October Mailbag: Color Blindness, Personal Art, and What is Up with Kindergarten? (Ep. 389)

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. It is the first Tuesday of the month, so you know what that means. It is a mailbag episode. Amanda’s here, but before I bring her on, I want to just say a quick thank you to everyone who has been writing in and calling in with questions. I know we can’t get to all of them, but I do want to encourage you to keep sending them.

You can email podcasts at theartofeducation.edu or email me at timbogatz@theartofeducation.edu. Of course, our favorite, you can leave a voice message at 515-209-2595. The second part of asking questions, we are going to be working on another new podcast for release at the end of the year called Ask the Experts, where we do a deep dive with some amazing art teachers on how they teach different media.

If you have specific questions about any particular medium, painting, drawings, ceramics, anything else, please send those along as well to either of those email addresses or leave a voice message for those as well. It is time to bring on Amanda to tell some stories and to open up the mailbag. Here we go. Amanda Heyn joining me now for the mailbag. Amanda, so excited to see you. How are you?

I am great. I’m excited to see you. How are you?

I’m doing very well.

Can I tell you something about last episode? Remember how we talked about how we both really stink at skiing?

Yeah, yeah. One of our great failures.

Yeah, one of our great failures. I put it on Instagram and I said, what do you think Tim and Amanda are bad at? The options were origami, skiing, cooking, or gosh, something else. Skiing was the lowest.

Wow.

People have confidence in us and they think we can do sports, which, oh, math, I think math was the other one.

Oh, okay.

Most people, they think thought we were bad at cooking, which, fine.

I’m excellent at cooking.

Me too. I’m also excellent at cooking, but skiing-

I’m also, I’m bad at origami too.

Yeah. I’m not the best, but I’m worst at skiing…

… which is funny because I have a child who is like an origami genius.

I was going to say, you have origami prodigy at your house. That’s fascinating.

He surpassed me at about age seven. He’ll try to teach me things and it’s hopeless.

Can’t do this.

I can at least fold something. Skiing, I can’t even make it down the bunny hill, so it’s my worst.

All right, well, we need to start with a quality story, as we always do. Since both of us were recently back in the classroom, I thought that would make for a good story. Would you like to share what you were doing?

Yes. Yes. For anyone who doesn’t know, it was AOEU-I, say all the vowels, impact week at AOEU last week, and so they gave everybody the day off to go volunteer in a classroom and it was excellent. I went to an elementary school and it was so fun. I taught a couple of classes. I wrapped a lot of looms. Do you remember the days of wrapping looms?

Yes. Hated of those days.

Yeah, because you would have to take them home and just spend hours in front of the TV wrapping looms.

I hate it.

I sat in the teacher’s lounge, so I heard all the tea. It was amazing. I just felt at home and I just wrapped looms for a while and then I taught. It was really fun for me, I think, because I’ve been out of the classroom for quite a few years at this point, and I always think I always have imposter syndrome, but no, I was on top of it. It went amazingly well.

The teacher, who I was with was like, “Oh, I learned a lot watching you, and that felt really great,” but the highlight of the entire experience, I really loved helping this teacher so much. It was so great to talk with the kids, but one girl in fifth grade unprompted told me my eyeliner looked cool. That’s all I need. That was peak moment for me. I was like, “Okay, I still got it. I’m cool.”

I’m glad you can impress the 11-year-olds.

I know. Me too. Did you get any compliments on your eyeliner or how did your day go?

No, I did not get any eyeliner compliments. Mine wasn’t good. I did some creativity workshops at three different schools. Stole lots of ideas from Andrea Slusarski. She was on the podcast a couple months ago talking about the psychology week creativity and everything she said, I’m like, “I can use this. I can use this.”

That was such a good episode.

I brought a lot of those analogies and explanations to the classes, which I think kids really enjoyed. We just had some good conversations. We did a lot of fun, creative stuff, and I love hanging out with weird middle schoolers as long as it’s a limited amount of time. That was quite a bit of fun. Then, we just had a really good day.

There was one girl who was wearing just a very unique Harry Potter shirt. I chatted with her about it and then awkwardly enough, they’re showing the old Harry Potter movies at the theater. I went with my family to go see those, and that girl from the workshop was there, literally sitting right next to us. It was just like, “Hey, good to see you again. We just talked about this.” That was…

I love it.

… weird serendipitous sort of thing, but kind of fun. That was cool, but yeah, it’s good. I’ve done a lot of subbing. I’ve done a lot of workshops since I’ve been out of the classroom, but it’s always good to get back in there and just be in front of kids. I love doing that.

Yeah, it was great. We do need to talk about one more important thing before we get to the questions.

Yeah.

Well, you said that we should not have a mail sound, and I said that we should have a mail sound, and I took it to the people and 90%, over 90% of people agreed with me that we should have a mail sound. I have secured us a mail sound that I would like us to play when we say, “We’re going to open the mailbag.” Can we do it?

Well, can you tell us where this sound comes from first before?

Well, it comes from a real mail room somewhere, and that is all I’m at liberty to say.

Okay. That’s fair. That’s fair. I mean, I guess we are involving the federal government here. All right, sounds good. Here is our official mail sorting sound. Let’s open up the mailbag. Okay. I like it. I like it a lot. It feels very official.

I agree. Let’s see what’s in the mail.

Thank you for procuring that. I love that.

You’re welcome.

Our first question actually came in from somebody who uses PRO and they’re just looking for a little bit more, or just had a question, I guess, but they said that, “I’m having a hard time getting rid of physical items, even with digital images and digital storage at our fingertips. I would love more ideas on this topic.”

This is a great question.

I don’t know. I don’t know if I have more ideas other than please get rid of the stuff. I don’t know. What do you think?

Yeah, my inclination is just throw it away. I promise, it’s fine. That said, there are some times where having the physical item is nice. It’s nice for kids to really be able to get up close. I used to do an activity where I would put different art reproductions out on the table and have kids kind of rotate around or interact with them in different ways. There are definitely used cases.

If you want to keep things, I would be really judicial about what you keep. Make it super organized, so it’s not causing you extra stress. You could store things by project or by medium. I usually did by project, so I could just take out the folder and have everything that I needed for that project ready to go. I would also say, if you’re going to keep them, be respectful of them. Find a flat file, put them in tag board folders, a filing cabinet. There are a lot of different ways you could organize that.

Then, once you’re organized, I would recommend keeping track of how often you’re using things. If you find yourself not using them, that might be a good time to get rid of them and free up that space for something more exciting or just breathing room in the art room, that can be a packed place.

It definitely can. I would agree, just go ahead and get rid of stuff. You will be fine. You can find replacements if you ever need them. I don’t know, just a quick story that makes me sound old, the very beginning of my teaching career, coincided with the very end of slides and slide projectors. Most people-

You are old, yeah.

Well, most people were getting rid of them as I was first started teaching, but I had put together a few slides in college because I was just part of the undergrad program. They want us to be prepared to have slides. I had those. Then, I walked into a situation where there were binders full of vinyl sheets, full of slides. I was like, “Oh my God, this is amazing.” Spent so much time organizing them and sorting them by lesson.

Then, within a year and a half, I’m like, “Why am I doing this?” Everything is available online. Just a huge waste of time. I never regret getting rid of any of those obviously, but I think that’s just kind of the mindset that you need to think about. Do you ever get rid of stuff and then regret it? Like, “Oh, I’m really upset that I got rid of that once upon a time.” I don’t feel like that feeling ever comes around. You get rid of stuff out.

There’s one pair of pants for me, but that’s not school-related. I’ll save that story for another time.

Right, but I mean, that’s the thing, you may have one thing here or there, but on balance, just go ahead and get rid of stuff and your art room and just your mental capacity for dealing with those things is going to be so much lighter if you don’t have that many things in your room just taking up space.

Well, and I think a lot of it comes from what people think they should be doing, or, “Oh, the school spent money on this,” or whatever, but if it is not serving you, you do not have to keep it out of obligation. You don’t.

Yeah. Absolutely.

I threw away so much stuff or recycled or repurposed or whatever, but I got rid of so much stuff when I moved to my first classroom and it was one of the best things that I did.

Same. I feel like we should do an episode sometime on just filling a dumpster when you first take over a class. It’s like everybody has their stories about that and yeah, it’s almost always beneficial for you to get rid of stuff. Next up, we have a voicemail. This is from Nikki. Nikki, I’m very sorry, I know this voicemail has been sitting in our mailbag for months, but we are finally getting to it. This is about making your own art. This is a voicemail from Nikki.

Hi there. My name is Nikki Tybush. I’m from upstate New York. I’ve been teaching art for nine plus years. My question is, am I the only one who has put, creating my own artwork on hold? It’s been, since I was in college, over 10 years ago since I’ve actually done a painting with one exception, when I was on my honeymoon, I did a very small watercolor painting on the beach, so that was nice, but life gets in the way. We’re busy as teachers. I have a four and a two-year-old. How would you recommend getting back into doing art again? Hope you guys can help. Thank you.

Amanda, would you like to take this first?

Yeah, sure. Just wait until your kids are older.

Honestly, that’s what I did.

I don’t know, right? You are really in the thick of it with kiddos that age. I remember that. I do not envy you as a person who also has two kids, but what I did at that stage, and honestly still continue to do sometimes with kids who are just a little bit older, is it may be helpful to expand your definition of art or creativity for right now and think about all the ways you are creatively using your brain as a teacher or as a parent.

For me, that looked like trying new recipes, throwing a super amazing birthday party where I may be making a couple of the decorations. Our family goes insane for Halloween. Right now, we’re working on crafting some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costumes and it’s really fun because now my kids are old enough and able to help with that.

Are you dressing your kids in cute outfits? Are you planning projects? Are you doing an art club one day a month after school? There are a lot of different ways that you can think of yourself as a creative person that may not be sitting down, but if you do really want to sit down, then my suggestion is to keep supplies out. You don’t want to have to muster up the energy to decide what you’re going to do or get your supplies out, make the art, then clean them up.

Think about if there is a space, and again, if you have tiny kids, maybe there is not a space, but the space could be a zippered plastic pouch, a Ziploc bag, something that you know I can grab this and I can spend a little bit of time making art. Then, my final tip is make art with your kids. That’s not really relaxing often, but again, it could provide a creative outlet. I don’t know, Tim, do you have other ideas?

I do. I just want to say though, you were asking those hypotheticals and for some reason, my brain thought you were talking to me and you’re like, “Are you dressing your kids in cute outfits for Halloween?” I’m like, “No, they’re 15 and 13. I’m not dressing them in anything,” but that’s neither here nor there, but yeah, I love the idea of expanding your definition of creativity because there are spots to be creative. Maybe it’s in your teaching, maybe you’re finding new things that you want your kids to do, and that can be your creative outlet.

I would say, you don’t have to create finished work. Nikki talked about it’s been, what, however many years since she’s done a painting. I think, even though I try and work every day, it’s been years since I’ve finished. [inaudible 00:15:50]…

Same.

… piece, but at the same time, if I look back at the last year, I’ve done hundreds of drawings and probably dozens of collages and there are just different ways of doing things. I do all my work in my sketchbook and I think the thing that helped me the most, is just being okay with doing little things each day. Even if it’s just 10 minutes doodling in my sketchbook or doing some line designs, just stuff that I don’t even think about, I just sit down and draw. I think that’s been really helpful for me to find that as a creative outlet.

I would just echo the idea of keeping a space dedicated. I love your suggestion. I know Kaitlyn Edington, artwithmrs.e, on Instagram, she has a little travel pouch that she takes around with her supplies in it, and just whenever you have a minute, just sit down and create and I think that works. I had a space at the school. I was lucky enough to have a big enough room in my classroom that I had a dedicated space where I had my own art work out. I think that’s cool for kids to see.

Yeah, I was going to say you could work alongside your students. You don’t have to be working on what they’re working on. Just sit down and chat with them during work time, hop around to different tables. I used to do that and it was a great way to get to know the kids and get to make a little bit of art too.

Exactly. Exactly. I think just, yeah, try and find the smallest amount of time. Maybe it’s just 5 minutes a day, maybe it’s 10 minutes a day and maybe that will get you feeling like you’re creating again. Maybe that’ll be sort of the impetus that you need to create even more, but say, just start small.

Don’t feel like you have to do finished work, but just do something as simple as it may be, quick sketches, quick drawings, like I said, simple line designs and just get making with something small and then you can see where it goes from there. All right. Next question, we have another voicemail. This is from-

I’m so excited.

I know, this is from Nancy in Colorado.

Hi. My name is Nancy Monahan. I’m in Colorado. I teach grade 7 through 12. This is my 30th year teaching art. I have a class of 34, seventh and eighth graders, fifth period after lunch, and kind of small classroom. They come in a little crazy and I have done everything in my little repertoire of getting them excited, having them help out, but they don’t want to clean up. They want to leave a mess. They want to do what they want to do.

I am looking for help and answers. I have them doing art theory work right now in writing and a few kids I think have earned or will be earning the right to do an art project. I want to do something really fun and hopefully get the other kids on board and get them excited to actually do the right thing and get to do fun artwork. Any ideas would be great and helpful. Thank you.

All right, thank you Nancy. Amanda, you look like you were very ready to answer this, but I would say, we also had some similar questions come in just about behaviors. I don’t know if we want to say this, pulling out their hair, but just they’re stressed about all kinds of stuff, so thank you, @axanauman and @judahslion and @linzers31 sent stuff on Instagram, similar stuff, like I said, about motivating kids to work, management with large groups, disrespectful behaviors, all of that stuff. Amanda, do you want to chat with Nancy or any of those people about…

Yes.

… any of that?

I sure do. Well, ’tis the season, we’re out of the honeymoon period and kids are real comfortable with you. In some ways, they’re seeing you as a safe person to behave like that with, but that’s not super comforting. I guess, I would say first, I totally understand why teachers go to “book work” sometimes. Sometimes you’re just in survival mode.

You need a second for everyone to just get themselves together and it can be a good way to take a breath, regroup and just have a moment of quiet, but I would not look to book work to be a permanent solution to this issue of cleanup, especially because one thing book work is not going to do is engage the students or make them enjoy your room or coming to the art room…

Exactly, yes.

… anymore. I can hear some of you saying, “But Amanda, the kids don’t have to like me. They just have to respect me,” which fair, I get that point of view. Gently, I would say, I kind of do think they have to like you.

When you have a good relationship with your students and they feel like that you truly care and respect them as people, then they want to do the work for you. I can think of five kids off the top of my hand who came into the art room, just determined not to like art. Until I let one of them sit under the table to do his work or talked about dinosaurs with one of them, they weren’t going to do anything.

When I did those things, they really came around and became some of my most favorite kiddos. All that said, I get can be very, very, very hard to tap into that mindset when they are being so blatantly disrespectful or not taking care of your limited supplies or whatever. Okay, so what? Let’s get to some things you can do.

First I would say take nothing personally. It’s really helpful to remember that kids are people too. They have a lot going on and they literally do not have the brain capacity or coping strategies probably to deal with any of that in an appropriate way.

Right, right.

That’s number one. It is not you, do not take it personally. I think that can remove a lot of that sort of reactiveness that we often go to right away when someone is being disrespectful, but if you can separate those two things and try not to let it affect you, that is a really good first step.

Number two, if you haven’t already, make your expectations insanely clear and have the kids practice them. Sometimes they’re goofing off or being disengaged because they’re not quite sure what to do and they aren’t sure where to find the answer and they don’t want to look dumb by asking what to do, take an entire period to practice if you have to and practice with all different kinds.

I feel like we just talked about this one month ago, maybe two.

Yes. Yes, you were talking about-

A whole bunch about routines and doing them…

Yes.

… over and over again because it’s worth it.

Just remember, cleaning up for drawing is different than cleaning up for painting is different than cleaning up for ceramics. They have to learn all the routines individually. You can use anchor charts to remind them of the steps. I also talked about this when we talked about routines, but projecting a list of directions with pictures can be incredibly helpful.

I’ve noticed this in my parenting, if I write my note or write my note, if I write my kids a note and say like, “Hey, do these three things before 4:00,” that is 10 times more effective than me nagging them for that half an hour to do those things. It’s not you telling them what to do, it’s the board telling them what to do.

All right, a few other quick tips here, make sure you’re leaving more time than you think. You have to get their attention. They have to stop working. You have to communicate your expectations. You need to help kids follow through. That takes more than five minutes, especially when you’re starting out or especially if they’re not in the routine, so that is another thing. I don’t let the kids leave the room until the expectations are met. Sorry, if you’re late for your next class, too bad. You have to do this checklist before you go.

Then, I’m not usually a fan of bribery, but I do think it can be helpful when you’re trying to start a new initiative. I think you could explore gamifying cleanup, turning tables into teams, having them compete for perks or prizes, could include access to more exciting materials. Then, a lot of things, or another thing I’ve seen a lot of teachers do is give each kid their own bag of supplies. This is not feasible for everyone based on budget, but if you say, here is your needed eraser for the semester, or here is your flat brush for the semester, often, kids are more motivated to take care of those supplies if they are theirs versus communal supplies.

In short, behavior is communication. If you’re dealing with unwanted behavior, whether it’s kids not cleaning up or kids being disrespectful, what are the kids trying to tell you? Are they confused? Are they overwhelmed? Are they hungry? Are they uninterested in your content? Once you figure that out, then you can brainstorm solutions. There’s two really good pro packs, one is called behavior management at the elementary level, but it’s good for any level. It’s by Shannon Lauffer.

Then, we have another one, if you’re dealing with really big behaviors, there’s one called deescalation strategies. Again, both of those talk about behaviors, communication and how to address them and they’re both excellent. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

I love it. I love all of that. Thank you. Also, Amanda, I would love for you to read the next question.

I’m so excited. Thank you to everybody who submitted questions on Instagram this time. We had a lot of really great ones, one from Theresa Moran Dennehy, I believe it’s pronounced, says, “My question is kindergarten, just kindergarten. What the F? How the F? Laughing emoji, SOS.”

You know what? Fair. Fair.

Yeah, fair.

I would just say with kindergarten, we’ve all been there. We know how crazy it can be, especially at the beginning of the year. Our friends do not know how to do school yet, and it can be pretty wild when the one person they’re seeing all day that sort of keeps them in check, just drops them off at your door and says, “Here you go.” It can be pretty wild. The first thing I would suggest to everybody is check out the YouTube series…

Yes.

… 1-2-3 ART. Lindsey Moss did that and it’s a great series. We’ll link to it in the show notes, just about everything that your kindergartners need to know. Lindsey is great. It shows her working with kids and how she teaches things and it’s incredible, just, yeah, I love it. Cannot recommend that highly enough, but I would say, when you are left alone with those 25 or 30, I don’t know how many kindergartners coming at you.

Babies.

Yes, literal babies.

When they have pajama day, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, you are babies. Where are your parents?”

Yeah, it’s spectacular. What I would say is just make sure you’re changing things up a lot. Even if you have them for 30 minutes, I want to do six different things in those 30 minutes. There’s a lot that goes into it. I always love starting with a hook, something that kind of captures their attention and then we can transition into the art part of things, but something that captures their attention, entertains them for a little while.

I always love to use books. Other people love songs. There are some good videos out there. You can play games. There are a lot of different ideas, but just I would always start with something that is only sort of tangentially related to art. I love books. There are a million great books out there. I love reading books to kindergartners and do something to make it interactive where they’re doing, do a read aloud. Let them be part of the conversation. Maybe there’s a call and response, like I said, maybe there’s songs. There’s a lot out there that you can do, and I think that’s all kind of fun.

I would just say don’t have any expectations for what their art is going to look like. You’re just sort of helping them develop their skills, both fine and gross motor skills. You’re helping them build confidence, you’re helping them have fun, and more importantly, I think you’re helping them learn to love art. Just figure out what kind of fun activities you can do, figure out how to make it engaging and interactive and entertaining for them, and just changed it up a lot because they don’t have the focus to sit and concentrate on something for a long time. Can I just tell one random story before we…

Yes please.

… we let you answer this? I always love to read books and no matter what, whether I’m reading around a table, they’re all on carpet always with kindergarten. I had kids come and always want to feel my arms. I have hairy arms and it seems like in one class, there’s always one kid who would come up and just sort of pet my arms.

The first couple times it really freaked me out. What are you doing? Luckily, I didn’t say that to them, but I got used to it. I’d just be sitting there. They’re all on the carpets, sitting down very nicely. I’m reading a book and kids not even knowing what they’re doing, they just stand up and walk up next to me.

Zombies.

Yeah, they are. They look like little zombies and they come and just start petting my arm because they wanted to feel the hair on my arm and then they would just sort of stay there and then just watch the book as I’m flipping the pages, and just mindlessly sort of pet my arm. I can’t even count how many times that happened. Anyway, I don’t know what that illustrates other than you never know what you’re going to get with kindergarten.

You never know what you’re going to get. Well, yeah, going back to routines and procedures, it was my second year of teaching and I just forgot to teach them how to wash a table. I kind of demonstrated like, “We’re going to wash the table,” and whatever, and I had sponges in my room and it turned into a water park.

I was going to say, I can see where this is going.

Just fill the sponge to maximum capacity. Don’t squeeze it out.

And then just-

Run across the room and then just squeeze it out on the table repeatedly before I could do anything about it. Like, it’s just such a memory that’s burned into my brain. I would say a lot of what you said I would echo, for me, it was really easy for me to think about breaking the class into 10-minute chunks. Do you have 50 minutes? Congratulations. You are planning 10.

Oh my God, 50 minutes with kindergarten.

Five 10-minute classes, which is what I had. If anyone is looking for just a structure, I would say first 10 minutes is carpet time. You’re doing a books, games, activities, discussion. I always broke the project, even if it didn’t have two parts, I would break it into two parts. Part one, they’re around the table and they have a little bit of work time. Part two, we come back around the table and then have some work time. The fourth 10 minutes is for cleanup. Doesn’t matter if you’re just drawing, it’s going to take a long time.

Right.

Then, the fifth 10 minutes is a closing activity. Again, whether they’re at their tables or the carpet, again, another book, another activity, another game, whatever it is and that seemed to work fairly well for me because again, their attention spans are still developing, shall we say.

Then, my last tip would be, don’t forget to frequently offer tactile experiences so they don’t just need drawing, but Play-Doh and blocks and Legos. All of those are going to develop those fine motor skills that they really need to be able to do art. Stations can be a great tool to use. Again, just doing different activities, having them move around a little bit, manipulatives of any kind. I’m a huge fan of fractal magnets. Do you know fractal magnets?

Yeah, those are great.

So, so good. Those are maybe a little bit or one step further than pattern blocks, but having a set or two of those is really fun. You can put them on the whiteboard. They come with a magnetic board that you can use, but super, super fun.

Should we get to our last question here?

Oh man, we’re to the last question already. This is going to be our fastest mailbag of all time, [inaudible 00:32:39].

Really?

All right This is from Instagram. Again, this is from Rohi Ann Reese, and they wanted suggestions on how to engage a child who is colorblind with color-based projects.

This is something I haven’t had direct experience with, but I have done the research for us. Okay?

Okay. Please, please summarize.

I went through a big, down a big rabbit hole. This was very fascinating to me, did you know there are different types of colorblindness?

I actually did know this.

Yes.

I don’t know that I could name them, but I know there are different kinds.

I think the first step is to understand what type of colorblindness your student has. They may not know specifically, but you need to know if they can see some color or no color. Without turning this into a science podcast, although I would love that because I do love science, let’s talk about it. Humans have three cone types in their eyes that allow us to see a spectrum of color. Those cones are red, green, and blue.

One type of colorblindness you can have is called red-green colorblindness. This is the most common type of colorblindness. If you don’t have red cones or green cones, or if you have weak red cones or green cones, you will likely see tones of murky green with hints of yellow and blue. For these kiddos, it is really difficult to see differentiate between red and green. Browns are very, very hard. I led a mural in eighth grade because I’ve always just been 30 in my soul.

When you were in eighth grade, you were leading this?

Yeah, when I was in eighth grade.

Okay, okay.

Yeah. I was in charge of this mural at school and one of my good friends was painting the mural and he kept coming up to me and being like, “Is this a red green or a blue green? What color is this?” I was like, “Who is letting this kid paint my mural?” He was my friend, so I helped him.

Anyway, there is also blue green, or I’m sorry, blue yellow colorblindness. This is less common. If you don’t have blue cones or have weak blue cones, you’ll have a hard time differentiating between blue and green, purple and red and yellow and pink. This is really interesting. You can go online and you can search up what do different types of colorblindness see if you are a typically seeing person and these individuals, everything looks kind of magenta and cyan. It’s like you’re living in one of those 3D pictures sort of with the cyan and sort of magenta red. Really interesting.

Then, there’s a third kind monochromacy. This is colorblindness totally. These people see the world like a black and white movie, and this is way, way, way more rare. One in tens of thousands of people see no color at all. Then, real quick, there’s also tetrachromacy, which is super color vision, which is you have a fourth type of light absorbing cone and you can see 100 times more colors.

Wow.

Isn’t that crazy? It’s only in women because of how the genetics are passed along. If you try to do a test online, it is a lie because color, the monitor doesn’t have the capability to produce the colors that you need in order to test it.

Interesting.

I know.

Wow. Okay.

Anyway, really quick. Can I share a few best practices I found, because I know you have some things to add as well?

Yes, I do.

Okay. If you color code things in your classroom, obviously make sure there’s a second differentiator or indicator, whether that’s a pattern or a size or a number or a location. Don’t rely only on color to communicate information. Bright lights can really help some students with specific types of colorblindness. Example, if they have weak cones, turning up the brightness of the light can help them differentiate colors. You might have a couple separate task lights for those kiddos or seat them in the most bright spots in your room.

Then, try having them work with high contrast hues and values. If they can’t differentiate between the different hues, they will likely be able to differentiate between something that’s really, really light or really, really dark. That’s another way you can handle that.

Yeah, I like all of those suggestions. My version of research here was calling my best friend last night because he has color blindness, I’ve been chatting through this with him. That’s sort of the different end of the spectrum. I would say, he told me a lot, and I mean, just stories we’ve shared over the years, but a big thing for him is just kind of learning how to get by where he used the example, if you had a box of eight crayons, he could tell the difference between the eight of those.

He could learn enough to know, he’s not seeing that this is blue and this is yellow, but he could tell you that’s blue, that’s yellow just by sort of having someone help him and teach him that this weird muddled, greenish-brown that you see is actually blue. Whenever he sees that same muddled, greenish-brown, he remembers, “That’s blue.”

Interesting.

He can kind of get by with that. He said, “If there’s a box of eight, he could learn those. If you had a box of 64 crayons, no chance. That’s just too much.” There’s just too much going on. Couldn’t even tell the difference between them. Translating that into my art teacher brain and I was just thinking about seeing things in value, if you had eight different values to learn, you could probably tell the difference between those. If you had 64 different values, that’s going to get tough.

Anyway, he said he could kind of get by with things like that. One thing that helped him was having a color buddy, kind of what you did with your friend painting the mural, just they can check in with you and say, “Did I mix this color right? Did that blue and yellow make a green?” Things like that and just have somebody kind of work with them and put all of that together and sort of help them learn where they’re not learning in the same way other kids are, but they’re learning enough to get by.

Translating that into the art room, oh sorry, one other thing, like you had mentioned, Amanda, having labels or patterns or other secondary indicators is a huge help, even if you just have a blue circle and you label it blue or red circle [inaudible 00:39:35].

They need the wrappers on the crayons.

Yeah, absolutely. They need the names on the crayons or the markers, that helps. For the art room, and I guess I’d love your opinion on this too, Amanda, I think there’s a bigger question is do the kids have to do color-based projects? I’m sure there are some standards out there that say, learn how to mix colors, learn how to do a color wheel, and you can help them through that, but at the same time, there’s also form and texture and space and value and shape and line. We can work with all of those things.

Can we do some printmaking? Can we make some sculptures? Can we do literally anything else that doesn’t have to do with paint mixing because even if you are colorblind, you can appreciate art, you can appreciate all of the different ways that we can make art. It doesn’t necessarily have to be color-based. I don’t know, any thoughts on that?

Yeah, no, I agree. I think if you throw out color, you still have what, six other elements and seven other principles depending on how you count them and what you count, but roughly, right. Many, many, many other things to talk about with art and I would also say, let them mix. Give them access to the colors and just see what they do. I think it would be so fascinating to have them paint a picture in a way that looks good to their eyes and have that be enough for them because that’s the reality they’re living in.

Maybe, they’re drawn to certain muddy greens in their own eyes and they want to express themselves that way. Let them. I think that would be really interesting and a really interesting discussion to have in your classroom about perspective and identity and I think it could be very cool.

Yeah, absolutely. I think there are a million opportunities out there that you can take advantage of. I think just spending some time thinking about that, maybe talking to your student about it and seeing what they can see, how they want to approach it, what they might want to do, I think that’s all worthwhile. Cool.

I think we can go ahead and wrap it up there. Amanda, thank you. This has been wildly entertaining once again, so I appreciate you coming on and answering this. Of course, I appreciate the mailbag sound, that really added a lot today. Thank you.

You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

Thank you to Amanda and thank you to all of you who wrote in and called. Please, keep doing so. As I said, we love receiving and answering all of those questions. If you send an email that wasn’t on this episode, I will do my best to answer email in the coming weeks, but like I said at the beginning, please keep sending them.

Then, one last thing before we go, we have a very cool project coming up, a new YouTube series where our AOEU team, including Amanda and me, are going to be visiting an art room, doing some cool projects and helping the art teacher out by kind of refreshing and changing up the space. Not sure if I can say much more than that, but I will say, you can look for that on YouTube toward the end of the year here.

More importantly, you can check out AOEU’S Instagram in a couple of weeks, the weekend of October 14th and 15th in particular, to see the stories, find out a little bit more about the project that we’re working on and see some of the behind the scenes action. Make sure you check that out. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

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. Amanda will be back at the start of our November for our next mailbag.