cycles

so i almost feel like i am going through the stages of grief, or some-such nonsense. i was so angry last week... now i feel like i am back to accepting my job and trying to think of creative ways to work through the challenges i have.

art club has helped that. hugs help that. feeling like my job is not insignificant helps A LOT.

i am pretty behind on grading and a bit behind on planning. i have a lot to do tonight. i need to get an after work cup of coffee...

things i feel i am getting better at:

-management, slowly but surely
-knowing how long a projeact will take and pacing instruction
-modeling each individual step

things i still need to improve at:
-connecting curriculum
-highlighting vocabulary
-integrating art history and model art works
-being more organized in general


on an unrelated note, i'm wearing stretch-pants-as-pants today. gloriously comfortable but kinda risque for school. oh well. comfort over all.

Art Club, A tale of two environments, projects we are working on

So at my 1 day a week school I am hosting art club. (My 4 day a week school doesn't have ANY clubs... for whatever reason) Yesterday was our first meeting and it was total lunacy. There were over 30 kids there. I don't think I could have been more unprepared. LUCKILY it was our principals birthday so we made birthday cards for her. Thank goodness for that.

My 1D (one day) school is amazing. It is a very similar student population between both of my sites (80% hispanic, 95% free/reduced meals) but at this school I have:
-a classroom
-supportive staff and administration
-an environment that is not plagued by fear of doing/saying the wrong thing
When I am there I feel like I belong there. When I am at the 4D school... I feel like I am someone that the administration and other staff actively tries to hide away. Now my office/closet is being used almost every day all day for testing, so I am not even allowed access to my own supplies. I came back this morning to discover teachers had taken almost half of my only stack of drawing paper.

I have to keep telling myself-- this is not about me, it's about these kids. It's not about me. It's not about me. They can take everything from me, give me nothing, no space to work in, no supplies, it doesnt matter. I will find a way to teach art and it will be amazing and I will still be a great teacher.

Some projects we are working on:
Kindergarten is going rainbow hair portraits. 1st grade is doing Wassily Kadinsky style shape drawings. Since I can't use paint, I am using markers to color our pictures and then "painting" the marker areas with water to get a nice watercolor look to our pictures. 2nd and 3rd grade are working on 3D cityscape monoprints that we did with marker/water as well. 4th grade is working on self portraits and basic drawing techniques. 5th & 6th grade is learning drawing/shading and going to start their first still life.

I am 4 weeks behind in grading.

Sigh.

It's not about me. It's about the kids.

Anger

Right now at my primary school, the elevator is broken with no fix date in sight. This is the school where I do not have a classroom and teach from a cart. I do have an awesome cart--- but it's basically unusable without the elevator as it is about 100 pounds when empty and there is no way I would be able to cart it up and down the four flights of stairs present in the school. My lessons have suffered greatly because of this. I am limited to using whatever supplies I can carry, and that is not much. Crayons, markers, and printer paper are now the primary things I use to teach art. I hate it. I have shed so many tears over how unfair it is that I don't have the resources or ability to do better for my students. It depresses me and makes me hateful/fearful for each week knowing that I have to work around dragging many pounds of supplies around to different classrooms. I feel like I get zero support from any teacher or administrator, who view my time as an intrusion into their classroom space. There is an empty classroom at this school which recently opened because our enrollment was too low to support 20 classes. This room is now being used as a "data room" instead of being used by me or any of the other support staff that teach from bags or carts or with no space of our own save closets or corners. This data room is a function of the GREAT TESTING ESCAPADE that goes on at this school, where every free moment and second is used to test and push evaluation and data gathering on these students in efforts to boost our MAP scores. It disgusts me and infuriates me that testing has become the centerpiece of teaching. I understand the value of data and to an extent support the push to gather data on student learning-- but only as a tool to inform instruction.

The basic attitude in this district is that I must just soldier on, so I do. But underneath the surface, I am mad. I am seething. I want more for these kids and I hate that they are being used as test subjects. Oh, and make no mistake, I do firmly believe that they are being used.

I must persevere, I must be better than this cycle of anger, bitterness, and cynicism that eats teachers alive... but its so difficult right now.

Thursday update.

I hate waking up in the morning and always have. I feel like I could easily sleep 10 hours a night, no problem. I need to learn how to be a morning person, apparently, because I am frequently the LAST teacher here. 

It's very VERY hot in Kansas City right now and the power went out in school yesterday ( which meant... no lights, and NO AIR CONDITIONING) so my entire afternoon was shot. Now today the gym teacher and I flipped a class so I don't have my next class until 3:10 and I am sitting in my office. I should be planning... grading... getting ready for next week... what am I doing? Looking at shoes and makeup online. Grrrr. Stupid ADHD brain. 

Two things I really need right now is a way to hang things up on the walls that's easy and actually STAYS where I put it... and a way to make oil pastels less messy. 

I must remember to put pictures up on this blog.

I want to take a nap... and eat a cheeseburger. Ooooh... and a Diet Coke.

Successes and Failures

Today I'm feeling sort of strange. I have these headaches that come and go lately and I think they are stress related, but I'm not totally sure. I spend a lot of time thinking in my car or laying in bed about how I can be better at this. I am plagued by perpetual disorganization... even when I am running on all cylinders actively trying to fight it. My biggest failure in life, I think, is my complete lack of organizational skills.

I feel like an island a lot. I don't have a lot of contact with administration and I can tell many teachers consider me "nonessential" to the staff or the environment of the school. Of course then I feel rejected... I'm just as legitimate of a teacher as you are. I went to school just like you did. I can write a lesson plan that would blow your shorts out of the water. Do I want to be a classroom teacher? Sometimes. I'm starved for that feeling of legitimacy, for whatever reason.

But, I do have to say this... even though I don't have a classroom, I don't have a "team" at either school I teach at, I don't have that sense of legitimacy and superiority... I do walk into a classroom to cheers and applause. Every. Single. Time. I do have TWO entire schools singing my name in the hallway. I do love these kids, and I can tell they like me, as well. This is what's important. Not the politics in the building, the cliquey teacher idiocy. I am a good teacher. I am totally disorganized, and it takes me FOREVER to do things, but damn it if kids don't like me and love art and have a chance once a week to do something FUN and CREATIVE than what's the point?

 My next posts are going to be some pictures of displays and projects we've been working on. Still trying to hang stuff from WEEK ONE. Everything takes forever...

-Mrs Marlow

Thoughts on going into Week 3...

Last week was the most challenging week of my adult working life. I had my first class spiral completely out of control, and could not for the life of me resuscitate my plans. It's a kindergarten class of 32 kids, and one kid derailed EVERYTHING and it became a complete circus. Did I mention everyone had scissors and glue while they were going totally ape? It was awful. I felt so helpless and defeated... and still had to teach for two more hours.
 I also realized how terribly inept my system of organization I designed for myself was, and just spent 8+ hours today redoing everything...not even done yet, honestly.
I got (gently) reprimanded by the district for not entering any grades into our electronic grading system yet. I wasn't aware I had to do it weekly. So now I am two weeks behind doing that...
 I also got a really nasty bout of stomach sickness on Friday and had to pound through my day while fighting the urge to vomit all day long... and of course it was 90+ degrees out. It was hairy... I felt incredibly lightheaded the entire day. After my 2nd grade class, I went into my office and put my head down on the paper cutter and passed out for a bit... and missed half of my lunch duty on accident. Nothing like hearing your name being rudely blared on the PA to REPORT TO THE CAFETERIA IMMEDIATELY to make you feel like a total nimrod.

Of course, there is the perpetuating rumor that I will be reassigned again and have a third school added to my rotation, bringing my total number of students to somewhere around 500, maybe more. I haven't really done the math yet, but I know at my main school, our enrollment is right around 400, and I teach every student there. Plus six classes at another school. On one hand, I understand the nature of being a support teacher and am willing to do whatever it takes for the greater good. On the other hand, keeping up with 500+ projects and grades is going to be a disaster. I also have this maybe wistful and silly want to be a part of a school community, to run maybe an art club or do a school play or something like that... and with my time being spread so thin, I am realizing that for this year, it is unlikely I will "belong" the way I want to.

I am just starting to realize the amount of work that this year is really going to take from me. This coming weekend I am going home (to Chicago) to see my family for probably the last time until the holidays, and I am stressing because although it's Labor Day and I will have that extra day... I anticipate I'll have another 12 hours of planning and grading to do next weekend. Finding time to navigate through all of this stuff is scary and difficult. But I'm managing.

I did learn one thing that really boosted my spirits from one of my colleagues/teacher girlfriends this past week. The original school that I interviewed at (School 1) and was originally assigned to be at as the "primary" art teacher is now my "secondary" assignment. When I found out that the district was able to just move and push people to wherever, I was so upset. I loved the principal at that school (the woman who hired me), and had really strong desires to be there. The staff all seemed positive and have a great repertoire. Plus, I have a classroom there. Well, it turns out that the powers that be in the district did what they would, but I was pleased to learn that there was a genuine fight by the principal and other staff at School 1 to keep me, and that they were VERY disappointed that they lost that battle. Silly ego stuff, I know, but it made me feel like less of a commodity to be pushed around by the blind eye of the district, and more like a "Real Teacher."

It's 10:15pm right now... Sunday... still working on plans for this week. I have adjusted and readjusted my units for every grade about ten times already in two weeks.

I just keep repeating to myself "Everything is going to be okay...."

Year one, post one.

The purpose of this blog is to document my first year teaching elementary art. I am thinking about using this blog as part journal, part gallery, part resource for my future self.
As of this post, I am just about two weeks into the start of the school year. The district I work in is undergoing massive changes as it is trying desperately to reclaim its lost state accreditation. Support/specials teachers are shared between buildings and I split my time between two schools, 4 days in one building, 1 day in another. I was hired in May, and within three months my teaching assignment has changed twice, and may change again... rumor has it as soon as next week.
My major complaint right now is that I am teaching art from a cart in my main school. The building is over 100 years old and the elevator hardly ever works. And it only goes to 2/3 floors. So I am part gypsy, part pack horse, running up and down stairs and dropping things at every turn. It's madness... and my feet are killing me.

In these past two weeks, I have felt joy, sadness, frustration, anger, a sense of hopelessness, a sense of overflowing hope, fear, determination, and exhaustion, more than anything. Oh, and hunger. I never have time to eat. I have been eating like a hobo... shoving food in my pockets and eating in the hallway, or the bathroom. It's bad.

The roller coaster ride has just started... I know it will get better, and worse. I know I will make worse mistakes than I already have. I'm terrified, and energized.... and hungry. Oh my word, am I hungry.

If you for some reason are reading this blog, you are invited to comment on any post. Thank you for reading my insane ramblings.

-Ms. Marlow