Having taught art and technology for more than 34 years, a life working with young people kind of gets under your skin in the best kind of way. With the social security loophole, forcing 2000 educators like myself into early retirement,it was a struggle at first to figure out what I could do with my life beyond the class room.
You see I absolutely loved teaching. I was living my dream with the unique opportunity of being able to teach art both on and off the computer. My art classroom was an amazing Mac Lab. In my assignment prior to retirement, I had numerous preps with first through fourth year very talented art students.
During the final years, my students and I collaborated on eighteen feature articles in School Arts Magazine. McGraw Hill contracted me to write Digital Studio Projects, it was truly an incredible series of experiences which were complimented with speaking engagements at both state and national art conferences. Each time I met very devoted art educators who shared my love for the profession.
The long story short of it is I have/had so many ideas that I refused to just allow them to just remain buried in a file cabinet, I want to share them. So many of my friends told me to "throw all of that stuff away." I could not do that, one day I woke up realizing that a presence on the web along with the newest technologies would allow me a forum to share these chronicles of my teaching life. My intention is to do just that... share all of the lessons,art work examples, and other strategies which brought about successes in my art classes so that others could realize some of the same.
I am interested in hearing from art educators to know what they need most and how I can be of assistance.
