It's the end of the semester and this is my last newsletter for 1st semester kids. I will miss all of my first semester students and will look forward to seeing you in the hallway and next year. I wish my 8th graders a successful second semester and an amazing time at high school. Please stop by and visit frequently.
Here is a quick list of resources, most of these are current artists who are on Instagram. The names listed here are artists who meet the needs of the students in my class, either culturally or physically. Most of these artists are making a stand for social justice in one way or another. This is not a complete list, actually it is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Some artists I have recently discovered and can’t wait to show them to my students. You will also notice that I have avoided the European artists. I find most art teachers had these drilled into them in art school. I am still looking for Middle Eastern and Indian Artists to add to my repertoire. If you have any suggestions for these or other resources to add please feel free to comment below.
Japanese Artists - Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami and Hokusai
Unfortunately, despite everything we try to do, paint often ends up on the artist’s clothing. In this post, I’ve compiled a few cleaning recipes for you to use at home in the off chance that you need to remove paint from your artist’s clothing.
It does happen that some students are gifted at leaving the class covered in paint. I highly recommend that you send it a t-shirt, apron, or some type of coverage for your artist to wear during art class. We have bins in the art room where your student can keep their art smock for painting days. I also suggest encouraging your artist to leave their expensive items in their lockers until after art class. These recipes are best for removing tempera, watercolor and sometimes acrylic paint from clothing. After treating with a recipe make sure to run your clothing item through a general wash. Before placing in your clothing item in the dryer, always double check that the stain is actually gone. The heat of the dryer will set the stain and then you will never get it out. Option 1: Windex Sometimes, if we are quick enough we can use Windex directly on the stain to remove the paint. This works best with acrylic paints as they turn in a plastic and bond with the fibers when they dry. The Windex seems to break down that bond, which helps the paint come out of the fabric. Sometimes this method works with tempera and watercolor paints. Option 2: Vinegar and Oxyclean To use the vinegar and Oxyclean option you want to first scratch off any top layer of dried paint with your fingernail. This works best and damages the fabric less if you pull it tight before scratching. Then using a clean (white) rag and white vinegar and blot the stains. As you are blotting the paint should transfer to your rag. Switch to a clean portion of the rag periodically to make sure you are not spreading the stain. If the stain persists, try dipping your rag in the Oxyclean and repeating the blotting technique with the Oxyclean. Then wash as normal. Option 3: Heavy Duty Liquid Laundry Soap This technique works best for tempera or watercolor paint. I like my general laundry soap, but have not had issues with basic dish soap, or in a pinch hand soap. Pour some soap onto the stain, enough that you can get a good lather, then scrub with your fingernail until the color has become activated and starts to come out. Rinse and repeat until the stain is totally out. Often with this method you may get a little haze left over that you may not notice until after your wash. Make sure to double check before it goes to the dryer and then repeat if necessary. Option 4: Laundry Soap with Bleach If I have a garment that can handle bleach, and option 3 is not removing most of the stain, I will soak the fabric in a diluted solution of all fabric powered bleach and check until the stain is out. If the stain still persists then try a diluted solution of liquid bleach. I personally have had good luck with Option 3, but I have had students who have not had the greatest success. I do hope these recipes help and that you are successful in reclaiming your artist’s clothing. Artfully yours, Kelly Tillman
Not only did I create a form but I also linked the Form spreadsheet using Autocrat and it now auto-fills a document for me. Basically, Autocrat creates my lesson plan. Which is spectacular because in my district we have to provide a lesson plan and a reflection to our administrator for our observations.With this one form, I have actually completed my requirement for planning and reflection. 3. Student Reflections
Finally, I recreated my student reflection and turn that into a form / auto-filled handout. Right now, the lack of printers in my school makes it hard for us to print out the final reflection. I love the idea but getting the reflections too my student's hands seems more difficult. While Autocrat will send me these forms, having to print all 350 is tedious and just silly. I want the students to have them and look at them. I think that in the future, when I move more into Google Classroom I will link this and have the students fill it out that way. Did you know that you can do all kinds of crazy things using Google Forms?! I mean, awesome things, like teacher appreciation, parent contact, and yes the dreaded discipline? YOU CAN! I'd like to think I knew all these things but honestly it's one of those things that I'm not sure if I knew it or if I just didn't have the creativity to think up such awesome ideas. On November 3rd I had honor of being asked to present at the Mercy High School Tech Talk #MHTT17. While my presentation was great, I was more blown away by the other presentations. While it was a small conference it was effective and impressive. Just what I needed for those just before Thanksgiving Blues. You know those over worked blues, where you force yourself to think about a thing to be thankful for everyday of the month of November to just forget how overworked and out of control your school life is. Yeah, this was perfect. Their keynote speaker, Brent Coley, was brilliant. His stories propelled you into a space of laughter and sometimes tears (or that almost tears moment). To sit and remember in a funny yet thought provoking way that we have the influence to be eduawesome is just what I needed. I needed to be reminded I have the power to change a student's perspective but simultaneously I'm not the only teacher who is terrified about becoming THAT teacher. You know the one who is set in their ways. The one who will criticize every student and teacher, if their behavior doesn't fit the 1952 protocol for education. Well, what does this have to do with teaching Google Forms? It was during this conference and in the session Taking Google Forms to the Next Level with Brent Coley that I learned how awesome it is to use Google Forms. I was so excited I had to share it with someone and since most of my building is headed out on the Washington DC trip, I returned to my blog. I highly suggest watching the tutorials on how to create these amazing Google Forms at BrentColey.com The thing that I have loved about Google Forms, since the beginning of Google Forms; is it will take the data from a survey and populate it into a Google spreadsheet. Let me repeat, it will take the data from a survey and populate it into a Google spreadsheet - this spread sheet then can be sorted for deeper investigation and can also be shared with others. I used to sort everything using the pull down tabs in Google Forms but I found out that a better ways is to use the google chrome add on EZ Query, you can easily and quickly sort your spreadsheet from its original format into other pages based on specific criteria. Here you can see that I have created other pages at the bottom of my Spreadsheet labeled 8th grade, 7th grade and 6th grade. All I had to do was use the EZ Query add on, then select what I want to include in my query and how I wanted it sorted. POOF! After a minute or two, depending on my connection speed, it populated the new sheet and now I can easily find my students via grade and name. Again I suggest watching the tutorial. It is much easier to watch than to explain via text. What blew my mind was the teacher feedback and teacher appreciation forms Brent Coley used in his presentation. Both of these forms provided positive, immediate feedback to teachers, the teacher feedback form was for informal walk through, a non-evaluative way for Coley to acknowledge the good work that he was seeing in his teachers classroom, he stated "if I need to leave non-positive feedback about a walk through, I'm not sending that through an email." The teacher appreciation form was created to send positive vibes to the entire staff at Coley's elementary from the students and parents and probably some teachers throughout his school. Both forms then used autocrat to send an automatic receipt. In the teacher feedback example the receipt was sent to the teacher being observed and to Coley himself. He stated that a copy of the receipt was then saved in a google file as well. For the teacher appreciation a copy was sent to the sender and to the teacher. Coley also stated other places that he would use autocrat, Student Discipline, here the feedback would be sent to teacher, the administrator, parent if needed, and then the counselor. All of these can be easily plugged into the program beforehand and will auto generate based on the questions asked in the survey. I am totally stealing these from him and creating my own versions for my school. Here's a mock up example I have created for walk through observations. These are just a few examples of the amazing places that forms could be used. At my school we have used forms for Student of the Month but it fell flat because finding the google doc, copying the information was not that exciting or easy to do. However, with the addition of autocrat we could easily create a "receipt" or award/certificate for the students that states exactly what was announced about their student of the month nomination. Plus it will auto-send the information right to my counselors and anyone who wants it. Here is one that I made for my counselors for the student of the month. Good luck creating your own awesome forms and check out Brent Coley's website for some other amazing form ideas!
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Kelly TillmanI am a middle school art teacher in Walled Lake, MI. I received a BFA in studio art with a focus on Photography from Michigan State University. A certification in Art Education from Eastern Michigan University, and Masters Special Education from the University of Michigan. I believe that Art is an essential element in every persons life. It is through creative thinking that society has been able to create unique world changing thoughts, events and products. In this day and age art is an important educational aspect for each of our students. Archives
August 2018
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