The Courage of My Convictions (The Story Behind The Wordless Wednesday)

 I've always liked a good turn of phrase.  I like reading them, I enjoy hearing them, and I like using them.  One such phrase is the courage of one's convictions.  You can replace one's with a multitude of pronouns, that is, after all, what pronouns do best. The phrase means having the fortitude to have your walk match your talk.  

A few years ago, I did a couple of turns of replacing the art teacher at my wife's school until they obtained a permanent replacement.  The first time was only for a few weeks, but when the new teacher moved out of state, I was the long-term art sub from August to the following January.  The first time I just taught the lessons that the elementary art team provided for me.  The second go-round I prepared my own lessons based on the suggested curriculum.  

I had been teaching primarily K through 5 at this course of my subbing and had noticed that most students coming into kindergarten loved art and were very confident in their abilities but by the time they were in upper elementary many students had taken to saying I'm bad at art.  I would tell my students that art was fun and that anybody could be good at art.  

The first two lessons I worked on with my 3rd through 5th graders involved drawing a shirt.  I used the exact same piece of paper for each assignment, a picture of a t-shirt with many compartments that could be filled in.  The first assignment was your typical first week of school, tell us about yourself, assignment.  The only difference was that people were drawing about themselves, putting different pictures that told the story of who they were in each compartment.

For the second assignment, I taught a lesson on different kinds of lines and then handed out the shirt template again.  The classes then spent time doing different samples of line drawings in pencil, and in a subsequent class, they filled in the line drawings with chalk pastels.

The courage of my convictions comes in because I'm not an artist. I believe that I was a good long-term elementary art sub. I'm creative, I have passion, and I love encouraging students. However, I am not talented at art.  If I was telling students that anyone could be good at art, I needed to buckle up and get some skin in the game.  So, once every two or three assignments,  I would do the project myself and show it to the kids.  

This picture is my shirt design from the second assignment.  I posted it here earlier this week on my Wordless Wednesday post.  

The Courage of my Convictions

For More Wordless Wednesday visit Comedy Plus

For the story behind the picture click here.

A Third Grade Perspective on the New Year

I have been a long term sub for art since the beginning of the school year. I teach one thing to the kindergarten through 2nd graders and something different for the3rd through 5th graders; Sometimes I will even break it into 3 levels. I have wanted to do the same project for some time now and with the 2nd semester starting at the new year I found my perfect opportunity. I had all my students make posters for the new year. For the kindergartners, I kept it simple :we folded a paper in quarters  and wrote 2022 with 1 number in each quadrant.  I then instructed them to draw and color circles in one quadrant, squares in another, triangles in the third and hearts in the 4th.  

With the 1st and 2nd graders I had them write 2022 on their paper and then color it in, When that was completed, I  taught them a little about collage.  Instead  of  using pictures, we cut out shapes and then glued them around the 2022.  

 

With the 3rd through 5th graders I taught about the 7 elements of art, (to read an excellent piece on why the elements are important click here) which are:

Line

Shape

Space

Form

Color

Value 

Texture

I then ask them to make a poster about 2022 and incorporate at least 3 of the 7 elements of art.  

The students have produced some excellent work.  This third grader's response shows how many of our kids are eager to get out from under the cloud of Co-vid.

While they are working or when they show me their finished product, I point out the elements that I see they incorporated.  This one has at least one example of  color (the co-vid molecules), value (the cloud and the rain), shape (the mask), space (spacing is used very effectively in all of the panels) , line (the rain) and texture (The mask).  When I point out these elements I ask if they planned them.  Many say they have and many have not.  At the end of class, I advise how most art work has at least 3 if not more of those elements.   Finally, I  encourage in them to look for these elements not only in their work but in all manners of art.  

I found out this week that the school has hired a new art teacher.  I am very glad for the opportunity I have had to teach these students for so long. I have not only seen the growth of the students but my growth as an educator..  I share the hopefulness of this artist for the coming year.  I wrote several pieces last year about surviving 2021.  My recent successes among other things have inspired me that 2022 could indeed be the best year ever and it is possible to thrive in difficult times.  

Colors of the Rainbow | Color Song for Kids | Learning the Colors | Jack...

I work as a substitute teacher in a local school district.  I have been doing this for the last 4 school years and have found that I really enjoy it and seem to be good at it.  Since January of this year, I have been doing mostly long term subbing which usually means filling in for a teacher or paraeducator on maternity leave.

 

A few days before the beginning of this school year I was contacted by my wife/s principal  (My wife is a school pyschologist) who wanted to know if I would teach her schools art classes while they searched for a permanent art teacher.  I had  previously done  two shorter stints subbing for the art teacher at that school and found that while it was a little out of my comfort zone it also landed firm in my sweet spot.  Buoyed my my previous experience I quickly agreed.  

 My students range from kindergartners to 5th graders.   II like tend to teach between 2 or 3different lessons to encompass all the age groups.  The activities, and types of content will vary.  With the younger students I like to supplement the activities with stories and songs. Jack Hartmann. a forever young 71 year old children's singer with unbridled makes some of my favorite videos for the pre-school to 2nd grade set.  I'm currently starting my k-2 classes on warm and cool colors with this great Jack Hartmann video.

   

Home School Convention

There is a special edition of WFMW this week. It is a back to school edition. Things here at the Izola Becker Home School won't get started until the last week of August but I do have a back to school tip to share.

We really like going to our local Home School Convention every year. Even though it is held generally at the end of our school year it really sets us up for what we will do the next year.

There are several things we like about going to the convention: 1)Amy and I get to spend time in seminars and large group settings learning more about home schooling. 2) We get to spend time together. 3) We generally run into and catch up with several home schooling families that we know. 4) Amy likes switching name tags with me during the convention, which is usually hilarious when I forget we switched and someone calls me Amy.

But the best thing about the home school convention is the vendor's hall. This is where rows and rows of companies sell their textbooks, videos, computer based programs and so much more. The majority of these vendors have their best sales of the year at these conventions so this is often where we (as well as many others) buy the bulk of their curricula for the coming year.

The Vendor Hall can be a very intimidating place. Even with all the discounts it can be a very expensive place. What works for us is having a system of how we are going to work the hall.

A. Before the convention we discuss what we are planning on as far as the curriculum for the next year.

Amy and I decided we wanted to try Konos for the coming year as we already had the curriculum from a previous home school convention. Konos is a multi level curriculum that includes all subjects except Math and Phonics. Amy and I then decided that we were satisfied with the Math that the kids were doing with Alpha Omega and would most likely stick with them in the coming year. We also discussed that we would want to focus a little more on Art as all our students show an affinity with that subject and that we also wanted to work more on penmanship as none of our students were showing an affinity with that.

B. We decide how much money we can or want to spend on curriculum.

C. Before we purchase anything we go through the vendor hall and look at what they have. Sometimes things change at the conference and our direction changes from what we were discussing before. Sometimes we end up getting exactly what we were talking about before the conference.

D. We leave the vendor hall and we discuss what we are going to purchase. Often the product is available at more than one vendor so Amy pulls out her calculator (me) to figure out what vendor has the best cost. Sometimes at this point we don't have everything decided yet. If that is the case we might divide and conquer where one of us will buy what we are certain about while the other will continue to look at products and make a decision

E. We generally find at least one new product at each conference that we are very excited to try out. This year we found out about the Draw to Learn series from the Notgrass Company. Remember how we wanted to have some more Art for the children. This book combines Bible Study and Art by having each student describe each of the Psalms in pictures. Click on the book cover for a sample page.

So that is how we make the vendor hall work for us. We are looking forward to a great school year and encourage you all to do the same. To see what has worked for me on previous Wednesdays click here.

To see what back to school nuggets await you at WFMW go back to We Are That Family.

This Article has been included at the Carnival of Homeschooling #189: The Lolcat Edition being hosted this week at Homeschoolbuzzdotcom.

Next Time: Remembering Millard.