Making Art Alongside Students

Finding the time to produce art while being a teacher is tricky.  Working alongside students during the lesson once they are working on their own art has been an interesting solution to the issue.  I try to sit and join in with students at their table.  Sometimes sitting with students who may be having difficulties with the task or with those who are not able to stay focused on their work.  The students get a kick out of seeing the work and value the fact that their teacher enjoys making art and may perhaps even be good at it.  It gives opportunities for conversations with students that would not otherwise happen and gives them a bit of insight into the teacher's own artistic interests.  Teachers are actually people too!  

This year I have also scheduled studio evenings with grades 9-12.  Once a month on a Friday, we meet after school in the art room and work on our art until nine at night.  It gives students a chance to catch up on their coursework or try something new.  It gives me a chance to complete some work too.  It is nice when students give me advice or share ideas of what I could do next.  The students who attend these evenings have greater respect for the lessons and me as their teacher.  I could also try to occasionally bring this atmosphere into the actual lesson by announcing to the class that the next lesson will be run as a studio where students may continue their class work or come prepared to try something new.  This would be good at the end of a unit when most students are finished but some need extra time.  It may help get some of those who are less engaged motivated by seeing me and their peers working as artists.  This could help them realize that the joy of focusing and making art is better than fooling around during the lesson.  I will have to give it a try.

 

 This is a watercolour I did with a grade nine class out in our school garden.

 This is a lino cut I did to trade with the grade nine students after they completed their own lino cuts.

 This is the lino print portrait I did of our former director who moved on to another school.

This is a drawing of  a dream that may be developed into a painting.

Finding Time to Explore a Familiar Source of Inspiration

Being an art teacher is sort of like working in an ice cream shop.  You quickly lose the desire for your favourite treat!  After spending all day working with the students and helping them sort out their ideas and artistic issues, the last thing you want to do is go home and start working on your own.

Discussions about this at the Artist Teacher Workshop made me realise that the students and I would both benefit from me making art in school.  I could take on a role of residential artist and work even in the classroom at times when the students were busy completing their projects.  Some non-teaching periods could be allocated for my own studio work or even studio evenings could be scheduled where I would work along side the students.  This would be an active step that I could initiate in order to make more of my own art.  Making more art and allowing the students to experience the process of an artist creating seems like a good idea.

I thoroughly enjoy brainstorming with engaged students; trying to figure out new ways of solving their artistic dilemmas and helping them when they are struggling to come up with ways of developing their own work further.  In my mind, they initiate sparks of fresh thoughts and trigger all kinds of exciting ideas that I can picture ever so clearly.  The work is created in my mind and ready to then be developed even further.  Then once it is out there ready for the taking, the bell rings and the students is rushing off to face a whole new set of obstacles that some other teacher must shed light onto.  I have often thought how tragic it is that these ideas seldom get explored or even considered.

Exploring the notion of making art in school then led me to contemplating the fact that I exert so much of my creative energy into potential art pieces for the students, which may simply be ignored.  This brought me to the conclusion of embracing those ideas and setting out to create the work myself.  Why not?  While I am at it, why not try to meet the students deadlines as well?  Why shouldn't I present work during their scheduled critiques?  Why not try to keep up a sketchbook with the ideas generated during discussions with students?

This seems to give some new purpose to teaching a subject that can feel so draining at times.  I am exploring the thought of accepting the collaborative work with the students as a source of inspiration for a new body of work.   I have just started to put this plan into effect.  So far the first piece made started with discussions I had with a grade ten student who wished to create some eerie image of some person or creature.  The keep a long story short, the result was him wearing a mask, that was still around the art room after being made years ago, while standing in the dark sink room holding a desk lamp toward his face during which time I snapped some photos at different angles and distances.  We looked at the shots and decided that some definitely had potential.  So I asked him if he would mind me also creating a piece from the photos.

Here is my first piece, "Boy in Mask":

Artist Teacher HERE: Finding Time to Explore a Familiar Source of Inspiration