Everybody Makes Art!

  Whether you are just getting ready to become an art educator or you have been doing this a while you'll know that there are some things that just work well and others are trial and error. This is true with classroom management. In my last post I detailed the importance of good art room management and shared some of the things that have occurred when I didn't have good management. Like me, it may take you a while to figure out what works best. It's also very likely that each year you will need to adjust accordingly, depending upon your student population.  In particular, one area of art room management that I have continued to adjust is art room rules. Above is the result of classroom rules that I used to have, back when I made new classroom rules every year... Yup, that's right when I first started teaching I made new classroom rules every year! This was because my students helped me brainstorm different ideas for what they thought would be good rules. The concept and...

  Art room management for all and for all success! So often it has been said in my teaching experience and my own education that the best teaching practices are truly the best accommodations and modifications you can make for your students. After teaching for almost 10 years (and especially in this pandemic), I can finally say this is completely and utterly true. The more I button down on routines, expectations and consequences the better off ALL of my students are. While, it may feel as though students have too much structure during the day, if you let them have free reign in your art room, not only will you not be accessible, but you won't get quality work. Children crave routines, structure and limitations... however I'm not talking about limitations to the art they create or the ideas they produce.  I'm talking about the management of clean up from how students should put their materials away, to how they should sharpen a pencil. Everything that your students do ...

  A Manifesto... My students enjoying some tempera painting and Kandinsky Circles. Hi! My names is Mrs. Chambers and I teach elementary art in New Hampshire.  This has been the wildest teaching year of my life! The coronavirus pandemic has completely changed how I look at art class and well life in general.  Last year before the pandemic set in, I had started this blog, but never published the posts I was working on. So, this year when I was gifted some time in my art teacher schedule, I sat down and said that I needed to get this idea out there for teachers to use.  Everyone should make art... art is significant to everyone's being... These and many more are the reasons it is important that everyone makes in your art room. Art is one of the few ways in which we can communicate as humans across various boundaries of diversity. Art transcends gender, race, culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, language, and ability.   The Art Room is changing and as w...