My Job As An Art Teacher

My Job As An Art Teacher with The Craft Corner

10 Apr My Job As An Art Teacher

Posted at 16:10h in All, creativity by Vanessa 0 Comments

is not to give my students the answers

One of the most important teaching lessons I learnt early on in my career was that I am not there to solve the problem,

my role as a teacher is to give my students the skills to solve it themselves.

My job as an art teacher is not to do the art for my young artists, it is not to give them the answers.

My job as a teacher is to give them the skills so they can figure it out for themselves.

It is to give them the confidence to solve the problem independently.

For me, this is one of the most important lessons you can learn as a teacher and it is one of the first skills I teach my teaching assistants.

A love of creativity

In my summer camps, as with my classes and my courses, it’s really important to me that while they are fun and enjoyable, my students are also learning arts and crafts skills.

Sometimes almost subconsciously without them realising it.

Depending on the age, or the dynamic of the class, as a teacher, and The Craft Corner as a brand, the most important thing for me is that as the children grow as artists.

That they leave The Craft Corner, to go on to other pursuits, with a lifelong love of arts and crafts.

That they are going out into the world with a confidence in their own abilities and their ability to problem solve and to figure out things for themselves.

This is really key in all of the three-dimensional craft projects we teach, in the drawing projects, even in the painting projects.

Skills and confidence

As a teacher I believe that my job is NOT to give my art students the answer to exactly how to do the project, or the answer to the problem they are trying to figure out.

My job as a teacher is to give my students the skills and the confidence to figure it out for themselves.

You are teaching them the steps along the way but you’re giving them the skills that they are going to get to the end themselves.

If a child creates a project and they have done every step of it themselves then they are going to remember how they did it, if you do it for them a child is not going to remember how to do it again.

But if they do it themselves, no matter the result, they will remember those skills that they learned whether they worked or they didn’t work.

It is important for children to realise that it is okay that didn’t work out, and then to figure out why it didn’t work out and how they can make it better so the next time it works better.

That is a problem solving skill – that’s a life skill to understand how to fix something, how to create something, how to come up with the solution yourself.

My Job As An Art Teacher

10 Apr My Job As An Art Teacher