Blogging From Wherever I Stand

I know, I've been sporadic again.  This blog was begun to track my progress and help hold me accountable to record my work somewhere!  As I've been learning to teach school, I have let it lapse a bit, but not because I wasn't learning and growing- rather because I figured my work at school wouldn't be interesting.  I had forgotten the purpose of this blog.  Again.  However, the desire to process my life through words is pushing on me.  That means sometimes I'll be writing about school.  I don't apologize for it, but felt a bit of an explanation was due.  Teaching about art is making art, too.  Just in a different way.

There are dozens of self-portraits hanging in the hall outside my classroom.  Every day I think I come up with a new favorite.  This is today's.  When nobody is in the hall I just stand in front of them and laugh with joy. 

You see, I have already come to love my students and feel how much they need creative expression in their lives.  Matter of factly, now and then, one will say something like, "My dad is in prison, Miss."  Or, "Will you keep this drawing here, Miss?  I don't have parents at my house."  No call for pity, just a fact offered up to me.  They bring me drawings, they line up for hugs after class and they tell me they love me.  How could this not take over my heart?  At night I dream about what we are making and I plan projects for them as I drive to and from school.  I ponder on how to help the student whose father committed suicide last week and the ones who are approaching teenager years and trying to settle the conflict between looking macho and making nice artwork.  The two are mutually exclusive in some of their worlds.  

My middle schoolers are just winding up a self-portrait project of their own- we transferred their faces onto art paper and each line has to be covered with words about themselves.  

So, sometimes this will be about my students and what I'm learning.  Sometimes it will be about my art- hopefully more and more as I begin to adjust to this intense experience.  I hope you'll come around and grow along with me.  I like having you here.

Thanks for stopping by! Alice