The freshmen boys are driving me crazy this year.
Three things have happened recently: 1. Freshman boy: 'all of your projects are boring, is this the state curriculum?'....he asked in the middle of printmaking...which involves carving and printing, should be fun and engaging but he was completely unmotivated. 2. Freshman boy: 'i hope i never see another piece of fabric again for the rest of my life'.....he exclaimed in the middle of coloring with oil pastels on a piece of fabric. (Stupidly, I exclaimed 'well you better take off your clothes then' trying to use hyperbole to emphasize how much fabric he would be seeing everyday for the rest of his life....the inappropriateness of my comment was not lost on the class, they died in hysteria).... 3. Freshman boy: 'mrs. mitchell, will you lie for me? I told a teacher that I turned something in to the wrong teacher but I can't remember who I gave it to, will you be that teacher? Will you tell them I turned it in to you?".......I told the boy to look up the word 'integrity' and then ask me again...because if I don't have integrity, then he doesn't know me very well. Ay ay ay.....
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In January, I decided to order Chinese one night and paid a few bucks extra to have it delivered from a place nearby, even though its just down the road. When I went to check on the order status, I realized that my old address was still in the system (even though we haven't lived there for a year) so I called to make sure that they could just use the new address, but the delivery had already been picked up and I had no way to contact the driver. So I jumped in the car, and high-tailed it across town (3x further away than the restaurant) to beat the delivery driver to our old house to pick up the delivery.
In February, we went to visit a friend in Tulsa for the weekend. Before leaving, we realized we had misplaced our keys in one of our bags so we were searching through everything. Somehow, I managed to leave my Apple Watch behind. My friend offered to mail it to me so was watching all week for it to show up. We realized on Friday that she had accidentally sent it to our old address. So, as soon as it had been delivered my husband went to try to pick it up. The new owner of our house was home and had been saving a pile of our mail for over a year. Christmas cards, a couple of packages, and an official letter from the university where I did my graduate program. So last spring one of my professors submitted a writing project that I did for his class to a competition on campus. In May, the university sent a letter letting me know that I won '1st place in writing excellence in outstanding writing by a graduate student' and the prize comes with $100. I contacted the university today to find out about the $100 and it turns out that they distributed it electronically in May to my checking account, so the money probably got spent already on bills or something dumb like that. My husband went into the house and was discouraged to see that she had painted everything gray, taken down some of the things that we lovingly left behind like the shelving he built and the tiffany dining room lamp shade, and replaced them with generic, boring junk. I'm at kind of a weird point in my career where I have a LOOOONG time until retirement, but I feel like I've already met all of my 'career' goals that I set for myself. I have a master's degree plus 18 additional graduate hours in painting. I have won all kinds of awards and recognitions. I had a show at Spiva last summer....and I know I don't want to get into painting enough to sell a bunch of work at art fairs....
told myself that I wanted to teach adjunct classes and I am currently teaching at Crowder in the evenings. What happens next? Here are a few things that have crossed my mind: Do I want to try to go viral with an instagram or TikTok post? Do I want to win big time grants for money for my program? Do I want to plan an amazing trip to Europe with students? Do I want to write a book? Do I want to host a summer art retreat for high school students? Do I want to develop some art teacher professional development stuff and teach for art of ed or present at conferences? Do I want to do another summer immersion program? Do I want to try to get an art residency somewhere? Do I want to join council for MAEA? Do I want to paint more community murals? These are just a few of the ideas I am kicking around for myself. I wonder if any of them will stick? Sometimes just putting them in writing or saying them out loud will manifest something into existence. Man, I love having structure in my life. I like a routine. I like living bell to bell most days. Even though I am teaching the same classes every other day, the thing I love about teaching is that no two days are ever the same. There is always something to make each day completely different from the day before. The way my schedule is, I have a different planning period each day, but I have a rigid schedule so I always know what to expect from hour to hour.
One thing I really love is getting out of the classroom for any reason. I love to shake things up and take the kids outside or schedule a field trip or leave school early for some special event. As much as I like my routine, I am always up for something different or new. Last week, I had to take artwork to Neosho for the COC and I had to leave school around 2pm. It was a sunny, gorgeous day and the weather was fine. I opened the sun roof and had a nice drive. I even stopped at Sonic and got mozzarella sticks and a strawberry/mango water as a little treat for the road. What a great day! We had a lot of snow days this year. I always feel more productive on snow days, they are like a little gift!
This year, I decided to set an art trap for myself by prepping my materials the night before so that when I woke up, it would be motivating and easy for me to go and grab the stuff and start creating. I decided to paint 4 images using a different medium, but the same reference image for each. I use watercolor, gauche, acrylic and oil. The oil is probably my favorite if the 4, but I enjoyed making the other three too. I'm not sure what I am going to do with the images yet, but it was a fun challenge and I will definitely try it again! Saturday I tried my hand at pâte à choux. I've had many cream puffs in my life, but I've never tried to make it myself. I got a new stand mixer for my birthday last year, and I have been trying all sorts of new recipes as a result. I have always wanted to make cream puffs, because I heard they are very easy, and I finally bought all the ingredients and carved out the time to make them. They were just as easy as I had heard they are. I made whipped cream and stuffed each puff with a fresh raspberry. Cream puffs don't have a ton of flavor, but they are light and airy on the tongue and oh so delicate.
I would definitely make them again! I topped mine with a grated chocolate/coconut dark chocolate almond. https://natashaskitchen.com/cream-puffs-recipe/ I'm teaching high school now, it is my 4th year at my current job. Previously, I taught middle school for 4 and elementary for 9 before that.
I also picked a night class at a community college, it's just Art Appreciation, but it's a little extra money and it's pretty easy. So now I've pretty much run the gamut as far as breadth and depth when it comes to experience teaching art. Teaching is such a huge part of my life and gives me so much purpose and fulfillment that it is hard to express in just a few sentences. It really is who I am....high school is my favorite age to work with by far, and the school that I am at is so rural, it's practically a movie set with all the clichés you would expect to find in a midwestern school. I honestly feel like I am making lifelong connections with my students. I enjoy interacting with lots of different people all day long. Teaching high school requires a certain personality type, you have to be able to take a supreme amount of criticism from teenagers who are bored by everything and inspired by nothing. It has the potential to wear you down, but honestly I have little victories that keep me going everyday. It is fast-paced and I get to be self-driven and set my own little goals for myself. There are a LOT of small details which can be burdensome, and you have to balance the details with a vision of the big picture at the same time, something I really love about education, but overwhelms some people. Being a teacher is the only thing I can imagine for myself right now. I never wake up and dread going to work. I am always excited for the new school day. I might dread certain students or classes but I absolutely love my current job and all the classes I am teaching. Sometimes I look around the room and everyone is holding a paintbrush, and they are 'suffering' through it....as artists do...its kind of a love/hate experience with yourself when you are learning a new skill....but I look around the room and I think, WOW, I get to do this everyday...I love it so much. Honestly, I could talk about teaching long into the night. But I guess this is my nutshell. I'm not sure how I found the band Still Woozy but I've been obsessed for the past couple of months.
I've been listening nonstop and hubby got me an album on vinyl. I found tickets to a show in KC in May and I'm excited to see him live. Basically the band consists of one guy. He created all of the sounds on the album. All of the instrumentals, synthesizers, voices, singing....He's a total goofball. I just spent an hour watching a bunch of music videos and they are all kind of zany. I honestly think he is going to be kinda big....so I'm excited that I found him and like he's the first sound in a long time that I have really loved. I haven't been super 'into' music the past few years, so it is nice to have some sounds that I am loving right now. I also made a playlist in December of songs that I'm really into and its been nice to have a kind of playlist for when I need to clean or do chores. For the longest time I've been into audio books, so it has been fun to re-discover music and find some new music that I really love. I didn't spell it out this year or make a proclamation. But this year I resolved to just do more things that give me pleasure. So far it is working out really well for me.
Things that give me pleasure: --cheap lemon cookies from walmart --getting into bed to read at 8 pm instead of watching tv --wearing silky long sleeved pjs --binge watching tv shows that i like --going for walks at the park near my house (even if it means canceling other obligations to take advantage of nice weather, sorry art club!) --prepping food for my lunches on the weekend so that i have less stress during the week --getting up early to play Wordle (and quordle and nerdle) --writing haikus and other witty things on my notes app --texting my friends randomly---sending them funny things or just trying to make spontaneous plans --letting go of some of the b.s. at work and trying to make things more fun I'm sure there are more things that I enjoy, but these are the things that come to mind today. I've been preparing a few salads a week for my lunches for the past couple of years. I don't eat a salad every day...and I never thought I would be described as someone who enjoys eating salad all the time, but here I am, almost 40 and its my healthy lunch option that I am proud to admit makes me not feel guilty about some of my other non-healthy eating choices. Basically, I saved a bunch of those wal-mart salad containers (and I still buy new ones occasionally when I have a busy week) and I just put my own ingredients in there. I probably consume more calories, but I try to add more fruit and fresh things like mint. Every day, I go into the closet and prepare my salad by dumping the romaine hearts into a bowl, throwing the toppings on and putting the dressing on and mixing it up. I try to do this about 10 minutes before lunch, so that I can watch the students during lunch dismissal. It makes my lunch feel a little longer if I already have this out of the way. My students have picked up on this habit and started asking me if I need to go prepare my closet salad. And another kid asked me about my big bowl choice....I explained that if I have to have lunch in a classroom, I'm at least going to eat it off of a real ceramic bowl so that it feels like I'm at a restaurant. He told me that it looked super bougie....which is a teenager way of saying it looks kinda fancy and rich. So yeah, I'll be having my bougie closet salad every day thank you very much. |
Mrs. Mitchell
This is my 'slice of life' blog. Archives
March 2020
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