October 25, 2010

By: Maxine F. from New York, NY
Comments: 12

Posted By: Maxine Feldman-Cohen
On: 6/26/2007 10:44:21 AM

So I have been teaching for 25 years and still do get great satisfaction from my work. I have taught both art to children in Pre-K through 8th grade and many years ago was a classroom teacher. I currently work with K-5th grades. I continue to take classes to enrich both my teaching and my own artwork. I wonder how some of you stay motivated and keep things fresh and vital? I find that there are several projects which I repeat each year because children look forward to doing them, such as the dinosaur project which is on this website. On the other hand, I am getting kind of tired of doing the same things and have a desire this summer to add some new lessons into the mix. Any thoughts?

Posted By: Barbara Nikoomanesh
On: 8/20/2007 10:04:37 AM

Hi Maxine, The great thing about SDI and CON, is that there are so many creative thinkers working together to come up with great ideas. There are so many lessons on this site and web connections to inspiring sites for teachers and students. I would suggest just starting out with one of the lessons from the Educator Resource page to implement in your classroom. It can be overwhelming if you try to implement all new plans. Integrate some of the new plans in between some of your sure bet plans. I have found that after 27 years of teaching art, that the last two years of teaching have been my most inspiring. Focusing on Design in our Environmental Design curriculum has been challenging and exciting. Good luck on your school year. Babs

Posted By: Beth Bessinger
On: 8/11/2010 10:36:51 PM

Maxine... I also have been teaching art for a long time (22 years) and I know what you mean about "fresh ideas". I get a lot of my ideas form the kids and what they think is "cool" now. The new plastic bracelets inspired me to create some kid-made bracelets of our own out of paperclips rolled with paper. Vintage is in too and the kids create their own notebook covers from old text and library book that are thrown away. They covered them with coffee stained paper (they also made) and inspired thoughts written in brown ink...gives it a vintage feel. Covered with contact paper, 3-hole pinched and tied with ribbon with notebook paper in between. They love them and many of them are giving them as gifts. I love to work with items others find no longer useful and turn them into artwork...reused, re-purposed and recycled... The wave of the future!!!