Making Connections and Building Community (Ep. 450)

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by the Art of Education, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz. We are now less than three weeks away from my favorite event of the year, the NOW Conference. The best online learning experience for art teachers. Just an amazing few days of learning, connecting, and art-making. So today on the podcast, we are going to talk to one of our presenters from the conference, Joel Scholten. We’ll talk about NOW, but also talk about community and how we connect with each other and the benefits that come from those connections. Now, Joel is the perfect guest for this because he has been to plenty of NOW Conferences, presented at plenty of them, and he creates these amazing art-making videos that we love to use to start the conference. They’re so much fun. They set the tone perfectly for the entire day.

Now, I also want to talk to him apart from the NOW Conference because he is just wildly popular on social media. He has something like 110,000 followers on Instagram, who knows how many on TikTok. And because of that, I think he has some insight into what art teachers need, what they’re looking for, and how we can connect with each other. So we’re going to dive into all of that today.

But before we get to that conversation, I want to give you a quick rundown of the NOW Conference and everything that you can expect if you’re going to attend. So Friday, January 31st, we have the conference kickoff. It’s an evening of a lot of fun. We have games, we have prizes, we have giveaways, we have art-making sessions. It’s a great way to get the weekend started. Saturday, February 1st we have an entire day of professional learning just for art teachers. There’s more art-making, there are more giveaways. We have a keynote this time around from the incomparable Carrie Mae Weems. So excited for everyone to hear from her. Then on Sunday, February 2nd, and honestly every day after for the next year, you can go to the After Pass to find extra presentations, asynchronous learning, more perks, more prizes, and revisit any of that learning, any of those presentations or catch anything that you miss. That’s all in the After Pass. You have access to it for an entire year. So everything you need to know to register and attend can be found at theartofeducation.edu/now. And with that being said, let’s bring on Joel and get our conversation started. Joel Scholten is joining me now. Joel, how are you?

Hey. I’m doing great, Tim. Thank you so much for having me here.

Well, we are thrilled to talk to you and even though we’ve known each other forever, somehow, you have never been on the podcast, and so I’m glad we can remedy that. But I think we should probably give everybody an introduction. So can you tell listeners of the podcast about yourself or about your teaching or just anything else that you want to share?

I’m a father of two and a husband, and we live in Omaha, Nebraska. I’ve been married for 17, almost 18 years. And I’m also a K-12 art teacher and reading specialist. This is my 18th year of teaching that I’m currently in. And I’ve experienced teaching everything from pre-K through year 12. I’ve taught in Seattle as well as Iowa and Nebraska. So I’ve been all over the place. And I spent four years teaching with the very famous Tim Bogatz. So you were like our department head back in the day.

Yeah. I don’t know. That is a trip down memory lane, and it’s interesting because we were technically in the same district, but talk to each other what, once a year, maybe twice a year. Yeah. Did not collaborate nearly as much as we mean to.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And so I actually see you more now working with you at the Art of Education-

Right. Then we did literally teaching in the same district together. Funny how things work like that. That’s a good one. Okay. So I want to talk about a couple different things today and definitely dive into all of the Instagram things that you do. But before we talk about that, I want to talk about the NOW Conference that’s coming up end of January, beginning of February. You’ve done a ton of the art making videos for us. They’re a blasts, they are so much fun and people love seeing you so I am really glad we can keep bringing you back for that. But can you tell us just a little bit about what’s happening with your video and what you’re doing for the upcoming conference here?

Yeah. Absolutely. First of all, I’d like to say that I love creating these videos. It’s so much fun to create art with other art teachers and just make art with you guys and enjoy creating in the process with you. I think it’s such a fun way to start the conference because we are all creatives at heart. And so to begin the conference with an art making session is such a fun thing to do to start the session off. And like you said, I’ve been doing this for a while. It’s a ton of fun and I absolutely love it because it combines both art education, teaching art, which is what I do, and sharing a little bit more about our flex curriculum, which is also what I work with with the Art of Ed. And so just being able to share my knowledge base in both of those areas with art teachers and then also inspire and create and just get people open to thinking and being flexible thinkers.

For this particular session I’m not going to tell you what we’re making. It’s going to be a wild journey that we are going to be on in this art making session. But I’m going to tell you it’s really fun. It’s super open-ended, so I can’t wait to see all the different results that we’re going to end up getting with this. But you’re going to want to have a sketchbook ready, you’re going to want some watercolors, maybe some permanent markers, and then a handful of your other favorite materials because you just don’t know what you might end up needing.

I love it. Well, I love that you’re still shrouding this in a little bit of mystery, which is very fun. But I will say it is a very cool lesson. It’s a very cool project. I love that this is the one you’re doing because I think it works well for people to create their own art, but it also works well if you want to take it back to your classroom. And so just the idea that we can do both is really fun. And like you said, it’s great to see what everybody comes up with. When we have a couple of thousand creative people together, you get some really, really good results. So looking forward to seeing what everybody creates with that. So I like that. And like you said, if everybody can just get their art materials ready and start off the conference with some art making, that’s a great way to do things.

Now I also wanted to ask you just about everything that you’ve done with Instagram. It feels like every time I look you up on Instagram, you have another 10,000 followers, which it’s been exploding. Can you talk us through that? I know you do a great job of sharing ideas, sharing videos. I guess my big question is when did you first find that format or create that format of lesson sharing videos that you do? And how did you find out that those types of videos were becoming popular, that those are resonating with people online?

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, first of all, this has been such a wild ride for me. Years back a mutual friend of ours, Abby, who also worked with us in the same district-

I was going to say, we had such a good crop of art teachers working together there. It was wonderful.

Absolutely. And she was trying to convince me to get Instagram. That that’s where all the art teachers were sharing all the best art ideas. And we were talking about how sometimes we can get caught up being on our own islands in our buildings. A lot of us don’t have other art teachers to collaborate with. And when Abby and I worked together, we did share a building. So we did have the opportunity to collaborate a little bit with each other. But once we moved to different districts, it really did feel like I was on this island by myself. And so she encouraged me to get on Instagram. And I thought at the time, I was like, “I’m 30. What’s a 30-year-old going to do on Instagram? That’s ridiculous. Why would I do that?” And so I held off and I held off and I held off. And then in 2019 I had a student teacher so I had a little extra time so I started-

I was going to say, just all kinds of time to fill when somebody else is teaching your classes for you, right?

Right. And trying to find inspiration to help her write lesson plans. And so I dove in headfirst and grabbed myself an Instagram account, and I immediately fell in love with the art teacher community as a whole. I think it’s just so awesome how much people are willing to share and support and encourage. There’s so much encouragement in the lesson plans, in the student work, in the successes. And even those moments where we can all laugh over a shared disaster like, “Oh, that happens to me in the classroom too. I’m glad I’m not the only one that has to unclog a jammed pencil sharpener every day or whatever.” It’s like, “Oh, I feel this vindication knowing that I’m not the only person in the world who has these issues.” And so I immediately fell in love with the community. And I enjoyed sharing lessons just like everybody else, but I was sharing just images of student work and a short little blurb of the lesson plan in the captions underneath.

I felt like things started to evolve organically. Even though I didn’t really have a lot of followers at the time people were just asking a ton of questions about the process or about my learning goals or things like that. And so I thought, man, I’m spending so much time writing responses to all these questions. It would be so much faster if I just made a time-lapse video because people can see. So I started creating these time-lapse videos. Well, of course, as I started creating these time-lapse videos, I started to gain more followers and followers who weren’t art teachers per se. And so what may have seemed really instinctive to maybe some art teachers, now I had people asking me very specific questions about exactly … Okay, but how do you do that? How is that done?

And so now I was thinking, okay, I’m still … This didn’t solve the problem of answering all these questions, which I’m more than happy to do, but it does take a lot of time. And so I thought, well, maybe if I slow it down a little bit and add a voiceover, it will again take less time than maybe adding or responding to all these questions that I had online. And so I started to add the voiceovers. I don’t know. Things just seemed to blow up. So I went from a pretty small art teacher following to a pretty large base, and it happened organically. I think one thing that really helped is that I never really intended to have a bigger following. So it all is just super organic. And I think people recognize that what I’m doing is authentic and so I think that speaks to people.

I think that authenticity goes a long way. And what you post and what you share is all so much fun. And so people just love seeing that, they love the positivity because it is an antidote to what you see on a lot of social media. But as you were talking about that, I was thinking because you’re well over a hundred thousand followers now, and I don’t even know if there are that many art teachers in the entire country. And so I am just curious about the different types of people that are following you now and if that has changed your experience on social media? Has it changed for you and are you doing anything differently now that you have all of these different people and different types of people following you?

Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah. I do think that my following is much more diverse than I used to have. I think I have a lot of parents who want to create art with their kids, and so are looking for art activities. I think I have a lot of homeschool families or co-ops who are looking for art activities to do with their kids. And I also think that I have a lot of classroom teachers who have been posed with the responsibility of teaching art in their classrooms, but don’t necessarily have the resources to do it independently. And so I do think I find myself going back and explaining things a little bit more thoroughly than I normally would if I was talking to an art teacher colleague. Because I think there’s a general base level of knowledge when you go to school for art and you go to school for education. It’s a little bit different than when you’re stuck with this situation where now, okay, I want my kids to have these artistic experiences, but I don’t know how to make those things happen or I don’t know what materials are needed to make this happen.

And so I’m pulling it back a little bit and just getting a little bit more basic with some of the instruction. And I’m finding that there are still questions, but the questions are a little bit easier to answer because again, I’m adding those in the captions, I’m adding material lists and things like that that will help people understand exactly what they need to get to where they’re going.

Yeah. That’s fair. Now also, I’m curious, do you get negativity that comes with that too? I’ve had a couple of things go viral through AOE and wherever, and I just noticed that the more people we have, it feels like the more hate that comes your way and usually misdirected. But has that been part of your experience as well?

Oh, absolutely. And it’s funny because when you have a smaller base group like I did when I started, it really was just all art teachers. And so it was incredibly supportive. Even people that maybe even had a hard time seeing it. Like how does a first-grader get that done in your classroom? Even the responses to that were positive. It was like, “Wow. I can’t believe that you can make that happen with a first-grader. Can you tell me how you got that to happen or how that happened?” As opposed to now with so much bigger of a base and with things lifting off and floating through the algorithm, if you will, a lot of people just having really negative things to say. I try to pick and choose a little bit what I leave in my space. Some things are actually great because they force you to think about what you’re doing-

Well, and it could prompt a discussion. Even if they’re not bringing it up the right way, it could raise decent questions.

Absolutely. It really does. And it can also help for me to self-reflect on some of the things that I’m doing or how to explain things better, or if there needs to be a second video that helps explain something a little bit better. But some of it is just not helpful. And it’s so negative that I need to remove it. Instagram’s my happy place. There’s really not a place for that negativity on my page. And so oftentimes I’ll delete a comment. Especially if I don’t want to in my head think about watching the likes on those comments build or something like that. And here’s the thing, I love what I do, and I think there’s a certain level of trust in my classroom with my students. I’ve built such a trust. There are two things that I say to my kids all the time. One is, in this classroom we are practicing not perfect. The kids understand that there is no requirement for perfection.That if they’re working hard and trying their best, then they are succeeding at the expectation that I have for them.

And the second thing that I remind students is that I have high expectations, but it’s low stakes. Hey, I’m expecting that you are going to try this. I know that you can do it. I believe in you. I believe that you can do this. But if you try and fail, we have so many opportunities to problem solve. If we try and it’s not what you expect in your head we have so many opportunities to problem solve. This is not, again, a high stakes situation. So I believe that you can do it. And if you’re not there yet, if you can’t do it yet, that’s okay. We can still make it work. We can still continue to practice. We will get there. And so I think my kids feel safe in a place that allows them to take big risks. And then what happens when they take those big risks is they are able to create really big things that blow me away. And sometimes the things that they come up with actually inspire the future of that lesson for me.

Oh, I love that.

Wow, that is so cool. This is how I’m going to do it from now on. For example, I had a Grant Wood project, and it was like everybody’s … Sorry Grant Wood. It was everybody’s least favorite project. We just drew a farm, and I foreground, background, middle ground. And it was like everybody was rushing to finish. And then one year I had a kid that was like, “Hey, can I make mine a dinosaur farm?” And I was like, “Yeah. You absolutely should make-

That’s a great idea. Absolutely you can make a dinosaur farm.

Yes. Absolutely. You need to make a dinosaur farm, man. And then I thought to myself, wait, why aren’t we all just making whatever farm we want to be?

Absolutely.

Right. If the learning goal is that you can draw the three different parts of a landscape, who cares what farm it is? And so I’ve had kids make the wildest farm. Vending machine farms and robot farms. I had somebody this year make a turtle shell factory. And so she had all these turtles without shells walking into the factory and then coming out with shells.

Oh, that’s funny.

Yeah. It’s just super cool. But they’re showing me that they’re understanding of the learning goal. And it’s so much more fun than it used to be, but it’s all because my students feel safe to take big risks. And then because they feel safe to take big risks, we get big things happening in the classroom. And so often when I have people who are just so critical of the things that I’m doing with such young kids, I just want to tell them, this space is such a safe space for these kids to try and fail and retry and brainstorm and come up with new ideas, they’re not afraid to erase and try again. They’re not afraid to try something big. And that’s how we end up having really big successes in our classroom.

Yeah. That’s well said. I really appreciate that perspective. I think that’s really good way to look at things. I also want to ask you, just as you were talking about that, I was thinking about all these different things, and if I can tie all of this into one question, but just thinking about what you said earlier about being on an island, but also sharing ideas and trying to connect with other art teachers. Can you speak to, I guess, the importance of connecting for us as art teachers? Why should we want to connect with each other, and how do you think that we as art teachers can benefit from those connections?

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, again, I do think it’s important. I think it’s important for a variety of reasons. And the first reason is obviously because we do live a shared experience, but we’re in different buildings, we’re in different rooms. And there’s so much camaraderie and healing. Even learning from each other when we choose to share with each other instead of hunkering down in our own space. And I have learned so many art room hacks from sharing with others, from being on the Art of Ed, from being on Instagram, from being in our district meetings. People have really cool solutions to really niche art room problems. And if I am not surrounded by other art teachers, I don’t learn those hacks. And I keep doing that thing the hard way until somebody brings it to my attention that there’s an easier way. And I have hacks that I do in my classroom that I can share with other people too.

And so the more we are willing to share with each other, one, it makes our jobs and our lives easier. It’s healing to know that we are all living these shared experiences. But also so many of us across the country are building our own curriculum or have limited resources to curriculum or are creating much out of nothing. And so we are all building resources by ourselves. We are all building these lesson plans and ideas by ourselves and we can share the workload. I think this is naturally what happens when you’re, for example, a fourth grade teacher and you’re in a team of four. You divvy things up, you share the brunt of the load, you share the lesson planning, and it makes it so much easier when you work together as a team. And again, we don’t always have that. I’m fortunate enough to have something like that within our district. Our art teachers, we do share a lot of that stuff within our district, which is great. But you don’t always have that either, especially if you’re the only art teacher teaching at a certain level in your district.

And so being able to share in spaces like Instagram and the Art of Ed and things like that is awesome because really what you’re doing is you’re saying, “Hey, this is something that was really successful for me. Here’s a little exit ticket I did with them. Here’s a resource that I gave them that I drew up for them, and this is all available to you.” Now other people have the opportunity to take a breather, use your content, and not have to reinvent the wheel. And what’s great is that whatever you’re putting out there, it’s coming back in 10s of thousands. And so there’s just limited ideas and resources that are being put out into the universe so you’re not having to reinvent the wheel every single time.

Yes.

I also think that another really great thing about sharing with other art teachers is that we all have our gifts and expertise. And I find that the more sheltered I become as an art teacher, the more I tend to stick to very specific techniques, materials, strategies. Things start to look a little similar in the classroom. And it’s because I’m thinking from my perspective as an artist. And so I am an encaustic painter. I love painting. I love working with collage materials. And so those are things you find often when I’m writing a lesson plan, you’ll see lots of layering. You’ll see lots of-

That’s going to be reflected. Yeah. Right.

Because it’s how I think. And there are other people who have other areas of expertise and they think in a completely different way from you. And when you are incorporating lesson plans from other art teachers who have other areas of expertise, you are actually giving your students a much broader education in the arts. You’re giving them a much more diverse education where they’re learning a variety of different things instead of learning similar things from the same person.

Right. Right. Bringing in all those perspectives can be so powerful. And like you said, it makes for a better education for your students. So yeah, I love all of that. Okay. So just one last question for you before we wrap things up. I always like to end the podcast with a little bit of advice for listeners. So I would love for you to share just your best advice, whether that be about sharing and helping each other, or how we connect or how we use social media. What do you want to put out there into the world? What do you want to impart to listeners?

It would be to get out and find a community of artists to be a part of. And I truly do believe this because I think you’ll learn and grow. You will become a better educator. Your kids will have a better arts experience. If you are living in less stress, your kids will feel that in your classroom too. But like I said, it’s going to make you a better educator. I can give you one more example of that. Like I said, in our district, we have a teacher who is so great at creating formative assessments. Written formative assessments. And for me, again, once again, if I’m thinking in my own head, I can watch a student and I can gauge very quickly if they are understanding the learning goal and how to reteach and adjust to help them. And so in my mind, I always thought, okay, well, I am formatively assessing these kids as they are working and I can adjust my teaching to their needs. However, formative assessment is not only great for a teacher, but it’s also a great moment for kids to think about their own thinking. And if I’m doing all the thinking for them, then they’re not doing any of the reflecting. They’re not putting it down onto paper, they’re not thinking about it, putting in their own words.

And so like I said, I had the colleague in our district, and she’s really fantastic about creating exit tickets and just short written formal assessments and having different strategies in her classroom. And man, I’ve learned so much about how to get kids involved in the formative assessment process where they are thinking about their own learning. And that never would’ve happened if I had not put myself in a space or if I had not been able to be in a space within my district to have these district meetings because I may not have the opportunity or chance to communicate with that art teacher outside of our district meetings. And I might not have ever come to that conclusion where, man, I probably need to start having the kids write these things down because they are not thinking about their own learning if I hadn’t had a chance to collaborate with that teacher.

And she’s inspired me so much to begin doing things. And she’s so good about putting together these really short exit tickets that they’re so easy to implement at the end of … Kids get cleaned up early, they’re in line, here’s a post-it note, write things down, slap it into one of the three categories on my door on your way out. It’s so quick and easy that I can do it, like I said, as they’re in line. And it doesn’t take away a ton of time from instruction or from their creative time. But it is something that I can do to help them think about how they’re thinking and for me to really get a much better gauge on whether or not they truly understand what we were talking about in the classroom.

Yeah. I don’t know. There’s so many good ideas there, but like you said, I think it’s important to just open yourself up to those new ideas and the more new ideas you can find, you can figure out what works for you, what works for your student. And like you said, those are the ideas that can make you a better teacher. So I think that’s an important message. So Joel, thank you so much for the conversation today. It’s been really, really fun to talk to you, and we’ll look forward to seeing you soon at the NOW Conference.

Yes. Thank you so much for having me, Tim. And honestly am so excited about the NOW Conference and this project that we’re doing. So if you haven’t signed up for it yet, please do. It’s going to be such a fun art making experience. Thank you so much for having me, Tim.

Thank you to Joel for joining the show and for creating more great content for NOW that you’ll be able to see when you are joining us at the conference on February 1st. Now, I want to leave you today with just a few more thoughts on creating connections. As art teachers, we understand the importance of connection not only within our classrooms, but also with other art teachers. Building a sense of community among us as educators allows us to share ideas, to seek advice, to celebrate, and just the unique joys that come with teaching art. And whether we are finding those connections on Instagram where Joel is hanging out, or the Art of Ed community that we talk about all the time or the upcoming conference, these spaces are so valuable because they are filled with inspiration and discussions and places to share lessons and ideas and share student work and our own work. And they give us a chance to find a sense of belonging, which I think is missing for a lot of people in their teaching position and something I really, really would’ve loved at the beginning of my career. So I would encourage you to continue to make those connections and to remember that no matter where you are or what part of your career you are in, you can be part of a larger community and that community will be there to support you and to lift you up.

Art Ed Radio is produced by The Art of Education with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you for listening to this episode and every episode. Come join us at the NOW Conference on January 31st, February 1st and February 2nd. As I said, you can find all the information you need and register for the conference at theartofeducation.edu/now. We’ll talk to you next week.