Just a warning, this is going to be picture-heavy.
So… hi! My name is Christina Chicas, and this is my first blog as an art teacher. Granted, I’m just working as a maternity leave replacement, but still. I’ve found other people’s blogs so interesting and helpful, I thought I’d make my own, not only for other art teachers, but for myself as something of a documentary of my ideas, projects, and just things.
To begin with, I completed my student teaching at both elementary and middle schools, and have taught summer school art classes for about five years now. The maternity leave I’m filling in for is in an urban-suburban district in New Jersey, and it’s at an elementary school. The room itself is HUGE, with tons of storage space, but unfortunately not too many windows.
I had a bit of cleaning and a lot of organizing to do, once all of the supplies came in. And here’s how I ended up!
My door was covered in these pretty terrible white marks and chips. Unfortunately, I couldn’t paint the door, so I had to make do. It’s cool what a little construction paper and electrical tape can do!
This was one of the first things I did. I got the idea off of Pinterest, and it took about 20 minutes and a $3 clock from Target. There was already a clock in the classroom, but I can’t see it from my desk/the front of the room, so I put one on a wall where I can see it easily. Fun times with Sharpies!
This is the TOTALLY cleaned up sink area. To be honest, this area scared me a little when I first saw the classroom. I absolutely hate spiders, and this looked like the one place that they would be in the room. I pulled a bunch of things out of the corner (obviously, the scariest place for me), and made things a little bit more accessible.
These are the cute supply cubbies! The tables are organized by color, so each table has its own container of crayons, markers, and Cray-Pas. Not pictured are the little buckets I made with pencils, erasers, glue, and glue sticks. Each container says on it what it should have in it at the end of each class. The boxes on top of the cubbies are for extra supplies – if a pencil breaks or if there are more than 4 students at a table, for example, they can come up and grab some of the extras. Specialty things that we won’t use every day like rulers and hand sharpeners are up there, too
This is just the sign that I made for the room. The font (one of my favorites) is called Spaghettica, and I found it on dafont.com. It’s a fantastic resource for interesting fonts, and I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on the fonts I’ve found there. I made a sign for the teacher who will be returning in November, too, so the Kindergarteners will learn her name and the other students will realize that she is coming back at some point.
I got the idea this bad boy (or girl) off of Pinterest. It’s a call-and-response system to get the attention of the class. We’ll be rehearsing it for the first week of classes, I’m sure, but the way it works is like the game Marco Polo. When I call out, “Mona!”, I’ll be expecting the class to respond with “Lisa!”, and then quiet down and follow the directions on the poster. I made this poster in Pixelmator (a less expensive, Mac-friendly version of Photoshop), and had it printed at Office Depot. It was a little bit more expensive than I would have hoped for a classroom that isn’t mine, but they’ll be something of a welcome back gift for the teacher when she returns. It actually works out well because her last name begins with a C, as mine does, so the signs work for both of us.
Another Pinterest find that I made up in Pixelmator.
The way the teacher has her room set up, there are picnic tables that she has assigned a color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple). On each side of the picnic table, she had painted squares of the color, and she tells the students to sit on the squares. This keeps them from sitting on top of one another, and potentially getting into trouble for anything physical. However, for the first day, I HATE assigning seats. I would rather save that for a situation that requires it. So, what I decided to do was cut out squares that correspond with the colors of the tables. I’ll hand them out randomly to students, and they can pick any seat at that table. That way, the students are seated randomly, they feel like they still have a choice in where they sit, and I still maintain the power to move seats if it is needed.
I also made these tissue paper pouffes that hang from the lights above the tables so I can see what table is what color when the students are seated.
This cabinet is going to end up being super important, I suspect. The stoplight was a method that the teacher already had in place before I was there. It is intended to keep the volume at a reasonable level in the room. If it’s green, the students will get to listen to music. Yellow, the music goes off, and the students need to speak quietly. Red, and there is no talking. The ART letters are similar, and are something that I learned in my student teaching. If I need to speak to the class about behavior once, the A comes down. Two times, the R comes down. Three times, the T comes down, and there’s “no more art.” Then, the students will clean up whatever they are working on and, depending upon what was happening, they will write apology letters explaining what they were doing wrong, and how they can do better next time. The third thing that’s up there is SUPER helpful for someone like me, who loses track of time quickly. It tells me when the period starts, when it ends, and (most importantly) when to clean up! I left 7 minutes of clean-up time for each period… we’ll see if that’s too much or too little over the next few weeks!
My drying racks. The teacher organized them by animal, because so many of the younger students can’t yet read. However, I added the stop signs and the “Your Work Goes Here” sign to help me in making sure the artwork stays organized.
This I’m super excited for. This bulletin board is right across from the cafeteria. I’m planning on putting an example of what each grade is doing up on this tree, so everyone can see what the other grades are working on. This is also cool, because it will probably change seasonally. I’ll add some leaves or a pumpkin for the fall, and then the teacher can add some snow in winter, and so on. I just love this idea, and I really hope it works out the way I picture it.
So that’s about it. Now I just need to get some sleep. I’ll hopefully have a chance to post some about the first week, and take some photos of how the kids are doing with their first project soon!
C.
Que Seurat Seurat 