Creative Hearts

Back in January, I challenged my first graders to an art project. During their free choice time the first day, I called five students at a time to a back table to paint their sky with water color. As you can see by my prototype, it was a simple matter of getting the paper wet and then stroking on some blue about two-thirds of the way down. My plan was the model of organization and I was quite pleased to realize halfway through that I was managing everything without even the presence of an aide! What a teacher. True, some of the skies were quite watery, but nothing that a paper towel couldn’t fix after the artist walked away. Also, very few actually ended up blue and two almost forgot to stop painting and leave a little white at the bottom for snow. The rainbow palette tempted many students to try for the sunset effect, which often ended up a little on the muddy side – again, nothing that a dry paper towel couldn’t soften. After school, when the papers were dry I mounted them to a background to help smooth the wrinkles and admired the handiwork of my little artists.

The next day I led students through the steps of tearing three circles of white paper to stack into a snowman that was silhouetted against the skies they had painted. Then they were to tear little pieces of paper that would become falling snow. Simple, yet effective...or so it seemed. Tearing paper was not a problem for these youngsters, but tearing it into a desired shape turned out to be a devastating process for most of them. The snowflakes looked more like ice blocks falling from the sky and I can’t even describe the snowmen. We persevered, though, and I eventually got around to every desk to help them individually so that their snowmen looked recognizable and the snowflakes were brought under control. Only once did I come close to a meltdown when I turned around to see one of my little boys holding the glue bottle upside down two feet above his paper. Squeezing with both hands he was watching a thin waterfall of Elmer’s cascade over his picture. True to the effects of Asperger Syndrome, he had become transfixed by the movement of the glue and had gone way beyond just cementing paper. Wondering to myself why I kept planning my art projects when his aide was on her break, I ran over to him and, telling him what a great job he’d done, rescued the artwork and wiped off some of the extra glue.

I breathed a sigh of relief once all of the glue was put away. Thinking that the pictures were essentially done, I gave students some fine-tipped markers with which to draw on the eyes and mouths of their snowmen. Here, again, I was surprised to see how differently each artist depicted their subject. Snowmen ranged from very simple to quite detailed with carrot noses, colored buttons, paper scarves, and stick arms.

As always, there’s a lesson here. Don’t turn your back on first graders with glue? Naw...well, maybe. I think, however, that for me it is more of a reminder that creativity is messy and unpredictable, but an essential part of the human spirit. We can all paint the same subject at the same time with the same media, but the results will be as individualistic as we are. And, well it should be because we are more than the creators, we ARE the art. What we are comes out in what we do and what we do helps us progress into who we are becoming. So, what does YOUR snowman look like? Mine is a teacher.

Hope

With temperatures consistently in the thirties since December and recurring snow flurries continuing to surprise us, it has been difficult for me to remember that it is still only mid-February. I feel like I have been cold for so long that surely it must be time for spring. Apparently not, however, since there are still patches of snow visible from my front window. But there is hope. Just outside our door we are greeted daily now by Snow Drops, valiantly defying the gloomy cold to bring us the good news that life is not lost; winter will not last forever.

Who's Got the Glue?

I have been substitute teaching for a first grade teacher who underwent emergency surgery lately. Actually, I was subbing for her sub when a one day gig suddenly turned into four weeks. Thankfully, she is fine and will return to work the last week of February, but in the meantime, I am really enjoying my time in her class.

Ironically, I did my first three-week practicum with this class when they were brand new kindergarteners and it is amazing how much they have learned about procedure and being a student in just one year. For instance, they have actually learned how to form a line! That’s something they hadn’t mastered at the end of my practicum. I had left shaking my head that, as cute as they were, I wasn’t sure I could spend my days repeating the sound of one letter of the alphabet for a week at a time (a says /a/, ants on an apple, /a/, /a/, /a/). And getting them to listen and keeping their attention was nearly impossible. But, look at them now. True, their attention spans are still short, but they have definitely learned some skills that most of us take for granted. They automatically form a line to get a drink or wash their hands and getting everyone’s attention at once is actually possible now. In my book, kindergarten teachers are heroes for this. How do they stick it out? I had a chance to better understand their motivation before Christmas...

Two kindergarten teachers who are team teaching their combined class of 27 students this year went on maternity leave at about the same time. I was asked to sub for one of them along with a retired veteran teacher that taught D’s kindergarten class years ago. It was a great experience to be able to have her as a mentor and be able to teach for eight weeks instead of just a day or two. I knew all 27 names and faces by the end of the first week and by the second week I could even conjure a mental image to connect with each name even if the student wasn’t right in front of me.

This class had been in school for two months by the time I came and, although they were still shaky about forming a decent line, they did know their small group names and the basic routine of the day. Although the curriculum wasn’t any more stimulating (they were finally past the letter a and on to m says /m/, monkey on a mountain, /m/, /m/, /m/), I must say that it was easy to pull together a week’s lessons and the day moved along nicely because we switched gears every 20 minutes. After a month, we were all in a nice routine and I began really feeling like a teacher. It was so nice to have time to get to know the students and to become comfortable with my role. By then I could also see the idiosyncrasies of each little personality for myself, and get a feel for their strengths and struggles. By the time I left another month later, at Christmas break, I was witnessing some students crossing the span between being a non reader and an emerging reader; that magical time when a student is able to go beyond sounding out letters to actually blending the sounds into a word and words into a sentence. No one is more surprised than they are when a group of sounds actually become a word that they recognize. We had also created art projects that involved 27 six year olds, Elmers glue, marshmallows, and paint; a combination that still makes me shudder. Kindergarten art projects teach one the hard way to simplify, simplify, simplify - both instructions and procedures. And never help one student for too long a time because five others are innocently concocting gluey disasters in your absence.

But, alas, they won my heart anyway. From the wispy little waif who tipped her head to one side when she smiled at me to the little boy with the toothless-little-old-man face that resembled Gabby Hayes of the old westerns. I suppose my favorites were the two little ones who seemed to always be in left field when it was time to follow instructions. Staff members were still trying to figure them out when I got there; why they barely spoke, what were their capabilities. I found out the first week that the little girl talked just fine when I approached her one-on-one and the little boy was eager to please, but just got ahead of himself and had trouble articulating. Neither had the deficits about which people speculated. They were just awestruck with the whole world of being in the school environment where people expected them to do things for themselves. I had the feeling that they were unused to the attention and the expectations of adults. How could one not fall in love with these little urchins? *sigh* They are a lot of work, but a lot of reward as well. Just don’t turn your back on them after handing them the glue.

This was the prototype of one of our art projects, but most of my students felt the snow was more likely to fall in clumps, or in horizontal rows, or in about three vertical columns.