The Looking Stool

In my art room, all of the stools are painted by students from years past. When a stool painting starts to fade or get chipped away, it is taken out of rotation and someone from art club usually paints a new design. These stools become well-known icons in the room. Some students race into the room so they can sit on their favorite stool. They are, in effect, putting their bottom on the very image that they adore but they want to "have and to hold" that stool for the 45 minute class period. There are several students that love the Batman stool in particular. The only problem is that the bat logo has completely worn off. There are no signs of Batman anymore. It must have never had a sealant coat put on it. Nevertheless, the stool is still coveted. They race to get close to the Looking Stool, to an invisible image.  I guess it is why we stare at historic plaques and gravestones. It's just enough to recall an image for us that was once there. And it seems we humans want to get close to our images. 

Here is a short talk by the artist Lynda Barry about the power of the image:

How to Bury a Fly Named Chester

During my 8th grade advisory period (sometimes called homeroom at other schools), I was leading my students through an extremely important team-building activity...clearly. While this was happening, one of my students was chasing a fly around the room. After repeated attempts from me to get him to stop, I finally said, "Joe, that fly is the reincarnated spirit of my childhood pet dog named Chester. Do not hurt Chester the Fly. Join us at the table!" What did he proceed to do? He pointed his rubberband at the fly and WHAM! He got Chester! The poor fly's guts exploded on the ceiling.
Students swormed around the scene of the crime, swaddled Chester in tissues, and claimed tupperware as his temporary coffin. Then, students set up signs and made a little alter in the corner where Chester had died. Funeral arrangements began immediately. It just all happened so quickly.
The next day, I asked each student to write on a sticky note what they had learned from Chester the Fly. Even Joe. Some replies: "To not be annoying or else you'll get rubberbanded." "I learned that even a fly can be entertaining during Ms. Fitz's boring activity." "Even flies can have funerals."

Then, I brought my whole advisory group behind the school with the remains of Chester the Fly. We found a good tree and began digging with spoons. Our beloved swaddled Chester was laid to rest with the lessons he taught us entombed with him.

Chester taught me a lot, too. Life is short. Celebrate it.

Two Hands, One Mind

As I was giving instruction at the front of class the other day, an 8th grade boy sitting right in front of me began to crash around the contents of the pencil bin. While continuing to make noise, he put up his other hand, looked regretfully at me, and apologized for the other side of his body. Who can't relate to those opposing actions that jumble inside of us simultaneously? Who hasn't had opposing forces battle within us? Who hasn't wanted to do one thing, but still did the other thing?
 It reminds me of that psychology study where a man whose corpus callosum (the connecting tissue between the two brains) had malfunctioned and he watched as one hand buttoned his shirt while the other hand worked to unbutton his shirt at the same time.

So, what I want to know is, which hand wins?

The Middle School Sword Collection

So this isn't a sword, but it's cool.

You never walk the same path twice.

 It is an enormous privilege to spend extended periods of time with middle school students who are growing almost as fast as an infant's brain.  I can literally see them growing, both in height and intellect. I care so deeply about these students, it physically pulls at my heart. While I was on a run the other day, one of the eerily warm 60 degree January days, I felt light opening out of what some people call my heart chakra. It was an orange light. I painted a quick sketch of it (below.) I think the weather and a hardy run helped, but I attribute it to thinking about the enormous responsibility of being someone's teacher. I was not on drugs, everyone, just warm weather endorphins and sensing a real connection with my students! After the awful obligatory task of reducing a student's learning in art class to a letter grade, I set to reading my mini-surveys they filled out at the end of the semester. I realize more deeply how the smallest and biggest choices I make in the classroom can impact a student. No letter grade or scoring rubric will show that. I love these young people and I'm learning how to show that.

Another part of teaching art to middle school students is emphasizing the importance of respecting your space and the materials you use. Sometimes the emotional maturity needed to perform these tasks (i.e., participate in clean-up time) can only be described through theatrical interpretation by Paul Rudd:

Experiencing 7th Grade Through Jello

A new friend of a friend had recently mentioned this cool process of printmaking on gelatine. I was intrigued and invited her over to my place to do whatever it is you do with gelatine.

Deanna brought over a cookie sheet of jello that we broke into pieces on trays. Then we got out paint and ink to brush and roll over the surface of squishy gelatine. We pressed different kinds of paper on top to make simple monoprints and marveled at our happy accidents.

My own Jazz Map from years ago

Then, I immediately put all of my mental energy into how I would take this process to my most difficult class: 6th period 7th grade art. There are 34 of them, 25 boys, 2 who require teacher's aides, and have boundless energy. Did I mention they are in 7th grade? I looked at "map projects" online and started scanning images of cool maps in fantasy novels from the school library. There just was something not quite "gelling" about this fantasy map idea...but my worrying weekend was running out of time and I had to come up with something that connected to my arbitrary constraint (jello) before our class met again...all project runway-style. I decided to just make the prints with them and see what they should turn into...CRINGE! I know, a lesson without a clear outcome. How risky and irresponsible.

To get jello production underway, I made friends with the the Food and Consumer Sciences teacher in the school (Read: Home Ec). She had lots of pans and trays and refrigerator space for the jello. So one dark and stormy Tuesday, I stayed late in the Home Ec kitchen boiling water and Knox Gelatin (found in the baking aisle for $10.) I poured 2 packets of gelatine into each 9x9 inch pan, with about an inch high of water. (There were 16 pans in total that I split into two trays later for two classes of over 30.) I sloppily stirred the jello mixture with boiling water, let it sit for a few minutes, and then I stacked them into a fridge next to the school custodian's dinner. I had no idea if my slapdash recipe would turn out. I was imagining sub-par jello the next morning and emergency plan B lessons for my already disengaged 7th grade class.

Student work

The next morning at 6:45am, as the sun rose, so did the trays of extra firm beautiful clear gelatine up to the art room on a squeaky cart. The tactile qualities of jello are amazing, everyone. Touch your jello. I did the project with two different 7th grade classes and I only had one student eat a piece of jello. Despite my clear rules not to put it in your mouth since it had been touched by several hands and would be covered in paint, one student still did it on a dare. Thankfully, he returned to my next class alive and well.
So just like my own experimenting, I asked the students to experiment with multiple prints off of their jello tray.

Student Work

At this point, I was in the eye of the lesson storm. So they made some weird abstract shapes on paper. Big whoop. I went home and literally saw the writing on the wall...thanks to my friend, Jasmine, who was over at my house brainstorming with me on what to do with these prints. The scribbles/writings on my walls were old "map-like" drawings I had done years ago that I called my jazz drawings. They were supposed to represent energies like I believe improvisational jazz does. Great, now I should teach this. But HOW? I realized they had already been doing warm up drawing exercises in the beginning of class --some teachers call them bellringers, I call them Vitamin A of the Day (A is for art)---The warm ups were tonal drawings in their sketchbooks using cross-hatching, stippling, shading, and tonal scribbling. I took this skill they had just learned and gave them the option to create tonal drawings between and among the continents/islands of their printed maps...whatever mood that had surfaced for them that day. To my relief, the results were beautiful. As often happens at the end of a lesson when I take a long look at the work made, I fear I fetishize the students' pieces and see beauty and value that they don't notice or appreciate. Were they just following instructions in order to fulfill my own dictated aesthetic pleasures? After they finished their tonal ranges using the various drawing techniques, I asked them to serve their artwork on an attractive platter, i.e., a frame made out of colored paper. Then they were asked to title their abstract pieces with a mood. I noticed my own insecurities with making these subjective connections as many of their own titles were tentative and perhaps a bit forced. Showing mood through ink lines and jello prints is no small feat though. If I plan on cooking heaps of jello and doing tonal drawings again, I will push this mood connection a bit more.
A lesson from this lesson might be that ideas and solutions do not come from locking yourself in a room alone picking lint and crying. It came from processing out loud with other creatives, namely  my great artist and art teacher friends. This is what we do for a living: problem-solve and create together--sometimes through j-e-l-l-o.

Student work

Dear Lisa Frank, What Skills Do Middle Schoolers Need?

 As I am preparing to teach a class called "Middle School Skills" to a group of incoming 6th graders on Monday, I started digging for memorabilia from my own middle school years to try and channel the feelings of that time of life. (I've been told I am permanently 13 years old so this wasn't a big stretch.) I came across this amazing letter that dropped me right back into the hallway... carrying heavy text books, trapper keepers (those things were so awesome, a foreshadowing of my love of bookmaking and paper arts perhaps?), and erasable pens, wearing rolled plaid skirts with oxford shirts tucked in 'just enough', and perpetually denying that you had a crush on someone. And as you will see in the letter, I was declining offers to smoke Pixy Sticks. Allow me to explain. Remember those candy paper sticks filled with flavored sugar called Pixy Sticks? We'd go to Helen's corner store and buy the sugar candy and then we'd walk to the park, pound back the stick of sugar, (then some of us) would light the hollow paper wrapper at one end, and pretend to smoke it. I kind of feel like I'm going to get in trouble with someone for telling you this. But it happened. I saw it. I was too chicken to say yes but felt pretty cool to be asked. UGH! Now that is getting at the complex, socially awkward heart of middle school.

You can't tell this letter was addressed to me because my avatar (I didn't know what this word meant then) in junior high was Martha. I have no idea why. We also addressed letters to each other with our personal symbols so that if a teacher caught us they would have to figure out who was the "shooting yin yang star" and who was "martha a.k.a. squiggle line with dots."
I also don't know who wrote me this letter. The symbol system worked!!! I must have lost my ability to decode our pseudonyms when I turned into an adult! I have narrowed it down to about 3 friends from middle school who I am all still in contact with regularly, or at least on Facebook. (Hi guys! Which one of you wrote this? Are boys still putting your belongings in inappropriate places?) If you went to grade school with me, you can probably figure out who is who in the body of this letter. I hope there is enough distance from junior high now to share this. Ha! I'll let you all interpret the rest of this gem of a letter. But I'm still left to wonder, what skills do middle schoolers need? Are you there, Lisa Frank? It's me, Martha.