The June Mailbag: Summer Vibes, AI Resistance, and How to Stay Creative (Ep. 470)

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. The show is produced by The Art of Education, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz. All right. Welcome to June. Welcome to the June Mailbag. Welcome to summertime if you are lucky enough to be out of school. Amanda Heyn joining me as always for the Mailbag. Amanda, how are you?

I am great. I’m ready for summer. Actually, I’m ready for fall, but I will tolerate summer. This fall’s my favorite.

No, that’s good. Fall is my favorite as well. Are your kids out of school?

Yes. I mean, not technically, but so close. They just have field trip day, and field day and field trip day left.

Do you volunteer at field day, and overall, what are your feelings about field day?

Literally, if someone doesn’t get heatstroke on field day, it is a miracle. I’ve paid my dues working in the classroom. I’m not volunteering on a field day. No, thank you. How about you?

I think field day’s fun. I don’t mind it. Kids really seem to enjoy it. As far as art goes, I think there’s a couple good directions you can go, either like sidewalk chalk or face painting, I think are the good options. Or even better yet, just mindlessly like supervising the water balloon toss is a good option. You don’t have to do art related things just because you’re an art teacher,

That’s true.

I don’t know. Mixed feelings. The kids love it, I’m indifferent to it, but overall I think it’s a good thing.

Can I tell you a quick story about field day?

Yes, please.

Yeah. Maybe I’ve told this before, I can’t remember. At my first school, it was all the teachers against each other for… There was Staff Olympics and all of the specialist teachers were on a team, but they didn’t have a team color, but all of the other teachers did. So I worked at a pretty big school. There were four sections of each grade, so fourth grade was orange, and second grade was green, whatever. And then all of the teachers on those teams would wear their colors, and then all the kids would wear the colors and they’d cheer for their teachers, and no one ever cheered for the specialist teachers before I came because what I decided to do was like, “Well, this specialist team is now the rainbow team, and do you know what that means? That means everybody cheers for us.” And also, we won the tug of war and it was one of the best times of my life.

I love it. I love it. Did you do rainbow order T-shirts for the team?

I did tie-dye T-shirts, and then I also made a giant rainbow sparkly flag, and that is how I unveiled my plan, and I think people respected me, but I don’t know that they liked it. Do you know what I mean?

Right, right. I don’t know, you’re kind of stealing the thunder from the fourth grade purple team, or whatever.

Yeah, but they made it bad first, so sorry that I had a good creative idea. No, they were all cool with it, and I do love a lot of those people that I used to work with.

Good, good. I’m glad to hear that.

Yeah.

All right. Before we get started, housekeeping things. Just a lot of exciting stuff going on in the community. What, two weeks ago, I think there is a post about the topics that we don’t talk enough about as art teachers, and oh my goodness, where there’s some great answers and some great discussion going there. So any highlights out of that from you?

I think just the fact about how hard it is. I think a lot of teachers just push that inside and they feel bad complaining because all teachers have it hard, but I just feel like art teachers have it special hard in special ways. That whole thread was just very validating to read through. A lot of you’re not alone. So maybe we can link to that in the show notes, and if you want to go check that out and add your own, you should do that.

Yeah, and even if you don’t want to add, if you just want to read and realize that, oh, yeah, there are some very different challenges that we face as our teachers and other teachers are facing those same things. Like you said, it’s very validating, so we’ll definitely link to that. Let’s see, what else is going on? Art Club is this week. Jen Leben, a friend of the pod, friend of all of us in the community.

Friends to all, really. Jen has the best vibes of anyone I know. Shout out Jen.

Also, she’s been doing Instagram stories all the time, and it’s so fantastic.

Just great energy coming from Jen all the time. She’s doing fantastic flip books, I think it’s called. That’s happening Thursday, if you’re listening to the show when it comes out on Tuesday. June 5th it’s happening. 6:00 PM Central Time. So that’ll be a great art club. And is Pop Up Studio coming soon also, I believe?

Yes. That is Monday, June 16th at 6:00 PM, both in the community. You can find that at community.theartofeducation.edu.

I love it. We are just a couple minutes in and we’ve already linked four things in the show notes. It’s great.

Perfect. Perfect. Okay, very quick story time before we get into our questions. What do you have to tell us about?

Oh my gosh. Well, I graduated from grad school.

You did? Congratulations.

The amount of mental energy that I have right now is so great, but I can’t stop doing stuff. I’m not good at relaxing, and so what I’ve done since I’ve graduated is not relax or do anything celebratory. I’ve organized every paper in my filing cabinet and also gone through all of every drawer in every room, and we’re having a giant garage sale. So if any listeners have any ideas of how I can relax and stop doing work, I would really love that. Please email podcasts@theartofeducation.edu and tell me your secrets.

Seems fair. It seems fair. I like that.

What about you?

Well, I will need to make this quick, but we can’t get into late spring, early summer without some garden talk. So first blooms are coming in. I’m very excited about all of them. I don’t know if we talked about this on the podcast. I don’t think so. Baby cardinals in my backyard. I know we’ve heard all the stories about your cardinals and the worst bird ever, but these baby cardinals are doing great in my yard. And so what I’ve done is make sure that these cardinals have everything they need to survive and make this work. So we got bird feeder, we got the bird bath going, just everything that we need, and because of that, all of the birds are coming in, and then there’s squirrels, there’s bunny. It’s like a freaking wildlife sanctuary in my backyard.

You’re Snow White?

I really am. Actually, they run away when I come close, but I can watch from the window and they’re everywhere and it’s very nice. So I don’t know, just between native plants and everything the birds need, it’s looking great back there. It makes me very happy.

That sounds really nice.

And no cardinals attacking my window like they do with you. So it’s peaceful.

Right. I don’t know, just go back and listen to all the episodes if you need the saga, but the cardinal that has been ruining my life, it just comes in bonks the window one time, once a week. I feel like it’s either threatening or saying hi. Maybe he’s maturing. I don’t really know.

I was just going to say he’s maturing.

Yeah, he’s maturing. And I still get a little bit of like, “Is this starting again?” But it hasn’t. He’s coming for a visit. So knock on wood.

You spend a lot of quality time with that window. You get a stop by everyone. Oh, man. Okay. Let’s go ahead and get into our questions. We had so many voicemails come through, we had so many questions come through. We’re not going to be able to answer all of them, but thank you all so much for sending them. What we are going to do is we are going to make this a double podcast. We’ll do part one right now in the podcast feed, and then we are going to record another entire episode, and part two is going to be exclusive to the Art of Ed community. So Amanda, do you want to tell people how they can find that?

Yes. Okay, part two will be linked in the show notes. You’re going to head to that same link I already said, community.theartofeducation.edu. On the left-hand side, you’re going to look for community perks in the sidebar, and then just look for bonus content and you’ll find it right there.

Perfect. Perfect. All right, I love it. Let’s go ahead and get to our questions. Amanda, would you like to officially start the episode?

Yes. Let’s go ahead and open up the mail bag.

All right, the first question, this is going to be a voicemail from Pam.

Pam:

Hey, Amanda and Tim? This is Pam I teach at in Hartford, at the middle school, and just a question for you, wondering, how do you politely tell people to stop dropping things off in the in the art room just because they don’t want it in their classroom anymore. I came across all of this as I was cleaning, and every time I clean an area I find more stuff that’s been dropped off when I’m not in my room, and just wondering if you could kind of approach that. And how do you approach that? People that want to get rid of their stuff? But don’t want to know who dropped it all off. Thanks. Have a great day.

Tim:

All right, Amanda, would you like to reply to what Pam had to say about all of the crazy things being dropped off in her room?

Yes. First, I have to say the only thing that I’ve wanted to happen since we started this podcast is for people to call us and leave us a voicemail, and now it’s happening and I am elated. So number one, thanks, Pam. Okay, this question is so good. If I can be very real for a second, this used to annoy me so much. One time somebody dropped off 23 wooden spools, one time somebody dropped off a musty box of yarn, and why do you think I want garbage? Okay, but Pam did not call us just so we could vent. So I do have some thoughts. Okay, step one, which as you might be gathering can be tricky for me, is to assume positive intent. People think that you want this stuff. They know your budget doesn’t go as far as you want it to. They think they are being helpful. So let’s just celebrate for a moment that people for the most part are probably trying to be kind.

Okay. Also, we need step two, which is set a boundary. You cannot be the distribution center for all of this stuff, because also they’re getting rid of it, but they’re also putting it on you to figure out what you want to do with it if you don’t want it, and that is not okay. So this could look a few ways. I think if it were me, what I would do is a two-pronged approach. So first I would send a kind email that said something like, “I’ve been so touched by those of you who have dropped things off to donate. Unfortunately, I don’t have room to store everything and I need to be selective about what I can accept. So if you have something in your room that you think would be a good fit for the art room, please ask me first before dropping it off.”

Some people, they’re going to pretend they didn’t see that, they’re going to conveniently forget that they read that, they’re not even going to read it. So I would also create a sign to put in the area where you are getting these treasures that says, “Thanks for your generosity. Please check if the art room can accept your donation before leaving things in this area,” and then you can leave your phone number or your email or whatever, however you prefer to be contacted. But that’s how I would handle that.

Okay, I like it. I like it. Now, I have kind of the opposite approach, and I don’t know if that’s because I’m just more relaxed or because I don’t want to confront people, or maybe I just have some hoarding tendencies-

It’s because we’re opposite in every way.

Basically. So honestly, I don’t want to miss out on what could be something good, and so I’ll just take whatever people are turning over to me and we’ll take a look. If it’s something I can use, we will put it on the shelf, we’ll put it in the closet. If not, we’ll just take it to the trash, or more specifically, have one of my students just take it to the trash and call that good. So I would just let the donations keep coming, but again, it’s obviously bothering.

Yeah, that is not what Pam asked us.

I know, it’s obviously bothering Pam as well, and so I think the polite approach is exactly what you laid out, Amanda. So I think that’s good. But again, if it’s me, I’m going to just accept it and be fine with it.

I just feel like this is a metaphor. Art teachers don’t have to accept other people’s garbage.

That’s very fair. That’s an excellent point.

Okay. Okay. Thanks, Pam.

All right. Now, I know you just said how much you love voicemails, but the next question was an email we got and I thought it was great. I thought it was something we needed to talk about, and this comes from Jen in Massachusetts, kind of long, but all important points. Jen says, “AI is something that I’m very hesitant to get on board with.” She talks about how a lot of teachers are really jumping on board, some of her colleagues are really coming in hard with AI.

And Jen says, “At first I thought it’s because I’m an older millennial and maybe resistant because I didn’t understand it. Then I thought about my artist friends who are very anti-AI and because of copyright infringement and the devaluation of creativity, but honestly, the most blaring reason I’m avoiding AI is all of the information I’ve heard from reputable climate publications describing how unsustainable and wasteful AI prompts can be.” And she says, I understand that AI can be helpful in many ways, but to me it’s horrifying to think of how wasteful it is to use AI for art when we already have brains and imaginations. Please help me reckon with this. Excellent question. Amanda, thoughts for Jen?

Yeah. Okay. Well, just know, Jen, that I am also coming at this as an elder millennial, and I’ve been thinking a lot about this too. So here is where I have landed. The caveat is for now, because I feel like this changes day to day sometimes, but for now, here’s my thoughts. Number one, AI is not going away. It’s here. And if kids don’t understand how to use it, they’re going to be left behind, and also, if we don’t teach our kids how to think without it, they’re going to be left behind because we’re just in a weird time right now and the vibes are bad. The vibes are not good. So I do think that it’s something that kids need to understand, and they have to retain their creativity and their ability to think independently because that is actually where the value is going to lie when they enter the workforce.

So what we cannot do is just stick our head in the sand about it. It’s fundamentally changing the way things work, and we have to understand it so that we can help our kids navigate tricky questions, to your point, what does responsible use look like? What are the implications of using it? How does it relate to copyright? How do we think about art created with this new technology? So you do have to understand it, however-

Can I jump in real quick and just add one thing?

Yes.

Just last week’s episode with Oscar Keyes and Erika Ogier just talking about all things digital art, and they made a great point about how digital natives and we think of kids understanding all this technology just because they grew up with it, that whole idea of digital natives is kind of a myth, and I see that kind of repeating here with AI where we are just assuming that kids are exploring it on their own, they know what to do with it because it’s something technological and they play around with it, but as you just said, there are so many questions that we need to dive deeper on, that we need to understand, we need to help our kids understand and help them grapple with and navigate all of those questions as well. And so I think just going back to that discussion from last week, it’s really important for us as teachers to do things like that.

Mm-hmm. 100%. That was such a good episode, so if you’re interested in technology, you should go back and listen. Okay, all that said, you do not have to be using AI for everything or even at all. We fully support you not using AI to make art in your art room often or ever. Again, might a day lesson about it and discussion about it be good for your kids? Yes, I think so. But if you don’t want to use it in your classroom, I think that’s valid and fair. But you might be pressured to use AI in other ways as an educator. So a lot of schools are picking up licenses, excuse me, for AI programs or having workshops about using them to grade or give feedback, or a whole host of things.

So two things that I’m currently doing to sort of mitigate my own AI usage are anytime I’m doing a Google search, you can add -AI to the end of your search and it will stop Google from giving you the AI summary at the top. So I realized just even by Google searching, it was forcing me to use AI all the time, and most of the time I don’t need that summary. I actually know what I’m looking for and I’m trying to double-check something, or I don’t want to actually take the time to vet the AI summary because there’s no guarantee that that is correct. So doing that has made me feel better of just eliminating that from my search.

But the other thing is trying to craft the best prompt possible at the start so I need fewer iterations. So water is talked about a lot with AI, and every time you use ChatGPT, it’s like pouring out a bottle of water and keeping that in the back of my mind is really helpful. I try to be as specific as possible and give it every piece of information it needs to do the best job with the task I’ve given it upfront so that I have to use it less, I guess. This is called prompt engineering if you’re not familiar with that term. So looking up some tips for prompt engineering might make you feel better about using it if you have to, but really in this new age, the skills students are learning in the art room, particularly creative thinking and problem solving, are going to be so, so important in navigating the future. So I say just keep doing what you’re doing.

Yeah. No, that’s an excellent answer. I want to talk just briefly, I think, about the sustainability part of things, the environmental side of AI. This is my daughter, she’s a high school junior, but she’s huge into sustainability, environmental justice, all that, and she had sent me an infographic about ChatGPT about how its use really uses up a lot of water, but it’s very little in comparison to even watching TV and the energy that comes with that, or eating a hamburger uses 660 gallons of water and then compare that to all the leaky pipes in the United States and how much water that wastes. And I don’t know if that made me feel better about ChatGPT or just worse about everything else, but there are other options out there. My daughter recommended Perplexity AI. It’s supposed to be more sustainable, and I know she uses a different internet browser that has a lot of sustainable practices. So there are options out there if you want to try and be more responsible about your use. I would encourage you to look those up.

Personal note, I love using AI for writing, doing prompts, streamlining some of my work, saving a lot of time, but I really dislike it for any kind of imagery, not only because of the ethical issues, but also it returned some really crappy stuff, it looks terrible, and I don’t love any of that. And so with that being said, I told Jen it’s okay to be resistant for any reason, whether it’s ethical or educational or any other reason you have, but you still need to understand how AI works, and I think that the better we understand that, the more you can clarify why you’re resistant to it, and then if there are ways you want to use it responsibly, great. If you want to share those with your kids, I think that’s really, really a good way to go about it. So just spend a little bit of time kind of understanding it and then you can decide how you want to approach after that.

Yeah.

Okay. Next question. It’s another voicemail for you. This one is from Katherine.

Catherine:

Hi, this is Catherine Kasparovich. I teach in reading Pennsylvania, at 2 small Catholic schools elementary. And my question is, how do you deal with multiple class packs of markers where some are working and some are not. And then, if I have to order more. I just don’t know if I should get rid of a whole box and and start fresh, and just not worry about the other ones, but I feel guilty not using them all up, and then, also, too, any storage options or markers, and any advice for that, because I’m always at a loss. Thanks so much, and thank you for everything that you do.

These voicemails are just really giving me life. It is really like to hear from people. Okay, class packs. In general, big fan. It’s often more cost-effective to buy supplies this way. I would not get rid of good markers and start fresh when some start running out. Instead, I would get rid of them as they go bad. And in my experience, there’s at least a few kids in every class and sometimes all the kids in all the classes who love nothing more than testing markers as an early finisher job. They just love to do it, I don’t know, and then they carry their little marker testing sheets out as a badge of pride at the end of class. So get the kids to do that. That is a kid job at any age. Kindergartners can test markers. And if you find yourself running out of specific colors more regularly, like for me in my classroom, it was always blue. The blue markers always went first, because the kids are just coloring the skies and the oceans. It’s like The Day the Crayons Quit. Isn’t the blue crayon the littlest crayon?

Oh, I have not read that in a while, but that does sound right.

I think so. But anyway, many companies offer the ability to purchase colors separately, so you can get a box of 12 blue or a box of 12 black markers. So I would investigate that. The second part was about storage. So for me, in my classroom, I kept a table caddy on each table with frequently used supplies, which were scissors, glue sticks, pencils and markers. I taught elementary, so your mileage may vary there. But the markers lived in there, and then if colors ran out, if there was a dried out marker, then I would just replenish it. I’d just swap it out from my class pack box, which I kept in storage.

Okay, all great. I will say, you mentioned that even kindergartners can test markers, and I’m just going to tell you kids still love testing markers when they’re in high school.

I like testing markers, quite honestly.

Right, right, and everybody loves doing that. So if you can just recruit some out there, that’s always good. I just had a drawer or two drawers of markers in with my other storage things, one with warm colors, one with cool colors, and that usually worked out just fine. And then if kids thought a marker was going bad, I’d have them put it on my desk and we had a collection that needed to be tested, because sometimes they’ll be about out, but still have a little life in them. And if you give kids carte blanche to throw things away, they’re going to throw everything away. So don’t try that, but just have them run it through you if they think it’s running out, and then you can test those later on.

And my kids always went through black first, because I think they like outlining everything, having those sharper edges. So just my experience. And then when I got to advanced classes, I would buy the really nice marker set, like the Prismacolors, and I’m in charge of that because those walk away real quickly. But having those nicer sets for kids who want to do advanced work, I think is part of the deal with markers for those kids as well.

Yeah. Also, I bet a lot of people know this listing, but if you don’t, you can pull the bottom cap off and pull out the inside. Even if the marker is dried out, you can put it in water and you can make your own liquid watercolors.

So much fun.

Hot tip.

I don’t know if it’s a hot tip. It’s been around for a while.

It’s a medium warm tip.

It’s a lukewarm tip for you. Okay, our next email is from anonymous, and the question is, “I’m going to just come out and say it. I’m finishing my first year and I feel like a failure. LOL. Classroom management was bad, lessons were bad, felt like everything was bad. How do I know if I’m cut out to be a teacher? I think I want to come back next year, but I’m going to have to be better. Where do I start and how do I make it so I’m not a failure as a teacher?” This is a heavy question right here, Amanda.

It is and it isn’t, because here’s the thing, congratulations. You are normal.

Yes, yes. Everyone has gone through this.

Everybody feels like a failure after the first year. In fact, I would argue caring enough to reflect and realize that things did not go as you planned makes you a great teacher and signifies you are cut out for teaching because it’s going to take you really far should you continue to stay in the career. So first, you are not a failure, you just made it through your first year of teaching, which is so hard. Did some things in your class fail? Yeah, highly likely.

Yeah, probably.

We’ve all been there. Would you like to ask me about the time I tried to pass back 150 prints to kids sitting in a circle one at a time, or I tried to teach 30 kids how to make rag rugs, which includes braiding, tying knots, sewing. Kids were literally crying and so was I. We all have these stories.

But that’s the thing, like everybody has those stories.

Yes. Okay, here are three questions I would ask yourself. Number one, what specifically about your year made you feel like a failure? So you mentioned a couple of brief things, but was it how the projects turned out? Was it that the kids didn’t like the projects? Was it that the projects took too long? What was it about classroom management? Was your cleanup insane? Were transitions where things fell apart? Get really specific. And then number two, out of that list, which one made you feel the worst? Because what we’re not going to do is try to fix everything at once on day one next school year, because that’s a real recipe for failure. You cannot work on everything all at the same time. So you’re going to pick one thing that you feel would make the biggest impact if you improved with it, and then you’re going to think about just one small concrete step that you could take towards learning more about that.

So some ideas for you is you could search the AOE magazine, lots of amazing free resources there. You could make a post in the Art of Ed community asking for advice. Certainly join if you’re not a member yet. It requires a little vulnerability, but people are so kind in there. You will get good responses. You can also go out to dinner with a teacher friend to vent and brainstorm. Lean on the people that you know. So just in general, remember, no one has it figured out, we’re all learning. If your district is willing to get you FLEX Curriculum or PRO Learning, if you don’t already have it, there is so much support there, especially for new teachers. So plug for that, that’s great. But also just come on into the community and start asking questions.

Yeah, for sure. I don’t know, I think you made all of the correct points, Amanda, and maybe it was a failure of a year, maybe not, but the important thing is you care enough to reflect, you care enough to get better, and that’s the key. And so I would say, like Amanda said, just drill down into what you think was… Get as specific as you can as far as what was not working, and then figure out how to fix that, whether that is routines, whether that is how you organize your classroom, whether that is how your lessons are presented. Whatever the case may be, there’s going to be room for improvement and there are a lot of resources that can help you with that.

So spend some time researching, spend some time talking about those specific things that you want to fix, and as you get back into it in the fall, you’ll be in so much better shape. Just from spending a little time reading, thinking, reflecting over the summer, you’re going to be able to start so much more successfully next year. And are you going to fix everything in year two? Definitely not.

The rag rugs, that was year two.

No, but honestly, even, I don’t know, 6, 7, 8 years in, I’m still learning things, still getting better, and so as long as you realize that you’re not going to be a finished product in year two or year three and realize there’s always room to get better, as long as you still have that curiosity and that drive to research and to improve what you’re doing in the classroom, you’re on the right track to becoming a very successful teacher.

Yep.

Next question is from Tyler in Arizona. Tyler says, “Does anyone else have kids that argue over literally everything? Literally every word I say to them, they have to argue back. They’re not even thinking, it’s just an automatic response. I watch them do something. They say, ‘I didn’t do it.’ I tell them something. They say, ‘You never told me that.’ Every single thing. I have lots of questions. Why? Why do they do this? How do I keep it from driving me crazy? How do I handle it in my classroom?”

Just Tyler, do you live in my own personal house? Why do we have to discuss brushing our teeth every day? It’s just something we have to do. Okay, first question. Why? The first question I like is actually why do they do this? I don’t know. I think there are two main reasons. So depending on the age of your kids, that upper elementary, lower middle school group is doing a lot of testing. I have one of these in my own home and I literally say out loud, “Testing, testing. 1, 2, 3.” Don’t do that. It only makes them madder. Don’t take parenting advice from me.

I was going to say, that feels like something that entertains you rather than actually solves the problem.

Yeah, that’s not the solution. But they’re seeing what they can get away with, right? Is it going to work today? Is it going to work this way? If I change it, is it is that going to get me the result I want? I think second, a lot of kids will just do this for attention. A lot of kids like attention from grownups, even if it’s negative, which is so fun. So is this normal? Yes. Is it annoying? Yeah. I don’t know, Tim, do you have ideas?

Oh, yes and no. Again, like you said, it’s what they do at this age, and so I don’t know how you keep it from driving you crazy because it’s going to continue to happen. As really question as to why, I think it works for them, especially at home, if they argue, they get out of consequences, they get out of things they don’t want to face, and so just in a lot of situations it works for them. So they need to know that it’s not going to work for them in your classroom if you want to shut this down. You need to make it clear that talking back, that arguing, that whatever you don’t want them to do, just make it clear that that’s not going to happen in your classroom.

One thing that always works for me, especially if I come over and say, “Hey, I need you all to stop talking while I’m presenting,” and then they’ll come back, “Well, I wasn’t talking,” and then I just tell them, “This is not a discussion right now. I just need you to listen. And so I’m giving you instruction, I’m giving you direction. I need you to follow through with what I’m telling you. Just sit and listen for a second and then do what I’m asking you to do.” And that’s not a skill that every kid has, and so you need to teach them how to listen. You need to teach them how to follow directions. You need to teach them how to accept consequences. And so say, “Hey, when I come over and tell you X, I need you to do Y,” and that gets annoying to repeat over and over, but if you’re consistent with it… You’re never going to eliminate these behaviors, but you can minimize them for sure.

And I know a lot of teachers really like to argue back with kids because it’s fun and it feels good and you’re smarter and bigger, so you’re going to win those arguments, but I would just advise that when you argue back with kids, you’re signaling to them that this is an issue worth arguing about and that’s never going to go well in the long run for you. So just do your best to keep a calm and cool demeanor, be very clear about what your expectations are and just be consistent with how you follow through on all those.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would go back also to a similar problem we talked about recently, which was kids not being able to handle the word no, and that’s just make your expectations so clear. They’re written on the board, they’re written on posters. You do not deviate from them because then there isn’t as much to argue about because they actually know the answer. And I think two phrases we talked about last time were, “Did you not understand what I said or did you not like it?” And also, “You already asked that and I already answered,” and then that just gets shortened to asked and answered.

Yes, I really appreciate your asked and answered approach. That’s a good one.

Yeah, just like we already talked about this, knock it off. So anyway. Those are a couple of other strategies that are worth resurfacing for this question.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Okay. We have one final question, Amanda. I’ve read a couple, we’ve had a couple voicemails. Would you like to read the final question?

Sure. This is from Cass Penegr, maybe, sorry if I’m saying your name incorrectly, from the community. How do I encourage students to stay creative over the summer and continue to make things, even if they are a small or daily doodle without making it official summer work?

Oh, that’s good. That’s an excellent question. I think the key word there is to encourage them. I don’t think you can expect kids to create over the summer for a lot of different reasons. So I would say just go into that assignment without expectations on your end. Just give them the opportunity, give them the prompts or the ideas to get started and cross your fingers and hope that you get some cool stuff back. And I would say just make it fun. Give them a lot of options. My summer work that I always send home with kids is just a list of fun and creative things that they can do. Some of them are small, some are big, all of them are kind of different. And then also just a huge list of drawing prompts, just so they can find something that intrigues them. If you give them a list of 50 different drawing prompts, they should be able to find something.

And so if they have a little bit of motivation, you just give them that opportunity and they can go from there. We have a ton of drawing prompts from the Art of Ed that we can share with you in the show notes as well. And one thing that we’ve talked on here a lot about is the small C side of creative from Andrea Slusarski and the psychology of creativity. It’s got a whole matrix of creativity, but part of that is the small C creative things that we do every single day, and just reminding kids that those are creative things, whether it is just a quick journaling thing or a sketch that they do, or a fun way that they’re organizing their dinner plate. It can be just the tiniest little thing, but just remind them that those creative endeavors are out there for them. They don’t have to create masterpieces, they don’t have to bring back huge, beautiful paintings, but if they’re just exercising those creative muscles in little ways every day, that can be incredibly worthwhile.

Yeah, I agree here that all you can really do is encourage. Some kids are not going to take you up on this or have the means or the supplies or the support at home also to take you up on this, but just like you said, Tim, just giving them something to remind them to be creative is a great strategy. We actually have two articles with downloadable resources that you can print and make copies and distribute to your kids. Each resource, they’re a little bit different, but the idea is similar. They have specific ideas and prompts for kids to do over the summer. So one is called A Summer Supply List and Art Challenge to Empower Your Students, and the other one is called Help Your Students Make the Most of Their Break With a Summer Art Challenge, and we can link both of those for you and then it’s done for you and you can just use it.

Very nice. Makes it very easy. But yeah, great question, great reminder as we’re heading into the summer here. All right, so we’re going to wrap up part one right now, but as we said in the beginning, we have so many voicemails, so many questions to get through, we are going to do part two. So if you want to watch or listen to part two, head on over to the Art of Ed community. We’re linking to all the spots you need to know in the show notes there, and we will catch you over there for part two.