We had the pleasure of multiple guest speakers this week who had a lot of information regarding working with huge groups of young students as well as with managing classroom materials within a budget. I got to get a better idea after hearing these presenters just what the rhythm of elementary art projects entails, as I tend to get stuck in the daily progress of high school art courses. This is especially true after being a college student for so much time, where we are entrenched in our art courses on a daily basis, it takes a moment to remember what it’s like to have art courses every three days or so, and to have to get reacquainted with whatever you were working on each time.
It makes sense then that elementary projects tend to be more spontaneous and have to be able to be experienced and jumped into on any given day. Our presenter explained that many of her lessons were just one-day experiences. There is also the matter of attention span to consider, as a three day lesson for a student on an A,B,C schedule might take weeks to get through. Given how often absences can be during this time, elementary students need to be able to be fully engaged regardless of whatever previous day they may have missed.
Overall the presenters exuded an enormous amount of passion for their positions alongside an acknowledgement that it can be very difficult at times. One presenter explained that she sees up to 850 students over a given week, which is hard for me to wrap my head around as I try to keep track of a fraction of that amount. I expect this is a skill that is developed over time.
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