Housekeeping: Toiletries as Art Materials

Besides cardboard, these are some other possible art materials that can be collected free. Hotel toiletries! I usually bring my own toiletries overseas and will collect these from the hotel for use in the art room. To hasten collection, it helps when you get your family to do the same :D They are excellent for doing mark making or paint splatters

Housekeeping: Caring for Art Supplies

Coloured ends of markers and pens

Mirror corners with air-dry clay

I usually do an introduction of myself to a new cohort of students by sharing about myself in different contexts through photographs. What I am particularly fond of is to sneak in some artroom management rules as I talk. I showed the children how other children from another country lived differently. We discussed about school facilities and lifestyle inconvienence which are evident from the photos. Then we do a comparsion between their lives and the children in the photos. The point of the discussion is really for the children not to take things for granted. An explicit teaching of a hidden curriculum meant that the children are expected to cherish art supplies and prevent the stationeries' premature death. This year, I have the table corners painted to match the colours of the labelled art supplies. This labelling would prevent accidental theft and will require children to be more responsible when it comes to returning supplies to its rightful storage place.

Art Class: My Little Trainee Teachers

I had this idea brewing for a while as I want to cut down my instructional time in class. Most of the time, I do give my instructions through Powerpoint slides, using the visualiser or do a live demo. My latest attempt is through recording my instructions and demo and showing them the video so I do not have to repeat myself so many times. The children can watch the video while I prepare materials at the back of the classroom. I do get the occasional questions such as these even when instructions were written on the whiteboard:

• Ms H. where do I hand this in?

• Ms H. Where are the markers/ coloured pencils/ scissors?

With composure and poise, I answered all these questions without twitching my brows. So, now let me present you THE TRAINEE TEACHER BADGE OF HONOR:

From Term 2, I have started these with some of my classes where I will choose a few children to be my little trainee teachers. My selection criteria starts from the time I picked them up from their class. You need to be explicit about what you are looking out for. For example, I will observe how quietly and quickly they move and how they stay in line while we walk to the art room. After my instructional time ends, anyone with questions related to the task should first seek help from any one of the trainee teachers. If that trainee teacher doesn't know the answer then he or she should go to another trainee teacher and so on. If all trainee teachers doesn't know the answer then they can come to me. When that happens, the problem must be me...

Housekeeping: What to Look for in a Classroom

Sharing an article by Alfie Kohn on organising the space in the classroom. You can access his article here.

Housekeeping: Distributing Masking Tape

This is definitely not White on White art but my way of coping with art supplies distribution: pre-cut them and tape them on the wall. Giving out adhesive for 30 kids in a calm manner is possible. It also helps that if you warn them that those masking tape are so sticky that if it gets on your nose and you pull it out, your nose will come along too. They are all growing up too fast, at 7 years old, none of them would take me seriously.

Housekeeping: How I remember names

This year, I have 566 pupils under my charge for Art class. My goal was to remember all their names before summer holidays. It's year end now and I still fail to do so. During our first Art lesson, I had everyone write their names on a mini whiteboard and take a photo. So, with these images in my phone, I arranged them in folders according to classes so I can do my memorization at home. I guess I will still continue with this next year and supplement my diet with ginko biloba.

Housekeeping: Class Schedule

As the only art teacher solely dedicated to one discipline in my school, I have started to record all the tentative dates for lessons in a school term. This document will aid me to plan for lesson units so that I will know in advance the dates to avoid etc. (I use google calendar to check for all the examination dates and also this website for school/ public holidays). 

Doing this works for me as I see 17 classes a week. Besides, I also show these schedules to my students so that they know how much time they have left or the number of lessons left to complete their work. Thus, this keeps everyone on task. 

I wonder how other art teachers do their time schedule? If you have better suggestions, please share with me. :)

Housekeeping: Storeroom

I have these God-sent white tubs in the storeroom. Just ignore the lonely tub that's labelled because I forgot to budget for more labelling tape.

These wired baskets are great for sorting out supplies in the art room. Supplies are placed within reach of the kids for easy retrieval.

Our school just bought some new guitars and thanks to the music teacher who donated these boxes for art cause :D

It's the last week of school and the kids helped to cut the cardboard into smaller pieces!

A friendly reminder for the future successor of the art storeroom placed behind the door.

Housekeeping: Collection of recycled materials

In art room utopia, all your students would bring any materials to art class when they are told to do so. They would be so considerate to even bring an excess of those just in case someone else doesn't.

I'm still waiting for this day to come.

In the art room, I have wired baskets to collect recycled materials for art class all year round:

Divide egg trays into small containers for holding paint.

Egg trays collected from the canteen vendors. Temporary holding area is the office until I find some space in the art room :D

Reusing the packaging from reams of printing paper.

Toilet roll tubes from the toilet of course!

Housekeeping

I may not be the best person to talk about organisation but I guess you can have an excuse to be untidy if you were just serving yourself. In a school with a few thousand kids, having an organised art room or store room stocked with art supplies is a big deal. If you spend less time looking for things, it leads to more planning and thinking time. Besides your students, you are also helping other teachers to acquire emergency supplies for some events.

Depending on your energy level, it's important to conserve energy and directing them into something more useful. Every little obstacles (e.g technical issues or mediating pupils' friendship problems) we encounter every day consume bits of our energy, by the time we got home, whatever is left (if we still have any left), is reserved for our family. It doesn't have to be this way because our family also deserve our time and attention.

Thus, the first step to ensuring sanity is to stay organised. 

Let's start packing!