Our Attempt at a Peace Pole

I was cleaning up some files and found this group of photos to share.

In our aftershock program we decided we were going to transform our schools support poles into peace poles. (You can read more about them here) The students wrote out "may peace prevail on earth" in lots of different languages. They decorated them and made them look really, really nice.

We put them all up...

with the help of some goofy 6th grade girls.

They looked really, really nice when we left....

But the next morning was a different story...

I think it took me so long to blog about these just for the sheer disappointment we had in the project. They didn't just fall down; they fell down and taped themselves together. These goofy girls are now freshmen in High School! Wow!

I do TWEET!

This time last year I was not a fan of twitter...

It seemed like ONE MORE THING that I was supposed to be doing but who has time?

Then I attended an NATA (Nebraska Art Teachers Association) conference hosted by Timothy Bogatz (check him out here and here).  He was talking about using twitter in his classroom and it seemed really interesting.  Then he told us about tweetdeck... and I was SOLD!

My biggest hangup about twitter was getting trapped in a time suck.  You know, like when you go to facebook or Target to look for one quick thing and find yourself still there an hour later... and you still don't have the one thing you went there for. Tweetdeck allows me to organize all my twitter information in an orderly manner.

From one screen I can compose and send tweets, I can scroll through my home feed (everyone I follow), I can see any interactions with my account (who is following me, who favorited or retweeted my tweets, etc), I can create searches and follow relevant #hashtags, I can search for a specific person or #hashtag... and so much more.  This website is the reason I felt comfortable jumping into tweeting!

No I have two main reasons for LOVING twitter.

1. I can easily interact with other teachers, even those I don't follow.  If you tweet out a topic or search for a #hashtag you can be connected with other "experts" in less than 24 hours, sometimes minutes.  You can also search by hashtags for topics that you want to know more about.  
2. I can QUICKLY share what we are doing in the artroom.  I don't always have time to write an entire blog post about one fun thing but I can quickly tweet it out.  Just this week I have tweeted about a students "What it means to be an artist" card and a naughty lady who painted on her hand.  

* bonus reason to love twitter is to search for the emmys/oscars/etc and read the hilarious tweets that roll through while these events are happening.  

Funny thing is that now there are even times I get a "twitter high"  Like when the Jon Gordon retweeted my tweet about him or when someone like ArtwithMrE likes one of  my tweets.  It's like I really talked with that person and I get all giggly.  

 

Monster Art Show

Earlier this year I posted about the shape monster projects that my 5th graders made using construction paper collage.  Well these projects were just the beginning of something bigger.  After I posted the monsters on Artsonia each member of the high school painting class selected an inspiration image.  The high schoolers then painted amazing images of each monster.

We waited until March for Youth Art Month and then we displayed them together at our local coffee shop, The Downtown Coffee Company.  They we awesome about letting us hang them there for two weeks.  The local paper covered it and we had an awesome opening reception.  The lighting in the coffee shop wasn't great for photos so I had to wait until they were on display here at my school.  

It has been awesome to watch students, teachers, paras and parents slow down and look at the artwork.  I just love to see the artwork of previous students hanging back in this building.  Here is a close of of each pair. 

The idea for this awesome project came from The Monster Engine Website.

Connected...

I love using technology to help my kids see their place in the global world.  On Wednesday we were going to create a warm and cool grid project on the computer.  By pure chance a blog post came through my feedly account that showed students in Belgium doing the same thing!  They were working with paint and we were going to be working on the computer program paint.  It was so much fun showing my students the work from around the globe so they could get to work on their projects...

The students from Belgium's inspiration images:

photo credit

Some of my students work:

Check out more at Artsonia

AOE Online Conference

This year we moved to a new house and I knew that would bring some new expenses 

(I wasn't sure I was ready for utility bills that were tripled but I digress). 

I knew that the National Art Convention would not be at the top of my "where to spend my money" list.  

When Jessica at the Art of Ed offered the online conference I knew it was my answer... 

Today is the day.  

The meeting site is having a few glitches but AOE had a back up plan ready to go so I am watching the video's one by one. I am keeping up on the conversations by following Twitter.  

(I am also able to upload to artsonia and blog!)

Thank you Jessica and the rest of the crew at The Art of Education!

Humbled

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Tim Bogatz the art teacher at Bellevue East High School in Omaha, NE when we both presented at our state conference this fall.  He is a super gifted teacher and his blog (Eastartroom) is a great read (who doesn't love the Top 10 Hotties of Art History).

I was humbled when he asked to interview me for his feature of 14 art teacher/bloggers of 2014.  I am excited to say that today is my day.  You will have to stop over and check it out!

Thank you Tim!

Feeling a little lighter...

So I just finished going through all my paperwork... and man did it feel AWESOME!

You know how we all get paperwork and then we put it into the "I'll deal with it later, its not top priority pile"  Well tonight it became priority.  To the left is the keepers, to the right are the recyclers!  It is awesome to think that I am carrying about 1/2 as many papers!     

So now my thoughts turn to what else I might want to tackle... I was just noticing that my district is open on the Nebraska Art Teachers Association Board.  It is has left me contemplating if that would be something good for me. 

With the house moving I think it is best left off my plate for this year, but is something I am really thinking about for next year... 

Wow...that really is my name on the presenting schedule.  YIKES!

Spotlight on Art...

We all would love for more people to know about what our kiddo's are doing in our art rooms. 

But we are also busy people.

It is the time of year when I am re-writing our Spotlight on Art master calendar and I just HAVE to share this awesome advocacy piece.  At our summer art workshop a few years ago we were discussing how we could get more artwork out into the community.  We discussed billboards, traveling art exhibits, art websites and "something in the newspaper."  

We worked through a few ideas but quickly realized they were very time consuming or limiting in their ability to share what our kids are creating.  

HOWEVER we did find one BIG WINNER!  

"SPOTLIGHT ON ART"

Our local paper The Norfolk Daily News has been running Spotlight on Art weekly for two years.  It is awesome.  Every school in Norfolk (pop. 24,000) is assigned a few weeks of the year.  The art teacher from each school is required to send their art images to the City Page Editor along with a short blurb about what the lesson was.  The newspaper then runs a COLOR image with the write up... for FREE!

Here are a few of my middle school images...

I am so proud (lucky) to be a part of our community.  

As art teachers we came up with the idea and thought "why not ask?"  It is now a favorite highlight of the paper.  It takes a few minutes every few months to send in your images and all the readers love to see it.  

Thanks Jessica...

Just finished my first online, interactive nightime meeting and it was AWESOME!

Jessica Balsley at the Art of Ed hosted a quick webinar tonight about writing SLO's.
It was so relevant and so easy to understand.  Needless to say I will be doing a better job at writing my SLO's this year and I can't wait to share at my districts first PLC.

If you have never checked out the Art of Ed.... go there NOW!

Thank you Jessica!
  (and Derek Balsley... the king of all thing computer)

Awesome...

I just received an email from a mom and with her permission, I have to share the attached picture.

This is one of my wonderful 6th grade students standing next to her project (the 2 point perspective tree house) on display at our Youth Art Month Celebration.  Every year the Nebraska Art Teachers sponsor a show at the capital building.  Students are invited to come down and talk with our state senators about their projects.  How cool is that!  

Celebrating Creativity at the Joslyn

This year we did another trip to the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha for their celebrating creativity day (see last year's post here).  Once again it did not disappoint!  We started the morning with some really fun classes... collagraph printing, drumming, special effect makeup, photography, stencil printing, dancing and more.  They also did a tour of a least one section of the museum.  I loved the students who toured "European Art" just so they could see Degas' Little Dancer.

photo courtesy

I also loved that the current exhibit is "Under Pressure:  Contemporary Prints from the Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation."  The students who toured it were able to see Chuck Close, Red Grooms, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellen Gallagher and so many more.  I have so many ideas for our Celebrating Creativity Classes.  

Here is a small collage from our day of fun!

How Many Steps....

I have a student teacher for the last quarter of the semester and was talking with him about how I finish up projects.  I found there are a lot of steps.

Step 1 - Gather and Grade all 300 assignments.  I hold back the best 5-10 from each class for display on artsonia, display in the hallway and art shows.

Step 2 - Photograph the projects, upload them to artsonia, "publish" them. Click here to see our school

Step 3 - Sort out the best 3-7 total... save for art shows in the spring.   (Mentally try to remember whose stuff you save so you don't get to the spring and find that you have only 1-2 students stuff).

Step 4 - Prepare the remaining images for display in the hall.  Organize them neatly... I am kinda crazy like that.

these are the 6th grade review squares... line drawings, shape collages, form drawings, color blends and value watercolors.  

Step 5 - Take down the display when a new one is ready, sort and file the artwork that had been on display.  

whew... no wonder I am so tired :) 

Snap My Art...

I finally did it...

I tackled my first art room fundraiser.  

(The main reason had to do with every classroom getting an iPad... that is every room but the "specials.")

About the same time as the iPad news was being shared, Artsonia started to promote their "Snap my Art" fundraiser.  I already love Artsonia and their materials so I thought, why not?  Kids make circular designs, I send them to artsonia and then the families order these awesome jewelry pieces.  

Step #1 was to register... I just used my whole 5th grade roster.  Total time investment 30 seconds.

Step #2 have students create their artwork on the pre-printed papers.  I had to label each sheet with the artsonia provided label, which I did while they worked.  I had the students review geometric and organic shapes, discuss symmetrical design and focus on using color schemes.  Time invested = one class period (with some students taking them home to finish)

(I graded these projects and that took about 2 hours to do 300 students)

Step #3 return the papers to Artsonia in the pre-paid mailer box.  Time invested = 20 minutes to drive to UPS store and back. 

Step #4 Wait.... this was the hardest part for my students.  While we were waiting Artsonia was uploading all the images to our account and creating customized fliers for each students.  (We mailed the artworks on the 8th and had the fliers back on the 23rd so it wasn't that much of a wait.)

Step #5 Hand back the customized fliers, which were awesome.  They arrived in a box, printed in full color and sorted by class (like I have on my account).  They have each student's artwork on them, including "on the art snaps."  Total time = 5 minutes to gawk at how cool they were and 5 minutes to put them into each teacher's mailbox.  Each teacher had about 3-7 minutes to hand them out, depending on their handout policy. 

Step #6 Wait... for the orders to start coming in.  Artsonia has an awesome order tracker that tells me how much I am earning, how many orders we have and the students who are eligible for the prizes artsonia is providing.

 That is right... artsonia is also giving me free stuff to give to students who order.  

One other neat thing was Artsonia sent me a necklace and a bracelet example along with several "snaps."  These have been a huge hit for the kiddo's.  

So far I am way impressed with the ease of this fundraiser... I will keep you up to date on how well we do raising money.  The jewelry is in the $20 range, which isn't a lot for me for a Christmas gift but I know that isn't the case for all my kiddo's.  The nice thing is that they can buy just the snaps for less than $5... and they are awesomely strong magnets.  

How do you conference?

It is THAT week.

Conference week.

I love and hate conference week.

I love getting to talk with my kiddo's parents.  I hate missing a majority of my kiddo's because I can't be located next to each team.  I love sharing what we are doing and answering questions.  I hate being grilled about why every student (namely theirs) isn't getting an "outstanding."  I love talking one on one with the kids and their families about what we are doing.  I hate missing out on my family 2 whole nights of the week... and managing the drop off/pick up schedule of an altered schedule.

One new thing I did this year was creating an art board.

I took this down to conferences with me (Specials are located in the lunchroom so parents can easily find us).  It had an example for each of the projects I graded this quarter and a teaser for what is coming up.  It was great to point to an example of each project I was talking about.  It helped the kiddo's remember what they were missing or what project exactly I was talking about.

One night down, one night and one afternoon to go...