Grant-tastic

The FAEA Conference these past few days was a blast!! I played at the vendors tables and made some fun projects. Took home some swag. I signed up for 4 incredible workshops (promise to share all soon). Presented a workshop and gave a power point presentation on getting a grant.
Here are the screen shots from that power point. I just downloaded to the FAEA site for 2017 conference handouts.

 What kind of grants should you be thinking about?

Where and how do I find grants?

 Photographs can also be used to advocate for your program.

 Resources 

Thought Co. Grant Writing Sources, https://www.thoughtco.com/grant-writing-sources-6557

Grant Writing For Dummies Kindle Edition by Beverly A. Browning

The theme for the conference was "What is your superpower?" AND I WON the costume contest!
I introduce you to my new Queen of Recycle outfit. 90% made from recycles!

I have also been appointed to the 2018/19 board and will serve as a Member at Large.

Time to go and get ready for returning to school tomorrow. I welcome questions and will answer to the best of my ability!

Thanks for reading!

Henna Tattoos

Been super busy the last couple of weeks getting my head wrapped around the concept of returning to school! And while I have managed to accomplish many of my goals for the summer, I didn't do everything....... I did DO a lot of reading, relaxing and sleeping. I also succeeded in completing over 300 levels of Cookie Jam. Redecorated a few areas around the house and went on a mini retreat with the FAEA to Ocala.

Part of the retreat was at the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, Florida. Which was pretty exciting for me, as I've never been there. It's a beautiful place. We got to explore the museum for a bit and had 2 workshops. One of which was Henna Hands given by Griselle Gonzalez.

 

 The photo on the left shows the stages of Henna. The Henna ink comes in cones, the point of the cone has the opening in which the ink comes out. It is very paste like and is raised up on the skin. It needs a good 30 minutes to dry and 4 hours later you can crumble off the dry ink. The design will darken over the next 12 hours and stay on for little while. You can still see some of my design even though it is 2 weeks later!

 

 

 I really didn't know much about the history of using Henna for tattoos. I was surprised to see how many cultures use a variation of this art. I have found different lessons online to do with students and I'm looking forward to sharing this with them. Will do a blog on that in the future!

   

Above is our instructor Griselle Gonzalez, the power point she gave was excellent. The other photo is the box the the Henna Cones came in. Henna ink can be found online. Try Etsy or Amazon.

 

This is me with my buddy, Glenda Lubiner (she writes the Tried & True Tips for Art Teachers in Arts & Activities Magazine). After trying out the ink on Glenda I got the nerve up to try it on my arm.

 

 

Check out all the wonderful designs on some of the other art teachers in the workshop!

 

  

The retreat was a nice way to spend the weekend. I met new people, which is always fun & caught up with my buddy Glenda.  All in all a great time!

In addition to preparing to return to work, I will be presenting at the FAEA conference in October. Registration starts tomorrow August 7. I will be doing the workshop Start with a Story, sharing how I use literature to inspire students and a presentation titled Grant-tastic about how I applied and received grant money for my program.

Turns out I'm also on the ballot and might be the next Elementary Division Directer. Voting on that starts tomorrow and will be open until 3 pm on October 20th. Check it out!

Thanks for Reading! And let's all enjoy the new school year!

Proposal to Present

Since attending my first NAEA conference back in 2011 I decided it was important to me to be involved with both the NAEA and my state's association the FAEA. To me one way to be involved is to give a presentation. That involves writing a proposal. I have been very fortunate as all of my proposals have been accepted. I presented at NAEA in San Diego. I was part of a Carousel of Bloggers with Nancy Walkup in New Orleans and I've presented in Florida a few times.

At the FAEA Elementary Division meeting, during conference last year, members wanted to know how to put together a proposal. I thought it would make for an excellent session. One in which I would like to be able to do, however I really don't know what is expected...... Sooooo when Jennifer Dahl, the NAEA Elementary Division leader asked for session reviewers for the upcoming Seattle Conference I decided that would be a perfect opportunity for me to learn and later be able to share.

I participated in an online training session given by Kathy Duse, Executive Services and Convention Manager and Dennis Inhulsen, Chief Learning Officer.

Turns out there were 1756 session proposals submitted for Seattle which is actually up from the last time the conference was held there. There were 180 people who volunteered to blindly review and score the proposals. Each proposed session is reviewed and scored by 3 different people.

This year a new proposal form was implemented to streamline the process. I also learned that while a session may get high scores from all 3 reviewers, there may not always be room in the schedule for it. My take on that is if you submitted a proposal and it was not accepted, try not to take it personally. And by all means try again!

You can see from the photos that there are 4 different categories that are scored and I will tell you from having read through the batch I was given it was easiest to read the ones that actually started their paragraph with Statement and Outcome........., Organization of Content......., Relevance of Topic......., and Impact on Practice...........

As I mentioned earlier in the post there are things that have changed or are new to the process this year. If you are considering submitting a proposal you might want to check out the guidelines here.

I shutter to think of what this process was like before e-mail and online portals. Our Association works hard for us and for that I am very grateful!

And as a side note, I will be presenting in Florida at the FAEA conference. I have 2 presentations.

One is a workshop titled: Start with a Story, how to use literature in the art room. The other one will be a Art Forum titled: Grant-tastic, you will find out how I managed to get thousands of grant dollars for my art program over the past 11 years. 

I'm curious as to grants you have received over the years, I would like to include that info in my presentation!

Thanks for Reading!

Collaboration: Calusa's Fire Hawk

I returned from the NAEA conference in New York City a week ago. It has been a hectic, crazy week filled with watching my grandson after school to attending Evita at the community theater and a visit to the doctor for a nasty cough that I seem to have developed. In other words NO time for myself!!

The conference was amazing and I will get to many of the happy details in the near future. Suffice to say I connected with so many wonderful people that it made the whole experience worth it!

Today's post will be the backstory for one of the presentations I was involved with.  The presenter, Karen Nobel is a past president of the FAEA. I am very fortunate to know Karen both from the Florida Art Educator's Association and the Faber-Castell Teacher Advisory Board. Karen sent out an email last fall to see if anyone on the advisory board would be willing to help her by doing a collaboration project with their students. 

Faber-Castell would help out by giving us their products FREE of charge! Never one to say no to free stuff, I was on board! I decided to use paint and colored pencils. But, that was all they would supply, so the principal suggested I write out a grant for the rest of what I needed.

Karen did all the paperwork to submit the proposal, she just needed some photographs for her presentation. We decided I would do a mural. Since my home school was recently renovated, I didn't really see where a mural would fit in. HOWEVER, my Monday school is an F school and when I suggested a mural to the principal she was thrilled!

Their mascot is a fire hawk, so I knew that was what I wanted to do. I also knew I wanted to put feathers on it, made by the students AND as I was thinking about that, I came across Cassie Stephen's post on Kelsey Montague's Inspired Mural. Check here to read about it in her blog!

 

I planned to do this on 8' x 4' plywood, so I made a pattern out of bulletin board paper. Now it was interesting to me that the point of the presentation was in collaborating - because of a definite lack of time in the art room..... because now I had to wait on the grant, then order stuff and also have students working on it to take photos for Karen........

 

When the plywood came, I traced the pattern onto it. (By the way, the plywood ended up being donated by parents at my other school, thank you Barnett Family!)

   

Now it was ready to be painted by students. Since I'm there only the one day a week the mural was in the art room with the full time art teacher, Mrs. Murphy. She had it as one of her centers, for early finishers to paint.

And while that was going on.....

 

 

I had students working on feathers. I tried to stick with the school colors of blue and orange, but also wanted to put the red and yellow in it for the fire hawk. Feathers were done with colored pencils to minimize the mess and hopefully take only one class session to do.

 

I wanted to tie this project together with the goal of being successful this year to motivate the students in bringing up the school's grade. So I instructed students that after they cut out their feathers they should write their goal for the school year on the back.

 

Anyway, here's what I have so far, I keep adding more feathers every Monday afternoon and hopefully they will all be glued on soon!  (I used hot glue to attach the feathers to the plywood.) A wall in the Media Center has been chosen to receive it when it is finished and I can't wait to see it completed and hanging up!

 

Here I am at the presentation explaining my collaborative mural! It was a very well attended presentation and most of the other art teachers who provided photos for Karen were also available to say a few words about their projects. What I found really interesting is all the different ways in which people chose to collaborate.......

Thank you Karen Nobel for the chance to share! 

Thank you Faber-Castell for supplying the materials!

What type of collaborative projects have you done with your students??

Thanks for Reading!!!