art shmart.

hard to leave this little face at home.

three weeks ago marked the end of my maternity leave. (obviously it also marked the end of my free time, hence the abrupt end to blog posts.) it was a bummer because as a happy homebody, i do not suffer from a burning desire to be employed. alas, there are bills to pay, so back to the grindstone. but the exciting part about returning to work is that at the beginning of the year my principal did some finagling and managed to hold open the art position just long enough for me to get my art certification. and now, that's right, i am an art teacher. and it is divine. i teach art to all the students in the second through fifth grades. it is official. i love my job. 

two fourth grade classes at one time. crazy, but we survive.

now i am not one for complaining. well actually, that's a lie. i complain a lot. however, at work i try to keep my chin up, because i have learned that the place is what you make of it. i wander the halls with a big smile, because my personal motto is "a happy face makes a happy place." are you gagging? sorry. now where was i? oh right, about to tell you about the trash pile i inherited that is supposed to pass for an art classroom. yikes.

six 1" squares of fabric clipped together and stored in a box. what the what? why save these?

floppy discs from 1993. how did we manage with 2mb of storage?

okay, so i am thrilled to have a classroom - not all art teachers are so lucky - but this place was a dump. bursting at every seam with bits of paper, jumbled up crayons, oozing tubes of ink, lumpy paint, broken pencils, and dust. oh my god, so much dust.

politically correct crayons. i heart crayola.

the good news is that under the craziness, i unearthed a surprisingly good selection of art supplies. three weeks of tossing, scrubbing, sorting, cleaning, and organizing, and i can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. i still have six boxes of paper scraps to sort by size and two hundred large art reproductions to organize, but then i will have a dream classroom.

making adinkra "cloth" with a third grade class.

and my days will consist of wrangling children to create gloriousness, wandering the internet for project inspiration, and creating sample projects. did i say, i love my job? i do. i love my job.