#NAEA15 Finding Inspiration Down in New Orleans

Wow wow wow!  So inspired.  Between being inspired from the heart to the mind, I am ready to put into motion all I learned!  Here's a recap of my favorite things..

Tim Gunn truly spoke to our hearts.  We are so often left with an island feeling.  Not the blue waters and breezy coconut tree island, but the I’m by myself and have to figure it out on my own kind of island.  Twitter and blogs have definitely helped with some of the loneliness, but there is nothing quite like human to human interaction.  Listening to Tim Gunn fueled my spirit.  He reminded us that a “lesson can be transformational”  and we are responsible for teaching the students with “the least resources or drive” to the “angels” that need inspired within their talent.  To see the passion in someone else for teaching and mentoring, and believing that “qualities of character” are as important as curriculum was exactly what my heart needed.  Thanks Mr. Gunn. 

'Truth telling, Empathy, Asking, Cheerleading, and Hoping for the best.'

Another island I like to swim to is my high school robotics team.  This year in sessions, I was finally able to find the pieces I needed to build a bridge between my elementary art teacher life and high school robotics life. During Peter Nosalik’s Art of Engineering session he said, “Think like engineers and see like artists.” Being immersed in both worlds the past two years, it was so apparent to me how engineering, art and design are interconnected. I have been so inspired by my high school students, I wanted to bring to my elementary students the design concepts and thinking skills I’ve learned. This year I spoke about creating a curriculum that caters to your students, and my students are interested in robotics, engineering and design.  They play Minecraft and with legos in their free time.  Many of my parents are engineers or science majors.  So if I follow my own advice, it’s time to put together a makers program.  I’m thinking I’ll start with a grant for materials and use my Family Art Night set up as the program.  I got great ideas from Steve Ciampaglia and his Art Makers Space he has created with the mantra, “Pop up, drop in, make art.”  Seeing how he made it work was inspiring and gave me the outline for where to start.  I can’t wait to see this project come to life and witness my students become "designer, engineer, and maker of one's own learning experience." 

Art Makers Space session by Steve Ciampaglia.  The Plug-In Studio.

The exhibitor hall is always so much fun!  I’m so excited about these new watercolors!  My students just tear up the watercolors we’ve been using.  I can’t keep up with them and it feels like every class I’m replacing the cakes.  I’m hoping this will be a good alternative.  I got a chance to play with them and the color was fabulous. I also love making palettes for the students, and this new system seems like a breeze to change.  I can even have students do it.  They are more expensive than the ones I currently use, but I’m hoping price per wear, (which is how I buy my bags!) will shake out to be more cost effective for my classroom with quality results.

These frames!  Immediately I knew my families will want them.  They will love not only the ease of changing the artwork, but how these frames really highlight the students work in a simple way, and it will work with all the non-straight edge art we produce, including our weavings.  I’m excited to share them with parents.     

I have so much material and leftover black felt!  The Ymm Art Education display on "Little Fashion Designer Class" is a starting point for inspiration!  AND I REALLY REALLY NEED TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO BUILD THESE TABLES!!!  Look at how you can fill the drawers with items, and then see the items through the clear table top!  To me, they fit right into my curriculum of giving kids choices.

OBSESSED WITH THESE TABLES!

Meeting other art teachers is always a bonus, and Stacey, my friend from grad school and I happened to meet Michael and Ashley, two phenomenal teachers from Wisconsin.  Their session on alternatives to drawing was awesome and I’m so excited to have these teachers in my address book.

My grad school friend Stacey.  We came across an artist
market in the French Quarters at MIDNIGHT! 

The city.  I am so happy I extended my trip a couple days after the conference so I could focus on the conference and then the city.  Southern hospitality is a real thing.  Everyone we met was warm and kind and willing to share their pride for their city. 

A Louise Bourgeois sculpture in the NOMA's
sculpture garden. A really great museum! 
Thanks for the free admission! We thoroughly enjoyed it! 

The architecture...beautiful! 

Our "haunted" hotel! 

NAEA 2015 Presentation Supplementals

Presenting is always so nerve racking for me!  I love to share with my colleagues though, so I fight through the nerves and 'make it work!'

Make, Show and Flip for Videos

Here's a link to view the keynote turned PDF in Google Drive.

Designing Your Curriculum with Students, Standards, and Meaning in Mind

Here's a link to view the keynote turned PDF in Google Drive.

Find the unit planning grid here!  This is google drive published.  If you would like to edit this document you'll have to go to my class website, which will allow me to publish documents without a round about way.  You can find that at buzzardart.weebly.com

To be able to edit this document go to my school website.

New Orleans Bound!

I'm leaving on a jet plane!  I am so excited for the ultimate inspirational event,  NAEA National Conference in New Orleans!  I have two sessions I'll be presenting at and I hope you for some great discussion and collaboration!

Make, Show and Flip for Videos! 

8:00-8:50 AM on FRIDAY!

Convention Center/Meeting Room 207/Second Level

Learn how videos, simple to complex, are made in art class, adaptive art and enrichment classes. Learn where to find engaging videos and create flipped instructions for all learners!

Designing Your Curriculum with Students, Standards and Meaning in Mind

2:00-2:50 PM on SATURDAY!

Convention Center/Meeting Room R03/Second Level

Discover a big idea curriculum that partners with the national standards and embraces technology. Explore the artmaking process with my K-5 students and lessons that are relevant to their lives.

NOLA BOUND! Normally, I hate leaving my students, but I won't be missing this view! 

Curating the Process of Artmaking: TEACH Talk 2014

I had the amazing opportunity to give a TEACH Talk at the Akron Art Museum this fall.  TEACH Talk took inspiration from TED Talks.  Five art teachers spoke for six minutes each and it was an inspiring night to be with and connect with the people that share your passion.  Our theme was how do you LIVE CREATIVE? The art museum has adopted LIVE CREATIVE as their theme this year so as someone who loves curriculum, I love how it all fit together.  If you have to opportunity to organize a night like this, do it! It was so powerful for everyone in the room to hear about our professional life in and out of the classroom.  It was professional development for the art teacher soul.  

Here is my talk in it's entirety.  Unfortunately, I can not publish the slide show, as I don't publish students faces.

My name is Katie and I have worked in an elementary school for 5 years, a middle school for 2 and a high school for 3.  I ski, I surf, I travel, I do youth group, robotics, alumni board, love my family and I live creative.  

Curating my curriculum is my art teacher high. It’s where I thrive and have my greatest teaching achievements.  It’s where i sometimes literally shout out loud because I’m so excited of the encounter of ideas and experiences and students.  

Its when the ideas, materials, resources, and needs of my students merge and collide into an idea and then into process and then into making meaning.  It’s like the colored rice that’s been in your cupboard for 3 years from the previous teacher, and you had no idea what to do with it.  But then you came up with an big idea unit on celebration and saw a lesson in school arts magazine on making 3D desserts and then you read in that paper mache book you had on the shelf that if you add toilet paper to the paste you can sculpt with it and all of a sudden you have frosting and sprinkles (the colored rice!) and a 3D project and you get out your Wayne Theibaud postcards you got in Chicago and that picture you took in San Diego and it all comes together. This is where i feel i’m living my life creatively.  The teaching moments and life moments and that one odd ball material that you been holding on to for far too long. 

Artmaking is a process.  I have my youngest and oldest go through the same process.  From kindergarten to high school classes, the process is the same. To make art in my classroom students experience play, skill, knowledge, connections, and reflections.

I see myself as the curator of this process.  I come up with the big idea and essential questions (which now has been written for us with the new national standards)  and go out a search for all the pieces and parts to fit into my categories. 

My categories, or charts, are the visual of my brain.  It’s not always perfectly geometrically, and often things can go into different grids.  To grid my brain perfectly is pretty scary.  This should really be cubes, on an axis with different orbits.  

In my own life, I am living my own grid.  I’m playing, skill building, knowledge building, and creating meaning.  And in these experiences I find inspiration for my lessons.  My brain is always thinking about the students.  They would love this, I can’t wait to show them, or what would they think of this.  

Travel has been a big part of my life. I even used it as a big idea for my grad class.  It’s something that has changed me. Each trip.  Each site.  And we cherish that which changes us.  So it makes sense that these experiences in my life ultimately affect the curriculum that I curate.  

Travel is how I’ve spent the last couple of summers.  It’s part of my routine now.  My grid.  I’ve spent weeks at grad school, weeks at youth mission camps, and weeks traveling domestically and internationally, for fun and/or education.  And on all these weeks, I’m curating.  I’m grabbing.  I’m taking pictures. I’m buying games in museum gift shops and magnets to cover my filing cabinets.  I’m taking the free pamphlets and I know how we love those free posters.  I’m hunting and gathering.  I'm thinking.  In the calm and quiet, which elementary art teachers don't often experience, I’m thinking and reflecting. Creating connections and ideas and wrapping my brain around what is it I want my students to leave me with.  

The piece that I have to consider when curating is my audience.  The student.  One unit may work for a 5th grade one year, but it won’t work the next.  The students are different.  They have different needs, they come with different talents and stories.  I discovered this was true when I gave my exam in high school.  The students had to record details of their life for 24 hours and make a piece of artwork that demonstrated skills they had learned that semester from the 24 hours of research. For the freshman class, they had lost a classmate the year before, so thinking about life in terms of time was very different for this class then others, and it was evident in their artwork.  My 5th grade students this year are not natural drawers.  They are, however, wildly creative.  Amazing story builders.  For the art show, they won’t have drawings, they’ll have stop-motion videos to show.  

For awhile I’ve felt like those school years or the summers I did not create my own artwork was a failure.  And a part of me still feels that way.  It’s on my to do list.  Make time for yourself to make art.  And I’m hoping that this is the winter I will check that off my list.  But I do find comfort in thinking about what I am putting together every year in my classroom. When I watch my students work in my room, and know the success they are having or the understanding they are expressing to me is because of the process I created for them to work though, sometimes this feels like my art.  My creation.  It’s hard to sell it.  It’s hard to put it in a frame.  But living the encounters of all the pieces and parts, and being with my kids as they make the boxes on my grid come to life, that’s living creative to me.