Middle School Art Teachers

Hope everyone is enjoying your summer vacation.  I know school is right around the corner but we can still enjoy the time we have left.  Like most of you I have been spending much of my time expanding my knowledge and practicing what I preach.

I am back from our summer council meeting in St. Charles where we spent a lot of our time preparing for the 2012 Spring Art Ed Conference.  It is in the preliminary stages but from what we have so far it looks like it will great as usual.

Right now I would  like to plug for the Fall Conference at Knobnoster State Park.  I know many of you who have attended, know what great lessons as well as activities go on there for those of you who have never attended you are missing out.  I know also that money is tight and schools are not paying as much for outside Professional Development but something to keep in mind the Fall conference is a bargain when you compare to the cost.  Which is a selling point, ask what it cost to send a core teacher to one of their conferences.  Another way to get get permission volunteer to present at the fall conference.  Presenters get a $25.00 discount on the conference admission (which I let my district take) for allowing me to attend and in most cases if you tell your district you are a presenter they will not turn you down.  It makes them look bad if they do:-)  Being a presenter can be a lot of  fun but if the though of presenting something to you peers makes you nervous, share it with a partner and do a co-presentation.  If you are interested in doing a presentation please let Rebecca Moppin know (just click on her name in the council page of the MAEA website) or you can contact me and I will pass your info on.  Hope to see you all at “Knob” which by the way, I am doing a glass fusing lesson there this year myself.

Wow it has been a while since I posted here.  Here it is almost the end of another school and what a crazy year it has been with all the budget cuts and staff reductions.  Then to add what has gone on in Jefferson City with the attempt to eliminate teacher tenure and tie performance to our evaluations.  The great thing that happened though a victory for Arts Teachers is the guarantee of PD at our regional development centers.  On the National level the restoration of the Arts In Education program the only education program that is to be restored from the previous cuts this year.  Even my Principal gave me an article from one her professional magazine about the need for quality Visual Arts education in our schools.  I just hope she read it before giving it to me. LOL  Well I am keeping this post very short.  I just wanted to say hi and bye for now.  Sorry for the long time between posts.  I will try to start posting more often.

Wow what a great conference we had this Spring at least the parts that I was able to attend.  I am sorry, I was unable to attend Saturday but I was called away on family business.  Thank You Leesha, for filling in for me at the division meetings.  For those of you who were able to make the conference I hope you enjoyed it.  For those of you who were unable to attend we missed you and hope you will be able to come this fall.

As you all know the State is very short of funds for next year so we really need to work hard to continue to promote our programs.  This is especially true for those of us at the middle school levels where the only requirement for school districts is to offer “arts programs”  Thanks to those of you who wrote to DESE about MSIP they at least temporarily tabled there discussion about cutting the arts requirement but we still need to remain vigilant and keep presenting our case.

Hey all you Middle School Art Teachers

It is almost that time again many of us are getting ready yo get back into our classrooms, just to start another exciting new school year:-P This also means that the Fall Conference is not far away:-) In fact a few of us just got together today and stuffed envelopes with flyers for said conference. This means Sharon will be getting them out in the next day or two so keep your eyes open for them.

I would really like to have a large turn out of our Middle School division members so come one, come all and if you have any art teacher friends who have not been to Knob, talk them into coming.   Some of you all may not know this but we can now sign up and pay for the conference online.  Simply go to the MAEA home page maea.net then click on Conferences and follow the link to the 2008 Fall Conference.

One last thing I really appreciate those of you who have already sent me your e-mail addresses. Those of you who have not gotten them to me please get them to me as soon as you can and feel free to add my e-mail address to your address list artistic252@comcast.net  As I said I have the list that out Membership Chair Linda Bowers gave me but I am finding many of the e-mail addresses are either incorrect or not working.

See you all at Knob.

MIDDLE SCHOOL DIVISION REPORT

Everyone is having a good summer, many of our teachers are teaching summer school while others are enjoying vacation time, and working on various summer projects.

I am personally working on getting all of the Middle School Art teacher members e-mail addresses together into a global e-mail address list. Linda Bowers our membership chair, recently gave me a list of Middle School/ Junior High members which includes e-mail addresses as submitted by our members. I also have a few members who have sent me their updated e-mail addresses. Once I complete the address list I will be sending out an introductory e-mail to everyone on the list. Hopefully it will get by the many junk mail filters.