Epic Fail & Drawn to Be Creative

So I wanted to publish a blog post every week and it’s now February and I’ve posted… yes, I failed. All I can do is try again. So let’s start off with something easy, like the weather.

This week we were assaulted by the “Polar Vortex” which still sounds like a really bad cartoon villain. Temperatures dropped, schools were closed, or delayed opening until it got warmer- which it didn’t. At least this time around we didn’t have people running around making jokes about “global warming” although I’m sure there were some comments tweeted out from Washington, that I may have missed. So school was closed for one day and delayed two days in a row. Parents either complained about being inconvenienced or the safety of their kids. Another reason I’m not an administrator- you can’t win. My school district even has it outlined in writing how the decision is made, and they followed their rules and still people were upset.

As a teacher, I want to see my students. I only see them 27 hours a year, if you do the math. Delayed days and missed days just give me less time with the kids. Delay days can almost be worse, but for many kids are very important. Working in a Title One school, some of my students may only get a decent meal at school, so a missed day doesn’t just mean missed learning, but also no food. So what do I do when my class time is trimmed by a third? By the time the students get out the supplies they need it will be time to clean up. So I decided to take a break from robotics and engineering and spend some time drawing.

When I started teaching I decided that while it was important to teach my first graders how to form letters, and hold a pencil, they also just needed to work on controlling the pencil. To this end I took at least one day a week and instead of going over how to make a “b” or a “d” we’d draw. I did some basics on my own and then found a book called “Draw Squad” written by Mark Kistler who had a show on PBS. It was great. The lessons were short enough that we could do them daily. There were 180 of them (there are 180 days in a school year). I used that book until it fell apart. Sold it in the class end of year auction, and bought another copy. I start off each year with some of the basics before moving on to building & robots. Last week, I used my shortened time to dive back into drawing with my students. I discovered that Mark Kistler was still around, and has a YouTube channel. So instead of learning from me, the classes and I learned from the master. I have decided not to share any drawings the kids made because they have been on hiatus for a while, but I’m right now trying to determine how to integrate it more into what I do every day, or at least every month. In this world of inflexible testing- the kids need a chance to be creative in more than just bricks & bots.

Thanks to the Polar Vortex & Mark Kistler for making me see that kids need to draw every day.