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!!!

Have a Seat: Making Chairs in Art

I was absolutely fascinated at an exhibit at The Tampa Museum of Art a few years ago. It was titled 100 Years, 100 Chairs. I was so glad that I went by myself, because I spent hours looking at and reading about the chairs in the exhibit. Click here for a you.tube video about the exhibit.

Shortly after that at my state conference I attended a workshop presented by Steve Miller on making chairs from recycles. Here is a photo of the examples he brought to inspire us.

 And here is the chair I made.

So I started collecting empty toilet and paper towel rolls. And I would end up using them for something else, so I would start all over again...... Just never getting around to doing the project.

This year I decided to pull out all the stops and just have fun with my students.

Over winter break I made this chair as a starting point for the lesson. I figured they would follow my example and come up with a theme to embellish it with.  I forgot about using the photos I took at the workshop. The chair I had made, I had taken apart for some reason. So I ended up showing my students the 100 Years, 100 Chairs you.tube video of the exhibit to inspire them.

I put out an crazy assortment of cardboard, bottles, cups, tops, empty rolls, paper, yarn, packing materials...... lots of STUFF in which to create a chair. My students did not disappoint. And after seeing the direction they were going in, I started another chair. I always wanted a hand chair, but could never figure out where to put it.

 I did this with my 4th grade and it took a few class sessions for them to complete them. In the mean time my younger students got very curious about what they saw at at the back of the art room.

 

They were so very curious that I decided to see if I could get them displayed in the media center. When everyone has finished I plan to take students on a gallery walk through the exhibit. I'm even thinking of having a closing reception with parents so that the chairs have a chance of making it home in one piece.

Check it out!

   

 

   

     

    

   

   

I wanted students to paper mache and paint the chairs, but the cardboard was not really cooperating when it got wet so some just left them the way they were and some used colored paper to decorate them. They assembled the materials with a low temp hot glue gun and white liquid glue.

Now I couldn't help but notice two different sessions at the NAEA conference next month that includes designing chairs.  I just love it when I'm relevant........

Check it out, I know I want to try to get there. So much to see, so little time!!

Thursday, March 2
11:00 - 11:50 am

STEAM

Creating Designers Out of Today’s Art Students

Ninoshka Boylston Come and learn an art teacher and interior designer’s process of how to engage students in the design process in the art classroom, designing functional chairs and lamps! Lecture

Hilton/Gramercy West/2nd Floor

and 

Saturday, March 4

11:00 - 11:50 AM AICAD Live Learning Lab

University of the Arts (Uarts) Presents: Enhance Your Art + Design Curriculum: Design Thinking Activities Rande Blank,  Barbara Suplee,  Karen Bannett

Teach students to use design thinking as a problem-solving process and cycle through two design thinking workshop stations including creating portraits using office supplies and creating chair prototype designs. Hands-On Demonstration Hilton/Bryant Suite/2nd Floor

It was a wonderful experience for me to have such an open ended lesson. It was also interesting to explore with students what would work and what wouldn't work. For starters the chair had to stand up on it's own. And no, we are making prototypes, I don't have room for life size chairs.......

It was also interesting to hear what they thought would be an important addition to their chairs, like cup holders, leg rests, etc. Some students insisted on putting a person in their chair. They were all so into it and animated about the lesson. Such a wonderful WIN-WIN!!

I would love to know if you have designed chairs with your students.... I also want to know if you are planning to attend the lectures on designing chairs at the NAEA conference next month.

AND if you have made chairs with your students, please share some photos!!!

Thanks for reading!!