Proud Educator

Today's my first blog post in two years in my teaching profession. Too bad, I don't exactly have a position to say that it is a profession. However the last few months that I've been long-term subbing at CMS, still counts for my experience as an art teacher. Today, was a momentous day for me as an educator: I inspired my student to enjoy art :)

This coming weekend is Mother's Day and I had the students choose either to do a free-choice project or to create a mother's day card. Majority decided to make a card for their mothers, step-moms, aunts, grandmothers, etc. In order to teach these students of composition and text organizations, I created a card for my own mother. I always believe that good examples will inspire great works from students. And who can make great examples? Me, of course! As a perfectionist, artist, and an art teacher, I can create examples that are exquisite, yet inspirational, for my students, I hope.

My mom loves sunflowers and to show students that hand-made cards are great cards (and doesn't have to be bought), I made a sunflower card. I free-hand drew four sunflowers, each symbolizing a member of my family (to show the students that it's great to make things personalized), and colored it in. It turned out well. So when I completed the cover of the card and showed it to my students, they were wowed by it (pats back). The next three days students were to create a rough draft of their cards, make a larger version of it on a heavier paper, and decorate it with various mediums.

One student, a happy over-achiever with great artistic potential, saw mine and wanted to make a similar card since her mother, too, loves sunflowers. Using a picture that I found online for her, she drew two sunflowers on the cover of her card. She created a border like I suggested to the students, and composed the sunflowers away from the center to give them an interesting design. As she started coloring her card in, the card started to come to life. She colors and colors, and it's turning out beautiful. She steps back, still only halfway finished, and exclaims, "I'm not good at art, but I LOVE it!"

 No teacher can ever deny the satisfying, humbling, ethereal emotions that bubbles up within them, when a student says something like that, the enjoyment and pleasure they feel from learning and announcing them. I became a teacher because I wanted to share my love of art to other people, especially children. Today I feel like I really succeeded as an educator. When my student looked at her work, and was amazed by her own skills that she didn't even know she had, and discovered that she is good at, it made my day happier. I'm elated still that I can make a student say, "I love art." It's one thing to be a great artist, but it's another thing to LOVE it. I was able to channel one of students natural talent into passion. I can't be more proud of my student and myself than this moment. It made the rest of my day, my week, this year, all worth it.

Technology and "Our" generation, with "their" generation

by Susie Kim

So I was thinking about how we can incorporate technology into our classroom, not for instructional reason (though that is what I should be thinking about) but to catch-up to "our" generation. Granted that "our" generation is older than "their" generation, we still grew up with more technology and new gadgets than our own teachers. When I mean by "our" generation, I mean the individuals who were born around the 1980s-1990s who were born with some technology, and grew up with the computer. As we all know, the computer and the internet did not really bloom until the 1990s (when I was in middle school) and after the Y2K, the internet was a contagious commodity of our time. We grew up with MTV's TRL, Pokemon, Sailor Moon, and Dragon BallZ, as well as the then "new" beepers and cellphones. When my dad had a beeper it was so cool and green! I wanted one! But now we are exposed to Blackberrys, iPads, Netbooks, etc... beepers are WAY out-of-date!

Going back to what I was originally saying, "our" generation-- the group of people who were born in the 1980s-1990s who grew up with the internet and modern technology-- are closely related to "their" generation-- our students who have and are accustomed to modern technology as part of their lives, we are at an advantage to connect with our students than the experienced, veteran teacher. We can connect to our students by sharing to each other what makes alike: growing up with a cell-phone (well, high school for me), having the internet as an informational resource, MySpace and Facebook pages, digital cameras, the mechanical pencil, Harry Potter and Twilight (at least for me). All these trends are popular then as they are now which changes perspectives in teaching. As we’ve learned in class, technology must be incorporated into every classroom and adapted to the growing technology as our students are adapting to them. Soon, we will be looking at our internet through 3-D glasses, or having touch-screen computer screens as interactive tools for our classrooms (when the prices go down, that is).

We must adapt to technology, rather than adapting technology adapting to the classroom. This will be a difficult endeavor to us educators and our pockets, but we have to engage our students’ interest in a more up-to-date way that our students are exposed to in their lives, to enhance their educational experiences.