Hello!
It has been a while since I've written any new blog posts. In August, I started a new job at a local school district--and now I am teaching high school art. I still have a few middle school posts that I started but never finished writing so I hope to go back and publish those eventually, but from this point on, most of my posts will be high school-themed projects. YAY! 

Can I just say, I love teaching high school? I taught elementary art for 9 years, middle school for 4 and now I am about halfway through my first year of high school and it is my favorite so far. In terms of projects that I am interested in, kids 'getting' my personality, and the pace of the daily schedule, it is like night and day from middle/elementary. There is a little more paperwork, and I had a bit of a learning curve as I moved to a new district, now I am implementing more technology than ever and it took a little bit to get used to the new gradebook and all of that, but the rest is so fun. 

For this post, I want to focus on Professional Development. Every school district does this a little bit differently. 

During the 2018-2019 school year, I will: 

• Read Drawing on the Right side of the Brain book. I will link my notes after reading. Write reflective blog posts about my implementation of vocabulary and academic language. My goal is to finis the book by June 2019. 
• Attend MAEA Spring Conference April 11th-13th 2019, and will attend sessions specializing in vocabulary and academic language. 
• Collaborate with other art teachers in the district, PLC fine art team and outside the district. I am currently enrolled in a graduate level oil painting class which runs from August 2018-May2019. During the course of this class, I collaborate frequently with cohort members comprised of practicing artists, local teachers and my professors. 

Today is MLK day so the kids had the day off. I spent the day in the art room of a local art teacher in a neighboring school district who was in session, making up a snow day. Man, I got so much information, I decided that the best way to reflect and delve into all of my ideas would be to draft this post, that way I can include links and photos. 

When I got to the artroom at the neighboring school, the teacher was in the middle of an advanced drawing class. The students were working on coloring with colored pencils. I was curious about her development of this skill and she shared some of the initial activities with me....and I promptly took scans and then forgot to save the scans on my notes and I just took a break from writing this to have a good cry....but I'm glad that I looked at what I actually got from her because I got a ton of great ideas!

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List of ideas:
Use www.sketchforschools.com to create custom sketchbooks for classes. First page includes a place for student's name, 2nd page is the course syllabus, pages 4-10 have examples of elements and principles. Page 11 has instructions on how to write an artist statement, page 12 has self reflection/rubric for artwork, pages 13-20 have weekly sketch prompts with an art style for inspiration. Wow, I cannot wait to design my own book!! After the first 20-30 pages, the rest of the book is #60 weight drawing paper for sketching and prompts. 

Supply bags. Using bigger than gallon-size bags, supply bags have the following: glue stick, drawing pencils, kneaded eraser, tortillions, sharpies and other supplies that kids have added. 

Use 'imagination at work' handout at the beginning of the year to check for creativity. (got a copy) This is also used in gifted testing. 

Final exam sample. In drawing, students were charged with combining a drooling dragon, an eccentric elephant and a maniac mouse into a single composition. The drawing should take the entire 90 minutes. 

Perspective: demo 2 point and 1 point; give students a small example to use as a guide for their own name (tailor the activity to each students ability). Some get to do 1 point, while others are encouraged to do 2 point. 

3-D class ideas: cardboard cube. Use x-acto to cut square pieces, tear away the cardboard to reveal the corrugation. Use a different design on each side, assemble into a cube. 

​Spirit animal quiz for a spirit animal mandala or other spirit animal project. 

Weaving loom. Raku firing. Make the loom out of clay, add texture and then when it is finished, weave in the center. 

Stonehenge paper roll from jerry's artarama. Amazing for colored pencil and drawing. Buy every 3 years it lasts a long time. 

Encaustic painting with Cray-Pen crayon melting tool. OMG these are amazing and I had to make a sample immediately. They aren't too crazy expensive and would be great for my Mixed Media class. 

Never Dull wadding polish. Buy it at wal-mart in the automotive section. You can use it to lighten magazine images and smear the ink around to create textured backgrounds. Useful in collages. You can draw on it with sharpie or gold pen. Cheap and useful for Mixed Media class. 

I cam home with a big armload of fabric from a surplus donation she gets every year for her fibers class. 

Also, she created a google drive folder and shared tons of images and reference materials with me. 

Looms, portfolios, weaving and basketmaking. Room layout. I need more electric pencil sharpeners that actually work. 

Tempera ink resist project for art 1. Collage candy wrapper for art 1. 

Inspiration for a display board outside the art room. Make sure the wood is 3/4" thick so I can use nails to hang stuff. Use nice carpeting on it. Can be done pretty cheaply. 

Looms!! She has her husband build these for her. Saving for later!! 

We also talked about art shows, I need 20 pieces for the COC show...she already has her pieces chosen! We talked about other exhibits in the area and the coloring book competition that she has been advertising. She gave me so many great resources on google drive and she is going to keep adding the folder. 

To me, getting to visit another art teacher's room and see how they organize things and to hear and watch them interact with their students is one of the most valuable things I can do to improve my skill. I made sure to ask her about assessment, and reflection, but it was wonderful to get ideas for future projects. 

I have a new art room and I am so excited for the change!

Here is a link to my old classroom flashback post. 

I have created a new Instagram account in order to share all of my new high school stuff. It is a public account so please follow me @cjhs_art

​Now, I would like to give you a little tour of the room along with some links to some of the new items I picked up this summer. Some things I made totally new, like the shibori fabric, that I tie-dyed last spring. And lots of things were 'thrifted' from local places like the DAV, flea markets, and the Habitat for Humanity. 

In the past, I've had a painted desk, but this time I wanted something a little quicker than that. I used the good 'ole liquid starch hack. I simply held the hand-dyed fabric up and brushed liquid starch over it. I stretched it and it smoothed out and it dried on the metal desk. Simple as that. 

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 I had to pack up everything in my old room, move it home, pack it up again and move it to my new room. My husband helped me with one load from my old school home, but the rest of it, I physically moved and loaded up all by myself. 

I've tried to be picky about what to keep and what to retire. And in some cases, I just wanted some fresh new stuff.

​Once I had the fabric on the desk, I had it in my head that I wanted to go for a bohemian vibe.

Literally everyone on pinterest is either using rainbows or farmhouse to decorate their rooms, but with my beaded mona lisa curtain, new plants, and with the tie dye stuff, neither of those 'vibes' worked for me. 

​I created a moodboard to kind of narrow down what I liked....because my problem is that I am a maximalist, not a minimalist.

So I like LOTS of stuff. A moodboard is kind of like pinterest, but its a little different. 

My pinterest boards had everything I have ever liked for classroom/home/diy inspiration and I was able to cull in into one quick visual board. 

I've tried to provide links to as many of the products that I purchased new at the bottom of this post as possible. 

The lamp shade used to be plain white, I just put a little fabric on it to make it match. Simple makeover. I don't know if I will keep the paint pallet table here, since this is where my over head projector pulls down, but for now it hides a bit of the cord vomit. I'm not 100% happy with this area, I still feel like it looks cluttered, but some of this stuff I will use a lot so I'm still trying to figure out what to discard or pack up. 

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The canvas fabric cubes that I had on the shelves looked too cluttered so I recovered these and added a wood tag and a little macrame. I still think the shelves look cluttered but I have a lot of stuff....so I might still need to edit them a bit. ​Below, you can see the small book shelves before I painted them white. Also, there was an annoying orange extension cord for the overhead projector that I have since covered in conduit. I hate it when cords show! 

I'm still trying to decide if the framed fabric needs a quote added in vinyl or paint......

This is my most obvious 'boho' corner. The green chair was at a flea market in Springfield for $23 and the brown was I found at habitat for humanity for $8. They are not in perfect condition, but I always loved it when my teachers had real furniture in the classroom, even if it was a little 'used.' 

The wicker stool was at DAV and I paid like $10 for it. The wicker vase and plant are the only other things I bought in the above picture. I figure all of this stuff will be great for still life drawing so it was worth the investment. 

​Below, you can see the other plant that I bought and the two plant stands I purchased. 

For the first time in 10 years, I have a window!! 

My room has 3 office chairs. I still opted to bring this yellow chair from home because I love it and I don't have a desk at home that it works well with.....

This room also has an exterior door, which has been really nice for moving and unloading stuff. I can pull right up to the door and viola! Unload! This is the view from the exterior doorway. Pottery wheels! And lots of wire shelving for clay. 

These tapestries are so cool! I seriously could not decide which one to get...but this one was the first one that I fell in love with. I put a link at the bottom of this post to the one I got, but if you have a big blank wall space, you might look at some of the others. I hung it with velcro and hot glue, but I don't know if it will stay because it was the Dollar Tree velcro.....

I have had some sort of star or paper lantern in every classroom I've ever had. At first, I wasn't going to have anything hanging from the ceiling but I spray painted the BIG gold one (used to be pink and white), and I had the green one at home. The white one is from home, I just added a little blue paint to make it look sort of tie dyed and now I can't imagine this space without the suspended stars. 

This room really is big, with a couple of different areas. 

These mirrors were $5 walmart buys. They came white and I just used a little blue acrylic to make a design on the edges. The map bunting I made several years ago from an old atlas. 

The open storage you can see in the mirror here is still a work in progress. I put a bunch of stuff up in the top that I might try to put elsewhere....Mostly, this will be a place where we store portfolios and 'in-progress' work. We can work on LARGE projects because we have plenty of space!

This is the view from behind my desk. These panorama photos are a bit misleading so I made a 360 video. 

The room has two entrance doors, three closet doors and one exterior door. Above is the view from one of the doors. Below is the view from the other door. 

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I like that the room has two light switches, I can have half of the lights on at a time, I should've turned them all on for this photo (and taken this single chair down, oops). But above the cabinets is some dead space that I have decorated with some oversized art supplies. Some people like to use that space for storage.....and I might need to do that eventually, but for now, I'm going to try to keep it uncluttered and 'decorative'. 

The scissors are paper mache that I made with a student teacher several years ago. They have travelled to most of my art rooms. This year, I added the letters MAKE ART, which I painted in July, inspired by the artist Jen Stark. 

The prisma color box used to be a box of crayons, but I painted over it this year. The 'messy' watercolor box and the big crayola marker are new this year. 

I had a tendency to clutter up the area above my cabinets in the past, you can see the old crayon box, which is now a prismacolor box...I still have the paint jar, but it doesn't look right with the other new stuff so I took it down. The globes I left at my old school and I also left the manikins. 

I am so grateful to the last art teacher for leaving such well-labeled and organized art cabinets, so helpful!! Made my job this summer a lot easier. 

Today, (after I took this picture) the custodian offered to adjust all of the desks so they are the same height, which I think will help when sharing supplies. The desks are like mini drafting tables, but the mechanism inside is a little janky so they don't really work right anymore. 

As you can see it is a nice big room. In at least one of my classes, I will have more than one 'class' at the same time...so it will be nice to have several learning areas to utilize. My new schedule is block, so I will have 3 long classes and one long planning period each day. I am most excited about the new schedule and the window in my art room. 

School doesn't start for another week, so I have been working on lesson plans and syllabi and new emergency sub plans. It has been a busy summer with moving, changing to a new job and learning all the new ins and outs, but it is also really exciting and I am looking forward to all the changes!

Product Links:
Here is all the stuff I bought. 

Growth mindset Activities Bunting on TPT, posted above my board. I printed it on a color printer and laminated it. 

Maritime Wall Tapestry Wall art for only $15.91 !! They have the Great Wave and Starry Night, but this one just felt right. 

Cavallini Papers Color Wheel Vintage Style I sprung for the one on the wood rod...even thought it was way more expensive than the poster by itself. 

Green Click 34 ft LED Outdoor globe String Lights with Remote Control. I like the warm light ones, and I bought a color string for my porch at home. 

Darice Square Bevel Mirror For $5 each at Walmart. 

Llama ceramic planter. Mine was a gift!

Mint Lexington 3 Tier cart I bought this last year at Michaels. 
Lamp, and chairs and wicker table were thrifted. 

​Paint Palette Wood Table on clearance at Hobby Lobby. 

I dyed most of the fabric myself. Using the Jacquard Mini Indigo Tie Dye kit at Michaels. 

I found the Rag Rug at Ross for $10 so I though it was a good buy. 
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Joann Fabric had a bunch of Indigo Shibori Decor items like pillows at the start of summer. I went in at the end to see what was left and 70% off, but most was gone, I got the idea to frame a piece of dyed fabric.... and I did buy about 3 yards of a shibori looking design, but I learned that it is so much cheaper to dye your own. The cut I got was like $20 and I used a coupon to make it a little cheaper. They have more fabric, if I need it in a pinch. 

Michaels has a bunch of 'indigo' accessories: duct tape, washi tape, ribbon, garland/banners, but most of it was not on sale and I could not justify spending money on it at full price. Now I need at least 3 more rolls so I will be going back. I couldn't find a link for this. 

This is a small bulletin board that I have outside my room. I printed a bunch of 4X4 photos but I didn't have a good wall space that looked right to use them as a mural so I ended up using them for this bulletin board instead. 

Finally, in case you are an art teacher and you are curious about the state of my closets....have a look here.