Visual Arts in Alabama High Schools

Well we all will have a few short weeks until we start up again. I want to remind everyone to be sure to renew their membership in NAEA. For those of you unfamiliar with the organization it is the Nation Art Education Association. What good is this organization to you, you might ask? Well it would depend on how much you want to improve yourself and give your students the best. This is a group of artists who are educators who wish to share their knowledge and expertise with…you. What do you give them? Your knowledge and expertise. You might not think you have anything to share but you would be wrong you have a lot to give.

There is also a conference in October in North Alabama. If you should be able to find out more information on this event in another folder on this site. There will be a student art show, a teacher art show, workshops (two taught by this humble author) as well as other very capable educators from throughout the state, fun and frolic. I really recommend these conferences. I have been attending them for years and even if the workshops aren’t great the talking with fellow art teachers is really great. It is super to know that you aren’t the only one out there. Especially if you are the only art teacher in your school or even in your county or even in your region.

I will try to keep you current on the latest on art shows and while I am talking about that let me tell you my personal philosophy on competitive art shows for students. I realize that there are a number of you that don’t believe that competitive art shows but I feel that students’ need some validation from outside resources plus it is a good thing for us as well to be gearing our students’ education to more contemporary art movements and having someone judging our skills as educators. We are constantly being judged by individuals who know nothing about our subject and it is nice to be evaluated by individuals who at least understand what art is supposed to look like. It is a terrific way to validate our program at our schools to our administration who. lets face it, thinks of our class as a glorified babysitting service. I know we all know what we give our students but it is sometimes an ethereal thing to some people. The competitions are a concrete way of giving people a reason to value the arts. What does it do for the student? If they win it gives them the same kind of motivation that their peer group gets from being a star in a sport, or on stage, or getting the best grades. I don’t know if your students are like mine but they usually never fall into those categories.

The last thing I want to talk to you about is AP art classes. Think about doing it. I did it for the first time last year and it was a great challenge for me. Let me tell you that you can send off student portfolios to AP without having your school endorsing an Advanced Placement course in art for your system. I don’t know if you are like me but I always had those special students who worked outside of class and inside of class and sometimes inside other teacher’s classes on their art. They are the perfect candidates for this opportunity. The work chosen for the breadth can be anything that they have done in their career of doing art. The concentration is a collection of work that they explore a subject. The quality is just their five best actual pieces of art. Anyway, think about it and if you have any questions ask. I am no expert on it but I will try to help.

Remember the bottom lines is that we do what we can to give our students the best we can give them. Whatever it takes however we can. My bottom line is to help my students’ feel better about themselves and feel good about what they are doing in my class.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 7:24 pm Filed under Information and. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.