Professional Develpment Training

 

Columbus Day was a teacher work day for us. I am lucky enough to be in a district so large that we get to spend these kinds of days in professional development with other art teachers from our district. This past Monday, another teacher from the district and myself lead a group of mostly new teachers in training focused on classroom management for elementary art teachers. We shared a lot of good things, and have already heard from some of the teachers that attended, telling us that they put some of the things they learned in practice and are already seeing great results.
 
 I am writing this post because I wanted to share some of the pictures of work the teachers did when I shared with them two lessons that I have great success with. One is a 4th grade lesson on Emphasis, Value, and Texture. This lesson uses Chuck Close as inspiration, showing the students that they can overcome obstacles by breaking big jobs down into small pieces and working together. It is one of my favorite lessons. We used a picture of our District Art Supervisor. The final piece is 32"x40" enlarged from an original 8"x10" that was cut into 1"x1" pieces.


The second project I shared with them is a color wheel made with Model Magic. I make these with my 3rd graders each year. We start only with the primary colors and then they have to mix to create the secondary colors. After that, we organize them into a color wheel and then they get to sculpt them into pretty much whatever shapes they want. Finally they are glued down onto black construction paper.

It was a totally different experience teaching teacher instead of elementary school students. I really do think that the results were not too much different than the kids. Enjoy.