Lesson Plans and Curriculum

For over 18 years, I had the pleasure of over 150 -200 students coming through my classroom door each school year. In that time, I learned what works, and what doesn't work with kids in the visual arts/CTE. Like any good teacher, I was always changing, evaluating, and trying to do more in the precious time I have with each student. These are all works that students really enjoyed and is just a snapshot of some of the fun we had over the years. Most of these lessons I designed, backwards planned and created from the soft skills or problem solving lessons I wanted students to master. And while I am keenly aware that most of my students may not go on to be artists, I hope the problems we solved, and skills we conquered together in that classroom will go on to serve all of them far into their professional career choices.

Although I’m no longer in the classroom, I cannot help but go down memory lane looking at some of these. For those of you thinking about going into teaching, I never felt that what I did was work, I simply shared my love of creating with my students.

Ceramic Rainsticks

The Rain stick Project is one I typically taught in the spring. It's a very difficult project due to all the parts of the rain stick and the fact that we want them to actually make the sound of rain. I got the idea to do rain sticks with my students in 2014 when I went to a workshop and saw a ceramic artist make these using nails for the insides. I had always wanted to make rain sticks but couldn't figure out how to make them with students without using nails. Over time, with trial and error I perfected my idea, and came up with a way to use coils instead of nails. I then enhanced the lesson by collaborating with the choir teacher at our school and taught the students about pitch and tone, something I didn't even understand until I had learned myself. Some years I do this as a cross-curricular lesson with science, focusing on endangered species and use science terminology and create habitats in the backgrounds of the rainstick. The last two years I taught this lesson, I have given students a choice, either they can make an animal, or they can focus on the seasons, which is a review of our first project, the 'wabi-sabi' teacup project. Technically, this is a very challenging assignment for first year ceramic students, but I've been able to break down the steps into smaller mini lessons ("chunking" we call it) and differentiate for those students who need extra guidance. Rainsticks have become a favorite project of all everyone and I'm happy to be able to offer it as an option to my students!

Slab Pitchers

Slab Pitchers are an assignment that I developed from a workshop I took from Elaine Pinkernell.  Elaine is a very accomplished ceramic artist that practices in the bay area. She works mainly with slabs and taught me the "Tar Roof" paper method. We have patterns cut out of tar roofing paper that we use, and then roll out our designs. (I buy a roll every year from home depot.) This pitcher is one continuous slab around, one bottom piece, one spout, and one handle. Students then learn new techniques for glaze application and we sneak in a little color theory in this lesson. It's a strong foundational skills builder, and we end up with a functional piece of pottery that everyone can be proud of.

ValUE WEBs

This assignment was originally inspired by Hannah Smith, fellow art educator. I have altered it and changed it to fit my own needs over the years, but it's a valuable assignment for beginning drawing students for so many reasons, the first being it helps them learn the drawing pencils and the value scale beyond the traditional boxes of lights to darks. The end result is one that many students never thought they'd be able to achieve, and it takes very little skills to be successful, just time and determination.