New Phase

I’m writing this after a bit of time for me to process the journey that I am on now.  I’ve always heard people say “listen to the universe”.  I’m relying on that now more than ever.  Some thoughts that have been filtering through my mind for several months.  Bare with me on this part….

Being a great dedicated educator requires many years of education and commitment to your craft.  You also need to always work on elevating your craft and learn new innovative technology, media, terminology, and educational shifts.  All the while you need to support and invest in the relationships you have with the students in your care.

Many of us sacrifice our time with our own family and children to do this.  Not only are we shepherding the young people in our care, but we are also striving to elevate them and nurture them to reach levels they never knew they could achieve.  This is rewarding and it is equally challenging.

After almost 30 years of teaching, I am transitioning into working for myself.  All the effort and dedication I put into my beautiful artists and art program are over.  With any change comes pain and trust me it’s like death while you are still breathing.  I’m working through the change and some days are wonderful and I love the new pace of my days but there are days when I miss the hum of a well-run artist studio with my art students.  It was magic.  My students knew it, my parents knew it, some of my colleagues knew it and respected it.  Others will never get it and would like to dismiss it.

My accomplishments so far are creating and publishing my own artist website.  Joy Schultz Studio  It was a learning curve but I did it just like I had to teach myself how to use two different 3D printers and numerous digital design platforms.  I’m proud to have accomplished this in time for the opening of the new school year.  The second accomplishment is to be selected to be on the Arkansas Artist Registry for artist residency programs.  The third accomplishment is to paint almost every day.  Keep being creative and growing.  The last is writing this post on my blog to let people know why there will be an absence of posts about my school art studio and my wonderful students.  I feel it would not be authentic of me not to let my readers know of the journey I am currently navigating.

I will still be working with young people and adults who wish to learn how to tap their individual creativity.   I plan on going through all of the many lesson plans and activities I created over the years and figure out how to share them.  I will also be purging the many curated artifacts, books, reproductions, and other things I accumulated over my teaching career at a garage sale or online.   I am fulfilling my role as a Co-President of the Choice Art Interest Group for NAEA.  Beyond that, I will listen to the universe.

I have been mulling over a list of advice to offer teachers going through similar paths but it’s still a process for me.  I do want to thank my ArtEd #K12artchat community for quietly being there to support and express concern for my well-being.  I’m unsure of what the universe will offer me.  I hope it will be as rewarding as it has been to launch and inspire all of my artists and all of you.

My best for the start of the new school year to all of you.

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer Professional Development on the Flip-Side

 

I just completed a Statewide tour of Arkansas.  I was able to travel all over to areas I didn’t know and visit arts buildings to see the programs they offered the community.  I spent several nights in hotels and one magical night in a Bed and Breakfast.  I traveled with a talented artist from Arkansas who has an eclectic life story that matches her layered and fascinating art work. It was a fantastic experience and we matched up perfectly.

I have attended loads of PD in my almost 30 years of education.  I have presented at local conferences and at the National convention for years, but this was personal.

The professional development program was created by the Arkansas Education Department and it connects working local artists with art educators, to bring professional development for visual arts.  This an opportunity to engage with a local arts programs and become informed about the artist registry.

Jeri Hillis was the talented artist I was matched with for the workshop. After doing research on her, I figured that her work in collage was going to be our focus for the art making.  http://www.arkansasarts.org/artist-registry/jeri-hillis

Collage is a wonderful approach to introduce the methods of teaching how ChoiceArt is implemented into a studio classroom.  I was able to show how I implement ChoiceArt in my studio and I was also able to demonstrate to the educators how to figure out the methods that would best fit them as the facilitator plus meet the demographics of their school population, and how to explain the ChoiceArt methods to all the stake-holders. I also wanted my participants to get back in touch with the inner artist, and level up skills/techniques, and open their minds to my teaching practice.  I designed the professional development program to try to bring out the working artist in each participant with the focus on Appropriation and Collage.  It is very important to NOT jump right in but really think about how to implement this in your program.   Think about how you would educate the population in the school district.  Also, how to educate others on what ChoiceArt teaching practice will bring to the educational program.

ChoiceArt FB page  https://www.facebook.com/groups/1699665476977044/?ref=br_rs

My presentation included the way I figured out a work flow, method of implementation, how to leverage my student learning management platform, my grading process, and how to communicate to everyone.  This has been a program developed over time.  I stressed that this is how it works for my school and for my personality.  I know myself well and I know my school community well.  It took a lot of front-end loading to get to where I am.  People can see and hear what I do but ultimately, the educator needs to customize the practice to suit the situation.  If I would move to a new school and teach a different population, I would need to make adjustments.

I had several participants at the workshop who were not visual arts educators and they came to learn about how students present their process and how to cultivate individual voices. I feel they were able to collect ideas from how I also stress the importance of building community by verbal critiques,  how to implement classroom mentors, how to  engage students to present their ideas in progress, and showcase the portfolio the students created for documenting the process for final critiques.  In addition,how to use  artist proposals and written reflections as a key to developing a voice that leads to a solid artist statement.

My goal was to educate and get educators back in touch with how they feel when creating, how they organize thoughts and materials, and how their individual pace in thinking/progress happens.  We often feel pressure of our daily schedule, expectations for evaluations, and the curricular requirements.  I wanted to remind the educators about how the most important part of what we do is visual communication.  How do we support our students where they start and meet their individual needs?  Where to do we leave room for thinking, practicing, experimenting, inventing, etc.?  This is all learning and it happens during the process.

IF the student is engaged the end product will speak for itself.

Art educators are often under-appreciated for how well we juggle the materials, behaviors, studio space, and nurturing the soul of our students.  In our studio’s the space needs to be a community that is safe for everyone.  All students deserve a safe place to explore, learn, grow, fail, and succeed.  Succeed based on what the student has identified as success not by the appearance of the product.  The learning is an intrinsic value.  This is often invisible accept when there is time and a method to communicate the learning.  We need to continue to create methods to make the learning and the success from the process, visible beyond the finished product.

We need to meet our students where they are when they enter our space.  It is nearly impossible to meet the needs of everyone when we don’t even consider a student-centered approach.  I am not going to have everyone or even a handful of students become famous successful artists.

I will have all of my students aware of their visual communication skills, how to figure out their work flow, apply the techniques and vocabulary they explored, be in touch and aware of artists worldwide, blend seamlessly the other academic areas they love into the visual communication created in the studio.  I will have young people who understand the importance of the “WHY” when creating original works of art.  I will have students that are confident recording their thoughts, ideas, progress, failures, research, and the confidence to speak and assist others.  I will have students who see the visual arts as a powerful tool to communicate effectively in the world with the balance of understanding how to wield that power on social media.  Plus, have an understanding of the damage that can be done to oneself for not comprehensively planning what they share on social media.  Leveraging visual communication is powerful but it needs to be taught how to be effective.

I communicated at the workshop that I feel that I am always perfecting my teaching practice and my studio is my lab.  It is my goal to be an effective practitioner of Visual Communication and this requires reflection and data points.  I utilize Google Forms and other digital platforms to gather and analyze how effective I am doing in my attempts.  Through my Google Forms and my student learning management platforms, I am able to collect information to adjust my practice.  I am also able to communicate with my individual students easily and to offer input and additional research, support, and plan scaffolding to increase student success.  This is work but with digital tools it makes it easier.

Wow! Didn’t think I’s write so much.  I guess my reflecting on my experience helped me clarify my own voice.  Funny…. I preach that all the time.  Again, practice what you preach.

So, glad I did this summer PD.  Looking forward to not driving and staying in hotels for a while.  I need some deep immersion into my own art before beginning my storage room clean out at school.

Happy summer to you all.

https://www.asc701.org/events/2018/6/28/taking-it-to-the-schools-iii-community-experiences-in-visual-art

Students Leading Students

Artist Workshop with High School Artists

On Thursday, March 8, ten of my art students traveled to Dover Middle School (approx. 1.5 hours away from our school) to present their research, process, and inspirations for creating their art work. The students who participated in the artist workshop were selected for their ability to present, relate to younger students, and their artistic style/voice.  I wanted themes and age-appropriate work to share with the middle schoolers.

How it all began.

I was contacted by Ms. Jocelyn Alvey the Dover Middle School art teacher.  Ms. Alvey follows Schultz_Life Instagram and was so impressed by the work and level of engagement the Episcopal Upper School students have in their Choice Art program, that she reached out for some help for her students.  At first, Ms. Alvey wanted to Skype with our students about our process and presentations.  I knew we could do better than that so I hatched an idea to create a workshop program and take it on the road.  Anne Marie and Heather were instrumental in helping to plan the workshop and assisted with the details and materials. In the process of the workshop details I contacted Paul Leopoulos the Thea Foundation Director. The Thea Foundation provides art supplies and funds for art programs all around Arkansas.  All I did was ask him if he would provide some funds for our students to present to the Middle School art program.  Mr. Leopoulos was super supportive and wrote a check for $200.00 for the presentation.  Once approvals were made to travel to Dover, the Upper School artists prepared a Sway presentation of their work and practiced the techniques we planned on presenting to the Middle School artists.

 

 

We hosted two workshops to a packed art studio.  Several Upper School artists presented their Sway links and then we divided into small groups. Each Episcopal art student shared actual works of art with the small groups and told them about their ideas and how they created the work. We wanted the younger students to be able see, touch, and ask questions about the ideas.  Then each middle school artist was able to experiment with the new techniques we shared in our small groups.   We demonstrated a few techniques with the Dover artists, packing tape transfers, chalk paper marbling, and using images from books and painted papers.  We also provided painted papers, magazines, children’s books to cut up, and handouts about line designs.

The sessions went great and the Dover students loved the new techniques and asked excellent questions.  When the first session was about to end, Anne Marie and Matt presented Ms. Alvey the large check to inform her about the donation.  She was very touched and the Dover students got really excited about being able to purchase new materials based on what the Episcopal artists shared.

 

 

Our second session was equally packed and the word was out about the Episcopal artists so they couldn’t wait to get into the art room.  After our second session, we met up with the Dover students at lunch to continue the conversations.  As we picked up our lunch the Dover students waved individual artists to their tables.  Carter brought along paper and pencil and gave a drawing tutorial at the table.  It was difficult to see what he was doing because of the large crowd that gathered around him to see and record his work with their phones.  Haley looked through a Dover student’s sketchbook and talked about drawing.  London was mobbed at lunch to talk about all kinds of ideas.  Matt and Rodney sat with a few Dover students and enjoyed talking about school and sports.  The rest of the Episcopal students sat with Ms. Alvey and shared what they experienced during the sessions.

We all agreed that it was an amazing workshop and how much each artist benefited from the experience.  Anne Marie thinks we should start traveling all over and presenting to other art programs.  Well, you never know what will happen next…

Next up is a small group of art educator’s coming in April to observe my studio in action.  I have to admit I’m a little nervous but when I mentioned it to my students they got very excited about the idea.  It just proves that if you ignite their passion and let them lead the world opens up for them.

As I am writing this I am looking through the NAEA18 Convention sessions.  I’m so looking forward to Seattle this year.  I cannot wait to all the ChoiceArt Educators at our meeting and to hear all of your successes from this school year.