A Happy Art Room

I'm retired now, but I'd still like to share these views of my former classroom.  Here's the color wheel table, made from a table I rescued a few years back.  The new art teacher is taking good care of it!

My room always included a place to focus on famous artists, though my inability to stick to a schedule convinced me in my last years of teaching to change this board to "featured artists" which enabled me to change it whenever I wanted to, and to leave it up longer than a month if desired.  The giant crayon pack was made by some 8th grade students many years ago.  Their children have now since passed through my classes, and were proud to know their moms built the crayons!

As for the totem pole and window shade - I used yellow contact paper and permanent markers for the sunshine, and painted the rest of the shade.  We could pull the shade down on rainy days and say "the sun is always shining in the art room!"  It is still in the art room.  The totem pole was given to an elementary teacher who was excited to adopt it for her classroom!  I'm glad it found a good home, since I am running out of places to put things.

My 6th graders were sort of middle school, sort of elementary school, so they needed a special set of grading guidelines.  Their first assignment was creating a "passport" where they recorded their thoughts and observations on each assignment/project completed throughout the year. I used the passport as a place to record their grades.  With the Common Core requirements, the new teacher has kept the concept of the passports but has had to make it a much more specific grading tool.  I'm glad I retired in time to miss dealing with the over-emphasis on assessment and data.  I  prefer to spend my time with kids MAKING ART!