Working with Visiting Artist!

#NAEA2018 is well on its way. I would like to invite you to join me at a presentation at 1:30 PM. These presentations are great because they are casual and you get to hear from several Art Teachers in a Carousel Presentation.  This post is the support links and images for my portion of the presentation.

Thursday

1:30PM-2:20PM

Center/Meeting Room 619 & 620/Level 6

Elementary Carousel of Learning: Working with Visiting Artists in the Classroom! 

I love introducing my students to Careers in Art. This idea came several years ago when I ran into a roadblock of bringing a Culinary Artist into my classroom to talk about her trade.  See, when we were in school, she was working. It was difficult to connect. I was able to send out a counselor from our building to interview and record on location. This was an amazing way to bring an Artist into the Classroom. Also, I was able to share her message to all the students in every class with her only dedicating about 20 minutes of her time to us.

Our school was celebrating it's 10 year birthday and I wanted to go big with this theme. I did the 2D and 3D artworks of treats, cakes, and delectable themes. But the BIG idea I had was to allow each of my students to become Culinary Artist themselves.  As a PBIS reward for our school, all students were able to come into my classroom and create real, edible cupcake filled with sprinkles and design.  As we ate our Artwork, I was able to play the video we had taken of our local Culinary Artist. This was a mom of one of our students so it was extra special to the viewers. Even though the Artist was not able to visit us, we were able to visit her virtually. Please visit my previous post about this experience. 

After having that great experience of bringing a LOCAL Artist into our school virtually, I was hooked... I wanted to bring others into my classroom but I wasn't sure how to get around that time restriction of the working day. Well, who better to reach out to than non-working people. I contacted a local organization called RSVP, they have retired adults looking for volunteer opportunities. 

Originally I asked them to come in a sit for us to have a subject to draw.  There were no takers for the Midwest retired community for this. So I changed this idea. I asked them to bring in items that they can talk about and we could draw for observational drawing. This was a hit. The variety that was brought it was tremendous!  The experiences I witnessed were one of a kind. Read more about what I ended up calling The Connect Effect here. 

Another way that I brought in the local and living was not so much as Artist but as subjects. I did something called the Pet Project. I asked parents to bring in 'table top pets' and allow us to draw them for the day. This was less about bringing in the Artist to my classroom and more about bringing in the art opportunities. It was also a way to create a connection between the Art Studio and the families I work with. 

I truly believe it takes a village to raise a child and I continue to invite my village into the Art Studio. I recently finished up a sewing project that I invited 'Community Experts' to help out with.  This post tells so much more, but what happened was these volunteers came in with the instruction to be a cheerleader and keep the calm. This is all my students needed to be successful. They did not need instruction, but more the encouragement from an adult... They needed my class numbers to be smaller, but when I received a 'no' for that... I made the classes teacher number go up.  Bringing these volunteers was priceless and again, a great experience for all. 

And finally... one of the best ways to bring visiting Artist into my classroom is through Artist Trading Cards. By having students trade with other students all over the world, they each have a little work of Art to be inspired by and learn from. They learn that art is universal and an Artist can be any age. There is so much to read about on this blog when it comes to Artist Trading Cards, please click here.