School has been more draining than usual so I haven’t been posting and that’s been disappointing to me because I felt like I had gotten closer to being more consistent with my posts. Oh well. I’ll get back to where I need to be.

In the meantime, I’d like to share what’s been going on with the work my students have been doing with Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The things I’ve learned are:

1. It’s okay to extend the lessons somewhat. Since last year I’ve struggled with failing kids. I want to hold them accountable for their performance, but I also want to be mindful that failing a lot of students can be a dangerous proposition when you’re looking to be rehired next year.
2. When you do extend a lesson be consistent so that the pace of the other lessons aren’t negatively affected.
3. Don’t be afraid to fail a kid for work not done (not much of a problem for me) or mark them down for work done poorly (can be a problem for me). This may sound obvious, but I’m a newbie and I know that I need to watch my tendency to be overly critical. I made a girl cry last week. Fortunately, I used the opportunity to show my humanity (by apologizing), to validate how she was feeling and to teach her about appropriate ways of expressing her frustration.

I offer these simple observations to help those who may have used this material before and found themselves in a similar teaching environment as I am now. If you have some recommendations of your own to supplement these, please let me know.

I’m going to try to post a few examples. Some of the work I’ve been getting has been quite good. We’ll see how the kids hold up with the profile portrait and self-portrait assignments.