How has my teaching changed?

In the few short years that I have been teaching, I feel that my teaching has greatly changed. When I was doing my student teaching, I wanted to follow all the principles I had learned at Ohio University. If I came upon a problem in a lesson, I had another teacher there to tell me what I should or to come to the rescue and fix the problem. The one thing I did not have to worry about then was discipline. My cooperating teacher never allowed me to fully take charge of her classroom, so I did not have to worry about not knowing what to do. As a substitute teacher, I usually had lessons planned for me and could fill in extra time with a worksheet or a game. When it came to disciplining students, I could use the threat of leaving a note for the regular teacher or issuing a detention.

It was a big shock when I began my job as an elementary art teacher. It was terrifying to be thrown into the classroom with only a weekly schedule, a staff handbook and a class list. I was expected to know exactly what to do and when to do it. I felt completely unprepared and the only advice my mentor had to offer was, “they’ve never had an art teacher, so they won’t know if you screw things up.” I knew I was really on my own.

That first year was a real eye-opener. I learned just how flexible art teachers needed to be. Lessons never took the time that I thought they would. My students would rush through projects which I thought would take them days and spent days on projects I thought would only take one class period. My discipline consisted of taking away recess and writing referrals to the office. Other teachers would not send their students to art class as a punishment and let me know that I had no say in this matter. I often wondered if I had chosen the right career path and if I was hindering my students more than I was helping them.

My reviews from the principal came back good despite my concerns, and I was asked to resign for a second year. I decided to give it another try. My second year was completely different. I decided first to allow my students to work at their own pace. Although this took more planning time, it eased the transition from lesson to lesson. Students had less discipline problems because they were kept busy. When discipline problems arose, I decided to handle things more on my own. If I took away a student’s recess, the student had to serve the time with me rather than their classroom teacher. Students did not like serving the recess time with me because I had them write about what rule they had broken and what they should have done differently or art definitions for repeat offenders. This did not work with all students. For those who had lost recesses in their other classes, I had the students put away their artwork, move to an area away from their classmates, and write during class. This decreased problems greatly because the students truly wanted to finish their artwork and hated having to stop to write about what they had done.

Discussing the value of art education with my coworkers and explaining that art class was not a play period to take away as punishment for students did not work. My coworkers basically told me that they would keep their students from art class as needed and there was nothing I could do about it. This just proved how little people value art education. I could not justify giving grades to students whom were never in my class. Since talking to their classroom teachers had not done any good, I presented my dilemma to the principal. He agreed that the students needed to be in my class and the other “specials.” The principal talked to the other teachers in our building and thankfully convinced them that the students needed to be taken to all of their classes.

My second year of teaching was completely opposite of my first. I still wonder from time to time if my students are actually learning anything and my lessons do not always go as planned. But I know when my students proudly present their work to me and when my coworkers comment on how excited their students are to come to art class, I have chosen the right career path. My teaching will always be changing and I welcome the changes that lie in the years ahead.