Let's see if I remember how this works...

11.12.12

I'm just starting my blog back up after six years of absence, four and a half of which I did not have a permanent teaching position. In January 2013, I moved from the South to the Northeast, got married, became a (step)parent, did a little freelancing, and even took a stab at having a studio (not structured enough for me). But I missed teaching, which was actually a bit of a surprise to me. I'd left a very stressful teaching position when I moved and had just about convinced myself that full-time teaching just wasn't for me.

During those four and a half years, I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to teach part time at an art college in my city, which allowed me to keep my feet in the water, as it were. I substituted, as well, for four school years. (I covered FOUR long-term sub maternity leave stints.) And I suppose that all of that temporary work, and the uncertainty of not really having a "home," left me feeling far less like the professional I wanted to be, but it also brought me to the realization that I truly missed having my own classroom.

Self-Portrait: Dances with Ice Cream (2012)

Anyway...the blog fell by the wayside, and now that I have a permanent position again, I realize that I truly enjoyed writing about my students and sharing their work. And honestly, I need to see proof of the progress my students and I are making. I teach at an International Baccalaureate school, and jumping back into full-time teaching, while also learning about IB methods and practices, has proven to be both exhilarating and extremely challenging. In some ways, I feel like a first year teacher all over again. My school is opening a new upper school this year, so I'll be teaching 6-9th for certain, and probably 5th, as well. There's still some question as to who will be teaching K-4 (or what part of those grades I'll be teaching), as there just isn't enough room in the schedule or the day (or my head) for me to teach all 10 grade levels. I'll let you know as soon as I do! :)

Returning to the classroom after a four and a half year absence has definitely been a humbling reminder that I have much to learn. But I'm committed to doing my best, and so, here I am, sharing the best part of my job: my kids. I hope their creativity is as inspiring to others as it is to me.

Chris Hagan Owl Collages (2nd Grade)

I'm a Pinterest'in fool, just like every other Art teacher out there. I love seeing all of the wildly diverse and inspiring projects, and I'm not afraid to admit that I beg, borrow, and steal from both the internet and from teachers for whom I've covered. (Long-term sub positions are a great opportunity to see how other teachers organize their classrooms and to pick up a few new project ideas!)

All that being said, on occasion I do manage to come up with a lesson of my own that I end up loving. These colorful 2nd grade owls are one of those projects.

I was looking for a collage project for my kiddos when I came across the work of Brighton, UK artist Chris Hagan. Y'all, I absolutely LOVE his work: bright, colorful, magical, textural, and very reminiscent of both Henri Rousseau and Marc Chagall. His illustrations are wordless folktales. They truly speak volumes. In fact, I was so enamored of his work that I skipped right over to his Etsy shop and bought the print below. (I've felt a connection to Tennyson's lily maid since my Victorian Lit class in undergrad. I can recite all 171 lines, people.)

Chris Hagan, The Lady of Shalott (c. 2015), mixed media collage

So anyway, after spending a good half hour drooling over his gorgeous textured paper and whimsical colors, I decided he would be a terrific contemporary artist to whom to introduce my second graders. We started by talking about artist inspiration and compared Hagan's "Tyger, Tyger" to Henri Rousseau's "Tiger in a Tropical Storm."

The kids were quick to pick up on the similarities in style: both artists are inspired by nature, use bold shapes and patterns/repetition, and stylize their subjects. They also noticed the differences: Rousseau chose a more natural color palette, while Hagan uses bright, intense colors; Rousseau painted in oils, while Hagan often textures his own paper for his collages. (He also paints in gouache and watercolor.) We ended our discussion by talking about the difference between being inspired and simply reproducing another artist's work. After all, even at 8 years old, I want my young artists to begin making their own decisions about their art and how they will express themselves visually.

Chris Hagan - Tyger, Tyger (2014), mixed media collage
(Seriously...beautifully intense color and references to my favorite poets?)

Henri Rousseau - Tiger in a Tropical Storm (1891), oil on canvas

After our artist discussion, we looked at more of Chris Hagan's work and drew inspiration from his "An Owl in the Jungle," thinking about how we could create our own whimsical, brightly-illustrated collages.

Chris Hagan - An Owl in the Jungle (c. 2015), mixed media collage

You know how you always wonder if a project will turn out in real life as well as it's come together in your head? This was one of those. But my young artists and I were not disappointed. I absolutely adore the vivid contrast between the bright, colorful owls and the monochromatic winter sky and birches!

Here they are - a few of our "Owls Among the Birches." (We live in Pennsylvania, after all, haha. I should confess that when we began these in mid-autumn, I was planning to have students cut leaves and tree branches from painted paper we'd made earlier in the year, but holidays, field trips, and a six-day Specials cycle proved more powerful than my ability to plan seasonally, so our owls became winter owls. It's all good. The kids loved the idea that their owls were enjoying the snow as much as we all were!)

4th Grade Self-Portraits: Positively Me

NOTE: After nearly six years (SIX YEARS?!) of being absent from the blogosphere (is it even still called that??), I logged back into The Elemental Art Room with the intention of starting the blog back up. When I did, I saw a (3) next to the word "Drafts" on my design panel and, curious as to what I'd left hanging around in limbo, I clicked to see what was there. Low and behold, there sat this post, patiently waiting, that I wrote sometime in the spring of 2012 while I was still living and teaching in Fort Lauderdale. I'm actually really happy to have found these images. What fun!

THE ORIGINAL POST:

I'll be honest, this project was born of near desperation. Fourth grade can be such a transitional year personally for children, as they begin to become more independent and are expected to take more responsibility for their learning and behavior. This can result in an identity crisis that frustrates and baffles students at this age. Who are they? Who do their teachers and parents expect them to be? What do they expect of themselves? How can meet these expectations without giving up their newly-discovered independence? Keeping all of this fourth grade turmoil in mind, I wanted a self-portrait project that would help my young artists decide who they are and who they want to be. This project also taught students about symmetry, balance, and proportion and allowed me to integrate a tiny bit of language arts as we focused on positive character trait adjectives. 

Here's what we did:

Prior to class:

1. I took head-shots of each student, printed them out, then used the paper cutter to cut them down the middle.
2. I decided that this project would use only colored pencils. My fourth graders need practice taking their time and not just slapping color on. They also needed practice taking care of our materials. I figured keeping the medium simple would help with this, and it did. They made great strides in clean-up procedures and became more responsible with care of materials since there was only one medium and no mess to worry about.

Class 1:

• Students cut away the background with scissors, leaving only their head and shoulders. They pasted this to a piece of drawing paper, making sure to line up the bottom of the picture with the bottom of their paper and leave room to one side for drawing the other half of their face/shoulders. (I know this seems like a given, but really had to keep an eye on this. Kids love gluing things to the middle of their paper.) 
• I then discussed symmetry with them and showed them how to use their pencil to measure features and distances from the center of their faces to various points such as corners of eyes, jaw line, ears, etc. Students with rulers used them if they chose, but I explained that they won't always have a ruler on hand, so being able to use the tools at hand is a useful skill.
• Students then began drawing the other half of their face in pencil in order to complete their image. I encouraged them to draw lightly (as always) so that erasing didn't leave unwanted scars and marks on the paper.

Class 2:

Students completed their drawing if needed and began using colored pencils to add color. We discovered that our drawings often looked like cartoon versions of ourselves, which was a lot of fun for these fourth graders.

Class 3:

Students began adding their positive character traits to the background of their drawing. I gave them a lot of freedom with this while making sure to talk about effective design, contrast, and use of color, lines, and shapes to make their words stand out. They could write "I am..." statements, or they could write the traits only.

Class 4:

Students completed their drawings.

I'm really please with how well so many of these turned out. I may do it at the start of the next school year, because this focus on the positive was really good for some of these kids. Rather than constantly hearing how they need to do this or that differently, they had a chance to really think about what they're doing well. I learned a lot about the students, too, during this process. Here are more of our results (parent permission has been given for the images shown here):

I talked about closure, and some students, like this one, let their text appear to continue behind their self-portrait.