Today was the first day I abandoned the split classroom format, and oh, my gosh, what a pleasure it was. I know I'm not keeping my people as safe as they were, but instead of taking time to fuss with technology and walk between classrooms, I had time to focus on my real job, which is teaching. My prayer is that they will all see reason and get vaccinated. My only struggle is getting them to keep their masks over their noses.
I usually run a pretty tight ship, because I think that this may be their only real art instruction in their lives, and if I give them enough fundamentals, they will be better equipped to carry on by themselves later in life. But, we just finished the first assignment, and it felt like I needed to loosen them up a bit. So, I introduced them to the idea of making a non-objective image and set them loose with some charcoal and an eraser. They struggled a bit, because they have been conditioned to think that art has to represent something. After a bit of prodding and more than a few excuses, they were able to make some interesting images. When we do things like this, I try to stay out of their way until they are at the point of needing a push. In the meantime, I usually make an image of my own. So, here are the pieces I did as examples to get them started, and how they ended up while I waited to talk to them. These took about 10-15 minutes each. I think I love my job again.
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