MoMA for Teens

I encourage my kids, all young people interested in art, to check out The Red Studio at Museum of Modern Art! What a FIND! OK. I lie. I love this site. But maybe then I will never grow up. . . .

Oil painting here: The Red Studio by Henri Matisse, 1911

One Day

I’m not naïve enough to think we all teach in the same school with the same demographics, the same funding, the same community support and the same needs. Regardless of these widely varying statistics, our children all deal with "stuff." As such, I follow this with a short blurb about today’s events.

I spent a school day with a first year teacher/friend of mine in her secondary art classroom. She teaches in the penultimate economic middle class, with a few lows and a few more highs (hate those words as classifications, but they work for my purposes here.) The school primarily services, in fairly equal numbers, white, black, Hispanic and Punjabi students. Today most students were moderately attentive to getting their work done; typical adolescent diligence. Sounds kind of boring and uneventful, doesn’t it?

During the course of this one school day, Ms B stepped outside the classroom three individual times to attend to crying students. They all settled enough to return to their projects after a few minutes. She briefly shared their stories with me, and it wasn’t until I came home that I realized the sum of them.

The first girl was in tears because she is two months pregnant and had just made the decision to abort.

The second was in tears because her boyfriend just ended their two week relationship. Turns out she drinks at parties and he doesn’t like that.

The third was in tears because her lesbian girlfriend just ended their relationship of indeterminate length.

Boring and uneventful?

I have SO much to say about this, as any high school teacher worth their salt would. But my most immediate simple and apparent observations are such:

Our public rarely understands the events of a school day.

Standardized test scores are NOT important to these students. (Does that shock us?) Our children deserve to be treated as people rather than number-bubble-input.

And finally, our children absolutely deserve to be treated with respect as they tackle mature problems.

Kids are kids. I don’t doubt that children of 35 years ago had problems that were different yet the same- all equally catastrophic. I pray we remember, in the quest of higher math, science and reading scores, that we are also striving to raise resourceful, empathetic and responsible young people. They are our future and we as teachers are instrumental in creating the solid ground they are and will be traveling upon.

The Wisdom of Kids

I'm embarrassed to say that after the many years of teaching, I have yet to include my students' artwork on this blog. And I will further admit that they had some of the most profound statements, both in standard English and visually in art.
Find here some work by my Katie P. She is an incredibly happy little girl, but who walked into my class with a daily high school lament: "Today is the WORST day EVER!!" Somehow that sentiment didn't make it into much of her work, hence... happy!

Michelangelo's First Painting Ever?! At 12 years old.....

The Torment of St. Anthony.

So, what part of this is hard to believe? That these demons, dragons, and a saint are painted in oil by Michelangelo, that he painted it when he was 12 or 13, or that it has been acquired by the Kimbell Museum in TEXAS??

This is a must see slide show with details and story presented by the New York Times. Michelangelo rocks.

Left is the painting (be SURE to click on it for MUCH better detail); right is the original etching (preliminary sketch) documented as drawn by Michelangelo.

More Exceptional Stolen Blog

Thanks to Daniel Pink and his blog; really you must check it out. But if you're in a rush (really? and you're reading this?), I am happy to supply a few tidbits, stolen straight from his space (yep- these are still there- DO go look! I made it SO easy for you!)
In the midst of my schoolwork, I'm spending time, way too much time, studying visual culture and literacy. So Pink's website struck a beautiful chord today. How can we as educators, in ALL content areas, not be infusing all curriuclum with a bit of visual literacy? With visual culture on the rise (is it yet possible?) and the need for our kids to employ inference and interpretation, that is called thinking in my book, we do a disservice to students when we so not explicitly address the potential meanings in images in our environments.
Not that these two images required a LOT of interpretation, but for fun anyway:

Stolen Piece of Blog

The higher the nor-
malcy becomes, the more se-
vere the tragedy.

from the Clandestine Samurai.
worth stealing.

Bob Doll

So, how do you reconcile making fun art with working on a master's degree? Well....
Making this guy was a blast. I can see why there are books and websites galore about how to make sock dolls. Think I may have to make another. One.
If you're absolutely dying to know more, check out the making of Bob ...

Liu Yan

The New York Times published an amazingly compelling article about Liu Yan, China's most talented classical dancer. She was supposed to dance for the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics. She was, and still is, an amazing work of art. Her story is sad, but her dance ability lives on, even if in a small way, in the video provided (on the SECOND page) in this NYTimes article.
If you find yourself as enamored with Liu Yan as I am, consider visiting her blog (in Chinese!)

A Whole New Mind

Can you figure out what this means? This is the question of the generation!!
Hint: Ape, Agrarian, Industrial, Information, Conceptual........
More to come.
Thank you, Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind.

Jeez, I love my job. Am I NUTS??

I am a frustrated teacher. Yeah, I know. Another one.

I’m frustrated at the impositions created by NCLB, at assessments, lack of funding, the demands and the threats. I’m frustrated about lack of parent involvement, while reading about how the community is so miserable with the state of our schools. I’m frustrated with education specialists, administrators and politicians who have never stepped in a classroom (or perhaps they lasted two years for evident reasons) yet create schedules, objectives, and tests that I must employ in the name of “good teaching.” I’m frustrated about the loss of creative and deep thinking so relished and needed in our classrooms, displaced by the emphasis of industrial learning.

And I’m frustrated that these overwhelming, sometimes seemingly insurmountable, issues are often becoming our focuses. I surely understand our need, as teachers, to vent about the horror of the “system” as it currently is, and seems to continue to be created; however, I also know how much of being a teacher is really about the kids. The kids. The kids. Of course the whole education system is, or should be, about these same kids. We wonder, don’t we?

We work desperately to negotiate the seesaw of discouragement, low moral, PINK SLIPS, no money, political oversight (and lack of vision) and the continuing strains with the joy, the creative discovery and all the glorious ah-ha moments of the classroom.

At what point do we give up, either to morph into administrative kill-joys, or to become little ostriches? Is it possible to accept the interminable demands of a classroom teacher, concurrently weave those demands into the emotionally laden dissatisfaction of our current educational environment, and be a happy teacher? I think not. Remember? We are the kings and queens of many things, chief among them the quest to keep the passion we discovered during those first few years of teaching.

I don’t have the answer. But a reflection on occasion is a good thing. We know that never will bad administrators, lack of funding, state and federal whiz kids, and imposed curriculum vanish completely. If you don’t deal with all of those, you most likely deal with one. (And if you deal with none of them, you are blessed!) I find a composite of teaching personalities at all sites- from those who have succumbed to discouragement, now the whiney, horrendous teaching examples, to those (very few) who seem to be on happy-drugs.

Hence, my blazing commentary: As teachers, we each absolutely have the power to keep the focus where it belongs. Most of us do. We squeeze an overstuffed chair in the classroom. We visit with the kids at their desks and don’t line our rooms up in rows. We have student work on the walls instead of educational posters about motivation and attitude. Our desks are most likely a mess, the time to organize given to our kids. Our classrooms are a warm and welcome home to those many students who lack one. We end our school days with stories of delight, hope and discovery as well as hurt, loss and sadness.

As teachers, our lives are brim full with humanity, an infinite variety of it. We vicariously experience the lives of our kids. In that, we mold attitudes and hope; we create and build character, both ours and theirs. We have the power to change and save lives in the naïve drive to teach a lesson. How silly of us.

In the midst of the angst in all that seems dysfunctional in education, let us pinch ourselves once in a while, really hard, and remember how blessed we are to have discovered the most incredible “job” man can create. That job of only being a measly, blamed, ignored, underpaid, and unappreciated teacher. With gratitude, I am one.

Pinch me now.

Thank you to Brian Germain for illustrations. http://www.bgstudios.com/angry.html

Right On, Lucy!

Charles Schultz was so profound in so many ways.
(You'll have to click on this to read it... sorry. No time to fix right now.)

Dear Abbinestra. It's me, Leda.

Leda and the Swan
by Cy Twombly



2036 BC

Dear Abbinestra.

I’m in quite a labyrinth.

I really don’t want to tell my husband, Tyndareus- you know, those Spartans are mean dudes!!- about what happened to me about a year ago. (I can’t help but think that this’ll be fodder for painters and poets for years.) But right this minute I am in a real pickle!

I was hanging out in the library last night, reading a great book about some odyssey, when all of a sudden Zeus pops down from the cosmos in a rush to escape from some attacking eagle! I didn’t know it was Zeus at first because he looked like a swan, and one fine swan he was! But once I found out, I was surely not going to let him down.

To make an epic of this, I must say again, he was a hunk of a swan, and we sorta began to play around, and then he went crazy and chaos ensued and then he wouldn’t stop, and... I was mortified! And all on the same night my husband and I had been creation-making also!!

So here’s my problem. I delivered the triplets, Castor and Pollux, the boys, and Helen, a Trojan looking, gorgeous girl! Of course the handmaids took them from me directly, and then I come to find out that they’d HATCHED! Oh my Zeus! A plague be on me! Now I have three half-immortal kids, or one immortal and two divine, or whatever, and I’m having going to have a tough time raising them!

The heavens are rumbling miserably. I don’t know what to tell my husband!

Please, please send help with the speed of Mercury!

Love, Leda





Leda and the Swan by Michelangelo
(This was a dang cool "assignment" that integrated English and Art!)

Take a break and play with me!

A bug, a germ. A bug, a germ.

FINALLY!!

(This is the second Heron I painted;
my brother got the other for Christmas.
You may see a difference.)


Eleven pieces fit on the south wall of ALL FIRED UP, 830 Broadway, and I hope they will be there till March 31.
Can't wait for you to see!! Do, please, let me know if you managed to stop by!
I'm SO excited!

Lego Art. . . . For Hobie !

Christoph Niemann's illustrations have appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine and American Illustration. Look at his website for more incredibly clever design. The New York Times spotlights his Lego Art., as well as a number of other fun posts.

John Updike

March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009

Post Your Secret

When I'm angry, depressed, annoyed beyond all sense, I write. I usually write a letter, and of course never send it. Oftentimes, it takes me hours, sometimes days, to articulate how I feel in those perfect words and phrases. Now I have Post Secret!

Obama. From NY Times. Jan. 20, 2009

New York Times
The Greatest Expectations
By David Kelly

Has there been another Inaugural Address for which expectations were this high? Needless to say, if anyone can live up to them, it’s Barack Obama.

In the midst of his train trip to Washington on Saturday, Obama gave a speech in which one passage, at least, drew praise from conservative commentators:

While our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not. What is required is the same perseverance and idealism that our founders displayed. What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives — from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry — an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels.

Leaving aside the question of whether “ideology” corresponds to “small thinking” the way “prejudice” does to “bigotry,” I don’t remember conservatives calling for an independence from ideology, as they are now, in 1981, 1995 or 2001. In those years, that job belonged to Democrats.

Today, Obama will doubtless return to the same theme, one he also sounded in “The Audacity of Hope”:

My wife will tell you that by nature I’m not somebody who gets real worked up about things. When I see Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity baying across the television screen, I find it hard to take them seriously; I assume that they must be saying what they do primarily to boost book sales or ratings, although I do wonder who would spend their precious evenings with such sourpusses. When Democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese-Americans under F.D.R., the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams, or a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations as having been possibly worse, and suggest we all take a deep breath. When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal.

Still, I am not immune to distress. And like most Americans, I find it hard to shake the feeling these days that our democracy has gone seriously awry.

It’s not simply that a gap exists between our professed ideals as a nation and the reality we witness every day. In one form or another, that gap has existed since America’s birth. Wars have been fought, laws passed, systems reformed, unions organized, and protests staged to bring promise and practice into closer alignment.

No, what’s troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics — the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our seeming inability to build a working consensus to tackle any big problem. …

A government that truly represents … Americans — that truly serves … Americans — will require a different kind of politics. That politics will need to reflect our lives as they are actually lived. It won’t be prepackaged, ready to pull off the shelf. It will have to be constructed from the best of our traditions and will have to account for the darker aspects of our past. We will need to understand just how we got to this place, this land of warring factions and tribal hatreds. And we will need to remind ourselves, despite all our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams, a bond that will not break.

As for me, I couldn't ask for a more articulate, educated, thinking leader.

The O in Obama! You GO GIRL!!

Have you heard this lady SPEAK?! Forget her wardrobe. Yes, we love the kids and their someday dog. Obama is magic to our future. (It's coming!!) But Michelle Obama is also an ICON for women. Take a minute, listen to her and spread THIS word!!!

Youniverse.com

I never cease to be amazed at the fun stuff on the web. Youniverse will raise your spirits and at the same time provide you with a whole bunch of really neat pics! Try this little personality test first... (Read the top question and click the pic you think most agrees with it.)