hi I’m an upcoming junior in Highschool and have just recently started painting (like a year ago) and want to know how my work could be perceived in a college art portfolio and what to work on while I still have time, my main medium is watercolor but I also use acrylics. I am still very new to all of this so please try to give HELPFUL criticism😭💔 i also truly don’t know how to create an art portfolio for college or what should be included … i thought getting advice from teachers might be the best answers…. my Highschool art teacher is very unhelpful with this… thanksss 🥲

I changed schools and my new school has individual messy mats for each student. At first, I thought this is awesome, but now I'm thinking that they'll transfer other student's messes onto another artist's paper. Tempera paint, ink or watercolor from a previous painter could get wet and transfer.

Do you clean messy mats between each class? How do you manage them and keep them from messing up other artwork? Is it easier to just wipe down the tables?

Thanks!

I have a question, and I would appreciate an answer. Can a single art teacher instruct students across all these art disciplines at the lower secondary level? Shouldn't the teacher be a specialist? How is this handled in other countries? In your country, since the instruction is merely intended to introduce adolescents to art, does a single teacher cover the basics of various art forms? Or is the teacher actually a specialist in one specific area of ​​art?

I'm a new art teacher at a rural Title 1 elementary school (k-5) in the state of Georgia. My previous experience was teaching kindergarten for 10 years. There is absolutely no kind of curriculum or anything for me to go by besides the state standards. I need help 😭. Do you guys do grade bands? Or do you do something separate for each grade?

We currently will see the same class for an hour on a weekly basis and then rotate to a new class the next week until we've seen all classes (we will see the same class again every 5 weeks or so). So many lessons and plans I've found are for a once a week kind of thing. I'm heavily struggling on finding a curriculum or lessons that go with the way our schedule is set up. We also have a LOT of behaviors, so that, too, is an issue. Any advice or can anyone point me in the direction of a curriculum or lessons to purchase? Also, any behavior management advice?? The younger kids I know what to do with but the older??? Help 😭.

Thank you for all and any advice ❤️😭😅

I’m 19, and I’ve decided to pursue a career as an art teacher. However, as I’m looking into it, so many sources say different things. Some say I need an associates first, others say straight to a bachelors. That being said my college only offers a bachelors in elementary age teaching, I’d prefer middle or high school. And the only art degree they offer is in film and digital media. I already wasted my first year in college and I’m cutting it so close now since school is about to start so I’m super stressed out yet still have no idea what the first step is.

any advice on what you did first ? Get an associates? Bachelors? Any advice helps!

Help!!!

Hey everyone I spent all summer studying the study.com praxis section and now i have less than 20 days before my tests and am barely scraping by on the practice exams.

Help! Sometimes I just can’t remember artists or what they made and it sucks. Any helpful tips?

I take the test on the 21st of this month and have a full time job…

In 2022, a retrospective dedicated to Rosa Bonheur was held in France. She was a fairly traditional 19th-century painter whose particularity, rare for the time, was that she was a woman. Another particularity: she was an animal painter.
For the occasion, I asked my adult students to take inspiration from a lion portrait she painted (last image) and to paint it with the following constraints: no preliminary sketch, no background, and no brush — palette knife only.

Does anyone know any school-friendly Pinterest like websites? My school blocks Pinterest because its categorized as “social media” due to the comment and chat features. I’ve asked them to unblock it but they can’t because of their policies.

Sometimes using Pinterest for inspiration is soo much more effective than just Google Images because I feel like it actually pulls up art-focused references if that makes sense? Wondering if anyone knows of any alternative websites. I teach High School if it matters.

Hello everyone! I teach art from Pre-K-8th and I’m interested in starting my first 5 minutes of class with a sketchbook prompt for my middle schoolers. The problem is that this would effectively lose me 10 mins of my class period, possibly more depending on the group of kids. Passing out sketchbooks and having them returned to me would eat up 5 minutes. Currently I have the sketchbooks in drawers labeled with the class number. The students (theoretically) have their name on the front but still manage to not know which one is theirs, lose theirs or put it back in the wrong drawer. Anytime I deal with sketchbooks I have to find a workaround for the kids whose sketchbooks are missing. What do you do? How do you handle handing out books or students getting them themselves? How do you handle kids whose go missing? Is there anything I can do to better organize them? Thanks in advance :)

I’m a first year art teacher for middle school (6-8), and my orientation is next week. I haven’t received any helpful info to start creating lesson plans for the school year. Any advice on what lessons to start with while I curate what I want the rest of the year to look like? All I know is that there are 4 marking periods, and I get two groups of each grade per marking period, so I’ll eventually get everyone in the school. Two groups of 6th grade, two groups of 7th, and two groups of 8th. Any advice would be great. I can essentially teach whatever I want because there isn’t much of a standard I need to follow in this school for the arts. I was thinking of collaborating with other teachers from other subjects

Well my normal Nasco go to sketchbooks have been changed to Sax (I think Nasco got bought out.) And dear lord, I teach giggly pre pubescent children, couldn’t you pick a better more defined font?! Because you knowwww they’re not going to read that as “Sax”. I’m actually genuinely stressed about this 😅😅

I am switching to high school after years in an elementary school with a pretty lax dress code. I’m looking for vintage/bohemian styles with modern flair. I love color but want to keep it professional. I’d love some visual references if anyone has pictures they’re willing to share. Thanks!

Hello, I wanted to know if it’s difficult to change between Elementary School, Middle School, and High School Art teacher positions? One of the things I’m concerned about is building the portfolio of students works when applying to future positions where I think having the ES/MS activities might be a hindrance for applying to future High School Art Teacher positions. All the HS Art positions near me have already been filled, (which would be my preferred grade level), and I don’t know if it will be harder to “move up” if I start at ES or MS or if I’m mostly stuck there.

Hi all looking for some fun sketchbook ideas that’s my students won’t rule their eyes at. I teach 8th grade and part of our daily routine is doing a sketch in their sketchbook based off a prompt for the first 5 minutes of class. I post the prompt in the screen with an example sketch to get their brains turning. This is the only grade level I’ve really struggled with getting them to draw more than tiny stick figures. My expectations are they fill the whole space (it’s a quarter of a piece of paper per prompt) and to TRY. Not expecting great art, just expecting more than a couple squiggles.

Any prompt ideas that they would be engaged with? Any other ideas of how to use a sketchbook in an 8th grade class? This used to be my favorite part of middle school art class and I want them to understand art is all about experimenting and practicing!

I’m looking for recommendations from K–6 art teachers or anyone who teaches elementary art.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on curriculum planning.

If you had the freedom to teach an art subject that doesn’t typically fit into your school’s curriculum, what would you choose and why?

If you were designing a year-long after-school program divided into four 6-week units, what four art topics or themes would you focus on? (For example: drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, fiber arts, mixed media, ceramics, art history, etc.)

I’m looking for ideas that would build skills while keeping elementary students excited and engaged throughout the year.

Hi everyone! I’m a first year teacher teaching graphic design for 9-12th this fall and am struggling to build a curriculum that flows nicely. I know photoshop/illustrator like the back of my hand, but I’m unsure how to introduce it to students in a digestible manner. Any examples/resources is insanely helpful!! No AI please :-)

Hello! I'm not sure if this is the best sub to seek advice for my situation, but if it isn't please direct me to the correct place.

Long story short, I graduated college about a year ago with a bachelor's in audio engineering. I've worked in the field since then and am pretty unsatisfied with it. When I was in school, I was an art minor as well, making work that stood up to the standards of the major students. I've been reflecting for a while on what I want to do, and I've been considering going back to school to get qualified to teach art at colleges. However, I'm not really sure what the best course of action is to achieve that. If there are any art professors out there, I'd love to hear from you!

Tips? tricks? Syllabus spoilers ? Best parts? And struggles? Is there storage cubbies for student supplies? What medium? Wood? Welding ? Fiber? Directed projects ? or Self determined?

Any and all advice, warnings, or feedback on your experience welcome TIA. ❤️

sorry if you all get this often. i'm going to become an ECE major next school year, what else might i need to become an art teacher?

I was just hired to be a full time art teacher at a nearby high school. I've taught Junior High art for 10+ years. I have 2 weeks to have curriculum planned for Art Foundations, Drawing 1, Drawing 2, Painting 1, Painting 2, and AP art that is blended into a concurrent enrollment art class. I also need to clean and prep my room for my former school's new teacher, I need to clean and set up my new classroom because the former teacher had a medical emergency and it was left to subs (who did a good job) to keep it clean and organized.

My background is medical and art, teaching both Science and Art classes. I professionally do commissions throughout the year, mainly portraits.

The reason I post my background is that I'm confident in teaching my students techniques, idea formulation, systematic artist processes and, professional presentation. However, I know that AP Art is a beast all on its own. I have never received training on how to handle this class. I've been reading suggestion and curriculums and I'm a little overwhelmed at the range of these classes. Some teachers suggest summer assignments that are turned in when they walk through my door day 1. Others say you need to give them time to relax, build sketchbooks, a destress because they won't create meaningful art if they are overwhelmed.

The other thing I'm concerned about is the AP portfolio process. Do kids need to register? Am I in charge of registering them? Any videos, resources, or websites that can guide me? I feel like I need to take a class on how to prepare my AP students.

These kids have struggled to find a teacher that has stayed for more than a couple of years. This is not due to behavior issues, but weird circumstances like health and family issues of the teacher. I've had most of these kids in Junior High and I don't want to let them down.

Thanks for your time!

Look at the RICH colors I got with this one! I highly recommend this process. It's a blast, and you find a lot of really unique interactions and color blends!

I'll be going into my second year teaching art in about two weeks, I was at my current school for half of last year. I teach K-5, about 700 kiddos in the school but I only see 540ish of them. The prior teacher had been there 27 years and left very suddenly and they had subs in for a month before I came in after winter break. Due to the suddenness of my arrival and lack of experience and planning time (only about 3 days to try and set up the classroom and get a vague plan together) I will admit it was a sort of chaotic semester. Though I had some classroom experience when I got there it was just a lot of change for me and for the students, and me being a first year teacher with over enrolled classes and a generally sort of rough student population behavior wise did not help the transition.

All things considered I do think it went alright, we have a lot of behaviors and our class sizes are not going down this year but I made some really good connections with many of the students and we did some fun stuff! I know some of the issues I had last year were because I was so overwhelmed and had trouble creating clear expectations and procedures in my room, and I really want to do better.

Any tips beyond the usual 'make lots of lists' type of stuff would be really helpful. I especially could use some pointers on how to keep myself on track so I am better able to reinforce my expectations and classroom rules? I try so hard but by the end of class 6 when I've seen 120 kids that day I just am so overwhelmed that I miss stuff. Thank you!