My Epic Fails in Art
My Epic Fails in Art
If this podcast helps prevent just one art teacher from an epic fail, then sharing my disaster stories will have been worth it. Admitting mess-ups is humbling... Especially when you’re creating a podcast on how to be a successful art teacher; but we do grow more from our messes than from our successes. No matter how much you plan, prepare and practice, every teacher will have a set back... especially when first starting out. In my 12 years as an art teacher, there are mistakes I will never, ever repeat. Here are a few of my art lesson blunders.
Let me begin by saying that I am NOT one of those art teachers who works in a sterile environment. That’s no fun!
I want the kids to dive into the medium we are working in. I tell them often... I don’t care if you make a mess as long as you clean it up. The only way to be creative and get the most out of each project is the messy way and I am ok with that. Yes, I am constantly cleaning the tables, the floor, the chairs, the brushes, water containers, sink... you name it! But I would rather spend more time cleaning and see my students get the most out of art. I want to be their favorite class.
The reason the following stories are so frightening is because I have back to back classes. I have 45 minutes for each class and I have prepared the set-up materials ahead of time so they are ready and waiting when the next grade comes in. I give students five minutes to clean up and dismiss them, while 20 more students are outside the door dying to come in. If there is anarchy in the art room, it causes problems with the outgoing and incoming classes. If I have to take a moment to write a student up for conduct or take time for damage control it causes problems. The very worst is when I lose track of time and the bell catches us in the middle of a project. Oh, how I hate when that happens.
The Beautiful, Awful.
I love collaborative projects. My first or second year of teaching art I planned a mosaic mural of sorts by giving each student a 10” x 10” square of cardboard to draw on. My plan was to tape them all together using black duct tape to create a giant grid, each art square framed in black. I planned to showcase this piece at our annual chili cook-off which is an evening event at our school. All of my art students would participate. Students could show their parents which square they made and hopefully I would impress the Director and principle of the school who had just hired me.
My first class of the week was third grade. I had the cardboard squares, pencils, erasers and soft, chalk pastels out on the tables. I instructed the kiddos to draw in pencil first, before using the colored pastels. They could draw or write anything they wanted. It didn’t have to be about chili but they could design their chili cook-off team name or have a western theme. Anything their little hearts desired.
I thought the vivid colors of the chalk pastels would really pop on the tan color of the cardboard... especially the white. They also blend together beautifully using your fingers.
Everything started off well. I helped students come up with images for their cook-off teams, showed them how to spell chili, and how to draw a pot of chili that looked 3-D. At some point I surveyed the class and discovered that the pastel dust was EVERYWHERE. It was accumulating in piles on their artwork, on the tables, on fingers, faces, clothing, and I swear, I could see it lingering in the air. Some of my little angels noticed it was getting out of hand and began blowing it off of their artwork and onto their fellow students and smearing it on their faces like war paint. It was getting tracked all over the floor. I could not believe how much pastel dust covered EVERYTHING in the classroom.
It was a colorful, awful, disaster. You really had to be there to understand the extent of the chaos. It reminded me of the Indian festival, Holi, where colored pigment explodes in the air and
party-goers dressed in white become brightly colored and
unrecognizable.
I took up the pastels immediately and began damage control. I sent kids to the sink in the classroom and to the rest rooms outside. Later, I scrubbed colorful hand prints off door knobs, light switches, sinks and floors. I instructed students that as soon as they got home, tell their parents to use stain remover on their clothes and wash them right away. It was years before I considered using pastels again, and when I did, it was for a project that required only a touch of white.
Super-Sized Selfies
One year I thought it would be fun to take a giant roll of white paper and roll out as much as I could fit onto the floor. I had the kids take turns laying down in creative poses and tracing each other onto the paper. My second graders would arrange their arms and legs in different poses, then draw their faces, hair, sunglasses, clothes, shoes and jewelry. Their selfies were eating ice cream, lollipops, carrying a cat or dog, all kinds of fun stuff. I don’t even remember which medium we used for the project. It was probably markers but we could have used tempera paint as well. Surprisingly, the media was not the problem. My plan was to cut them all out and tape them to the walls of the school hallway. I imagined they would look super cool and the kids would love it.
Looking back, I don’t know if it was their age, their mood or maybe their stress level or something that had happened in class... I have no idea... but one by one, students became unhappy with the way their selfies looked. Their face was messed up or their hair wasn’t right or they looked ugly and wanted to start over, and one by one they started crying. Most of the class was upset and crying over how they looked in their paintings!! I never thought I would experience this kind of problem in art class, ever. Consoling and encouraging them didn’t help at all. I wrapped up the lesson early and took them outside to run around on the field before taking them back to their class room. I tossed all of the selfies and learned my lesson. I didn’t want to give up entirely on this project, though, but not without making a change. The next year, I instructed students to create a fun, silly, imaginary character... not themselves.
Plastic Cup Weaving
As many lessons start out, I saw a cool project on pinterest and decided to change it up and make it my own. My downfall was overestimating the ability of the age group I was teaching. It was also that teaching kids how to weave is difficult at any age.
The project was an adorable little basket made by weaving yarn using the bottom half of a plastic water bottle. I cut the tops off of water bottles and cut slits down the sides of the bottle, almost to the bottom. I made an odd number of cuts into the bottles. I pre-cut lengths of different colors of yarn for the kids to choose from and set out tape to secure one end of the yarn to the bottom of the inside of the bottle.
Whenever I try out a new project I always regret it when I don’t make an example to test it out first, to work out any bugs, and take note of any issues that may come up. I had done that with this project but my mistake was over-estimating their ability at their age and the materials I chose.
The water bottles I used were made of very thin plastic which made the cut sections very flimsy when weaving in and out of them. It was impossible for students to weave the yarn and maneuver the flimsy pieces of plastic that kept moving around and when they pulled the yarn tight, it would slip right off the bottle. They had such a hard time managing the project that they became frustrated and then upset. The worst part was that they wanted to finish the project to have the cute little basket to take home. I took up all of the water bottles and yarn as I apologized and promised to make it up to them with something really special. I want my students to love art and play and experiment. I hated that they were discouraged in art class.
The next year, when the same group of kids were a whole year older, I asked if they remembered the project. I passed out some pre-cut card board circles especially made for weaving baskets using colored rafia. They were more mature and had better materials, and easily managed the project, taking home beautiful, colorful baskets.
I learned not to over-estimate the ability of the age I’m teaching, use manageable, good quality materials, and that teaching kids how to weave is really hard...at any age.
On the subject of weaving...
please listen to my podcast with different strategies I’ve developed on presenting the concept of weaving to different age groups.
Painting with Little Ones
Our school’s music teacher and photography teacher, and I got together and organized an art festival showcasing our students’ art, music and photography. We took the A M and P and called the event, AMP. To decorate the event, I wanted all 111 of my art students to paint a person, a coach or a teacher on a fence board. The plan was to have the painted boards lining a long, metal fence where people entered the festival and it would look adorable. The fence boards would be different heights for different ages. Our principal brings her two dogs to school with her each day and we made two tiny boards for them as well.
The project was done outside because we were using donated latex paint and I knew it would be messy in a permanent way. Here is the fail. I made the mistake of leaning the fence boards against a wall for the kids to paint. The older ones were fine with this. They managed the paint, the brushes and paint containers like pros. It was with the 4 and 5 year olds -- the little ones -- that things went wrong. I instructed the kids to choos a color and take the cup of paint with the brush to their fence board. Instead, they took the paint brush out of the cup and carried it, dripping all the way to their board, and painted their board, with the paint running down the wood and onto their shoes. I did have enough foresight to put them into smocks so most of them did not get paint on their school uniforms. I will never forget the image I saw looking down the row of kids, each dripping different colors of latex house paint onto their shoes. And then walking through it, and tracking it onto the sidewalk and decking. I stopped them in their tracks and told them to take off their shoes. I then washed paint off of a dozen shoes in the art sink as quickly as possible. It was challenging to work quickly, because herding 4 and 5 year olds is like herding kittens and puppies. They are adorable, but they wander everywhere.
The next week I held class inside the class room where I felt like I had more control. The boards were laying on covered tables and the paint containers well within their reach. In the end the project turned out great, even though it involved a lot of work. We glued buttons and jewelry, flowers and trim to our fence board people. Also, the parents were really great about it, declaring their kids had official art shoes that they would wear on art day. A couple of the teachers still proudly display their likeness on a fence board in their class room. That makes me feel good.
Glitter.
I know better than to use glitter in any project. Glitter glue, glitter paper, glitter pens, great. But glitter, poured or shaken is banned from my room. You can’t spell glitter without litter and you’ll be cleaning it forever.
I did break down after my older, more mature eighth graders, begged for glitter. Even they could not handle it responsibly and I regretted it, keeping them after the bell to clean the sparkly disaster.
Check out a blog called Art Teachers Hate Glitter. It is a humor blog and it is funny. It’s on Facebook as well. I guarantee it will make you laugh out loud.
Closing note: I never have and never will do finger painting. I did it as a kid and loved it and many people assume we finger paint in art but believe me when I say... it will never happen. I know better.