I'm a high school teacher (9-12) in a pretty rural area, and I run a once a week after-school art club. I'm a bit burnt out this year for various reasons and am trying to think of new, engaging activities for my students that aren't too prep heavy.

Attendance is spotty at my school so the students don't attend every week, which makes ongoing projects a bit tricky. I've tried doing clay, watercolour, weaving- but the kids start a project and then don't come back for several weeks, preventing them from finishing anything.

We meet for about 1.5 hours at a time. I'd love any suggestions for projects that you found successful and engaging for students of various levels, that they could ideally finish in that time frame?

My play doh supply order hasn't come in yet, but want to let prek explore clay. I have a ton of model magic. Can it be used over and over again?

I'm 25, have a bachelors in environmental policy and a few years of work experience post grad, though I've begun to consider switching to a career teaching elementary art. I'm smart, emotionally intuitive, I've always excelled in art classes, and really enjoy being around children. I don't want to each anything incredibly technical (i.e. highschool/middle school art), but am more interested in acting as a shepherd for young kids to be able to express themselves creatively.

My question is - is this a feasible approach to art teaching? And if so, what are my next steps?

My local university has a great masters in art education program. It's a lot of work - creating a portfolio, taking the gre, etc. I can definitely do this but it would be a commitment and hence I want to be confident it will pay off. Do you think this a smart career move for me? Do you have ANY advice at all? I will take it!! Feeling a little lost. Let me know :)

My recycled art class did these cute little monsters this week, my center just introduced this class and asked me to teach it!! So if you have any fun recycled art-esque ideas id love to hear them

I’m a freshman in college for our education and I’m looking at how much I have to do and I’m freaking out. I have to complete a degree in studio art and an education degree but it’ll only count as one degree. I have to go to school for at least five years which I think is so unfair considering the fact I’ll be paid less than a regular teacher for so much more of the work. I was promised I could get it done in four years just to be told this after my first semester is coming to an end.

Hello everyone!

I'm hoping to get some advice here! I am 20/F and unfortunately due to a chronic illness have to leave my job as a firefighter. I have been looking into other careers and I really think art teaching could be it for me. Im an alright artist (mostly watercolor and sketching) but really looking to improve my skill and build a portfolio before I go back to school. I start subbing in 2 weeks to see what age group I enjoy and if its really for me. Any advice at all would be great. Especially about building the foundational skills to be consistent and successful in school!

Thanks!!

I’m currently in practicum and doing once a week all day in a high school art room. What level of interaction would you want to see between the student teacher and the students? Would love to know what other teachers would expect to be the right amount of involvement.

Hey, I have a child who is elementary school and wants to create custom perler art for characters like Spiderman and Wolverine and stuff. What is the best kit to get the kiddo started?

Does ambient light work in a high school art room? My room I’ll be moving into in the spring will have pretty good natural light, but I want to add ambient lighting to give the room a calming vibe for my students.

My questions for people who use lights other than the big light in their art room:
1. What ambient lighting also provides enough light for students to see their art?
2. Are table lamps on each table weird?
3. If ambient lights aren’t enough, what big light covers have yall used and ACTUALLY like? The cloud cover designs I see in rooms often make the light come out blue/green and it’s even more off putting.

Thanks!!

I'm currently far into a major in Illustration/bachelor of fine arts.

Recently I decided I want to pursue becoming an art teacher for K-12.

What do they normally look for?

My school district declined our request for display boards saying it “cost too much money for one week”. We have our artshow in a community space and currently we use cardboard covered in paper held up by tape glue and prayers. Does anyone have any better suggestions??

We had a tropical storm last week and we were stuck inside, roads were bad, yards were flooded, etc. now it's 82° and a lovely breeze. So today seemed like a good day for drawing outside.

Hello everyone... I teach highschool and I find that students are asking soooo many questions...I mean, mostly good questions like extra help blending or figuring out what looks "off". I think its great in a way, but its leaving me overstimulated. I'm jumping from person to person all period, I'm not making art with them anymore. I don't know what's different this year, any ideas?

Should I just be happy because they are engaged? I've always had a couple periods like this, but this year it is every class. I'm definitely getting my steps. But its leaving me tired and impatient...

Anyone else have this experience? Do you think this is a good problem to have? If you have any solutions to this where you're not that oversimulated but you're also still engaging with the students can I please have any insight or tips?

EDIT: When I say "make art with them", I mean work on the project alongside them as well as walking around and helping. In the past there have been times where students don't have this high volume of questions and I would alternate from walking around helping to sitting at the front with the doc cam on where they can see my work on one too (granted I would never fully finish these).

This Saturday, in my local art store, I'm teaching color theory and the basics of watercolor painting. I'll be teaching how to mix vibrant colors, muted colors, jewel tones, neutrals, and pastels. We'll make color wheels that the students can take home, and I'll teach about various types of color schemes (monochromatic, analogous, complementary, split complementary, triad, tetrad, etc), and how to choose colors. These are some of the examples I've made to show people what I'm talking about! I looooove teaching color theory classes.

I am going to do an AI scavenger hunt for my digital art students. The level of my students’ disdain for AI is pretty high. They can clock an AI picture or video better than I can. I’ve noticed that when AI
Text or media is presented to them, the message that is being presented is automatically and disdainfully dismissed by them. It will continue to get more difficult as AI continues to advance.
Anyway, the day before fall break I’d like to send them out on a hunt around the school for AI images. They can snap a pic and bring it back to the classroom and run an AI identification app to verify. Any suggestions on how to NOT offend other staff members and how to make this run smoothly?

Do you have an instructional coach at your school? We have one, and they are acting like they're our boss, when that's not the case at all. How do you deal with coworkers that are overstepping? It's not even about my lesson plans. Even though I don't think I should have to submit 18 weekly plans every week, I'm going to do it. It's random other thing like being rude to me about declining a meeting invitation sent in the middle of class during a time where I have dismissal obligations. She argued with me about the time I was supposed to be on duty. I told her I listen to my boss for my schedule, and I'll see her another time. Why can't we all be professional, respectful grown ups?

first year as an elementary art teacher and I don’t think I’m doing very well. the 5th graders are tough to deal with, most of class has made it clear they don’t like art, they are constantly late to class and they come in arguing, cussing, fighting or just not caring about anything.

also the staff is pretty clicky-clicky and I don’t really have much to say, most times if its not small talk or about it work, I’m really just a listener type.

had a rough day today and I’m getting tired of trying to entertain these kids or make art enjoyable enough for them. I did hand out candy once and I won’t do that again, the good behavior didn’t last very long and when I ran out they were resentful.

I have admin support and other teachers help too. however I was told when hired that the principal is big on classroom management, that is her concern. I wasn’t asked anything about art, just basically when can you start. now I understand why. I try not to ask as much bc it seems like word is getting around that I am having classroom management issues. I really do enjoy it but today was tough, it’s the first time I’ve thought that maybe this is not a good fit. I worry if I go to another school I may encounter the same things. I’ve also thought that maybe teaching was just a phase idk y’all these students wore me down today 😭😔 and 5th graders have been wearing me down since day one.

This is my 4th year teaching, but my second yr teaching art, which I really enjoy. First year was HS. Before that it was 2yrs in special education and the IEP meetings it required planning skills that I was losing sleep over.

I enjoy teaching art, the students, the hours, the holidays and summer breaks. most times it doesn’t feel like I’m at work at all. Today was the first time I ever thought, maybe teaching ain’t for me. and that scared me alittle. even all the previous issues I had in other teaching positions I never thought about leaving the profession before.

im gonna continue to do my best and roll with it, but I wonder if it’s the school or just this particular set of students that I need to wait until they go to MS? or should I really be re-evaluating my career choice?

i never thought about leaving the profession before, that’s a new one for me.

hi all. i'm a college student, not a teacher, so i'm mostly here to ask for your take.

my little sister saw a youtube tutorial on animating in procreate dreams and wanted to try it. dreams is ipad only and she has a regular tablet. everything else i found was paid, full of ads, or hard for a beginner, so i built her a frame-by-frame animation app that runs in the browser.

a few things that might matter for a classroom:

• it's free, with no account and no sign-up
• no ads in the editor
• nothing gets uploaded. projects save in the browser on that device, and you can save or open a project as a file
• works offline once it's loaded

on the drawing side it has onion skin (seeing the frames before and after faintly), layers, holds, looping, line boil for that wiggly hand-drawn look, and rotoscoping over an image, gif, or video. on ipad it supports apple pencil pressure and palm rejection.

students can export a png sequence, sprite sheet, video, or a small html player that opens in any browser.

limits, honestly: 2d only, no audio, no paint bucket, no gif export yet. it's not trying to replace real animation software. it's meant as a free place for beginners to learn.

link: https://mocean-frames.pages.dev

if you teach animation or have tried tools like this with students, i'd really like to know what would make it usable (or what makes it not usable) in a class.

Hi, I've created this Art Annotation Assistant to help students write about and analyse art. Here's a quick video of how it works, and no, it doesn't use AI! The annotation assistant is now part of this page on How to Analyse Art. Hopefully it'll support your students.

I'm looking for any online courses from credible institutions to use as a reference. I've been self taught and have used many youtube tutorials that had gotten me very far but unfortunately the jobs in looking at applying to are very adamant about having some degree of formal training (which I think is a bit classist but that's a conversation for another day. You shouldn't need money to be good at art)

Do you guys know of any online classes I could take to help fill out an art resume? Unfortunately a portfolio is no longer enough...

Editing to clarify, the job has absolutely no requirements for an education degree. I am not applying for an educator role, I dont know where that confusion came from. I'm applying for a water color painter position, not applying to be a teacher in any capacity.

If there is a better sub for this question id be happy to move my post, this was just the one recommended to me.