Art Sparks Genius!

The Art Educators of New Jersey's Annual Conference was a great success! An organization of volunteers create the AENJ and offer art teachers in the Garden State some of the best professional development experiences available. This year, I accepted a position on the executive board and will be responsible for communications. I'm proud to be an AENJ member and an art teacher in New Jersey! If you aren't a member and would like to become one, click here.

NEW from Kiickstart!

HANDMADE TILE MOSAIC DVD & CD

The second kiickstart video will be released in one week at the Art Educators of New Jersey Annual Conference. This kiickstart video will teach you how to transform an ordinary blob of clay into a one-of-a-kind mosaic! Learn techniques for designing, creating, glazing and grouting your own handmade tiles!

Visit kiickstart.com for more information and for purchasing.

National Arts in Education Week!

To celebrate National Arts in Education Week, we hosted a special ceramic bowl-making workshop to prepare for our third Empty Bowls charity dinner that will be held in March 2011. Over 35 people came out to make bowls during the four-hour workshop held after school on Thursday September 16.

Empty Bowls is a nationally recognized service project that raises awareness of hunger and poverty within our society. Haddon Township High School's previous two dinners have united our community for a meal of soup and bread and have raised over $9,000 for The Foodbank of South Jersey.

Thanks to all of the people who came out and donated their time and energy to this important cause. Click here to learn more about Empty Bowls service project.

Tomorrow I officially begin my third decade in public education. I've been teaching half of my life. If I didn't love it, I'd be very depressed. But I DO love it, so I'm not depressed, just a little nostalgic.

I've wanted to be an art teacher since tenth grade in high school. It's funny to think that someone could actually want to do the same thing since the tender age of 16. That doesn't happen to many people, especially not today's youth, but it happened to me.

I've had many great teachers along the way. While I credit my happiness to many (including myself), I credit my vocational choice to three. I'd like to thank my Dad, Kirby Kiick, a science teacher of 35 years, for doing a job that he loved. I never heard him bad-mouth kids or public education during any of my years living at home. He genuinely enjoyed his career and his students. I'd also like to thank my high school art teacher, Gina Tray, for allowing me to see the joys of art and the many pleasures it can bring to one's life. If it wasn't for her, or my high school art classes, I'm not sure where I'd be, or who I'd be.

My last thank you is not for one person, but for the many people (young and not as young) who I've taught and learned from, and those who I will teach and learn from in the future. We are all part of the creative collective that makes life so much more pleasurable and satisfying. I'm a better person for it and am so happy to be part of that group!

With all of the changes happening in public education and within my current job description, I hope my third decade will be as great as the first two have been. I'll do whatever I can to make sure that it is.

The End of an Era

Haddon Township High School Art Department suffered a major blow due to budget cuts. The high school school previously offered nine art electives. Between me and my colleague, Ellen Hargrove, we taught a variety of sequential based courses in various media, and also taught the sixth through eighth grade students at the middle school. This year, I'm doing it all.

For the 2010 - 2011 school year, there are only THREE art classes offered at the high school, now called: "Creative Arts". I will be teaching them as a 2-D / 3-D experience and will also be teaching all of the students at the middle school. Ellen has been reassigned to our elementary schools.

We're sad. We built a program up over the past seven years and within five months, watched it get reduced to a third of its size.

We'll see what the coming school year brings. Whatever it does bring, it's certain that it won't be better than what we already had.

Advocacy

During the twenty years I've been teaching the role of advocacy has changed. In the past I felt it was about informing the parents, community, administration and school board members about all of the important things happening in the art room. Advocating our art programs was work, but it was fun. Kinda like show-n-tell.

The role of arts advocacy in the 21st Century has become all that we used to do and then some. It has become political and in all honesty, not as much fun. With attacks on public education reaching epidemic proportions, our role as spokespeople for our programs and our profession is of crucial importance. We must be informed, professional, articulate and make our voices heard not only to the people we focused on in the past, but to our legislators and policy makers.

Click here to see a few of the ways I've advocated for the arts, education, and for kids and families. We can't make a difference if we don't try!

Collaborating with Collage

Collaborating with other teachers and students across the curriculum is a fun and enriching way to help kids learn, and it’s pretty fun for the teachers too!  This year was the fourth year that I’ve worked with our 10^th grade honors English teacher and his students on an exciting project called “My Personal War.” It’s amazing what young people can create when they are invited to look inside themselves.  Our students are encouraged to see, identify and accept vulnerabilities without judgment.

Pat McCloskey, the English teacher, spends several months discussing the concept of personal war.  For this thematic unit, his class reads and discusses three novels, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and A Separate Peace by John Knowles and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  All address the human conditions of struggle, grief and overcoming physical and mental obstacles, which may be real or perceived.  The students are engaged in the topic from a variety of perspectives and Pat brings the experience to a climax by having each student write an essay about their own personal war. 

The students’ essays are everything it sounds like they would be…they’re personal, some are intense, some are painful.  The topics range from things that have happened to them, (death in the family, illness or abuse) to things that happen because of them (pressure to be the best, overachieving or being unable to prioritize) or things that they perceive as personal shortcomings (weight issues, shyness etc). Many of the students have experienced some sort of closure or resolve to their war, while others are still actively dealing with the issue, and will continue to do so long past the tender age of sixteen.  For a few of the students, this essay may be the first healthy exploration into guided introspection that they have been asked to have. 

Due to either a class swap or class coverage arranged by our amazing secretary, I enter his English class right after they hand in their papers to introduce what will be the double-whammy to the assignment – a collage. My role is to guide the students to visually articulate the topic of their essay using imagery instead of text. Basically, they must now say the same thing, but in a whole new language! Since many of these kids are non-art students, I show numerous examples of collage, talk about the process and give them pointers and websites to look at to assist their understanding.  I also explain how to successfully juxtapose interesting pictures to create visual metaphor.

Four days after I introduce the lesson, I come back to his class for a general critique, where we discuss what’s working and why. I invite the students to come talk to me outside of class to discuss their collage, their process and progress.  Many take me up on that offer, which allows me to personally meet students that I might not have ever encountered in one of my art classes. Two days after the in-class critique, the finished collages are due.  It’s fast, furious and fantastic! 

Mr. McCloskey hands me the students’ essays unread.  I photocopy the collages and create what will become the cover sheet to each student’s essay.  I print their name and title underneath their image and staple the cover sheet to the student’s written work.  After all that, I get to read them! That’s right, the art teacher reads the English papers before the English teacher.  The students give Pat permission for me to read their work, (a few decline). I enjoy the opportunity to read the writing that honors level students submit to their English teacher.  It helps me know what I should expect from my own students when I require a writing assignment.

Mr. McCloskey spends hours writing back to each of his students, validating them and acknowledging that his or her voice has been heard.  He grades the piece of writing as an English teacher, while simultaneously treating each individual like a courageous war hero. It’s one of his strengths and a true gift that he brings to his interactions with his students. I feel honored to be a part of it.  I grade the collages based on the overall aesthetic success of the work and consider their effort.  The students receive two grades for this cross-curricular experience - one from him and one from me.

Our collaboration began when I approached Pat after reading one of our shared student’s essays.  I was so moved by the comments that he took the time to write to her, that I told him that I thought it would make a great collaborative project.  It’s been that and so much more!

Every collaborative lesson that I am a part of teaches me how to be a better teacher.  And it’s free!  In our current world of scores, standards, testing and AYP, I feel like Pat and I are on the same page.  We are two different teachers, teaching different disciplines, who together guide students through the art of being human.