Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Art Class

In our elementary schools we do not have art teachers.  Classroom teachers volunteer to head up the art program and they beg for parental volunteers to help them.  I started out helping in class as an aide...  setting out supplies for each student and helping answering their questions as they made their own masterpiece.  

I'm not sure how I ended up doing it, but somehow I ended up volunteering to be the teacher!   Yikes!!!  And there I was.... last week, standing in front of 60 fourth graders teaching about one of Art Masters... Henri de Toulouse Lautrec.... the short guy who painted posters.   Yeah... that's about the limit of my art knowledge.  

Standing in front of a class with 60 pairs of eyes staring at me was un-nerving to say the least. Thank goodness for slide presentations with scripts to follow.  Thank goodness no one asked me any questions!  I'm not good at faking my way through things I know nothing about.

There were step-by-step directions on how to make your own copy of the Master.  The kids seemed to enjoy it and I and was able to lead them through the process... and everyone left with their own masterpiece... including me.



I repeated the process again this week with the second grade class and will do it again with the first graders next week.  It was definitely easier the second time around... and will probably be easier next week too.

It was an experience.  It was fun.   My grandson LOVED seeing me.   But I think I am retiring from teaching!  I'll go back to being an aide in the art class.