{UN}inspired

Today, I was a drabby art teacher. I had two days at the art conference (which should amp me up) and instead I was lost on where to take my kids next. I have my pacing guide, which I meticulously planned at the beginning of the year, and for my Art Is I am doing great, but Art II is STRUGGLIN'. I have 3 -4 students who are always about 4-5 days ahead of the rest of the group FOR EVERY PROJECT. I have tried multiple things inluding, but not limited to: moving the one's ahead on, asking the ones behind to stay after school, having a side "fun project" for the one's ahead to work on, letting them do homework, let them go to the library,etc. If I let the one's ahead move on , the one's behind NEVER catch up, and then I can never put up a display, grading becomes difficult...blah blah blah. I have had one student stay after school, and she still is so far behind. At least half of my students who are ahead and have been assigned a side project (not knowing it was extra work) complained and did a very crappy job. I am lost. I have sort of complained about this group a lot in my head. They are a difficult bunch, and now I have 6 weeks left and today I contemplated letting them do book work for the next 6 weeks since they complain about almost everything I have them do. Let me tell you, I search high and low for fun stuff for them. They literally said they would just rather sit and do nothing than art. WOW!!!! I just can't believe it. I am glad I don't have this group of ArtIIs for a whole year.

Well, I guess I had to vent, but has anyone ever came across a class like this, and if so HELP!!!! (or feel free to complain in the comment section about your frustrations!).

Art I Aerial Perspective Landscape Collages

I like to look at this every once in a while...

10 LESSONS THE ARTS TEACH

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it
is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solutionand that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young
what adults believe is important.

-Elliot Eisner 

NAEA