Sunday, October 11, 2009

Worst Idea Ever


These are the most successful prints from two very chaotic class periods. I planned a 1st grade lesson where the students were to apply paint to leaves and create a monoprint. I demonstrated and talked about being careful with paint and care of brushes and thought everything would be fine. The only bad part of my first class was a little boy, who doesn't try to get in trouble but just doesn't think about things, started shaking his paintbrush in the air which sent watered down paint everywhere. In the second class within about 5 minutes the following things happened: Boy 1 spills very dirty water cup on table which colors girl 1's paper, girl gets mad at boy 1. Girl 1 was sent to the bathroom to try to clean up (thankfully was wearing dark colored jeans so no stain showed) while I used paper towels to mop up the mess. While I was cleaning that mess, boy 2 across the room also knocks over water cup. As I was trying to move and clean up mess number 2, girl 1 came back in, tried to sit down on chair and missed, landed on the floor and started bawling. In the mean time, several students decided that since I was cleaning instead of standing over them, it was a good idea to wander around the tiny classroom (which used to be a storage room behind a stage.) I changed the lesson for the next first grade classes but at least the students had fun, and when I looked back, some of the prints turned out pretty nice.


2 comments:

  1. Good for you, with the sound of your upbeat attitude even though the lesson didn't go "exactly as planned" - no doubt you'll have many more years of being a loved art teacher!
    p.s. I like the prints.

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