First two days...done!

So, the first two days of school are over for us and it's already the weekend...phew!  I don't necessarily like that we always start so late, but it is nice easing back into school with only two days the first week.  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to share from the first two days, but I'll share how my first two days went!

My bulletin boards on the elementary end aren't finished, so I didn't want to photograph them.  The "Art Is..." and "Art Isn't..." board is filling up with Post-It note answers, but the illustrated aspect isn't done yet...we've just ran out of time.  Same with the Van Gogh board...I've only had one class complete flowers for the vase (out of 4) so it's still bare looking.

I can say that I'm DEFINITELY going to miss having the little kids twice in a cycle...as I was starting to plan for next week, I realized that my day 2 classes, the classes I had today for elementary, won't be seen until the Monday after next!  That's such a long time in between! :(

Something else that is going to be a HUGE adjustment is going from having Studio Art students to kindergarten the next period!  I always seem to forget what kindergarten is like at the beginning of the year...it's always a shock during the first few class periods until we start to reign them in!  The group I had today had a lot of students who were just full of energy, and I had them right after my Studio class!

As for the high school classes, I've got mixed feelings for them.  I've had Studio Art twice now, as they meet every day, and I can say I'm extremely happy with the two groups I have.  I actually had a student who is in band willingly join Studio because she wanted to take art with me!  Yea!!!!  (In NYS, students don't have to take Studio Art if they are in band or chorus as those fill the same state requirements.)  I then decided to ask how many students were band students and were there because they wanted to be...a majority of the one class said they were there by choice!  That's a really good start for me! Today I had planned to start the pre-assessment drawing after they received their sketchbooks but they asked if they could paint their sketchbook covers with metallic paint, so I pulled it out and they were ALL content to decorate their sketchbooks!  Score!

My 3rd period Studio class is going to be my comic relief...lots of boys in there.  The 8th period class has more students in it who need the credit, but I think they are going to be my quiet, laid back class.  This class started their pre-assessment drawings today.  I have three students who need to finish due to being absent or late and having less time, but I'll share those next week.  Even though these seem to be the students who don't want to be there, they do appear to have some talent...more then they think!  I'll be excited to extract that out of them and help them feel more confident about art!

Now, as for the two 7th grade classes...I think I'm going to dread those classes this year!  One group has a clique of girls in that had issues last year in 6th grade, and the other group has a group of boys in it with the same problem!  They were OFF THE WALL!  I talked about how this was a clean slate start for both them and me to work together...blah blah blah, but I'm not so sure about their behavior!  They may be the only two classes I have to give assigned seats to...

Finally, I had my elective class today.  I gave my survey to find out what they wanted to learn about and what elective that had originally signed up for last year, but didn't get much out of the 7 ladies who were there.  I think I may end up losing one during the drop period, but I'm pretty sure I was able to sway two of them to stay in the class.  I think this will be my hardest class to keep motivated and excited about art, especially since they haven't given me much to go off of!  They pretty much nixed the idea of doing project proposals...said they all wanted to work on the same type of project together.  I got extremely positive reviews from them when it came to glass projects.  A lot of them had signed up for stained glass.  I, unfortunately, have never done stained glass.  I understand how it's done, but have never done it.  A lot of them have, so I'm thinking I may have them teach me and then we'll do some glass slumping and glass jewelry making.  I also go positive feedback when I was bouncing ideas off of them and mentioned duct tape prom dresses...so we shall see!