I run an art camp for about 5 or 6 weeks every summer. I keep classes small and affordable so it does not feel like "work." These are kids that love art and are often self motivated. Those that come but obviously have no interest, are sent home with a refund. 

It is during these summer sessions that I tweak my lessons and experiment with new ideas, some of which I get from the Facebook Art Teacher's group. (It's private so you'll have to ask to join.)

One of our most popular weeks is "CrAzY Art" week where we do things not allowed in a traditional setting, like making paintings by walking through paint and onto a canvas, setting fire to sticks and drawing with home-made charcoal, squirt gun paintings, painting with 3 foot paintbrushes... you get the idea.

Someone posted a nifty idea of putting paint in a tight little lidded container with a bit of water and Alka-seltzer to make exploding paint. We're gonna try that!

I saw an neat exhibition where an artist cut open stuffed animals, filled them with Quickcrete and later took off the skins. They looked like creepy Frankenstein-pets. We're gonna try that too.

As for some more traditional projects. I've done sunset silhouettes 
but this time we're going to try moon light silhouettes with tree branches, another project from the facebook group. We'll make some Andrew Goldsworthy style nature projects and photograph them. We'll make a sculpture head with cup up top to grow grass for hair, and a bunch of others. Projects that go well will make it into my public school classes, those that do not, will just be fun experiments. 

Summers can be a great time to experiment without an administrator forcing benchmarks or observations upon what you do. Every year I end camp (this my 20th year) I am always anxious to try out new projects when I return to school.

Make no assumptions, "special" students should not be treated "special."

Before teaching in school, I worked in several group homes for autistic and medically disabled folks...

Kids are kids. Read IEPs and 504s first for seating issues, then the fine points. Do a variety of projects, some messy, some neat, 2D and 3D, every kid will find their niche. Be ready to simplify, but also to challenge. Some kids will struggle making a line, others may surpass your own skills.

As soon as someone tells you not to do a certain kind of project for special needs kids, doubt that advice deeply. If they are ALL autistic, there may be a few true-isms, but even there, skill sets are broad.

If any come with an aide, USE THAT RESOURCE, they hate to be board too. If you work in a district that is "specials focused," the skills you use there will FULLY apply and help you deal with ANYTHING in public schools. I know I am a better teacher because of my years working in group homes, and there may be one in your local neighborhood. I highly recommend education majors in college seek out such jobs to help hone their skills. 

"But what about students that are severely disabled? Surely they need to do something different?!"

NO. If you have a student with "special needs" and they are integrated into your "regular" class, They should use the SAME materials, and do the SAME lesson, UNLESS SAFETY IS AN ISSUE.

So when my class is doing gridded self portraits, my special needs students do what they can at their level of ability. Maybe they just draw a face on paper and color it. Their aide can prompt them to include similar features to their own; freckles, glasses, ponytail... Maybe the aide can draw a face very lightly in pencil and that child can trace. Maybe a student will just be able to draw head shaped circles by themselves, and maybe it's hand-over-hand for a severely disabled child who is able to choose colors. 

When painting, having all the available colors might be fine, but for some, one color and a brush is enough for an experience. EVERY LESSON YOU DO can be simplified to the bare essence of what is to be learned.

In some cases my special needs kids will finish far quicker than my other students. So when my class focuses on 1 thing, my specials need to do it about 4 to 8 times 'cause they are so fast. So sometimes they do the first or last one on the "good paper" and the others on free copy paper I sneak from the office as practice. If class is too long for them, like for block scheduling, talk with the aide, and see if at every half-way point they can go for a walk around the building, or go in the hall to stretch, get a drink, some little break may help. While in the hallway they could complete a simple task: Find 8 things that are red, or 6 square things, cubes, rough/smooth, etc, exploring the art elements with each visit.

When you have a gifted student in your class, you know to push them a little harder than the others. Show them a little 2 or 3 point perspective while the others struggle through one point. To show them how to stipple or crosshatch when others struggle with just making a smear for a shadow. Add background details, highlights, textures so that you can meet their needs, so they have pride in their gifts and soar.

Here's my one "true-ism" for specials: Treat them just like any other kid but be ready to modify to meet their specific needs... as we do with ALL our students... and once in awhile, one will surprise you. 

For more about the needs of Autistic Students, please visit HERE. 

Below the images I have a letter you can give to your aide in helping with your special needs students.

With all the things we're required to do all year, there's always more... and one important one is to promote your department from within!

Though we often think art promotes it'self, you can see enrollment fluctuate, which may even have an impact on your employment. A fully tenured, exceptionally talented art teacher can be let go (RIF = Reduction in Force) if students do not register for their classes.  Your guidance department may not view art as important, or have misinformed ideas of what we really do.

Every year that students begin to schedule classes, I make a concerted effort to be more visible in school. The image in this post is a fun structure project we do outdoors while students are having lunch, in full view of everyone. We also put work outdoors, and make it more visible in the halls.

• Display really fun looking projects during scheduling weeks.
  
• Display work in the Library or other major gathering areas.
  
• Connect 1 on 1 with your freshman, and be sure they stay in art.
  
• Remind students to tell their talented friends to sign up for art.
  
• Show how "art kids" score 100 points higher on average on SATs.
  
• Have the video club feature art the weeks of scheduling.
  
• Start an art club and have them help promote during scheduling.

Consider too making connections to members of your guidance department, especially those in charge of scheduling. Touch base, tell them what you are up to. Send them good news when you have some about a difficult student. No one like to just hear about problems. Donate some art to them that kids have left behind. With very little effort, you can have these people advocate better for you, and you will be fully employed.

A common resource for art is the book, "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." It's full of some really great skill building exercises for artists young and old but backs up it's approach with the theory that the right side of the brain is more creative, and the left is more logical.

This myth has been debunked through a massive study of 1000 brains by Plos One with more articles HERE and HERE. So if the foundation of Betty Edwards' book is false, does that mean one should throw it away?

Hardly. Many of the exercises are very helpful in teaching student to truly "see" what they are drawing as opposed to drawing what they think they know. Though I don't teach from the book, I still use several of the techniques, like drawing upside-down when my students do grid portraits. It slows them down and their work looks better. Others love the negative space drawings, or the line drawing approaches. Betty Edwards offers a lot of tools to add to your toolbox. 

My main point is that if we continue to talk about it in terms of left and right brain, we sound a bit like "flat earthers." When advocating for the arts within our schools and community, it's important to avoid coming across as ill-informed. Creativity and cognition are spread throughout the brain and is far more complex than left and right.

​Keep the tools, lose the hyperbole. 

For all of my 25 years of teaching art I have introduced my students to the great movements of art. Though vast and dizzying in it's array, I have chosen to start with the Renaissance, and end with Pop Art. So my full list would include the previously mentioned two plus Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, Romantic, Realism, Impressionism, Cubism, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Dada, and Surrealism.
 
Arguments can be made to add earlier art movements, and we do touch upon the ancient and modern styles, but these are the 13 movements I require my students to know. There is some "fudging" so for example, we consider "The Scream" an expressionistic work because of it's heightened emotional value, so too is Fauvism put under the same umbrella, and we lump Post-impressionism into Impressionism because it helps kids recognize the key features of bold brushwork, working from observation, and a hidden "Z" pattern within the paintings. My feeling is that after an introduction, later classes, like Art 2, 3, 4, or AP can partition movements a bit more precisely. I lose no sleep if a first year art student calls van Gogh an Impressionist; actually I rejoice!
 
My final exam is one where students see 60 works of art, some they have seen before, some that are new, and they must use the visual clues to surmise the correct school of art. We play games, groups battle groups in a game-show-style contest to guess the art movement. They begin with a one page outline, and gradually move to no resource at all. Most do very well, but it has always been a challenge.
 
I had an epiphany one day and made this flow chart. It's hardly complete, and only gives a bit of direction, but students found it very helpful. It won't work for pre-renaissance movements, and some off shoots like Northern-Renaissance, or Grant Wood's Regionalism, Grandma Moses folk works, or Whistler's Aesthetic Movement, but it does do an awful lot that is helpful. Kids spot how American Gothic is connected to the Neoclassical Movement with it's rigid composition, and morality message though with a more modern twist. How Whistler is connected to the Realist movement in his approach, and Moses too though in a "Country Craft" sort of way.
 
I like how they argue within their groups citing visual evidence for their choices, pointing to brush work, the absence or presence of roman togas, the hues of the background. They are making astute visual observations, sharing them, and learning. It's the STEAM approach in full gear, a marriage of art and history.
 
They love the little stories I tell about the work bringing it into context; how the Rococo artists were hated by the Neoclassical artists and it paralleled both the American and French Revolutions. How Cubism and Expressionism included shattered and distorted images, while European society and bodies of it's soldiers were shattered and distorted through World War One. How World War two saw the emergence of the atomic bomb that did not shatter bodies, but vaporized them--while the Abstract Expressionists, at the same time, like Pollock and Rothko, vaporized all subject matter!  That the Baby Boom led to massive consumerism, so no wonder Pop Art blossomed.
 
Though my list is incomplete, it becomes a good jumping off point. 

CLICK HERE for a printable version of the flowchart.

Poster Version HERE. (13 Major Movements of art)

Advanced flowchart poster HERE. Byzantine through Op Art, and many more. Better for advanced classes and college. (24 major movements)

Like this lesson idea? Generate your own complete, standards-aligned lesson plan in minutes with the ArtEdGuru Lesson Generator — built on 40 years of real classroom experience. Free to try.

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I know not every child that takes art is going to be an artist, maybe just a couple every year will. So what are my expectations?

#1. I want them to TRY, to get out of their comfort zone, especially the ones who walk in and say, "I can't do art." When they understand grades are not based on skill, they open up to the idea.

#2. Once they get over their fear, and 99% do, then they start to explore personal points of view, and solving problems where there is more than one answer. That experience can follow them all their lives, another key accomplishment.

#3. I want them to come out of my room having broadened their perceptions of their world in the context of history and society. (They are not an island)

#4. I want them to see that the arts is more than "making stuff," that it reveals connections and information about core course material and deepens understanding. (Color/Physics, grids-tessellations-origami/Geometry-math, illustration/literature, sculpture/engineering, art history/The history of our species...)

#5. I want them to have a deeper understanding of themselves as a creative person, unique in all the universe.

#6. I want them to be happy, but the world has a way of beating the joy out of all of us. Art, is sometimes, a cure.

Art in our public schools must do two important things.

1. The art project must connect to the child's life experience or point of view.

2. It should be connected to core content to reinforce learning and understanding.

When projects do this, students succeed.

Art teachers know, when we grid, measure, and draw—we use geometry. When we make sculptures—we use engineering. When we mix colors—we reveal information about physics. When we create illustrations for stories—we learn about literature. When we review the styles of art from da Vinci to Bansky—we teach history. When we write about art—we strengthen these skills. When we create works of art, we solve complex visual problems in creative ways. Art is the meeting place of all subjects.

Art can be a great means for students to get a deeper grasp on their subjects and the connections between courses. Research shows that students who take art succeed at higher rates than those who do not. In the U.S., art students score, on average, 100 points higher on their SATs. In my own district, using our methods, our students scored 155 points higher on average than students who did not take art in 2013. 

Does this "connected-ness" makes the projects any less "artful" or less expressive? 

No. It means there will be a level of depth built upon the work of your colleagues and reinforced by the art teacher. More knowledge is always better.  We already do this, it's a matter of making these connections more overt, for the sake of our children, ourselves, our department, and our schools. 

Does this mean crafts are not of value?

No. Crafts have connections to cultures, social studies, and history. They can be a rich source of learning IF we make these connections in a meaningful way by incorporating reading and writing skills, and teaching about the cultures and history of the crafts we expose our students to.

So everything is okay in the art room?

No. There are still thousands of classrooms across the country doing "art" that minimizes our profession, reinforce the idea that art is frivolous, expendable, filler. These programs waste opportunities for learning and problem solving. The hallmark to poor programs are large amounts of "cookie-cutter projects."

When projects line a hallway that look like little reproductions of a teaching sample I cringe at the lost opportunity. No matter how cute, how appreciated, how loved they may be, they come at the expense of our profession. Leave these for classroom teachers looking for filler. Help them if you like, but such projects have no place in a valid art program. I don't care if the child is two or twenty, art must be personal, expressive, and connected.

To those who say these cookie-cutter projects build the skills to be used later, my reply is do it NOW, while they are under your professional direction. It need not be dramatic, or profound, but the element of student choice, and connections to core content must be present in all projects to be valid art experiences.

Sure but how about an example?

Paper Plate Fish: Cut a pie slice from a paper plate, re-attach it to the opposite side of the plate, and you have a fish. Paint, decorate, etc. If you limit paint to a few choices, which you should anyway for the very young, you end up with a hallway full of delightful, but vapid fish. Each like the other, little distinction or expression.

Solution: Have students reflect on their personality. Are they loud or quiet? Are they active, still, or lazy? Cut the mouth of your fish to show what a big mouth you have. Make a tail to show how active you are. This tiny alteration has changed the cookie-cutter fish into an expressive, albeit simple, work of art.

How about those Core Connections?

A: Before making fish, show different kids of fish and organize them by type, air breathing, and water filtering perhaps. 

B: They can write about being loud or quiet, fast or slow, energetic or lazy.

C: They can make a list of all the water animals they know for a few minutes, organize them by order. 

D: Vocabulary: vertebrates and invertebrates

Speak with your colleagues and coordinate a little. They will respect you more, students will learn more deeply, and succeed at higher rates.

...And how about the Common Core?!?

I feel "Common Core" has become a buzz word that incites a lot of division. I am not a fan of tons of testing that takes up so much time that we, as teachers, are less able to get to as much material or cover it as deeply as we once had. BUT I do believe we do need some national standards so an "A" in New Jersey, is also an "A" in Mississippi or Washington State... 

My approach is to create more overt connections to core content with vocab, writing, reading, interpreting, observation, recording, etc. When I do a unit on gridded portraits, we discuss scale. Before we make art, we write about our ideas, creating lists, assimilating information, and include some expository writing. When we talk about da Vinci, we cover the Renaissance, the 1400s, and the history of that time. When we illustrate stories, we talk about the work, the author, and the literature. My "approach" does all the things common core is meant to do, but goes beyond, and is more successful. So though I am required as a New Jersey teacher to follow Common Core, and I do, evidence shows my department exceeds expectations because of our "STEAM-like" approach. 

As I said before, in 2013 our students did 155 points HIGHER on average on their SATs... and we don't get a lot of "AP" kids that might artificially skew our numbers.  It's a proof of concept that's hard to argue with.

LINK HERE for STEAM Approach Studies