Do What You Love, TEACH!

It’s Valentines week and we know many of you dread Valentines week at school, parties, candy, balloons, distractions to the learning environment. So we wanted to shift the focus and remind ourselves why we love teaching. Let’s share our LOVE of teaching! Here are a few reasons to love teaching from our amazing PLN!

Matt Grundler- @artguy76

What do I love about being a teacher? The way you can give a student who doesn’t feel like they succeed in the everyday curriculum, the opportunity to show off what they really know and understand. You can give a student a way to voice the things going on in their everyday life, you might not have known was happening in their life from the start! You give students, the opportunity to see that not all artists are old, dead people, that have an impact on their current lives. I am always telling my students, the goal is not to be an artist, but to at least be respectful person and be open to other ideas, even if they differ from yours.

Laura Grundler- @GrundlerArt

Once a teacher always a teacher. I actually have a hard time thinking of myself as an administrator (our kids tell everyone Mommy teaches teachers). Although, I don’t get to teach kids daily, any longer, the most favorite part of my job is planning and teaching professional development and guest teaching a lesson at one of our local schools. Recently, I was invited to teach visual journaling to entire middle school and loved every moment of it. So why do I love teaching? It’s the connections that kids make when they create! That moment when they realize that they created something they are proud of or even that moment when they realize that they pushed the medium too far and ruined it. It’s about those little moments of understanding that lead into bigger connections. Bigger life connections, as a former high school teacher one of my greatest joys is seeing my students be successful adults; Vanessa working at the local pharmacy, Priscillia teaching elementary bilingual students, and David a husband, father, leader in his church and teaching and leading an art department. They are my why, the why I teach. Now my hope is that I can help multitudes of teachers make a positive impact on their students, so they can have that proud moment when they see their students become awesome adults.

Russell Richmond @Richmondruss

I love teaching because i love students. I get paid to show inquisitive minded young people how to work with clay. I daily get to see them problem solve, use their creative mind, express themselves and enjoy being at school. It is a blessing to share my love of ceramics with students. They won't all be potters, most won't be, but I have a piece of opening their hearts and minds to the power and beauty of self expression through clay. The best part is seeing kids years later and having them come up and thank me for introducing them to ceramics and helping them learn to problem solve. I truly am doing what I love!

Debi West @dewestudio

I’ve been blessed to teach children through the vehicle of the visual arts for the past 25 years and it’s my greatest joy! Watching kids come up with creative responses to tell their visual stories is so magical! Watching them experiment with a variety of media and use these materials to make a piece of art, what’s not to love about that!! Now that I am retired-ish, I have the awesome opportunity to consult and work with teachers and students across the nation so my motto remains: “Together, We ART Better”!!

Tricia Fuglestad @fuglefun

I become completely immersed in my teaching everyday with my students; juggling the lesson planning, prepping materials, managing the little people in my classroom. Sometimes this “immersion” feels like I’m barely staying afloat. But when I stop and take note of the laughter, joy, and excitement of my little students, the sweet little drawings they hand to me, the stories about tooth fairies and learning to tie shoes the blur of my busyness comes back into focus. I helped put that bounce in their feet as they walk into the art room. I helped raise their self-esteem as we celebrate their art. I helped them understand something they never knew before. What a gift it is to be a teacher!

Nic Hahn-- @MiniMatisse

I love the making connections and celebrating others. I love connecting with young people. As the only Art Teacher in the school, I have the opportunity to connect over with 700 students. In addition, I get to celebrate their work using Schoology and Seesaw. This allows me to connect with their teachers and families at home. I want to celebrate my students even bigger… so I share their work on social media (MiniMatisse.blogspot.com, twitter, instagram and facebook). This in turn connects me with educators all over the world. This is all because I love teaching, love my students and love to celebrate the creation of ART!