Last year, I did a “quilt” project with Trish Maunder, who works with the Faith Ringgold Foundation. Trish does her own story quilt idea in school classrooms. During that time she also educates students about Faith and her story quilts.

Students pick a theme and then each student translates that theme into a personalized image. They also need to pick a famous quote or write a poem to accompany their image. The pieces are glued onto a larger piece of canvas with fabric strips covering the seams and then a fabric border is set around the whole thing. They turn out really well.

Well, the founder of my school saw the quilt my class did and wanted another one to auction off at an annual fund-raising event. Long story short, I exploded the original idea into a series of smaller quilts based on the founding principles of the school’s charter IN ADDITION TO the large quilt that would document the school’s growth from conception to fruition. It’s moments like that where I think to myself, “I know, let me put this bag over my head so you can all beat me with a stick.”

Well, the students let me down at the end of last year and I didn’t get much done. So, I ended up having to hijack my two painting classes to complete the work. It’s going to take the entire quarter to get all of the quilts done. I’m just hopeful that when they are all put together that they are strong pieces. Of course, they better sell too! LOL!

Friends tell me they get roped into doing things like this too. Why do we, as art teachers, fall for this stuff? I know on some level I liked the original idea and wanted to see it come to pass. In the end, though, I need to remember my ADD tendency to over-commit. It’s during those moments that I need to remind myself to be practical and realistic. In the end, I know my students better than any administrator because I work with them every day.

So, lesson learned. In the end, though, I’m thankful to 1) have a job and 2) have a job teaching art.

I came back from this year’s Art Educators of New Jersey Fall Conference with some new things to think about. I have to admit to wondering what this year’s conference was going to be like since the State refused the petition for a waiver for schools to cover overnight stays. But, the hotel was booked and things seemed just as crowded as last year.

While my school couldn’t cover my stay at the hotel, they did cover my food, tolls, registration/membership and mileage. The mileage coverage will bring my car rental to about $2-3. (My car has 195k miles on it and the engine smokes if I drive it longer than 15 minutes. LOL!)

I have to admit that one of the classes I signed up for was a dud primarily because the instructor for the class left too much time (an hour and a half) for “playing” and “experimentation” versus walking us through doing certain techniques with the medium. To me, direct instruction in those venues seems to have more value for participants. But, that’s me.

The non-hands on wire animal sculpture session was great and is something I can immediately bring to my classes this year. This plus a couple of other events made it a worthwhile adventure.

I’d love to be able to go to the National Art Educators Conference in Baltimore next year but I can’t swing being away from the family. Plus, my school probably won’t foot the bill. I may try to get there for a day. We’ll see.

As I reflect upon the resounding (and expected) victory of Barack Obama in his bid for the Presidency, I am piggy-backing upon my thoughts from my last post. I commented that there was a high degree of emotionalism that drove Obama’s campaign both in political and popular circles. I want to undergird that statement with a couple of other thoughts on why I think Obama so resoundingly won.

First, I think Republican hubris played a huge role in the Democrat (and Obama’s) rise to power. Beginning in 2006 with losses in both the House and the Senate, the Republicans began their steady downward spiral to where they are today. They squandered their opportunity when they were in the same position that the Dems will be in after January. They, ironically, conducted themselves as traditional Democrats and increased the size of government, violating that and other core conservative values. They appeared to believe themselves untouchable. Sadly, they found out they weren’t.

George Bush, in his last four years in office, also squandered much (though hampered in the last two years with an oppositional House and Senate). He simply didn’t do much to further conservative thought and remained, in my mind, aloof as the figurehead of the Republican party. The public’s view of him as everything wrong with our country (not a fair estimate, but understandable) hurt any chance for a Republican to take office. (Ironically, we’ll see how the Dems spin the fact that they have control of both Houses and the Presidency but ALSO have such low approval ratings—even lower than Bush’s.)

Second, and most importantly, I believe the election of Barack Obama had much to do with the failure of the Church to effectively communicate its message to it’s own people. Yes, I didn’t say communicate its message to the World, but to its OWN people—both black and white. While I recently heard that polls indicate that the African-American vote helped Obama, it didn’t put him over the top. There wasn’t a significant increase, overall, in the number of black voters (with the increase coming from in younger voters). Rather, it was white independents and moderates who elected Barack Obama. Nevertheless, I find two points interesting.

First, the African-American community as a whole votes very traditionally on issues such as family and abortion. Ironically, they selected a candidate who is anything but traditional. Did the A-A community know Obama’s stances and voting history on these core moral issues? Or, was it more that they chose to overlook it—much like most of America—in favor of economy and the prize of having a black President? My own experience in urban education leads me to believe that they abdicated their role as salt and light to the World in favor of race. That’s a harsh statement, but, as I indicated, it holds true to what I hear consistently in my all-minority school.

As I indicated previously, polls show that moderates and independents won this election for Obama. Most of those were white. The present state of the mainline Protestant and Catholic churches also shows a clear willingness to PUT ASIDE mandates about life and the family in favor of progressive politics. After all, in their view, times change and the Word of God is a book written by men that must be revisited as society evolves.

I wonder what would happen if evangelical churches made their focus—over the next four years—one of educating their congregations about the core values of the Christian church. Because the Church has a different vocabulary—a different way of looking at the World—our account of life and meaning is vastly different. I have to agree with Robert Lewis Wilken:

Nothing is more needful today than the survival of Christian culture, because in recent generations this culture has become dangerously thin. At this moment in the Church’s history in this country (and in the West more generally) it is less urgent to convince the alternative culture in which we live of the truth of Christ than it is for the Church to tell itself its own story and to nurture its own life, the culture of the city of God, the Christian republic.

I can’t help but wonder what would happen in the 2010 and 2012 elections if the Church was grounded in this way.

I’ve been reflecting more earnestly these past two weeks as students have been talking more openly about their reasons for voting for Obama. Obviously, I’ve been listening for quite some time now, but the past two weeks—the last few days in particular—have been particularly poignantly. Frankly, I’ve listened (and read) Obama’s words and been intrigued as to what is so new and hopeful about him personally and his message professionally.

If you do a cursory examination of ads and political paraphernalia from the recent past, you’ll notice that during the recent past principles such as “hope” and “change” are dominant. This has caused me to ponder why this particular candidate has infused such words with so much more meaning as to win the election with so little experience and such damaging rhetoric.

It’s the conversations I’ve listened in on and participated in that has given me my answer and that answer rests in pure emotionalism. I know that sounds simplistic but the complicated answers about the sensibility of his political stances don’t make sense. No, I ground my argument not in politics because, frankly, the average American doesn’t care much for politics. I think it’s also clear just from the complexity that we’ve allowed our political systems to become mired under. After all, who has time to research all that the candidates truly stand for? Even the sites which purport to be nonpartisan fact-checking sites are proving to be less than genuine.

Rather, my argument is founded in pop cultures’ fascination with the image and the new. When my students go off about Obama, the point is clear that they’re not interested in answers as to why I can’t vote for him. Rather, they are more keen on emotionalism and vitriol. Once again, this spirit isn’t new with this election. Our election process has become all about promises that neither candidate can deliver on.

And, it’s the emotionalism of today that has people flocking to Obama instead of reflecting on the potential damages his policies will be for generations to come.

It’s late. I’ll post more tomorrow.

Is it just me or is it really just hypocritical that people get bent out of shape over NCLB (No Child Left Behind) whereas the SAT has been around for (seemingly) forever? Ok, NCLB is about federal funds but the principle remains the same, right?

It all comes down to a single test being the defining piece of information about your ability to perform well in college (and, to some, life).

I’ve received a few responses to my last post concerning my students’ complaints during class (Intro to Painting, in particular). I was going to respond to them individually but I’ve decided it would be better to clarify my thoughts in a formal post.

The comments I’ve received can be summarized by Daniel over at kungfu komix—

“Ignore them. Students are always that way.”

I’m sympathetic to this sentiment. On some level I think any art teacher who deals with urban kids or kids taking introductory courses needs to be aware of this (seemingly) pervasive dismissive attitude.

I should have clarified myself in the original post that my distress is also (and perhaps more so) related to the incessant talking that occurs while I’m trying to teach. When I try to address it, the students don’t get it. Sadly, their insensitivity is what most distresses (and, frankly, scares) me.

It drains me because waiting for them to get quiet—which is what I was instructed to do by an administrator— causes my projects to take forever to get done or move forward. And, the fact that the lesson gets drawn out causes MORE complaining from my students. (Yes, they’re clueless to the fact that THEY are the root cause of the delay.)

The students’ insensitivity scares me because it reinforces to me how shortsighted they are to how their own behavior is negatively affecting their education. I’ve tried to clue them in to the fact that, unless they go into a science, medical or engineering field they would use most of the higher math they are learning. BUT, the skills I’m teaching them could be a hobby they enjoy until the day they die. Well, maybe the day BEFORE they die. LOL!

Hopefully, this fills in the gaps on my frustration regarding my students lack of motivation. Additional thoughts anyone?

This week was particularly troubling for me. Emotionally, I was drained by my students’ constant complaints:

• This is too hard
• This is meaningless
• This is so dumb
• I’m never going to use this
• Blah, blah, blah.

Albeit none of these complaints is new or surprised me. I’ll be reflecting this weekend on my personal responses as I do my lesson planning.

My painting class, in particular, has been quite distressing. They don’t understand why we’re learning drawing basics. My attempts at explaining it fell on deaf ears.

What do you do with students who position themselves beyond motivation?

I met with my media specialist yesterday. I wanted to discuss with her the possibility of taking 3-4 students out of my painting class and giving them writing assignments. One of the kids has been asking for this from the beginning of the year because he hates art. (He failed art last year.) We came up with a couple of ideas. We’re going to meet again next week.

One of the issues I face in my classroom as an art teacher is when my kids tell me that talking to their friends while working is okay for them, actually critical. A 2005 Johns Hopkins’ study, which specifically addressed cell phone use while driving, would also seem to speak to my classroom situation.

Professor Steven Yantis states,

“Directing attention to listening effectively ‘turns down the volume’ on input to the visual parts of the brain. The evidence we have right now strongly suggests that attention is strictly limited — a zero-sum game. When attention is deployed to one modality — say, in this case, talking on a cell phone — it necessarily extracts a cost on another modality — in this case, the visual task of driving.”

Again, the implications from this would seem to indicate that concentration in any one modality is compromised when another is introduced. So, I guess this would also give me an answer when my students say listening to their iPods helps them concentrate while they work on my projects. LOL!

I found an interesting article documenting a study regarding changes in actual brain structure. The source cited was a 2000 study referencing work done with taxi drivers. Apparently, “the longer a taxi driver had been driving, the larger a specific part of the brain (the part that we believe stores spatial representations of our environment).” In the words of the author, “(s)imply by doing something repetitively, or doing something differently, can affect a change – not only in your actual brain’s structure.”

I can’t say I’m shocked. Frankly, this report makes perfect sense to me. Addictions are forged in the brain through repetition; their resolution could only come similarly. Reading something like this, though, makes me question why pro-gay activists would discourage individuals who seek to undo years of addictive behavior that reinforced same-sex attraction? All addictive behavior causes chemical changes in the brain and, now, it would seem that it doesn’t just stop there.

Hopeful news for those who seek to make positive changes on many fronts!

We took a drive to Philadelphia to eat at a restaurant called Beau Monde. It’s a creperie meaning everything you order is stuffed into a crepe. It sounded interesting.

The lady at the door wasn’t kidding when she told us at 8:30 that we’d have a 30-45 minute wait. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised this being a city establishment and it being Saturday night. Needless to say, 45 minutes later we were sitting down with a menu in hand.

Before I get to the food, the atmosphere is, um, a tad loud. Aw, who am I kidding—we could barely hear the girl who was explaining what we should expect. We had to speak much louder than we normally do when out to eat. All in all the experience was disappointing. The food came very quickly. I ordered the smoked salmon with leeks. Although there wasn’t as much salmon in my crepe as I’d hoped, the dish was quite flavorful though more than a little salty. It filled me up. My wife order a chicken dish which she also enjoyed. Both of us would have enjoyed a starter salad, but at $6, a small bowl of mixed greens wasn’t what we had in mind.

Dessert was what you’d expect it to be, delicious. We shared a cherry compote with vanilla ice cream. At $11, it was a $1 more than my entree. It’s funny how I’m more forgiving for sweet things.

All in all, an evening out with two of our favorite friends is never dull and their presence made the trek to Beau Monde worthwhile. All of us felt the cost was a bit much considering what we got. I’d say try it out for yourselves keeping in mind it’s loud and rather dark. Oh, and you can expect to pay around $85 for four entrees, two desserts and one beer. So, if all of you drink—versus just one of us in our party—you’re going to spend a lot more.

All-in-all, I’d give it:

• 1 star for atmosphere
• 2 stars for value
• 3 stars for taste

I think the next time we get to Philadelphia will try out Buddakan.