November Mailbag: Calling in Sick, Instagram Follows, and Teaching Regrets (Ep. 394)

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by The Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.

All right, welcome to November. It is a few days into November, but it is the first Tuesday of the month, the first Art Ed Radio episode of the month. So it is a mailbag episode. Amanda is here, she is ready to answer questions, but before she joins us, I want to say a quick thank you to everyone who continues to write in, either via email or answering the Instagram questions that Amanda pops up. We love hearing those, and of course, we love the voicemails as well. So please keep calling. Please keep sharing your questions. We really enjoy having this sort of conversation with you through the mailbag and we love all the questions that are coming in. If you want to submit anything, you can email podcasts@theartofeducation.edu, or email me, timothybogatz@theartofeducation.edu.

And of course, like I said, our favorite, you can always leave a voice message. The number is (515) 209-2595. And then I’m going to put another ask out for this. We’re going to be working on another new podcast that’s probably going to come out early next year called Ask the Experts. And we’re going to do a deep dive on all different types of mediums that people teach, and we would love your questions, whether you’re unsure of certain things or whether you’re looking for some more advanced knowledge about any medium, drawing, painting, ceramics, sculpture, whatever you have, printmaking. Send us your questions, and we’re going to get some art teacher experts on the show to answer some of those questions. So please feel free to send those in as well.

But I think we’re ready to go here. So let me bring on Amanda, we’re going to share a couple fun things and then open up the mailbag.

All right, Amanda Heyn joining me now for the mailbag. Amanda, how are you?

I’m fine.

Okay.

I’m fine. I don’t want to lie to the people. I’m good. I’m very busy. I have a lot of things going on.

Okay, so what has been going on in the past month since we’ve talked to you? How was October for you?

Okay, October was fine. So I’m in a grad program, as you know, but maybe the listeners don’t. So I’m taking two classes on top of working and parenting. And we had a very exciting work trip, which, again, was fun. I also have another work trip, and then after that I have another work trip. So three work trips in six weeks.

Yeah, that’s too many work trips when you have multiple children at home.

Exactly. And then most importantly, every year, I’m like, “We’re not going to, we don’t need to go so hard for Halloween,” but then I just can’t help myself. So we were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle family costumes.

Yes, I love it. I love it.

And we made the kids turtle costumes. We had a Raphael and a Donatello. In fact, when I got home from first work trip, my 10-year-old was wielding a bow staff that he made out of a broom handle. This is what I returned home to in the driveway, because he’s Donatello. And then I’m April O’Neil, of course, the only girl in the entire Ninja Turtle universe, maybe, the reporter. And then my husband is Shredder.

I love it.

So this is a lot of crafts that I don’t have time for, you know?

But also they’re fantastic.

But also good, but also good. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How are you?

I’m good. As of yesterday, I started two grad classes at once, which, not smart, on top of a full-time job. I’m also coaching basketball, which I love, I love. So that brings me great joy. My son is on my team, so that’s great. And it’s middle school basketball, so I think my favorite part is just the size differential of the players. Because I have an eighth grader on my team who’s taller than me, he’s like 6’4”, weighs probably around 300 pounds. He’s making plans for college football already. He’s just so big and still growing. And at the same time on my team, I have a seventh grader who has not even sniffed puberty, and he’s less than five feet tall, probably weighs about 85 or 90 pounds.

Oh, cutie.

And just really contrast between those two, just epitomizes what it’s like to coach middle school or to teach middle school. It’s incredible. I love it so much.

I thought your favorite part was going to be how good they smell.

Oh, man. We do not need to talk about the bus rides after games. Those are rough, but so far they’re all washing their uniforms, for the most part, which is better than some years. So I’ll take it.

That’s a win.

Hey, we should talk about our two work trips, though, because they’re exciting. You get three, because you’re more important than me.

Well, I mean…

But we have two, one that we just finished and one that we are about to do. So let’s talk about what we just did in Baltimore. Would you like to give everybody a rundown? Because I think many people need to look out for this.

Oh my gosh, I would love to. So we did something that I have been wanting to do for literally probably eight years, which is taking it back to the days of Trading Spaces and making over an art room. Like, coming in, kicking the teacher out of their room, and just giving the entire room a refresh. And it was… Man, I came home and I slept for 13 hours the first night we got back, and it was one of the most fun weekends I’ve had in a very long time. It was so much work and it was so much fun.

And don’t worry, we filmed it all for you for YouTube. So if you have not subscribed to the YouTube channel yet, make sure you do that so you can see this when it comes out. We’re shooting for early December, and we’ll see if we can make that happen. But yeah, I don’t know. What do you want to say about it? I don’t want to give too much away, but just imagine a regular sort of very dingy art room, and what we were able to do in two days, thanks in big part to Lindsey McGinnis, we have to give her a shout-out, our media content manager.

Yes, for sure.

She is one of the most organized people I’ve ever met in my entire life, and without her we would’ve been lost, but we were able to pull it off.

Yeah, we got to put together some very cool projects, and really, I don’t know, just brightened up this entire art space, and I feel great for the teacher. I feel great for the kids in that classroom, and I’m super excited for everybody to see the makeover. So yeah. What, about a month away?

Yeah.

Keep an eye out for it.

I think the most surprising thing to me was the amount of gum under the table. You always see it in the movies, but oh my gosh.

Yeah, it was bad.

It was bad.

And then we also have a trip coming up… Oh my god, next week is our trip. Okay, so I should probably finish getting ready for that. How much do we want to say about this? We’re going to New York City.

Okay, we can’t say that much, but we’re going to New York City. I think we can say we’re going to interview our featured presenter for the next NOW Conference.

Yes.

It will certainly be the most famous person I’ve ever met in my entire life.

That’s fair.

So I’m thinking a lot about my outfit, and I’m so excited. I don’t think we can say anything else at this point, but you need to watch Instagram. So we’re going to be there on November 13th and 14th. You should tune into Instagram on those two days if you want to be the first to be in the know, and you should sign up for the conference, because you are not going to want to miss it. It’s going to be good.

Yes. That’s all very, very, did a great job of teasing that. I really wish we could talk about it more, but that’s probably about as far as we can go. So yeah, just keep an eye on socials, and then we we’ll chat a bunch more about it with the December mailbag, and it’ll be good.

Mm-hmm.

Cool. All right, so I guess we need our dramatic sound now, because it is time to actually open up the mailbag. So here we go.

All right, now, we are actually going to begin with a voicemail. Thank you to everyone for leaving voicemails. This one came in just a little bit too late to get into the last month’s mailbag, but we’re excited to answer it for this month. This is from Rowe in Massachusetts.

Hello, my name is Roe. I work in Watertown, Massachusetts at a middle and high school level. My question is around working with the students. I remember my practicum teacher said that it’s really important to be working along with the students on the project that they’re working on. I can see the importance in this, and I feel as though every time I try, it’s extremely challenging, and students are calling me over for insight and questions, and it’s just a very busy room. What are your thoughts on this? That would be great.

All right, so I have some thoughts on this one, if you don’t mind me taking this first, Amanda.

Go for it.

So I would say this feels like a luxury to me to be able to sit down and work with your kids. I would say do it when you can, but I don’t think it’s imperative for you to sit down and work with kids. It’s great if you can. I would say it’s much more important for you to be present and make sure you’re focusing on your teaching. Make sure you’re focusing on your classroom management and make sure that all of your kids have an opportunity to learn. Yeah, I love sitting down and working along with my kids, but that works really well when you have 20 or 24 kids. But when I have classes of 34 and 35 and 36, it’s impossible.

You’re not going to turn your back on a ton of them just to sit down and work. That’s not feasible and that’s not a good situation. So like I said, I always kind of look at that as, if you have the chance to actually sit down, things are calm enough, you can work along with the kids, that’s a great teaching opportunity. But like I said, it’s kind of a luxury that you can do when everything else is going well.

So if you’re kind of in Roe’s situation, you’re feeling like you have to show examples, but don’t feel great about sitting down and working along with kids, I would say just do a little bit of work during your plan time or other free moments in the day. You don’t have to have finished work, but you can show kids how you’re solving problems, how you’re creating compositions, how you’re dealing with other art elements, whatever other teaching opportunities are there. Feel free to show some examples, but I would say don’t feel pressured. Don’t feel like you have to sit down and work along with your kids.

Yes, I fully agree. So I think teaching and maintaining a safe and respectful classroom environment is obviously the number one priority. Like you said, I would often save working with students when we were deep into a project, maybe day three I taught at the elementary level, and everyone was working well. And even then, I wouldn’t just sit in one spot, I would rotate around the room. I’d sit at one table for a few minutes and then maybe go do something else and then sit down for another few minutes. I think this is also a good reminder not to take everything your cooperating teacher says at face value or as ultimate truth.

Yes.

You’re going to be teaching at a different school with different students and your own personal strength and growth areas, and what works for one teacher who has likely been teaching for 20 years, if they’re having a student teacher, it’s not going to be right for everyone, and that’s totally okay.

Yeah, absolutely. And just one more point that I didn’t hit, Roe in their question said, “Students are calling me over for insight and questions and it’s a very busy room.” Guess what? Those insights that they need, those questions they’re asking, that is your priority. As a teacher, you need to be following up and giving them insight and answering questions. So yeah, like I said, that’s where your attention needs to go. But Amanda, I love your point about, everybody’s in different situations and you just have to do what works for you, and you find that through some experience. So yeah, take the opportunity if you have it, don’t feel like you have to.

Okay, next question. This is an email that came through from Sam in New Hampshire, and Sam said, “Last week I had to make the dreaded before 6:00 AM call to my principal to let her know that I was sick and wouldn’t be in for the day. She seemed fine with it, but I still could hear the disappointment in her voice. How do I keep from feeling bad or guilty when I have to call in sick or asking for time off?”

Okay, well, I will just say, first of all, I think if your principal’s fine with it, you’re luckier than a lot of people that I’ve heard who will literally get yelled at for calling in sick.

So awful.

Which is just bad administration. You can’t make people feel guilty for doing that. So I would say a lot of those reactions come just because it’s tough for principals or tough for administrators. Everybody knows the shortage of subs, that’s literally across the country, how tough it is to find coverage. And that’s probably what the principal’s reaction is really about. They’re going to struggle to find coverage. They may be in your classroom themselves covering that class, and it’s probably happening to them four days out of five every week. That’s got to be tough on them, but at the same time, that’s their job. That’s not anything that you need to worry about.

You need to take care of you. When you’re sick, you need to be sick and not worry about it then. If you need to take time off for whatever reason, take that time off, and you don’t need to feel bad, you don’t need to feel guilty. You need that time off so you can be at your best for your students when you are there. And I would say probably the biggest thing that I would do is, when you are sick or if you know you’re going to be gone, just leave good sub plans so you know that your kids are doing something productive. It’s never going to be an ideal situation, but if you leave good activities that are well-thought-out that a sub can come in and be somewhat effective with, I think that’s the best you can do. Leave it at that and try not to worry too much more about it.

Amanda, your thoughts?

Yeah. Well, first of all, I don’t know what the principal is expecting, because presumably you are working with hundreds of students during cold and flu season. People will get sick unless they’re coming to school in a hazmat suit. So that’s what I would say first. But this is a classic case of control what you can control. Like you said, make sure you have great sub plans ready to go. If you need help with that, there is an excellent PRO Pack by Lindsay Moss called Planning for Substitutes that walks you through…

Oh yes, that’s such a good one.

It’s so good. Literally everything you need to set subs up for success, step-by-step. And that includes plans but also other things like, where do you put your emergency procedures and what do you do if you have a kiddo who you know is going to have a tough time? So anyway, check that out.

But after that, after you have planned and done what you can control, it is 100% not your responsibility as to how the school district can or cannot cover your class. There are large systemic issues at play here in terms of sub shortages and whatnot that you can’t address. Also, your principal’s feelings of disappointment are not your responsibility. You don’t have to take those on. You can let her have those. Can you tell I went to therapy recently? So be as prepared as you can be for emergency time off, and after that, just focus on getting better. And if that means taking more than one day, do that, because the best thing you can do for your students is to rest when you feel bad so that you can feel better and get back to school as soon as you can.

Yeah, great advice.

All right, Amanda, I have another email, another voicemail, but I’d love to dive into Instagram questions. You have some good ones from Instagram?

Yes, we do.

Okay.

All right, so our first one is from @msmurphyart, and they said “How to respond to a student who is constantly saying, ‘I don’t like it’ about their art?” To me, this can be one of the most annoying problems to try to fix. Know what I mean? Because these kids are so adamant, and so first of all, no, you’re not alone. We have all been there. Kids do this. I feel like you really start to see it around 11 or 12 when they’re making that big developmental shift of noticing everyone else around them, and they get into this really comparative mindset. They feel like everyone is looking at them and judging them all the time.

And sometimes their observation or drawing skills just aren’t up to par with what they see in their head. They want to make it look realistic or right, and that can be really tricky. So a few thoughts here. One is just, I kind of ignore it. So this was something I used to do in my classroom but then was validated when I became a parent from a parenting expert regarding kids saying things like, “I don’t want to go to school.”

So the idea is you’re just kind of ho-hum about it and then redirect. So for example, at the beginning of the school year, my 6-year-old would be vehemently opposing school. “I’m not going to school today, I won’t get in the car, I’m not getting dressed,” et cetera. And I would be like, “Okay, what do you want to eat for breakfast?” Or “Do you want to wear your Pokemon shirt or your me-owter space cat shirt?” So you validate them, you hear them, and then you just move them in another direction or distract them with a decision.

Yeah, this is exactly my strategy in the classroom when kids are like, “I don’t like it.” I mean, I’m sure there are more underlying issues, but my thought was always, “Oh God, that’s annoying. I don’t want to deal with you seeking attention in this way.” And so I would always just say, “Oh, okay, I really do like it.” And then I would point out something specific in their artwork that I thought was really good, and then I would point them in that direction.

They’re like, “I don’t like it.” I was like, “Oh, but you’re doing a great job using color. Look at how you blended those blues right there. Is there anywhere else that you can blend some colors?” And then they’re just on with that, and that, for whatever reason, generally worked fairly well. But I don’t know. I’m sure you have more ideas than that one strategy than I have.

I do, but I think that’s a good call-out that you have to get at the root of why they’re coming up to you. So if the student is really actually upset, and you’ve tried like, “Oh, I hear you’re not liking this. Well, it’s work time right now. Do you feel done with the drawing step? Do you want to move on to color?” If you’ve tried sort of that strategy and they’re really just in their feelings or shutting down, which can also happen, I would try a short discussion and sort of approach it from a solutions perspective. So again, you’re validating their feelings. “I hear you. You don’t like it. Okay.”

A couple of questions you could ask would be like, “Oh, what’s making you feel that way? Is there anything we can do together to help make this project more positive? Can you tell me about the parts that you aren’t feeling are successful?” And then you can sort of narrow down what might be going on and find a way forward. So it might be that they have low self-esteem and maybe they need a more exploratory experience to get back on track, take a breath. Maybe they can voice that they’re lacking a specific skill. Like, “I really don’t like how I drew this,” I don’t know, “still life object,” right? And maybe you can address that with a short bootcamp with them.

Do they just need a timeout from art? Are they just saying “I don’t like my art,” but what they really mean is “I need to get out of this room for a hot second,” and send them to the, well, I’m going to say bubbler because I live in Wisconsin, but…

So weird.

To the rest of the country that would be a water fountain.

Yeah, a water fountain, slash drinking fountain, yes.

To go get a drink. Or maybe they’re just really craving some one-on-one adult attention, right? Because their needs aren’t being met at home. So trying to get at the root of the behavior I think can really help you figure out how to address that.

Yeah, I think that’s some great advice.

All right. Second Instagram question is from at @lowensart, I believe is how you say that. And they said “I would love some suggestions for high school accounts to follow on Instagram. I’m already following Art of Teaching, Artful Ideas Classroom, Mrs. Fox Resources, and Art Queen Sandy.” So I have a few friends of AOEU I want to mention, but Tim, do you want to go through some of the other suggestions we have?

Yeah, for sure. I put together a couple, we put it out to our team. They had some awesome suggestions. If you’re looking for ceramics, Karen Kick, she’s @karenkiickart, Sarah Mundy, @sajceramic, and Hope Kathleen Lemansky Smith, I think that’s @lemanskystudios.

Nice job with that name.

I don’t know if it’s right or not. I hope if you’re out there and want to let me know how to actually pronounce it, I would appreciate it. But we’ll do our best to link to all of those. And there are a lot of good departments out there to follow, not necessarily just individuals, but departments. George Washington High School in San Francisco, @gwhs_art, and @wemakebhs, I think that’s Barrington High School in Illinois. Those are two really good places to start.

Yeah, that’s really good advice, to look for the art department. So good call-out. Can we also link… I don’t know how many links we can have in the show notes, because that’s not…

Well, I usually try and limit it a little bit, but it looks like we’re going to need to do a bunch today.

We also do have two articles that you can go look at. So one is called Top 10 Inspiring Art Teacher Instagram Accounts to Follow, and the other one is called 10 Interesting and Inspiring Art Teachers to Follow on Instagram. So obviously you can have 20 to look through there, but I also wanted to mention some friends of AOEU who teach at the high school level. So Janet Taylor, who you may be familiar with from the podcast is at @jtaylorartteach. She is currently teaching jewelry metals, but also has a lot of content about assessment and creativity.

@therussellartroom is Jen Russell, another friend of the podcast who has created a ton of content for AOEU over the years. She is really incredible at building relationships with her students, so that would be a good follow-up for that. Bill Rembert did an amazing presentation on portrait painting that was super well-received at a recent NOW conference. He’s @wbrembert. And then Tasha Newton, who has created some YouTube content for us, is @iartmyjob and is doing some really cool things at the middle-secondary level. So like middle school level.

All right, very nice. Those are some awesome suggestions. Okay, anything else from Instagram?

Yes, I have one more, but I’m a little bit scared about it.

Oh, is this the color theory one?

Yes.

Okay, okay. Let’s go, because I saw this come through, and I’m like, “Oh, I need to look into this more.” So I’m ready for this one.

You took the rabbit hole on this one, which I’m excited to learn. So number one, I need to apologize because I lost the handle for this person. So if this is you, please email us so we can give you credit in a future episode. I can’t dig back into the Instagram story archives. I don’t know how to do that.

The question is, though, which is more important: “Is there a difference between intermediate and tertiary colors? What should teachers at the high school level do if kids are confused?”

So I will admit, I saw this question and I said to myself, “What are intermediate colors?” Because that has never come up.

And you taught high school.

Right. And those are what I have always known as tertiary colors.

Same.

And so I’m very curious to hear from people whether you use the phrase intermediate or whether you use the phrase tertiary for these colors. And actually, Amanda, while I’m blathering on here, will you do me a favor? Can you go to the Merriam-Webster website and just look up “tertiary color”? Because I looked at this to make sure I wasn’t going crazy for the definition, and I would love for you to read it in just a second, if you can look that up.

Yes, on it.

So basically, we all know what our primary colors are. Okay, we all know that it’s…

Do we?

Okay, that’s a whole nother debate. Are we doing red, yellow, and blue? Are we doing cyan, magenta and yellow?

I don’t think it matters in this case.

Are we going digital and going RGB or CMYK? So many options. So anyway, let’s say for argument’s sake today that our primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. We mix those to make orange, green, and violet, and those are our secondary colors. We can mostly go ahead and say that.

We can debate about violet or purple, but yeah.

Right. But then when you mix a primary with a secondary color, let’s say mixing red and violet, you get red violet. I have always called these tertiary colors, but I’m learning that there are a significant number of people that call these intermediate colors, and they seem to get very upset with you when you call them tertiary colors because tertiary colors are something very different in their world where you’re mixing red violet with yellow green, and why you would mix those ever, I don’t know. But that’s how you actually create tertiary colors.

But yet, when I look up what this says in the dictionary to try and get a definition and figure out what is the difference between intermediate and tertiary colors, Merriam-Webster tells us what, Amanda?

Okay, Merriam-Webster’s not really helping us. She tells us, number one… Well, there’s two definitions.

Yes, here’s our problem.

Here’s the problem. The first definition for tertiary color is “a color produced by an equal mixture of a primary color with a secondary color adjacent to it on the color wheel,” which is what we thought. But then it also says “a color produced by mixing two secondary colors.”

So according to Merriam-Webster, both the intermediate people are right and the tertiary people are right. And so there’s really… I don’t know that we’re going to come to a consensus on this, which is fine, which is fine.

Yeah. Well, that’s why it’s called… What did I say? Remember I called something out on the podcast? It was such a good quote. Oh, it was like, “That’s why it’s called color theory, not color facts.” I saw some art teachers say that in a Facebook group, and I was like, it stopped my scrolling in its tracks. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so funny and great.”

Yeah, that’s absolutely right. So I guess to try and answer our Instagram question, I would say just try and be consistent with whatever definition you take, with whatever approach you take. And so, I don’t know, I mean, you can call them intermediate and you can call them tertiary and you can talk to your kids, especially at upper levels, about how there are lots of different theories, like you said, theories, not facts. And I would just say, decide what’s important to you when you’re teaching color.

For me, we always just talk about hue, value and intensity when it comes to colors. And kids can get a long way when they just understand those. And then we spend a lot of time just creating new colors and mixing colors, which may or may not be within the color wheel. And talking about how you create harmonies, which is, I’m not going to rant too long here, but that’s an entirely different thing because harmonies look different to everyone. Like, what’s pleasing to your eye is differentiated by what your gender and your age is and the mood that you’re in and the experiences you’ve had in your life, and so many different things. So again, there’s no hard and fast rules.

And so I would say just be consistent with everything that you’re teaching. And Amanda, you brought up the point previously that, just try and be consistent amongst grade levels or across your curriculum, right?

Yeah, I think just have alignment. I think this is why it’s important to be involved in your curriculum writing committee. I know that sounds so boring, but…

If you have strong feelings on intermediate and tertiary and what language we should be using…

Yes. But be aware of what the kids coming to you if you’re at the secondary level have learned. I think older kids can handle the discussion of two things are true. “Some people believe this, some people believe that,” you may want to introduce that idea, but then just make it very clear which one you are expecting them to use in your classroom. And I think we’ll all get through this and we can all grow up to be adults who argue about this on whatever social platform is happening in 10 years. Just prepare your kids.

Yes. All right. Can I dive back into emails?

Yes.

All right. Next one caught my attention was from Josh in Illinois. I feel like this is a great question. Josh said, “We talk all the time about the best ideas we have and the best things we’ve done in the classroom, but I think we should normalize talking about the worst, too. Everyone makes mistakes, and I think we can support each other if we share some of our mistakes and what we did to fix them.” Do you have any big mistakes or big regrets from something you’ve done in your classroom?

I love this question.

I love it and I hate it too, because you have to be vulnerable to answer this. You have to put it out there.

People already know we’re bad at skiing.

Yeah, that’s true.

We already talked about some of our failures.

Yes, that’s very true. So I will chat just a bit about mine, Amanda, if you want to think about yours. I’m going to say one of my big ones, especially when I first started teaching, is a lot of the comments that I would make to students. Not inappropriate comments, but just, I like to talk to my high school students as though they’re adults and have normal conversations with them. But for me, in my sense of humor, that includes a lot of sarcasm, a lot of, not disparaging comments, but just like…

You’re kind of cranky.

Right, I am, and have kind of a rough sense of humor sometimes. And not all kids are ready for that. They may act like that, but they may not be mature enough to handle that. And I didn’t necessarily realize that when I first started teaching. And so there are a lot of things that I would say that I thought were funny and maybe got laughs at the time, but maybe were not the best thing. So I really wish I would’ve held that back a little bit more when I first started teaching.

And again, we talk all the time, we’ve talked on the New Teachers podcast every single episode about how you’re not going to get everything when you first start teaching. It takes a while to kind of develop your skills, develop your personality, develop your classroom management style, all of those things. So that was definitely something that I needed to grow into.

Another thing, and I’ve talked about this a bunch on the podcast, I felt like I had to know everything when I was first teaching. And so when kids would ask me questions about this printmaking technique, I wouldn’t say, “I don’t know,” I would just BS an answer or talk my way through things.

“It’s intermediate colors.”

And that’s definitely something that I regret doing. I should have figured out a lot sooner to just say, “Oh, I don’t know about that.” Or, “Hey, I’ll look that up and get back to you.” But I felt like I had to be the expert on everything, which is not the case at all. It’s okay to admit that you don’t know something. I wish I would’ve done that more.

And then I guess one last thing that I was thinking about, because just a couple weeks ago, Janet Taylor and I did our podcast on what new teachers need to know about assessment. And man, it took me forever to get my crap together with grading as far as figuring out what’s important to grade, what’s not, and then doing it in a timely manner. I just get overwhelmed by so many classes and so much to grade, and it’d be three and a half weeks before I’d get something graded, and kids are like, “I don’t even remember this assignment at this point.”

And I’m like, that’s not good for me, that’s not good for kids, that’s not good for parents who are checking the grade book. And it was just very inconsistent. I did a very poor job with that. And that’s something that I definitely regret, something that I wish I would’ve made more of a priority early in my career. Just timely feedback, getting things graded, and just communicating better with kids about their work. So anyway, those are three, I guess, off the top of my head.

That did go deep.

Yeah.

I’m proud of you. I was a perfect teacher, I don’t have any, next question.

Oh, okay. Great.

I’m just kidding.

Let’s move on.

For me, I think the biggest regret I had is I think I’d be a much different teacher as a parent versus a non-parent. So I never was a parent… I mean, I was pregnant my last year of teaching, but I never was an actual parent of a school-aged kid when I was teaching. And I think just approaching tricky conversations about student behavior with even more compassion. This little being who is so annoying in my classroom is a literal piece of someone’s heart and soul. I wasn’t ever unkind or abrupt, but I think I’d be even more careful now with those conversations.

And then in the same vein, for probably a year, I tried this thing where every time a kid had a tricky time in class, particularly tricky, did not do well with redirection, or I had tried other things, I would send home this little note, and it just makes me cringe so hard because it was totally devoid of context, it was super impersonal. Sometimes I was sending notes home to parents who I had not ever interacted with before, and I quickly learned that wasn’t working for anyone and switched to a phone call or a more detailed email where I could start off with something positive and just be more nuanced in that communication about that.

And then of course the age-old problem of new teachers running themselves into the ground. I think I wouldn’t have taken on, if I had to go back and do it again, taken on “art teacher” as my sole personality and the only thing I ever did or cared about. Just like, your job is not your whole life, and it doesn’t have to be.

Yeah, for sure. No, and that’s why we talk about those things, because that’s a piece of advice that I think gets missed by a lot of people. So it’s good to hear you say that. And yeah, I would do the same if I had to do it again, just try not to do quite as much. All right. But anyway, Josh, thank you so much for that question. I think that’s a good one. If anybody else wants to write in with their big mistakes, be vulnerable along with Amanda and me, then yeah, we’d appreciate it.

All right. I guess this is probably the last one here that we want to go for here. This is a voicemail that we’ve been sitting on for a little bit, but I think it’s a good one. Voicemail from Tara here.

Hi, my name is Tara Gowan. I go by Miss Gowan at school, and I actually live in Canada. I live in a place called Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is on the east coast of Canada. And a question I have is, definitely long-ish but not too long, but what I wonder is, how do you both ever deal with confrontation within your division? For example, in my division I teach in elementary, and before I arrived at the school, there actually wasn’t an elementary art program, and that was about three years ago now. And a lot of the teachers previously before that didn’t have a specialist art teacher, they taught art themselves. So sometimes I just wonder, what do you do when teachers have been doing something for the same thing for a long time, and how do you go about dealing with that?

Okay, Amanda, I’m going to process this for a moment, and like I do at least once every episode, I’m going to put you on the spot to take this one first.

That’s okay, I’ll take it.

If you don’t mind.

So that is a great question, Tara. Thank you. This is interesting because we had a very similar question come up during a discussion I was having with some of our graduate degree students. So I have the privilege of occasionally sitting in on some capstone presentations, and this group of particular grad students were talking about how they were learning all of these cool new strategies and techniques in their grad program. And they were so… The only way I can describe it is on fire for bringing these ideas into their teaching practice. They were amped up about these ideas.

But there were a lot of teachers who they were working with who just weren’t on board. And at least one of these teachers who was talking about this was younger, and so the other people in his department had more experience, they had more clout than he did, and he wasn’t sure how hard to rock the boat or if he should rock the boat. So my first piece of advice is, if you are working in a school as a teacher, then you have just as much right as anyone else there to voice your opinions and do what you think is best for your students. I would not be afraid to say your opinions or state that you think things should be done differently.

Yeah, for sure. If you don’t mind me interrupting here, I was just kind of thinking along those same lines. If you’re excited to implement some new ideas, do it. And if you’re worried about pushback from other teachers, I would just suggest that you maybe talk to them first and say, “Hey, I was reading about this” or “I was in my grad course and we looked at this, and it’s working really well for these teachers. I want to try it in my classroom. Do you have any advice for me?”

And it’s not a wishy-washy like, “Oh, do you all think I should try this?” You go in with, “I’m going for it. I appreciate your experience. Do you have any advice for me?” And then sort of re-frames the conversation, I guess, as far as you asking for permission, and you’re saying, “No, I’m going to go for this. I’d love for you to chime in with your two or three decades of experience on what may or may not work, but I’m definitely going for it,” and just see where that goes. That may be a little aggressive, but I think it’s going to be effective.

That’s such good advice. One personal example I have is I was the youngest new… I was a baby teacher on the curriculum committee one year, and we were asked to come up with standards-based grading outcomes and then realign and rewrite our whole curriculum. And I sat in this room for literally three hours while two very experienced older teachers talked and talked and talked about how they didn’t want to do it and they didn’t believe in it and they weren’t going to do… And I finally was just like…

This sounds so familiar.

I was like, “Hi. The administration is not actually asking whether or not we want to do this. They are asking us to do it.” And I had brought some resources with me and I was like, “I think I have something that can help us figure this out. I’d love to show you. What are your thoughts?” And that turned out really well, and we got through it. You are hired for a reason. Someone hired you because they believed you could do the job, so do the job.

A couple other of super quick things here. You can join a committee, which I know, I know, I just said don’t do that. But if you’re a couple years in, you feel like you can handle it. If you do have a tricky department, establishing yourself as a leader can be one way to give yourself some authority, but also just remember, it’s okay to take up space, like you just said. Be tactful. Approach it from a partnership lens. But you can learn a lot from teachers with more experience than you, and it’s okay to ask for their advice, but do your own thing.

And then the final thing I would say is know what battles are worth fighting and which aren’t. So some people are in a really tricky situation where rocking the boat could have bad consequences. They’re just working with incredibly difficult personalities. So there are times when it may be better to just mind your business, and that’s okay too. And choosing not to push the boundaries can also be a very loving choice for yourself sometimes. So I’ll just kind of end with that caveat.

No, that’s a great place to end it right there. I think that’s some awesome advice. So Amanda, thank you. This was fun once again. Yeah, we’ll keep everybody updated. Check Instagram next week for everything that we’re doing in New York, and then make sure that you’re subscribed to YouTube so you can see the art room makeover in December. And we’ll be back in December with our next mailbag.

So Amanda, anything else you want to share? Any closing thoughts before we go?

I don’t think so. I think you nailed everything. I’m excited to come back next month.

Perfect. Thank you.

Bye.

Thank you to Amanda, and thank you once again to all of you who wrote in and called. Please keep doing so. We love being able to answer questions, hopefully help you out and hopefully entertain you a little bit with our answers and our advice. And again, we would love for you to check out AOEU’S Instagram next week, particularly on Tuesday the 14th. Amanda will be taking over the AOEU Instagram page. Make sure you check that out. We have some fun plans. We have a very cool announcement coming. We’re doing something really fun. So please keep an eye out for that.

Art Ed Radio is produced by The Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you as always for listening. I will be back next Tuesday with another episode. I think we’re going with some more art history tips. Hopefully we can get Kyle Wood on the show, and Amanda will be back at the start of December for our next mailbag.