and a small taste

so here are some pictures of my room so far. it still needs to be painted, and the tables are littered with poster making materials, however, i am very happy with how it looks so far! the walls have a blue and pink mural of a cloud and sun rays, which is nice, but i still want a crisp gray & green.

paintbrushes in tin cans

love my floating crayons

front of the room

this is my time out desk and some pretty sweet drawers full of supplies.

love the tall paper sorter

my desk area

view from my desk

Infinitely Helpful

so....just discovered Google Art Project....any art teacher should check it out. Pretty much any artwork you could want to use via projector, all high resolution with info and stuff. one of the coolest features is a Google Maps-esque Museum Tour (pictured above) so you can take a virtual tour of any of the museums. such a nice thing. 

Visit Art Education 2.0also, i got an Art Education 2.0 account. not sure what to do with it quite yet, but it has forums, videos and all kinds of cool stuff that should be check out as well. working on some DIY storage today, pics to come!

door decor

i've never really thought about decorating my door before, but there is some pretty tough competition at my school. while wandering around, checking out things, i noticed that the teachers there really care about how their doors look....and now i feel pressured to decorate mine. however, i don't think i like the standard butcher paper happy colors (although many other teachers there use fabric and bulletin board borders, so smart), so i think i'll need to find something that is uniquely me, that also says "elementary art room". ideas?

chalkboard paint/cloth. easy change throughout the year. Creed.

definitely a fan of bunting. somehow i want that incorporated into the classroom, maybe changed with season? Little Things Bring Smiles.

perhaps a world map design, art all over the world? Ada's Interior Design.

and then the hipster in me is in love with wood grain, so maybe a painted wood grain design with your standard "Welcome to Art" things.

or a collage of old book pages. i could get pretty creative with that. Texturly. 

the color palette

choosing colors for your classroom is one of the most important steps in creating your class community. for me, i wanted an environment in which students could feel safe, but also energized and enthusiastic.i wanted professional and work oriented but with a sense of fun as well because it is, after all, an elementary art room. 

so my final decision was: gray & green. but not any green, not a forest green, lime. i think it has the right amount of energy, like yellow or orange, but with all the calm and structure of a cooler color like blue or purple. but having a solely lime room would be a tad overwhelming, so to bring it down, and to add some more professionalism to it, i'm balancing it with a gray. not a slate gray, but a lighter gray, because dark grays can become overwhelming very easily as well. 

also, i need a heavy presence of neutrals to balance the inevitable influx of rainbows. rainbows. rainbows. i love them. no matter how much i tell myself i shouldn't. the gray will help future Beth be not so upset with past Beth. pictures to come!

diy file folder

A very simple file folder made from empty cereal boxes & scrapbook paper. made these from the supplies below. it was free for me because i already had all of these things, but the spray glue alone is about $7....so it may be a project of convenience for me, others may be better off just buying some folders. However.

simple steps: cut box (as shown along the dotted lines). spray glue, add scrapbook paper, wrapping paper, etc. and ta da! something for "to file, to mail, to copy" and what have you.

Interview and New Job!

I finally got a permanent teaching position! (yay!) but more on that in a moment. Let me first tell about the interview process and how I am sometimes the dumbest person I know....
So one Thursday I awoke ( at around 11am because why not I have nothing better to do) and noticed I had a voicemail. Didn't check it, assumed it was from the same derp that had called me three times that morning with the wrong number insisting I was a trucking company.

Made my usual rounds (coffee, breakfast, feed kitty) then sat down in the living room for some hardcore Fable III time (time very well spent). Around 1pm, I received a call from an unknown number. It was my lovely new principal, calling to see if I was interested in an elementary art position in Bedford County. (Oh yes, of course!)So in all that excitement, she tells me the name of the school and begins giving me directions. But of course, tech savvy kid me decided "I don't need directions, I'm looking at your website right now! I'll Google it!". Then she asks if I can be there for an interview at 3:30 that day. Well yes, I can. Called out of taco work for an interview and prepared for my husband to get home so that we could go.

So this is about an hour drive from Murfreesboro to Nashville, the whole time going over interview questions, thinking about things I saw on their website, lots of stuff to make me look good etc. and finally, I arrived. I walk in all excited and eager, "Hello! I am Beth Moore, I have an interview at 3:30 for the open art position!".....lady at the desk...."No you don't. We don't have an open position."....le me "$#!^". Wrong school.

*Fun fact* Turns out there are two Eakin Elementaries. One in Nashville...and one in Shelbyville, Bedford County which makes way more sense because A) I applied for that county and B) it's not a thousand miles away.

Return to car where eager and excited husband is waiting. "I am a derp. Wrong School, mine is about an hour and a half from our current location and it is 15 minutes before my interview (yes I showed up 20 minutes early because that's what I do)".
Next action, call my principal, try to think of what excuse I could possibly give that makes me sound the least stupid (turns out the truth makes me sound least stupid) and luckily she understands, she says she's done it before as well. "Can I come in tomorrow?" Nope, closed on Fridays. Today was the last day for interviews before a decision must be made.
However, for some unknown reason, she decides to put off the decision so that I may interview on Monday. most thankful Beth ever.

Go in on Monday, interview is fine, I really like the school and the staff that I met, and hooray I got the confirmation call that evening!

So now, after what was my second interview that happened to be the most stressful ordeal ever, I am the new art teacher at Eakin Elementary in Shelbyville, TN!

I got my keys this past Tuesday, and went in to start organizing my room (armed with an art budget I spent 2 hours creating because I had no idea what supplies to expect. Turns out I have everything I would ever need, yay!). My husband and I spend 11+ hours in that room organizing, throwing away and digging out things to make the room functional. Completely worth it though, now I know where everything is, what I have and the room is set up just as I want it. When we get paid, we will buy some paint to re-do the room (not digging the pink and turquoise it currently is, although the sun and cloud mural is quite nice) then we will be done! I am so happy that this is my first art job because I already feel that it's perfect (at least the room is....that's really all I have to go on at the moment) and things can only get better.

SO.

Images to come, lesson plans & stuff, lots of excitement. I expect to be very active with my online accounts (the art page at the school is kind of poop at the moment, hopefully I can fix that) and this blog will definitely be utilized for myself, my fellow educators and my new students' parents. So if you happen to be a parent of one of my students, I hope you enjoyed reading how I can to get this job and keep up so you know exactly what we're doing this year! If you're my principal, hopefully you don't think I'm quite as scatterbrained as I am sure I initially appeared and for my future coworkers, perhaps this can give you some insight as to whom you will be sending your students for 40 minutes a week.

...and that concludes this ridiculously long but pertinent blog entry. I do love writing...never get the chance to since all of those lovely art history papers are a thing of the past ( a few of which I am truly proud of and do want to get published), but I have plenty of grants and proposals to which I can lend my literary skills.

so have a happy summer, eagerly awaiting the 2012-2013 school year!