The room code of an art teacher

I have a room code.  I've had a room code since I started my final student teaching internship and I've kept it everywhere I've gone.  Even during the two times when I shared my room, I kept to my code, and let those around me know about it. The code: To never horde supplies in amounts where my room is nothing but piles.

During my my last internship, I was placed at a high school for one semester and the teacher had two large connected classrooms giving him about 2,000 square feet easy.  It was difficult to adjust to the room, because it was poorly laid out.  There were unorganized supplies in random closets, brand new supplies mixed with old, rarely if ever used supplies, there were speed bumps that interrupted traffic flow, and the storage of student work was often difficult.  I would often go in for several hours on the weekend to finish grading and to just sit and imagine how I would change the room to make it more efficient and conducive to making art.  This process of focusing on foot traffic, grouping supplies, and re-imagining storage gave me the skills I needed to be a successful art teacher.  I believe that the reason I've been successful has been because I have worked hard to lay a solid foundation with my room space.  Having a room space that is well-grounded has helped me eliminate problems with transitions, material distribution, clean up, and student interaction.  My room space is the first step I take when I come up with routines such as clean up or lining up too.  Your room dictates the type of environment and energy your students will be making art in as well as how your routines will flow.

Panoramic view of my new room mostly setup.

Now, I am a firm believer in leaving a place in better shape than when you arrived.  As a great student teacher, I reorganized my host teacher's kiln room, throwing center, and organized glazes and slips by firing cones.  I haven't been back to my host teacher's room since I left after graduation so I'm not sure if what I did was maintained, but I like to think it was.  If anything, the experience in working with a difficult space helped give me develop the skills I so highly value and incorporate in my teaching life regularly.

Sharing a room can also add to the difficulty of maximizing the space.  The teacher or teachers you're sharing a room with all have a different teaching styles, different needs, and different supplies.  My first teaching job was a .6 position just outside Detroit and I shared my room with the Mandarin teacher.  She was a very nice woman, but the urban teaching environment was very difficult for her to manage and there were a lot of cultural misunderstandings too.  Because she taught two classes in the morning, I taught three classes in the afternoon all of which were back to back, allowing us 5 minutes to change the room from a Mandarin classroom to an art room, we had a lot of problems.  The second year I was teaching at this school I was given a room to myself, which allowed me to make it an art room and focus on the space I needed for efficient flow and creating a good work environment. My teaching subsequently improved because I wasn't fighting my layout.

My second teaching location was in a K-4 elementary art room just outside of Grand Rapids.  At this
school I was a .3 art teacher and shared the room with two other art teachers.  It was nice to have an actual art room this time, but there were some difficulties in managing the space.  After my day and a half of teaching was complete for the week, I had to tear down my expectations, artwork examples, and make sure my students had left supplies in the order they were found.  It was a lot of extra work to put up and tear down your room in a matter of 48 hours.  I really streamlined what I needed the students to see. One of the teachers I worked with was very organized and particular about how clean the room was and the other was much more messy and cumbersome with supplies.  There were days I came to work only to find a mess left in the sink or all over the counter with the drying rack full which only added to my morning workload of preparation.  Needless to say I survived, even when the construction paper package was partially opened (a huge pet peeve of mine), I survived and established my own routines with what I was given with my room layout.  Teachers are great at making do with what they have.

Now I'm still in the same district but I moved buildings.  I'm now a .7 art teacher in another K-4 elementary school and have my entire classroom to myself.  It's a gorgeous room, with some large, gallery style track lighting on one wall, a large kiln room with ample cabinet storage, a paper storage room, and lots of cabinets.  I do wish there was more flat storage built in but overall that is just a small problem that can eventually be fixed.

Random things found in the storage room.

If you have ever had to move to a new building or even a new classroom within your building, its a lot of work.  Its even more work when you have one week to do it and the room you're inheriting is from your messy and cumbersome peer who spent 30 years in that room.  I should have taken more pictures of the room before I started making changes and cleaning, but there was that gut reaction of panic to start right away and not miss a moment as school was starting seven days from when I got the keys to my room. But to paint the picture of how much stuff was in this room, the retired art teacher took between one and three pickup truck loads of stuff to her house daily the whole month of June,  two to four loads of trash to the dumpster each day, and even had to rent a 10' x 20' storage unit for the stuff that didn't fit in her house. I even helped one day in June and took a few books of her hands and there was still so much stuff.

I'm still organizing and labeling things.  Sometimes I catch myself grouping like items in one cabinet only to finish and then decide they need to be moved over one cabinet more.  My room and I are still trying to figure one another out.  My computer and teacher zone are a constant mess because of the way the technology requires my desk and I am still mulling over my student table arrangement decision.  The more time I spend in my room, the more I am able to pinpoint what I need to fix.  Which, when you've been in your classroom for 10 hours and every counter space is filled with paper and miscellaneous supplies, that overwhelming feeling creeps up on you and you can't focus beyond the need to get the basics taken care of.

The supply closets & Ben sorting paper.

For me, the basics were to organize my dry goods (what I call my paper storage and dry art materials like crayons and colored pencils), go through my paint and organize it, establish a free choice/time area, create easy artwork storage, and an area to turn in artwork.  I'll admit, there were times I came home in those seven days and cried.  I cried because of the amount of cleaning and organizing I had to do and I cried because I was missing my old building with my teaching peers.  My mom and step-dad came up one day and helped me setup my tables, bulletin boards, posters, and even organized supplies. I had a fellow art teacher friend from college stop by and take a few things off my hands.  It was amazing some of the things we found in there.  As you can see by some of the pictures, it was an interesting endeavor. Ben spent several nights with me sorting paper and grouping like items.  He wasn't keen on doing such tedious tasks as sorting paper by color, shape, and size, but he did it for me anyway.  Ben thinks I'm a bit neurotic about those things and that they really don't matter, but for me I need to have it done to think clearly. It was good quality time together talking and listening to jazz as we sipped smoothies.

Overall, I've made it through twelve weeks of classes with everything rolling pretty smoothly.  My room still has some areas that ail me but I keep looking for solutions.  What I'm happy to announce is that I'm still keeping to my code even in my new, larger room, with vintage goodies.  Layout is important and something I'm always questioning and reflecting on.  I hope you enjoy some of my before and after photos of my room.

Happy dabbling.

A New Year Means A Clean Start

Happy New  Year!  I can't believe it is 2015 already.  It's a clique to say but I can't help but feel it's true; time flies, especially is you're having fun!  Reflection is a big part of my artistic and educational pedagogy.  I spend much of my time reflecting in my daily tasks.  When a task takes a lot of repetition like cleaning and cutting vegetables, I feel my mind go to what I can best describe as a meditative state, much like when I throw pots.  It's in this state that I do my best think: about life, my career, my artwork, and the world around me. 

I'm still reflecting on 2014, a lot of good things happened in the beginning of the year but it didn't end as positively as I had imagined.  The holidays were strewn with several deaths and illnesses of close friends and family and the stress of being a part-time art teacher and artist started to weigh heavily on me.  Stress tends to make me cleaning and organizing, as if the physical ability to clean and organize chaos helps me clean and organize my emotions, thoughts, and demands.  The other nice part of cleaning and organizing is the accomplished feeling of starting fresh.  I don't think there is ever quite as good of a sleep as going to bed the first night of making the bed in clean linens. A new semester or school year is always fresh with the feeling of anything is possible.  

Keeping my house and my classroom clean and organized are a way I help keep my stress levels low.  I have been accused of being a "clean art teacher"; I'm not sure if that is good or bad but it seems to hold true when I reflect on my daily teachings.  One thing I let get out of hand is glue bottles.  

It seems a majority of the art teachers that I have run into lately are obsessed with glue sponges.  They have their plastic lidded containers with a sponge filled with glue inside.  This, I do say, is a really cool idea and I love it for certain projects, but I just can't seem to drop the use of glue bottles completely. I think learning how to use a glue bottle appropriately is an important skill even if it seems a bit passé. Through the few years of teaching experience I have had, I have developed a stream line way to clean and fill the glue bottles so it doesn't eat up a bunch of my time.  I even learned a new trick from one of my fellow second grade teachers while cleaning this semester's glue bottles.  

Glue Bottle Cleaning Procedure

1. Get a microwaveable safe bowl.   
2. Line up your glue bottles and remove all the caps.  Place each cap in the open position in the microwaveable safe bowl.  
3. Wipe down each uncapped glue bottle to remove buildup, especially near that top.
4. After all the caps are open and removed, fill the bowl with water.  
5. Microwave the bowl filled with glue caps from 3-5 minutes.  I sometimes repeat this process several times, giving the caps a good swirl with a brush handle to agitate the glue clumps.
6. Once the water in the bowl has cooled enough to handle, use a paper clip to remove any glue that did not dissolve in the hot water from the inside of the glue cap.
7. Run water from a faucet in the glue cap to ensure it is clear.
8. Fill all glue bottles going down the line.
9. Cap each glue bottle and store in your usual location.

This whole process takes me alone about an hour.  If I don't have time to do it by myself, which let's face it, many of us teacher's don't, I'll have students come and help me.  They love fishing glue clumps out the caps.  I always fill the glue bottles myself because I don't want students accidentally spilling a gallon of glue all over my floor.  Having students help gives me the ability to multi-task and get a lot accomplished.  

To some people this may seem like a headache and not worth the time, but I believe the care I and the students exhibit to the glue bottles will make them last longer.  Plus, I hate having students come me during projects with glue bottles that need emergency de-gluing.  I would much rather make this part of my winter and summer cleaning so that my lessons run smoothly. 

The one trick that my second grade teacher shared was using Vaseline.  By putting a dab of Vaseline inside the the tapered part of the glue cap the cap doesn't clog.  Apparently the lubrication keeps the glue from sticking to the interior walls of the glue cap.  While talking about this in the lounge, another teacher said that she had read that if you soak the entire glue cap in vegetable oil it prevents the caps from clogging as well. After cleaning the glue caps before winter break I tried the Vaseline trick.  We've only been back in session for a few days now but I hope it works and will soon be part of my glue bottle cleaning ritual. 

Happy dabbling.