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.

No More Books! Blame the Internet and Amazon!

by Susie Kim

July 18, 2011

Today is a sad, catastrophic day: it is the beginning of the book-meltdown revolution. As you may have hear, Borders Group, the corporation that controls Borders Bookstore, has announced that they will be liquidating their remaining 400 stores, taking away 11,000 positions from their employees. California's unemployment rate just went down too! I am not sure if these people will be able to receive their unemployment checks.

This is when technology, the almighty literacy haven, becomes a nightmare for people with jobs in the literature/ writing industry. With the closure of Borders nation-wide, publishing companies will print less books to save money; why would they print the same amount, when one of the leading book distributor has gone down? Amazon and Barnes and Nobles are the last remaining book companies and the internet isn't really helping with its free and easily accessible collection of informative resources.

I was in Barnes and Noble the other day to buy a book... it was $17.95. With my teacher- 25% discount, it would be about $15. So I decided I would save my money and look for it online, which I did. I would've preferred the book but why pay at all if I can attain the same or about the same amount of information online for free? Now I feel guilty about not buying that book... my purchase would probably have saved a person's job. But at a time like this when unemployment rate is high, and people are living paycheck-to-paycheck (like me), it is hard to think about others when one can barely survive on him/herself.

Technology is great because it is cheap, easily attainable and accessible, and bountiful. Technology is evil because it creates pollution, takes away manual labor which in effect takes away jobs. Technology is terrible, yes, but also great (yes, a quote from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone).

There is no "technology" without "techno"

by Susie Kim

So I was driving one day from I don't remember to I don't know where, and I was listening to the radios and one of my new (at-the-moment) favorite song came on: "Take Over Control" by Afrojack and Eva Simmons. I absolutely love it! Great beat, rhythm, and bass. I would dance in my seat every time the bass- break came on and get really into it! Then it hit me, I'm 25 years old who loves to dance and go to clubs to "exercise" and "practice" my grooves, and the middle- and high- school students are also probably loving this song and dancing to it. That made me feel slightly old and awkward at the same time because when they go to dances and listen to this song, and if they go to raves, etc, they will be used to it. I am just getting into House and Techno music while the students of today are growing up with it.

It must be fun to be a student of today's generation; they have endless informative resources (by phone, laptop, or iPad), digital cameras, great "techno" music, "free" file-sharing, and more! While I was growing up, we still had pagers, thick Nokia phones, some internet, and Oregon Trails (totally not hating! LOVE that game). It would be SO nice to live in their generation where many things are more accessible inexpensively. They have Facebook to keep up with their friends while in high school (with 400+ friends), while we (my generation) got Facebook while in college with fewer friends (600+ including high school and college friends). Technology is part of life for them as day and night is for us "older" generations. Man, life is unfair, I wish I was born in their generation; at least, we had "Baby-Sitter's Club", "Boxcar Children", and Donkey Kong while we were growing up :)