On "Vacation"

  
Be back... sometime.

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In the meantime, you can find me at One Blonde Girl or The Bittersweet Blonde.

Scoring Some Sweet Swag

One of the perks of working as a graduate assistant in an art ed department is occasionally walking into my office to discover free goodies on my desk. Sometimes the products I get are just free samples, but occasionally some of them are new products that are just hitting the market. Regardless of whether they're new or old, it is always cool to score some sweet swag. Here's a sampling of some of the stuff I've taken home over the last two semesters.

Here's my quick little run down of the products and where you can purchase them* (top to bottom, left to right):

I Survived 7th Grade Art

  
Today I re-entered the wonderful world of substitute teaching, which I haven't done in over three years. I chose to jump all in and spend my day subbing for 7th grade art. Ouch. I haven't been in an art room since last April. I haven't been in another art teacher's art room in over three years. Subbing is not something I enjoy. I was a part-time building sub for two years while I was a part-time art teacher in the same district. This kind of subbing wasn't too bad because I was already familiar with the students and the teachers and the school. However, I found it difficult to be a sub in regular classrooms in the same building where I was an art teacher.

Being an art teacher is a completely different ball game than being a regular classroom teacher. The way you manage your classroom is different, the type of work you do is different, your expectations of the students is different, and you are different. There was nothing more painful for me than having to spend the day in a regular classroom with the same group of students all day. In the art room, the students you work with cycle through about every 45 minutes or so, daily, and weekly. If there's one punk kid getting on your nerves, you just send him on his way at the end of the period, and then you don't have to see him again for another week or more. If you're in a regular classroom, with the same punk kid, you're stuck with him for the entire day.

I strongly dislike the structure of the regular classroom. The routine. The restrictions. The tedious way the class runs. It's so painful. I crave variety and change and excitement. That doesn't happen in a regular classroom. In the art room however... well, that's a different ball game.