My Grade 9 Art class is a picture of productivity creativity and chaos all in one room, and you know, even with all of the issues, I love that class. The kids come with more baggage than I can even imagine, and I don't have the qualifications to deal with all that, but they're showing up. And this class is quite possibly one of the few classes they are not skipping in any given day, even though it's at the end of the day.
I've learned so much from my associate with this class. Literally every assignment is tailored to each student. One girl loves music, so we've got her airbrushing a guitar. Another likes painting, so we've got her doing a giant oil painting, another is learning portraiture and painting a self-portrait. Another is creating a stop-motion video with clay characters that she is sculpting because she likes movies. And the list goes on. It's wonderful to see all the students doing different projects which interest them.
The issues are still there. I had a few minutes away from running around the class like a chicken with my head cut off (you can only imagine how busy it is to have every student using different materials and doing different projects), so I sat down with two of the students working on their clay characters and made a character out of clay myself. The issues that students face are definitely there and definitely bigger than I am capable of handling, but it was so good to have the opportunity to just talk with students. They are great kids doing their best to make a life out of some difficult pasts. I hope we can keep them engaged in projects that interest them and let them express the realities of the world they live in.
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