Lesson Plans and Progress

August is almost gone.  That means a few more days of doing as I please, and enjoying quiet days with my two dogs who rest up all day in anticipation of when my husband walks through the door after work. Then they come alive!  He just can't understand why they are so quiet all day long with me.  I have trained them well!

My quiet "dog days" will soon become filled with the chatter of energetic teenage girls ready to collect and store whatever nuggets of artistic wisdom I can pass along to them.  So in preparation for  that first day of school, I have begun planning my curriculum.   I have added and subtracted projects with courses I have already taught, and created the curriculum for 2 new courses.

I've been teaching art for many years.  With the introduction of technology, things have definitely gotten easier for teachers, especially in the area of finding ideas for lesson plans.  When I began teaching, I had to think about what projects I would come up with, wonder if they would work, how they would look and if they would be fun for the students.  I would visit the library, modify projects I had done in college and just experiment.   Enter technology!  Have an idea? Just type it in on your computer, and you will get a huge assortment of projects, complete with the lesson plans and student examples. You can even read comments from those who may have tried the ideas already.  But, even though I myself have relied on the internet for ideas, I still love some of my tried and true projects that I have updated over the years.

I remember when I first started teaching, I began my drawing classes off with the element of line.  I had the students go up to the blackboard, which in itself is sort of an archaic teacher's aid, and draw a word using lines that they felt best represented the word.  I would give them the words, of course, to steer them in a more creative direction.  That project led to learning block lettering and then using the block letters in a one word poster.  In recent years, I have updated that poster project to be a tribute to Peter Max, but containing their name and things that pertain to them in and amongst the pop art flowers and bright colors  Funny, but now I have reinvented my love of lettering in teaching graphic art and design.  Years ago, I felt it was a good thing for the students to learn lettering because they would need it when they made all those posters for their classes.  Now they convey that same poster information digitally. so the need to know how to create hand drawn letters for that purpose seems unnecessary. 


Peter Max inspired poster/portfolio cover

I will be teaching a mixed media course this year in addition to my graphic courses, and although I love teaching art via the computer, I miss the days of teaching drawing and painting.  So when I had the opportunity to teach a mixed media class this year, I was very excited.  I sat down to create my curriculum, the first thing I did was search ideas online.  Then I went to all the lesson plans I had seen and saved on Pinterest, opened a notebook and made some thumbnails and notes.  I started sequencing the projects and adjusting techniques and materials to suit my needs.

I think it is vital that I test out any projects ahead of time to discover the potential pitfalls and difficulties the students may encounter.  I have seen my roster and I have taught or have seen the previous year's work of most of the students in the class, so I know what they are capable of.

When I thought about all the projects that I had selected for this class, I realized that there really wasn't a lot of me in the course, just some projects that used my favorite materials and techniques that I had found on the internet.

So early one morning, as I lay awake at 3 AM, I started thinking about some of the projects I had done using various materials in courses that I have dropped from the curriculum or absorbed into other courses.  I taught a decorative arts class, a design class, and an art history class at one time or another and had some successful projects in some of those courses that I can resurrect and use.  I felt comfortable knowing the success and skill factor of some of those projects, and I thought that they would lend the "me factor" that I had been searching for to the course.



Student example of an altered book with a children's book theme from a past drawing class

 I will insert an altered book project.  I had done this project with my drawing classes several years ago, and although it was time consuming and a little messy, the students enjoyed doing it.  I will also add a copper foil embossing project which I had the students attach to a piece of black mat board and extend the design using colored pencils.  I remembered that one after I saw something similar online.  I will also do a polymer clay project which I had done with my design class using an tin container, creating a trinket box.  With that project, I had done a picture transfer using rubbing alcohol.  I will do this again with a few adjustments.  I am a big fan of line and texture, black and white.  I find myself gravitating to this type of drawing activity, however, I know I have to shake things up a bit and do more collage and 3D work.  I am doing a combination yarn painting and fiber fusion project, batik, and printing on fabric.



Polymer clay over a tin box with a copy transferred to the clay using rubbing alcohol

I will do a stencil project, and a 3D cardboard sculpture of fantasy sunglasses (larger than actual sunglasses of course) with an image painted in the lenses.

One of  my favorite finds was a combination collage and ink drawing.  Here is a sample version I did on a notebook page.  It was so much fun to do and I know the girls will love doing it.

My "Line Lady" example on notebook paper


Teaching is all about growing, learning, and adapting.  I have done a lot of that over the years in the classroom, but I think it has kept me creative, and made me continually strive to be a better teacher.  For today, though, I will sit on the couch with  my two snoring dogs and my lesson plans and enjoy my last days of solitude.