Sunday, March 3, 2013

A Day in the Life

This week it occurred to me that most people don't understand the day to day life of a teacher. Least of all the art teacher.

People tend to approach it with this "Oh, how fun you get to play with kids all day!" attitude, and while yes, it can be fun and to some degree we can play - it is however, generally, completely draining and utterly exhausting.

In this case it can be exacerbated by the schedule my co-op has. This school is a K-8 and she's the only art teacher. Right now the 8th graders are taking music not art, so I am working with K-7 students.

1st graders learning to mix colors with their fingers.

Most grades have 3 sections, but not all. In total I am working with 17 individual groups of students, most have an average of at least 25 students. I'll let you do the math.

To make things more complicated each grade level doesn't necessarily have art for the same amount of time each week. The school has a A-F calendar. Kindergarten, 2 sections, comes once every 6 days for 30 minutes (an amount of time that guarantees you can't accomplish anything). Frist grade, 1 section, comes twice every 6 days, once for 30 minutes, once for 45. 30 minutes essentially means that as soon as you get the kids settled and explain what we're going to do, you have about 15 minutes to do it before you have to clean up.

Second grade is where things get really interesting, there are 3 sections of second grade. One group comes twice every 6 days, once for 30 minutes and once for 45. The second section comes once every 6 days for 45 minutes, the other comes once every 6 days for 30 minutes. Third grade, two sections, one comes twice every 6 days for 45 minutes and the other once for 45 minutes.

I imagine just reading that you feel turned around and confused - imagine what its like to plan for that! And I didn't even discuss the 4-7 schedule. On average I teach 6 groups a day, with 3 minutes in between and 30 minutes for lunch (which is generally absorbed by clean up for the previous class/prep for the next). There's also a 45 minute prep period thrown in at various times which is sort of useful.

The 3 minutes between classes is however, a dream. Most teachers either bring their kids early, or come late to pick them up which eats up any fraction of a second you have to switch gears. It's no ones fault, just the nature of the art teachers life.

The basic idea of lesson planning is that each grade level is working on the same project at the same time, within a day or two of each other, which means that you as the teacher can reasonably organize his or her week. But given the above schedule its really hard to keep kids on the same page. One group is inevitably ahead of the other by at least a week. And given the 3 minutes between classes its very difficult to work on the projects kids like best - the messy ones - because its so hard to keep things organized and clean. Particularly given that the room we're in right now has next to no storage.

I could go on but I think you get the picture. I should be clear though, this is insanely hard, but I love it. I especially love the little kids. I think I'd be very happy in a K-4. But every grade level has its benefits. Ultimately I'd just like to have a limited number of groups to work with, or at least a more structured schedule - you know, just to keep things a little simple...

Time will tell!

No comments:

Post a Comment