Starting a New School Year

The postings on the Art Teacher FB pages are buzzing with new classroom decor ideas, purchases, and ideas.  New educators are asking for icebreakers and best practice ideas.  It will be my 29th year of being an art educator.  I still get the before school start dreams/nightmares.  I love adding some new artifacts to my studio and also editing old things.

I have been busy all summer educating other art educators about new techniques to offer in the studio and ideas on how to create a Choice Art studio to their current environments.  I also completed my Google Level 1 training this summer that compliments my methods of delivering my studio content though my Google Forms and my LMS.  It feels great to have some established systems in place and the buy-in from my school population on my ChoiceArt practice and my desire to host a student driven program.

There is a lot of front-end loading to prepare for when serving a blended studio program.  You have to create a solid method of content delivery for a diverse set of skills, media, content, research, and submission process.    I’ve worked with different methods but now I have settled into using Sway for studio documentation, Screencastify for presentation recordings, Haiku Learning Management Platform for my resource content, and Google Suite for submission forms.

I just revamped my older forms to streamline my questions and to freshen up the old ones.  I created a new Powerpoint to present to my new students and to remind my experienced students how to prepare for an Artist Proposal Submission.  I am currently reviewing my past ice breakers to come up with new twists for each of my different courses.  I am able to do all of this in the comfort of my home all online.  NO paper! It’s seamless and I love it.

I have one more Professional Development presentation to complete with about 40 LRSD art educators to complete before I get to start my own inservice prep for the new year.  I did spend some time in my studio straightening up my storage room but with a ChoiceArt program the studio doesn’t require loads of redesign.  My students maintain a good studio flow and it works for all of us.

New additions are two nice new computer stations loaded for my studio to create films and photography.  Plus- my keyboard garage sale find will make an appearance to add a musical component to the originality of our presentations.  I have a motivated group of AP art students and a enthusiastic group of student artists ready to turn the year into one of the best years yet.

The summer flies by more and more as my career advances.  My online PLN #K12ARTCHAT keeps me sane and motivated.  I’m so very thankful for their support and influence.  Soon enough I will be swimming in a sea of teenagers again so having my #HIVE to reach out to is a blessing.

Thank you #Hive #HiveMind