Wednesday, March 30, 2016

A question about interruptions.

Sorry folks; no photos of artwork from awesome students in this post or great lessons to share. Instead, I have a question. How do you deal with the constant interruptions to lessons that come from the normal activities of school? It is that time of year for us here in TX where testing, field trips, holidays, assemblies, and even severe weather prevent students from making it to the art room, sometimes up to 3 weeks in a row.

I have classes in every grade level that are way behind the other classes. To keep myself sane, sometimes I skip a lesson/assignment with one group so that all of my classes in a grade level can start a new lesson on the same week. Of course, then I end up with students asking "why didn't we get to make...?" Sometimes I just keep a group trudging along hoping that fate will put them back on pace with everyone else. Other times, I try to condense information or assimilate it into the next lesson.

Please don't get me wrong, I am not trying to gripe. I know we all deal with this situation, and I would simply love to see a discussion on how others deal with interruptions. An opportunity to help each other out. This is only my third year teaching, so I know that some old pros out there could lend some sage wisdom to the rest of us.

So, please respond. If you don't have a solution, but have other info that might generate some tactics of dealing with this, feel free to give that input too. Or if you have an opinion of why this shouldn't stress us out, let us know why.

Thanks ahead of time for any input.

1 comment:

  1. Hey there. What a drag! I'm pretty fortunate to not encounter much of this. We are a large (1300) school and we never have school wide assemblies because our auditorium can not accommodate everyone. Our administration also makes a point to check the art and prep schedules so as not to impact our instruction. When they can't work it out our staff works well with each other to switch times when needed too.

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