Elementary . .

(The picture is one created by a 5 year old who currently takes private lessons from me.)

 Teaching elementary art came from nowhere.   

I was happily teaching High School Art in a town several miles from my home.  Each day, I’d load up my best intention, whatever supplies I’d procured, my heart, my brain and my vast creative energy and drive it down the highway singing, praying, planning.  Sometime between 5 and 9PM, after meetings, ball games, projects and preparation for the next day, I’d drag my worn out body, mind and spirit humorlessly into the car and take myself home until the next morning.  On weekends, I graded papers and wrote or updated the next week’s or month’s lesson plans. 

My husband was quietly raising our daughter when it all lost sensibility.  A car wreck, physical therapy, disagreement with my principal, and, oh yeah, my teen-age daughter’s raising inspired my resignation.  There was an opening in my own city for an art teacher.  After the resigning, cleaning out, coming home thing was over, I got a sorry, but no thanks letter.  No problem, several High Schools were hiring.  But they  weren’t hiring me. 

Then 2 weeks before school started, I was called in for an interview. It was for an Elementary Art position.  I was about to become an itinerant teacher.  I had 3 schools, 43 classes in all, teaching Kindergarten through sixth grade.  I felt like a traveling salesman.  Not only that, but I had no clue about elementary children.

I’d had children who went through the elementary age thing – 5 of them.  I was educated and certified to teach Kindergarten through grade 12.  But somehow when placed in a room with 20 to 25 elementary children for 30 minute intervals all day 5 days a week, I knew I was clueless.  We’re talking art teacher here.  Paint, glue, scissors, markers, clay and pencils – oh yes, the pencils.

Quickly, I learned the teacher dodge.  When a student as tall as my pelvic bone came running excitedly toward me, arms stretched out, screaming my name, I learned just as they reached me to shift quickly to the side so the darling hit my hip with her brick like skull.  I learned that when I taught a first grader to use sissors, he would probably cut up something valuable like his new sweater.  I learned that when a kindergartener says “I gotta go,” there'll be a puddle if it doesn’t fit my timeframe.  I learned not to give full glue bottles to a group of 11 year olds.  I learned not to leave the unfinished Christmas card entries with the classroom teacher for completion beacause she will come up with copious amounts of glitter.  I learned that Puerto Ricans don’t distinguish between “Crap!” and uumm, -crap.  I learned to take nothing for granted.

Those two years in elementary art make up a funny, fuzzy time in my career.  Each of the afore mentioned events has its own silly long winded story.  My personal art consisted of examples created for my young students: simplified drawings, paintings and sculptures in bold childlike color schemes.  Looking back, I wonder who was doing the teaching and who was learning?  Who was guiding and who was developing?