did they come from home?

I guess if they were in mulch, maybe it was just a shovel. Maybe it was an ant pile that got shoveled into the bag. I don’t know.

Yeah, that is something else. So I’ve told this on the podcast before, but just the moving bag thing at me, I did have a student bring a backpack full of rats to school before. I considered telling that-

I found they’re like sewer rats.

One as my story. They were rats from under her porch and she thought they were cool. Just her trailer at home had rats under the porch, and she decided to collect them one day and just bring them to school. And I just walked by in the hall and I just see this bag moving. Called the teacher out, and she’s like, “Kayla, what’s in your bag?” And she’s like, “Oh, those are my rats.” And we open up and there are literally three rats just moving around in the bag that’s just hanging in the hallway with the other backpacks.

Oh, my goodness.

No, thank you. Are we ready to move on to our gross stuff?

We are ready.

Let’s do this. We have a great voicemail. This is a voicemail of gross stuff from Todd. Let’s give that a listen.

Hello Art of Ed Community, my name is Todd Leban. I’m an art teacher in the middle school level at District 97 in Oak Park, Illinois. So here’s my spooky story. This took place about 22 years ago during my first or second year of teaching. I was hired as an applied art/design teacher, and the curriculum included woodworking. I had previous experience from a jewelry metal smithing class in college, and many of the skills learned there were similar to working with wood and required the same patience. With the help of an eighth grade student at the time, we decided to make marble mazes that based on my design required the use of several thin wooden strips that I would need to cut on the table saw. Being a new teacher, I did not anticipate the quantity I would need, ran out, and made the poor decision to cut some more strips during class.

I still have all 10 fingers, but can we see where this is going? While I was ripping one of the final quarter-inch strips, I apparently thought I was bulletproof and invincible and sent a board through with just my fingers. Yep, you heard right. I proceeded to make blade contact with my ring finger on my right hand, doing just enough damage to know it wasn’t okay. I stopped the saw, grabbed my finger and walked from the saw room through my classroom to the big art sink. I called the student over and said, “Could you please go to the nurse and bring them up here?” The nurse would later tell me how helpful that was, because she was new too and didn’t know where all the rooms were yet. I kept my finger under cold water, added pressure, wrote sub-notes, and the nurse took me to immediate care. I was bandaged up, learned about push sticks for woodworking and healed enough to learn my lesson.

Okay, Amanda, reactions to that? Would you like me to share first?

Well, Todd wrote sub-lessons?

That’s what got me too.

It’s just the most relatable thing I’ve ever heard. “I almost cut off my finger, but I wrote sub-lessons before I left.”

“Before I left.” If that does not encapsulate teachers, I don’t know what does.

It’s amazing. I’m so sorry that it happened, but I am so thankful that you shared that with us.

But every part is understandable. As I keep listening, I was like, “Yep, I would’ve done that. Yep. I could see myself doing that.” Just part by part, I was like, “Yeah, I understand.”

I also really appreciated how he said, “I have all 10 fingers” up front because I was scared, but then I knew I could listen to the rest without feeling too scared.

I appreciate that disclaimer at the beginning.

Really, honestly, horrific situation, but handled so well under pressure. The thought to get the student to bring the nurse up, the sub-plans.

Todd, we are impressed.

Oh, my God.

Way to keep cool under pressure. We admire you.

Todd’s in our community, so if you want to come interact with a cool guy, come join us.

And ask him some more questions about almost cutting off his finger. I have two stories here that I wanted to share for gross stuff. They’re both quick. Both came from Instagram. The first one, I didn’t know if this was under bad behavior or gross stuff. I decided it was gross, but kids drinking glue for money.

No. Yeah, that’s both.

It is both. But I just decided, if I were to try and drink glue, that’s gross. That’s really gross. If I-

Imagine. Imagine. Imagine. Everybody take a minute. Close your eyes. Imagine trying to drink a bottle of Elmer’s glue. I don’t know that it’s possible.

I don’t want to think about it that deeply, to be honest. And then we also had a lot of poop stories, a lot of vomit stories. I did like the one that Erin sent, “I noticed a pile of vomit under one of the classroom tables. No one would claim it.”

Yeah, duh. Whose is this? Null kids raising their hand.

But usually kids at least know, “Oh, I need to go out of the classroom.”

True.

“I need to go to the nurse.” I can’t imagine just ducking head under the table, throwing up and then going about your day.

Oh, my gosh.

But Amanda, your gross stories.

Well, okay, I have a few. Again, I didn’t follow directions because I just have a wide range. So I’m going to start off with a quick one.

I’m ready.

Sean from Facebook said, “Kids spilled an entire tin of sardine juice on my carpeted floor.”

Oh, no.

I just think that’s so funny. Why…

Why sardines?

Again, why do you have a tin of sardines at school? I don’t know. From Instagram we got, “A little girl peed on my Birk.” Now, I do have a follow-up question here because I don’t know if she means Birkenstocks or-

Oh, that’s what I-

A Birkin bag. Do you know what a Birkin bag is, Tim?

I do, actually. I just assume Birkenstocks because if you’re a little kid, you’re peeing on things, it’s probably going to hit somebody’s shoe before you just go squat over a bag.

Both are expensive and you don’t want to ruin them, but if it was a Hermes Birkin bag, I did look this up for us, those run 20 to $100,000. If you’re living on a teacher’s salary, it’s probably just Birkenstocks.

Probably. Also, if you have a Birkin bag, why are you bringing that to school?

Right. I just don’t… Right. So anyway, peed on your shoes. Great. All right. I do have a poop story that, again, is next level. So if you don’t like this, maybe this is where we start adding disclaimers. This comes from Jessica, again, from the community. We had a pop-up art studio recently, which is just our time to come together. It’s just come bring your art, bring what you’re working on. I brought my Halloween costume, people brought all sorts of stuff and she was like, “Oh, is this an open time to share a horror story?” And I was like, “Yeah, funny.”

Definite. Feel like you should.

Please. And she said one time there was a kid just running through her room, just not paying attention, not following directions, and he slipped on something on the ground and went flying. And she walked over and she just saw brown everywhere.

Oh, no.

There was a phantom pooper. I had a kid who used to do this. He would poop and then shake it out his pants leg.

You’ve told me about that before. Oh.

We have a lot of love and understanding for kids who have issues with that. And also, now Jessica had it smeared all over her room and all over this other kiddo.

Oh.

I would say that’s horrific. Do you have any other gross stuff, because I have one more?

No, you go right ahead.

Again, if you’re not into vomit, you can fast-forward. This is from an anonymous community member. “Last week I had a student who kept laying her head down during class. I asked her to sit up and get to work. I turned away and the next thing I knew the room was being sprayed with vomit Exorcist style all over the room, and I mean everywhere. On the table, under the table, on the floor, on her Chromebook and on the art supplies.”

Oh, no.

“My sixth grade student stood in the middle of the room with a shocked look on her face like she didn’t know what hit her. ‘To the nurse,’ I told her, ‘Hurry.’ She laughed when all the kids started turning green. Luckily we were right next to the library and could evacuate there. The next hour included the vomit child returning to class. The nurse said she was fine.” I think this is the most horrific part of the story.

Yes, yes.

“So the vomit child returned to the class. The nurse said she was fine. What? I couldn’t believe it. Fine. ‘But you stay in here. The library has carpet.’ So she finished up class next to the crime scene.”

“To top it all off, due to mixed up communication, the janitorial peeps did not clean the room for over an hour, way after class had ended. The cleanup was rushed and poorly done. There were vomit bits still on the table, under the table, and the floor was super sticky. Grateful it was the last class of the day, I ended up donning PPE and cleaned everything with bleach.”

You kind of have to at that point, but, oh man. Any story that includes the phrase vomit bits is…

It’s not good.

It’s not good for anybody.

That’s really not good.

All right, can we move on to our final category now?

We’ve arrived at bad behavior.

So I have one quick one and one longer one. The first one is just a sixth grader fainting in the middle of a demonstration.

Oh, that’s scary.

Not bad behavior, but not fun to deal with either. So I don’t love that one. And then this one would absolutely haunt me for quite a while. It says, “My classroom is on the first floor and I was working super late. It was pitch black outside and the streetlights were off in the alley. Some students saw me working and knocked on my windows. It was terrifying until I realized it was my kids.” I cannot imagine just working late and then all of a sudden somebody just knocking on your windows out of nowhere when you can’t see what’s going on out there. Oh, man. So I have a friend who has a first-floor classroom, and she will not go in at night because of that reason. Everybody’s just right there and can absolutely see in, everything she’s doing. Do not like that at all.

I do not like that either. All right. My bad behavior comes from… Well, she wasn’t behaving badly, but someone was in this story… Jessica from the community, she said, “When I started at my current school, I inherited a pretty disastrous art room. I spent a lot of time getting the room ready, thoroughly cleaning, organizing over the summer. The head of maintenance saw me working and let me know that he was going to take a look at the sinks in the room since they had been a little slow to drain in the past. He dutifully snaked the drains and found a bundle of 10 paintbrushes held together by nothing but sink junk.”

Oh.

“The sinks have drain traps. The paintbrushes would’ve had to be forced down the drain for this to happen. Needless to say, I was left with more questions than answers about how that happened, but at least the sinks drained again.”

That’s good. But oh, man. Again, another one of these stories with so many questions. Are we just forcing paintbrushes down the drain? How big is this sink drain that it can fit 10 paintbrushes?

Right? I don’t know. I don’t know.

Oh, man.

All right. And last but not least, “My closet was a makeshift dark room.” Oh, sorry. This also comes from the community, anonymous community member. “My closet was a makeshift dark room for wet photography before we sadly went all digital and turned it into a kiln room.”

A familiar story.

“There isn’t heat in there, nor do we hear any alarms or PA announcements in the room. One day I was working with my whole photo class in the dark room. We come out when finished and notice the whole school is lined up on the lawns outside. Not only did we miss a fire drill, but apparently no one noticed or reported that a whole class was missing. Thank goodness it was just a drill and not a real emergency.”

Oh, man, that is bad news right there.

Bad news.

That’s why you do drills to learn these things, right?

Right.

That maybe we should not forget about the art class if the building is on fire.

It just feels so on-brand.

It really does.

It’s so discouraging. You just forgot about us? No one thought to come look?

All right. We do need to close the show with a couple of our own stories. Before I do that, I want to say thank you to everybody who shared their stories. You have no idea how much Amanda and I enjoy reading all of these, and it’s tough to pick our favorites to bring here. But thank you to everybody for sharing. So Amanda, would you like to tell your story first or do you want me to do that?

No, I can tell. Mine actually takes place outside of the classroom. So I’m going to preface this with two caveats. Number one, I purposely didn’t live in the district I taught in because I like to keep those things separate. Number two, I am not a big drinker. It is not part of my nightly, weekly, monthly routine. A couple times a year I will have a couple cocktails, that is… Okay. So I had just become the art teacher, and we had just had, either it was back to school night or parent-teacher conferences or something. I had just met all of the parents.

And there was this one special child who I had already been in contact with the mom and she was great, but this kid, was just a mischievous, lovable kid. So I had had to talk to her. I knew this mom. And I was at my local Target, not the Target in the district I taught in, and we were having a party of some kind. And I was shopping for the party and I ran into this mom and this kid in Target, and the only thing that I had in my cart was the biggest bottle of vodka that you can possibly buy. You see them coming, and I was like, “I’ve already been spotted. What do I do? Do I turn around? Do I pretend to…” I said hello? I just was like, “Oh my God.” And I’m 23, I look like I have a problem. It was-

You look like the type of person who buys giant bottles of vodka every week.

It was not my best moment. It was kind of horrific. And then funny enough, that kid is tied to another horror story in my room because he cut his finger open and had to go get stitches. That was my one and only like, “Oh, you have to go to the urgent care immediately.” So that’s mine.

All right, that’s a rough one. So I tried to think about a story that I have not told on the podcast before. We have 400 episodes, so I can’t guarantee, but I don’t think I’ve told this one before. This is my first year in the high school. I had taught elementary for two years, just moved to the high school and still getting things set up, still figuring out how everything works. And we had those giant gallons of paint with the big pumps. You press down on the pump, it goes in the pallet. I eventually got rid of those because they get clogged and they make a mess everywhere. Anyway, I had taught my kids, “Hey, if there’s a clog there, just grab the dried acrylic, pull it out of there, and then use the pump.”

And you can see where this is going. But the assistant principal came in to observe and this kid is over there trying to get the red paint out and it’s not working. So rather than unclogging, as we’ve been taught, he just starts pounding on the pump as hard as he can. It, of course, explodes everywhere, splatters all over my assistant principal who-

Oh, my gosh.

Is wearing a fairly nice suit at that point. And I’m a month in at this school. I don’t even know if it was October yet. And I was just like, “Oh, my God, am I going to get fired right now?” Because the assistant principal is just covered with red paint. It looks like blood splatter all over his suit coat. And thankfully, thankfully, he had a great sense of humor about it. And he just came up to me. He’s like, “Mr. Bogatz, I assume this is why we wear aprons in the art room huh? I was like, “Yes.” I was like, “I’m so sorry.” And he laughed it off and it was not a big deal. And he actually, whenever we had art shows or any kind of public appearance, he would wear that sport coat with the paint splatter all over it.

Oh, what a happy story in the end.

I know. I really appreciated that. And just the fact that… I’m sure that coat cost him hundreds of dollars and it was instantaneously ruined and I was so scared and so freaked out. But he could not have been any better about it, so I really appreciated that.

Oh, I love it.

It was a nightmare at the time.

A nightmare turned into a happy ending.

Just a little running joke and we appreciated that. So, cool.

Amazing.

All right, well Amanda, I feel like that’s a good place to leave it. So thank you for joining me. Thank you for collecting the stories. It’s been a lot of fun.

It has been. Happy Halloween.

Thank you to everyone who shared their stories, and thank you to Amanda for joining me for this podcast. I always love doing these kinds of episodes. They are fantastic. If you are looking for even more horror stories from the art room, you can check out The Art of Ed community. We have a post all about that. We’ll link to that in the show notes and you can join and be part of the community if you have not done that already. I will also link to the original episode of Horror Stories that we did a couple of years ago. If you decide to give that a listen, make sure you stick around until the end for one of the wildest teaching stories I have ever heard. It is from a now happily employed art teacher, and the story is all about how, as a student teacher, she was being actively sabotaged by her cooperating teacher. It’s wild. You have to give it a listen.

So look for the original Horror Stories episode in the show notes, and you can give that a listen. It’s wild. But I hope more than anything that these have entertained you and helped you realize that we are all facing a lot of weird things together in the art room. But that’s just what makes our job interesting. And as you hear all these, just hopefully you realize you’re having a better day than these people were at that time.

Art Ed Radio was produced by the Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you, as always, for listening to the show. Please share this episode with your friends if you feel like they would be entertained by it or your colleagues or anybody else who you think might enjoy. And if you are loving the podcast, please leave us a five star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We appreciate the ratings. We read all of 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, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the October mailbag. We are very excited to have you. Unfortunately, Amanda is not able to record with me this month, but we have Janet Taylor with us, familiar voice on the podcast, frequent guest. Janet, how are you?

Hey, Tim. I am doing pretty good. How are you?

Good. I am great. Well, I’m always excited to record mailbag episodes. These are my favorite. I do want to say we got a bunch of new listeners now that the school year started. With the September episode and a few people wrote in and we’re just like, “Hey, the podcast is great. Who are you?” And so I thought that we should probably begin by introducing ourselves. So just really quickly, for those of you who are new to this podcast, my name is Tim Bogatz. I am a longtime art teacher. I did some elementary art, I did a lot of secondary art, and then I’ve worked for the Art of Education University for the past eight years, full-time, doing all sorts of cool things, including the NOW conference and this podcast every single week. So Janet, can you give us a quick introduction and tell us who you are please?

Sure. So I’m Janet Taylor, and I am a high school teacher in the western suburbs of Chicago. I have taught pretty much any different course that there is, different media or whatever, but mostly teach jewelry metals, and ceramics right now and AP. And I came by AOEU like, what was that, 2019? So it’s been like five years. That’s crazy to think-

It is that’s awesome.

Five years. Part time. So I’m the K-12 content specialist with the community engagement team as well.

Yeah, very cool. And you’ve been all over the podcast. We’ve done so many things together. So I know your voice is familiar to a lot of people, but before you host a mailbag episode, I need to ask you, are you good at gardening?

I’ve always been waiting to be asked that actually. No, I’m, what is gardening after? Okay. I am a terrible, terrible gardener, actually. I feel like every year I really want to be a good gardener. We plant vegetables and I’m really good at killing everything. In fact-

That’s okay.

… In fact, yeah, my neighbor around the corner was doing a fundraiser and I bought mums. I thought, okay, it’s October, or it’s almost October, so we should probably get some little yellow buds going, a little bit longer to feel. And my husband picked him up and said, “Are you sure you want to give up these?” And she’s like, “Well, why? All you have to do is water them once a day.” And he’s like, “You know you are sending them to their death by sending them over to us.” I was like, “How dare you say that?” But it’s so true. Sad.

Oh, that’s funny. No, I just feel like Amanda and I talk about our gardens to the point of annoying some of our listeners, but as Amanda said, you’re in charge of your own destiny. You can hit the fast-forward button, but I will spare everyone any gardening talk, but things are going well for me, I will say. Our big thing that we need to talk about though, before we actually open up the mailbag is Amanda kind of teased this in the last mailbag episode at the beginning of September, and then last week I had generally been on the podcast to introduce the Art of Ed community. And I would just say we are very, very excited about it. We’ve been working on it forever. How long, Janet? How long has this been?

Like a year and a half. It feels like it’s been like five years,

But we’re so excited that it has actually launched, as Amanda’s been calling it, your new favorite place on the internet, a community for art teachers to get together and do all sorts of amazing interactions. So we’ve sent out a lot of communication about it, but in case you haven’t heard, I’m going to do a quick synopsis and then Janet, I would love to get your opinion as well.

So the Art of Ed community, it’s a best way to say, it, is a dedicated online space for our teachers to come together and hang out with other art teachers. And you can ask questions, answer questions, give and receive support. We have daily polls, daily questions, we have monthly events so people can get together live online to learn new things and to make some art. I think I talked about this a little bit with Jen last week, but it’s like all the best parts of social media all in one spot without a lot of the headaches and a lot of the annoyances that come with social media. And I think that’s been a really sort of refreshing experience. So Janet, what has it been like for you since the community has launched?

It’s refreshing, I have to say, right? I just noticed the other day I was scrolling through some social media. It’s just so much spam now, and I’m always just trying to get to the good stuff. I’m like, no, no, no. I want to get my questions answered. I want to talk to my community, my people, and it’s hard to sift through it. So I’m really excited because our community is truly that. You just go in, everybody’s so welcoming and warm and just really wonderful positive space, which gosh, we all really need a lot of that right now. You know?

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, so I’ve really been enjoying that as well. I also wanted to ask you though, before we open up the mailbag, how is the school year going for you? I mean, we’re what, six weeks in for a lot of us? I don’t know, are you a month in now, but how are things for you?

Yeah, so I am a little over a month in, which is crazy because I mean, I keep asking myself, it’s like got to be winter break by now, right? I literally walked into the building the other day and there was the teacher that I didn’t even know. I was like, “Oh, I really like your outfit today.” And she’s like, “Yeah, man, I’m so tired.” And I was like, “Really?” She goes, Yeah, we been teaching for seven months already? I was like, “It’s not just me. Okay, okay.” Yeah. So it’s going pretty well. Okay, so a little bit fun note. My daughter is a freshman, not at my school, but her other school, whatever. But she’s a freshman this year, and so I feel like very particularly attentive to those little babies.

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.

I feel like I’m experiencing her freshman year, even though I’m not even around just watching these freshmen walk around.

Watching what they do. Yes.

So it is interesting being a parent and having that kind of experience again. But so my classes are going really well. I’m pretty excited about them. Actually, my day goes, I feel really good. I feel happy and excited to be there, which is a great feeling. Last year, one of our ceramics teacher, amazing ceramics teacher, she retired. And so this year some of her students came over to me and were like, “Can you please continue Clay Club?” And I was like-

Clay Club. That sounds amazing. I mean, I love the alliteration as everybody knows.

I know.

It just sounds like so much fun to come to Clay Club.

I know. I was like, I’m not doing a club, I’m not going to do a club. I don’t have time to do a club. And then they were like, “Please Mrs. Taylor.” And I’m like, “Okay, okay, okay, all right, fine, fine.” But I was like, “You two have to be the leaders.” And it’s just been like, oh my gosh, we had two Clay Club meetings and it’s just like packed. Everybody wants to play with it, but okay, I have to tell you about this really cool activity that they did.

So the first day they wanted, so again, I said to these two leaders, I said, “You guys have to plan things, I’ll help you, whatever.” And they totally brought it. So they brought this activity called the Fortune cookie activity, and I think she literally just made it up. She saw these porcelain fortune cookies on Pinterest something, right?

And she’s like, “Oh my gosh, this would be such a good idea if we can teach them about the stages of clay and how clay will dry out and it’ll be brittle, be bone dry.” And I was like, “Okay.” So she said, “The first day we’re going to all do little fortune cookies and write little fortunes and put them in the cookies and then we’ll put them out to dry. And then the next week when we come back, we’ll open up the fortune cookies, pass them around.” And oh my gosh, it was the best activity ever. I’m like, these two leaders are going to be art teachers. They’re going to be art teachers. Yeah. So it was really, really great.

Important question. Have you posted about this activity?

Okay. Yes I did. I made a little reel about it. And here’s the funny part. Okay, usually my stuff gets two views. No, I’m just kidding. It’s like a couple hundred or whatever. I have a small following, whatever. It’s very tiny. I’m not one of those amazing elementary teachers who are viral every time they post something, right?

Yeah.

And so all of a sudden on Instagram, I got this notification that was like, your post has gotten a lot of views, and I look and it’s like at 2,000 views within 24 hours. And I was like, am I viral? Did I go viral? I literally had to go on Google and look up what does it take to be to go viral? What does that actually mean? I’ll just like to admit for those of people that are my age, I did not go viral with it.

I feel like if you have to Google search, am I going viral? You’re probably not.

Probably not. Yeah.

I like it. But still, we can link to your Instagram in case anybody wants to find what you’ve posted about.

I love it. Thank you. But I just have to say that’s twice now in the podcast. We haven’t even talked about the good stuff yet. Twice now, I feel like I’ve been outed for my gardening skills and now my ability to know what going viral really means.

Well, I was just going to say, you’re doing a great job subbing in for Amanda because we are 11 minutes in and still have not gotten to the first question. So I feel like we’re doing great.

Okay, good.

That being said, we do need to get to some questions. So the official sound is going to play after I say let’s open up the mailbag. Okay. First question, this comes from Trevor in Nebraska and the subject line, which is perfect, which is why I asked you, it says, “A teaching question for your gardening podcast.” Which just made me laugh really hard when that came into the email. So I told Amanda, I feel like we’ve been successful with our gardening talk.

There you go.

Trevor’s question is what should I do with a student teacher or practicum student? I feel like teachers are never taught what to do with a student teacher. They’re given a few rubrics and tasks the student teacher is to complete before the end of the semester, and that’s about it. What is the key things a mentor teacher should do to best prepare their student teacher?

Wow, that’s such a good question and even a better subject line. Okay, so this one is so good, Tim. I have to say it’s been on my mind for quite a while, and I don’t think I told you this, but I was thinking that we should do an entire episode just on this instead of what do new teachers need to know? It’ll be like, what do new teacher mentors need to know?

That’s good. Yes. Tack it on to our miniseries.

Let’s add it to the list. All right.

I’m not thrilled about that much work, but I’ll admit when I read this question and I even replied to Trevor, I was like, “This could be its own episode.” So yeah, there’s lots to chat about. So can I share just a couple ideas.

Please.

So I think the biggest things to think about at first, and I have some other ideas I want to share too, because Francisco Matas a couple years ago at the NOW conference, put together a great presentation about how to set your student teachers up for success. So I’ll reference back to him in a bit, but my first idea that I want to chat about biggest thing is just to prep your classroom and prep your students, make sure everything is organized, make sure you explain your routines and procedures and just kind of share what’s happening in the classroom and make sure you can share why you do those things in your classroom with your student teacher. Not only the what, but the why. And I think preparing your students as well and just, “Hey, we’re going to have somebody coming in. This is what it’s going to look like.” And just make sure that they’re prepped. So it’s not a huge surprise when when the student teacher is starting to help or starting to co-teach or starting to actually teach or take things over.

And I think it’s important to lay out the process where you begin with your student teacher or practicum student observing and just seeing and learning the what and the why. And then we’ve talked before about the gradual release of responsibility where they’re slowly taking on more things. We talk about it in terms of curriculum or instruction a lot of time, but it works for student teachers as well as they slowly take on more responsibility and slowly take on more of the teaching. But I think it’s super important. I’d say one thing that you can do to best prepare them for teaching is figuring out not only what the student teacher wants to teach, but what they want to get out of the experience. And so if you have some time to talk to them about what their goals are, what they want to learn, what they want to do coming in, make sure that you get on the same page with them, then I think that’s going to set them up for success and give them some of the tools they need to have a positive experience. So Janet your thoughts?

Yeah, totally. So I think what do they want to teach is just a really good question. I worked with student art teachers as a supervisor for a year at a university.

Oh my gosh, I forgot about that.

Yes, I did too. I was like, oh yeah, that was back into the classroom I go. So what was cool about that experience, especially for me was going around to seeing all the students in different schools like elementary, and middle school, and high school and getting to see what their mentor teachers did and didn’t do with their student teachers. That was really interesting to see how that went. But I have to say, a lot of what you do with your student teacher really depends on that student teacher. You know?

Yeah. That’s a great point.

For me, this is my second career. So I think I had already spent my good 10 years in another career, and so I think I came with a different skill set, for example. So walking the classroom is very different for me. I might need to focus on different things than right out of college, out of undergrad, 22-year-old. So that really depends, or maybe if they have an really strong art background or whatever. But I would say, in that first part, when you were talking about the graduate release and the observation, sometimes I think mentor teachers don’t really know what you do with the observation, you know?

Yeah.

Sitting there and what they, and I think student teachers don’t know what am I looking for, what am I supposed to be paying attention to?

As Trevor said, there’s just a checklist and checklist observe.

Done. So I think when it comes to that, a great opportunity for you to do is maybe provide some questions to them as you’re even a little piece of paper or something that they can take notes on while you’re teaching a lesson. Why do you think I did that? Do you think it went well? What did you notice about the student’s response? And then those usually create really great organic conversations around like, oh, I saw so-and-so was having an issue or struggling with this. Oh yeah, how do we help that kid? Or that kind of stuff. And those are the things that really help new teachers. Right?

Yeah.

And then once they get into that kind of place of actually teaching, I think it’s really hard as a teacher to let go of your classroom and let go of your curriculum and trust that, that student teacher is going to do right and by you. And sometimes you have to just let go and be like, “Yeah, they might not have a great lesson, but I think it’s really important for them to try.” Right?

Right.

I know even in my course team, if I have the same lesson as somebody else, I often have to change the materials because teaching it is so different for me and it feels really inauthentic and it’s hard for me to teach something that’s not mine. So I think it’s really important for them to be able to try that out and then taking time to really reflect on that. I think student teaching is a lot, it’s a lot of brain work really. It’s just a lot of reflection, a lot of thinking about what worked, what didn’t work, why? That kind of thing.

The other thing that I wanted to mention too before I forget, is as they’re working through a lesson preemptively, a really great thing to do with your student teacher is to bring up things ahead of time. Hey, what do you think about the materials? How are you going to distribute materials, for example? Asking them those questions ahead of time, but coming from a place of curiosity so that they’re figuring it out as opposed to, I think a lot of times as a veteran teacher, we want to just give them the information you want to impart… I mean, I’m guilty of that. I just want to give you all the things I can.

Right. Right.

Right. And so oftentimes it’s like, oh, you should do this or you should do that. And instead you should really… Now, now I’m saying that, instead, you should. You know? Really ask or offer questions that they can figure it out what’s going to work best for them.

Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, I think that’s important to let them figure it out for themselves. Let them learn on their own rather than you just imparting that knowledge. I think that’s good. I want to ask you too, what do you think, let’s say they are going to present a lesson, you’re letting them try a lesson and you are pretty sure it’s going to fail spectacularly. What is your reaction to that? How do you deal with that?

It’s making me feel anxious just thinking about that, right? It’s so hard to just watch that happen, but I mean, I think it’s kind of that fine line of teetering on letting them figure it out because that’s how you learn best. But obviously, if they’re going to do something that’s off the wall and kids are going to be throwing pain at each other or cutting their fingers with an X-ACTO knife because they don’t know how to do… You know what I’m saying?

Yeah. Yeah.

Right. That’s not really a fine line. I think that’s a pretty clear line.

Right. Right.

On the failure scale. But I think sometimes it’s like, okay, you can see that maybe something’s not going to work out. You ask the questions, they haven’t maybe figured that out ahead of time. So let’s go back to the materials distribution question. So the kids don’t know how to get materials. It took forever, things happen, right?

And then they didn’t even get through the lesson and kids are talking or whatever, because now they’re disengaged or unengaged or whatever. So after that period, that’s a great time to say, “Okay, so what do you think went well? What do you think didn’t?” And then “Let’s problem solve together. Maybe next time try this.” And then hopefully they’ll have another opportunity pretty quickly to reteach that lesson and try it. And then you can reflect on that. “Okay, so did that work better for you? Did this feel okay?” I mean, I don’t know. I just think we all know that learning we do best by failing and figuring it out as opposed to being told everything, right?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I was just going to say there, like you said, there’s a line between letting them fail in a way that helps them learn or just letting them fail, period. And so you need to kind of be aware of that. But I think there is a lot of opportunity for reflection there. Nothing’s going to go perfectly, and I would say as often as you can take advantage of those opportunities.

And then just one last thought to close out this question. I mentioned Francisco Matas. He had that NOW presentation and the four steps he said to set your student teacher up for success was the number one, establish the relationship. Like I said, figure out what they want to get out of the experience.

Number two, get ready to let go. As you and I both said, it’s tough to give up control or to give up parts of your curriculum, but it’s something that you need to do.

Number three says, let them do the heavy lifting, but you still need to support them. Let them do their thing, let them know what teaching is all about, but you’re still there to help. You’re still there to support.

And then number four, creating closure. Just all of those reflection things that we just talked about and what you can learn from them.

So if anybody wants to dive a little bit deeper into that, I will put in the show notes a link to his presentation from a few years back. And it’s a really good one. So if this is of interest to you, then you can definitely check it out.

All right, Janet, our next question is from Jeff in Iowa and just says, “What suggestions do you have for lessons for students who don’t want to be in art class? I have one class with only about 20 kids, but it’s all students who are signed up for the class, not by choice. I haven’t found anything yet that gets them excited about art. What do you say?”

So Janet thoughts on what you can do for students who maybe didn’t choose art class but are in art class anyway, how do you get them engaged?

Yeah, so I guess I kind would be questioning what’s their MO, right? Why aren’t they excited about art? So are they feeling uncomfortable about making art? Maybe they didn’t have a really good experience in the past, or maybe they equate art only with drawing, technical drawing, like we’ve talked prior.

Yeah, so many kids are in that boat. Drawing realistically or nothing at all.

I’m not a good drawer, so forget it. I’m not good at art. It’s like what? Or maybe they’re like, oh, I’m too cool. I don’t want to look like I am good at this. You know what I mean? I don’t know.

Can’t be seen trying hard. That would be-

God forbid, right? So I think I kind of look at that perspective and think, okay, what’s that? So my tips would be to get to know them personally, try to understand what it is that they’re interested in, what’s cool at that age group. So I don’t know if that’s middle school or high school. It kind of sounds more like high school or whatever, but obviously, as we just noted that I’m not cool, or hip with what’s happening in high school, but that’s fine. People love me anyway. No, I’m just kidding. Okay. So I’d say that’s a big part of it. And then from there, kind of branching out from there. So small bite-sized, low-risk art activities, like fun challenges, introducing them to things that are not specifically long-term technical drawing projects that’s going to kill it fast, I think. And then creating a really fun community culture. So I think some things like that could be partner challenges or experiences using fun materials that don’t carry that judgment weight. Instead of doing drawing, doing collage where you’re tearing the paper only. Or you’re taping a marker to your elbow and drawing with a partner or that kind of thing. Or trying some monoprinting that is messy and really low expectation because it’s not something necessarily representational.

And it was funny, Jen Leban and I were just talking about this at the community, we had an open studio time, which was really fun. And I’m trying to remember if her husband Todd had asked about this or something, but we were talking about it and I was like, “I feel like kids are just really excited to use other materials like Shrinky Dinks or just different hands-on stuff like clay.” And she’s like, “Yeah, well you know Janet that digital tools can still be really cool because not every kid has those necessarily those type of tools or experiences at home.” So anything that they don’t have access to feels novel and exciting to them.

And then lastly, I’d say if you were, so again, if you’re using more traditional materials, trying to make it more functional or relatable, so you could do a phone stand or I’ve had students have done little speaker things for their phones or whatever, or my kids love Shrinky Dinks, make the keychain, make it functional that they can put on their backpack. Or if you’re like my daughter going to Homecoming this weekend digital poster for asking a date to Homecoming,

Oh my God.

What could motivate them more? I’m not sure. I’m not sure.

Oh, I love it. I was just going to say though, just to kind of carry on with that idea of giving them opportunities that they maybe don’t have other places, I think that’s a big key. Whether that is building something with clay or just cool processes like the monoprinting that you had mentioned, or digital art or whatever else. I would say just pull out all the creative lessons, creative materials that you think might work for them and just keep trying things and something will eventually pique their interest and it may not be what you expect, maybe something that surprises you, but I would just say try as many different things as you can. You don’t need to go super in depth with any lessons. Like you said, Janet, just the bite-sized art activities, as I think you said, just let them kind of try it out and something’s going to click eventually. So I would say just be patient and be willing to experiment and you will find something that will get them motivated.

Can I share two resources too, that might help?

Please do.

Okay. So if you are a pro subscriber, we do have a great pro pack called Motivating Reluctant students. I think that’s a great one to access. And then if you’re looking for some kind of out of the box materials to get them excited about it, I wrote an article a while back, I’m trying to remember the title of it. It’s like magical. I’m sure it’s got some alliteration in it, but it’s like Magical Media for the Classroom or something like that.

Okay.

Yeah, we’ll link that here too, but it’s-

Okay I will make sure I find that and link that one.

Yeah, I think paper making, things like that, right? Just all those things that we forget about, I feel like you know?

Yeah, no, I think that’s great. And there are a lot of ideas out there and the more time you spend researching, the more ideas you’ll get and I think we can definitely find something that will help for that situation.

Our next question is from Diane in Massachusetts and Diane says, “It’s late September and my supply order is still not come in.” That’s rough. Diane says, “I have pencils and some old markers and that’s literally it. I will take any suggestions you have for lessons with pencils only.”

Okay, I’m laughing with you, not at you because I feel this pain so deeply, right? I swear speaking from a teacher right now, myself, who put in a supply order over the summer and things keep being backordered, backordered, backordered so you just never know when it is coming. It’s the worst feeling.

Yeah, agreed.

Okay, so I hate to even bring this up, Tim, but remember when we were in this little thing called a pandemic?

Oh, yes.

I’m so sorry to say that word. But there are actually surprisingly a big number of resources where you basically don’t have to use anything more than a pencil. And so one of those Saria Krajewski had written an article literally called What to Do When You’ve Only Got a Pencil and Paper or, so I’ll put that in the show notes as well. That one’s great because it talks about all types of mark making the basics of hatching, cross-hatching know scumbling, etc., and then having students come up with their own types of techniques. And name me, I have a contest, that kind of stuff. But there’s other things that you can do besides just drawing too. And I am just going to name a couple things that I thought of. So one is if you have markers, like you mentioned, you could also put them in water and turn them into watercolor paints.

I know that might be different if you don’t have brushes, but there’s just ways to use watercolor in a lot of fun ways. So there’s that. But also as somebody who teaches mostly 3D now I’m going to say your paper turns into really great 3D sculptures. So even if you just have paper, you could even do it in preparation for drawing exercises, like tearing up the paper and strips and turning them into a word like standing upright and then using light sources and taking photos or doing some fun origami or I love zines. So anyway, fold up your paper and use it in different ways.

And then I’m not sure what the age is here about the question, but maybe an actual good use of phones. I hate to say that too, out loud. You could do some scavenger hunts, right? There’s a ton out there as well for that of different prompts and things like that we’ve provided through the years too, so you don’t have to be stuck with just paper and pencil because like I said, you just never know. It could be December before you get your order, but hopefully it’ll be tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll be tomorrow.

Diane does not want to hear that, Janet.

I’m sorry.

No, I was just going to say I appreciate your creativity there because I was just jotting down a list of projects and they’re all drawings, so anyway-

Okay, good. That’s better.

… But honestly, when I was in college, I had drawing 1 and then drawing 2 and all of semester one, all of drawing 1 was just done in black and white media. It’s not unheard of to go through and just do a bunch of drawing for a semester if you need. I think that’s okay, but a quick list of thoughts and list of things that I’ve done before. Obviously not comprehensive, but can maybe give you some ideas to get started. Still life with one object, still life with multiple objects, translucent objects, transparent objects, reflective objects, all good drawing challenges. Portraits are always good. Self-portraits are always good. Portraits of your pets or other animals, always fun as well.

That’s a big one actually. Yeah, pet portraits, biggie.

Yeah, kids love it. Kids love it. Doing just studies of facial features, doing studies of anatomy, going outside, drawing plants, going outside, drawing trees, any of those things work really well. If you want something really in depth, you can do a grid drawing or a transfer drawing. Try and learn about photorealism. One artist that a ton of people don’t know about. But one of the best photorealists I know is actually from Omaha where I live. His name is Kent Bellows, and if you look up Kent Bellows, he does just incredible graphite work as well as colored pencil work. But my kids are fascinated by seeing his stuff. It’s just absolutely incredible photorealism. So if you’re looking to do something in-depth, that might be a good starting point for your graphite drawing. Anyway, hopefully that can give you a few ideas, Diane and can get you on the road to getting things figured out until your supplies come in.

Next question is from Casey, and Casey says, “This is my first year of teaching. Thank you so much for the podcast and all of the resources. I’ve been listening to as many episodes as I can, and it has been really helpful. My question is what to do about elementary students who won’t stop asking, am I done yet?”

Is it just elementary? Are we just talking elementary here? Okay.

She said, “I heard people joke about it before I started teaching, but it’s so much worse than I thought. How do you get them to stop asking?”

Janet, thoughts on this one?

First of all, congrats Casey to your first year of teaching. That’s so exciting. And welcome to the world of, am I done yet? That will not stop. Okay. Okay. So this is kind of funny actually, because we were just talking about this in the community under, I had posted a poll of what are your art teacher pet peeves? I think it came up a few times, like 10 or 12 maybe. I’m not sure.

Wait, what did you put down for your pet peeve? I don’t remember from the discussion.

Oh, what did I say? I have,-

I said mine was side conversations, kids talking when I’m trying to talk, I cannot handle that.

Oh, I think that was actually mine too. I think I posted that because the question, because it was literally happening to me and I was like, this is my pet peeve. Okay, what are everybody else’s pet peeves?

Good conversation piece. I like it.

Oh my gosh. Oh, yeah. I was a little bit nervous actually, that people would go down the rabbit hole of negativity. I’m not kidding. This is the most positive community. I’m not just saying this. I was like, wow, this is really great. Yeah.

I love it, I love it.

And people had a lot of suggestions also on how to curb those pet peeves, so I appreciated that.

Okay, good. That’s helpful. Okay, so let’s help Casey. How do we curb am I done yet questions?

Do you want to go first?

Yeah, I can. I can. So I actually learned this from when I was doing elementary art. I was traveling from classroom to classroom and I had a classroom teacher actually helped me with this and she talked me through it and she wanted me to, going back to the reflection piece, figuring out why they’re asking. And there are a few different ways or reasons that kids might be asking. It might be just approval. They want your approval, they want some praise, and it’s really good to turn that question around and say, “Hey, what do you think? Do you think you’re done? Or what do you think you could do better?” And just let them kind of figure out if they aren’t actually done yet. Second reason might be they just want to be done working on it, which is fine. Some kids are like that, don’t love it if they’ve rushed through it.

And so then you maybe think about what can you compliment about the drawing? I really liked how you did X, Y, and Z. Can we work a little bit more on that? How can you get them to put a little more effort or a little bit more time? And a lot of times with elementary kids just complimenting a certain part and seeing if we can get more things like that can be really helpful there. They might be asking, am I done yet? Because they just want it to be excellent. They might be an achiever or an overachiever. And so if you have a rubric that shows them this is what we’re looking for with this project or just talking through what the goals for the project are, then you can do that, go through that with them, but also remind them, “Hey, your opinion is the one that matters.” And so let them figure out what they think about it, whether they think it’s excellent, whether they want to improve anything and just see how they feel things.

And sometimes kids are just asking because they need some attention, which is fine, but also I can’t handle too much of that. And so I usually would send them the always popular ask three, then me and just get other opinions. And I think that can be really helpful to redirect. And if they keep coming back too many times, it’s okay to shut them down. It’s okay to say, “Hey, I’ve already helped you with this, I’ve already answered this. I have a lot of other students who need my help too.” And then redirect them to go work on whatever they need to do and just kind of move on with things, but don’t let them keep coming back over and over again.

So anyway, just a few thoughts there on why they might be asking and what you can do with them. So Janet, other thoughts? I guess? I mean, you are in high school, so I don’t know, but you just mentioned you do get this question still, so you want to add on whatever thoughts you have?

Yeah, well, I mean think your points are really great, that is kind of how I feel a lot of times too of when they ask me, am I done yet or am I done with this? I almost always put it back on them and ask them the questions about their work, right? I don’t know, like you said, I don’t know are you? What do you think of that? But I think sometimes too when you said maybe here’s some suggestions or whatever, I oftentimes will tell my students, “Okay, this is really great, and also here are some other ideas.” I’m just thinking I oftentimes I’m like, “I don’t know, I’m kind of coming up with this on the top of my head. You could try this or you could try that.” And just kind of come up with a bunch of different ideas. And you could see sometimes their gears turning then it’s like they just didn’t know what else they could do. Right?

Yep.

And I always say to them, “I don’t know, you don’t have to use any of that. You could use none of it. You could be done.” But just kind of getting them to think in a different way sometimes helps them get further. But again, I teach high school, so it’s a little different, but I think this is also a great time to pause. So when kids are coming up to you all the time saying that, or you notice it more frequently, you can pause the class and be like, okay, and do a little mini lesson or discussion about like, oh my gosh, everybody’s asking me is this finished? But I’m curious, how do we know when an artwork is finished? I mean, I just talked to my students about this. How do you know when it’s finished? I’m not sure. Sometimes I don’t know when my work is finished.

Talking about what craftsmanship is, because I think that’s really difficult to quantify of saying, what does that actually look like to take your… I asked my kids, “What is craftsmanship?” They’re like, “Putting in effort.” I’m like, “What does that mean? What does that look like?” And it’s a real stumper, but even the littles they know they will say, talking about paying close attention to detail or drawing neatly or whatever it is, right?

Mm-hmm.

But part of that talk then, becomes like, well, it takes us a while to actually do that. So if we’re slow down, so if you’re coming up and asking me this right after I just gave instruction, am I done? Then you need to think, probably not. Sit back down and work a little bit more. I also like to give some of my students a checklist of what to make sure that they’ve done before they can come and ask me. Whether it’s the rubric or it’s just like these three things need to be done. Did you do this? Did you do that? Did you shade it nicely? Do you see areas, spaces that are not shaded or whatever? That kind of thing.

And then another thing, sometimes students finish really fast and you know it should take them a long time. I mean, I think that’s one of the bigger problems. And so sometimes just breaking that project into smaller chunks so that each of those little sections of instructions takes shorter time, but they know that they have a checkpoint where they can… Before they move on to the next thing. And so that kind of builds that stamina or that resilience to actually focus for an extended period of time to create the artwork that is more significant. Right?

Yeah, that’s a really good point. So yeah, something that I had not considered, but yeah, I like that a lot. Cool. All right, our final question is from Trish. And Trish says, “I teach art K-12 in a tiny little school with very small classes. I try to critique with my middle school students and they did not want to speak up at all. I want to try again, but I’m not sure what I should change. I’m also going to try with my upperclassmen soon too. What advice do you have about getting students to talk during a critique?” Okay, I have a few ideas. Is it okay if I answer this first, Janet?

Please do.

All right. I would say just like anything else you’re trying to teach in the art room, critiques are something you need to build up to. You need to scaffold this. And speaking in front of a group can be incredibly intimidating. Even more so if you are a middle schooler, that’s a tough age to get people to talk in front of everybody. And if you have a small class, a small group, that can be even worse. So there are some things you can do to kind of ease into that. And I would say my first idea would be to do a written critique. You don’t need to make them talk. If you’re just starting out, you can do it asynchronously. You can have the kids write or give suggestions on sticky notes. Put those sticky notes next to the artworks or on the artworks. Or you can have students leave their artwork at their desk, put a piece of paper next to it and have them rotate around the room and leave comments or leave suggestions.

And another idea, you can make them talk, but not about their artwork necessarily. And you can practice on famous artworks or famous artists that you’re looking at in class, show them a piece of your own artwork. This is what I created. What do y’all think? Let’s talk about this. Or you can have them swap classes, talk about a different class’s artwork. So it can be a little bit different. Not quite as much pressure if they’re not talking about their own work or their friend’s work who are right there with them. And if you do talk about a different class’s work, take some notes on that and share them back with that other class. And that’s a good way to connect things between classes. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with just addressing the elephant in the room and just say, “Hey, this is uncomfortable. It’s not easy to talk about your art. It’s not easy to talk in front of people, but we’re going to do it together and it’s something that we can all do together.” And just lead the way with that. And if you can slowly build up to that, then it’s something that, like I said, a skill that you can build.

And I was going to say we have a ton of resources on fun critiques, different critiques, different approaches to critiques. So we’ll link a few of them in the show notes if you’re just looking for some different ideas or looking for something that might work for your students in particular. So Janet, your thoughts please?

Yeah, well scaffolding is a hundred percent true. There is just nothing worse than starting a critique and then just having crickets. It just feels so-

That’s terrible for everybody. It’s bad for you as a teacher, it’s terrible for them as students. No, nobody wants that.

Yes, totally. So I think a big part of that is that they don’t even know what to say because it’s too big of an ask. I always look at when you’re questioning or asking students to talk at all, regardless of a critique or anything, sometimes I’m in class and I’m like ask them a very yes or no, black and white question. And it’s like crickets. I’m like, is my ask really that big? I’m not sure. Do you have a pair of scissors in front of you? Yes or no? Just tell me. When it comes to critique, it is, that’s a big broad statement to just come up with something to talk about it. And so building that kind of ability to articulate or know how to ask or give feedback is a big thing. So I don’t even do end of unit critiques anymore. I really just focus on the process feedback because I also want my students to know that those critique, the information that you’re getting is supposed to help you get better at what you’re working on in progress. Right? So-

Can I interrupt you real quick there? Yeah. Just because I think that’s an important point is it’s good to give something for kids to walk away with at that critique, something to do on their artwork, some actionable item there with the critique. So we’re not just awkwardly sitting around talking and then be like, okay, thanks everybody. It’s good for it to be productive and give them a direction or some assistance with what they’re creating or what their process, the direction that it’s going. So anyway, sorry to interrupt. Go ahead.

No, no, that’s exactly… So you can start even at the planning phase. So kids are just drawing little tiny sketches for their ideas and then have actual little critiques then. So it’s really low risk. Nobody has even put effort into making an artwork. So it feels really low risk there because it doesn’t really matter yet. So even just asking which one do you think is the strongest little sketch? You know?

Yeah.

And then why? I feel like it’s a lot more approachable than giving feedback on a finished work that somebody’s worked on for three weeks. You know?

Absolutely.

And then also in the scaffolding front too, of providing maybe one to three very specific prompting questions. One question even or one thing. And maybe you’re working on a still life, for example. And so the question could be like, can you identify the focal point? What is the focal point? And why are you saying that’s the focal point? If the audience, the responding students, even if… You had mentioned sticky notes, I use them constantly, right? It’s so much more chill. You know?

Yes. Yes.

Or I said it was the apple, but you as the artist are like, no, no, it’s the giant head on the side of the… Or whatever it is. And so then, okay, now how can we fix that? And that’s helpful.

And then sometimes I think artists will feel a little uncomfortable sharing a work in progress because they don’t want to be told like, “Oh, well you should do this.” And then the artists, when they’re having these conversations, I have this all the time with my students, will be like, “But I’m not done yet.” “Oh yeah, I was going to do that.” “Oh yeah, but you don’t understand.” And so what I have my students do is ask a specific question that they particularly want feedback on. So they don’t want feedback on the whole thing. Or they might say, “No, I am open to any suggestions.” And that puts it on them. Or they could say, “No, I’m asking in this area, should I be doing the mark making with oil pastel? Does it work? Do you like it? Why not?” So then it’s just targeting that area and then they don’t feel like the rest of their decision making is compromised by the feedback. You know?

So just quick, small, I think not making them feel so important in a way, they’re still formal. They can still be formal but not feel so risky. I think it helps take that pressure off. Yeah.

Yeah. I love those ideas. Those are all really good. And I love the idea of taking the pressure off, like we talked about with Jeff and his students who didn’t want to be in art class, making the small, bite-sized activities make the bite-sized as well. And I think that’s a good way to build up all of those skills that we’re talking about.

So Janet, thank you for all of those suggestions. Thank you for jumping in to do the mailbag with me. It’s been great to talk to you and we appreciate all of your advice today.

Thanks so much. I hope I lived up to being Amanda today.

It was good. It was good. We’ll let everybody write in with their reviews and I’ll get those.

Oh, please do.

We’ll let you know. All right, thanks Janet.

Thanks.