Update: And only 8 more days to go!

Yup, I'm counting down...8 more days of school left (with 2 half-days in that mix)!  Today was actually my day 6, but I was paid substitute pay to go to Boces to swap and grade my post-assessments with another art teacher from a different district.  Hopefully I'll have some pre- and post- examples to share with you in the next few days, as well as my reflection on how my assessments went!  I can already say that my scavenger hunt idea for 2nd grade doesn't seem to be very successful, at least for that grade level.  I think if I would have had it in more of a test-format, like my mid-assessment I did, it would have been more successful.

Anyways, I can finally share the official (and it is finally official) news that I WILL be teaching K-12 art next year in my district.  I don't have my official schedule yet (that should be to me hopefully by the end of this week), but I have been told that I will have two Studio Art classes (with a total of 19 students between the two), two 7th grade classes (which will be split into 1/2 year classes, one 1st semester and one 2nd semester), and supposedly one elective, which I don't know what it is yet.  The elementary grades will then receive art once a 6-day cycle instead of twice, which leads me to some questions I'm hoping some of you veteran teachers can help me out with!

1. Do you have any good blogs you follow for high school art?  

2. For those of you who have elementary art once a cycle/week, how do you deal with making sure you are doing quality projects?  I feel like I'm going to stress myself out because I won't be able to accomplish as much as I have the last three years, nor will I be able to really have solid units because it will literally take an entire quarter to cover a unit!  Do you do 1 or 2 day projects?  Do you ever do projects that take more than 2 days to complete?

3. Does anyone out there have a link or a copy of their syllabus for high school art classes that they would be willing to share with me?  My e-mail is artroom104@gmail.com.  I kept all of my syllabus from when I was in high school, but go figure, I cannot for the life of me find them!  I really want to start out with a strong syllabus for those high school classes to try and reign them in a bit and start off on a straight-forward foot with the high school students.

4. Sketchbooks:  How do you successfully incorporate sketch books in your high school curriculum?  As weekly homework?  Or, "you must do 5 out of 10 of these assignments to hand in by the end of the quarter?"

5.  And finally, is there one type of supply or brand that you MUST HAVE in your high school classroom that you would recommend?  I am currently working on requisitions for the high school classroom and I am flying by the seat of my pants as the current high school teacher will not let me into the room to scope out what supplies are there until after she has cleaned her stuff out (which is ironically after the requisitions are due).  I do know that painting supplies are of very poor quality in that room, so I will probably be looking to replace a majority of that stuff.  I typically order my supplies from Dick Blick and Nasco, as we have an account set up there and those are the two order books I currently have in my room.

Requisition Time!

I know most other teachers at my school cringe when it comes time to do the requisitions for next year...even the other art teacher hates it!  Me, on the other hand, I LOVE it!  I am a neat freak when it comes to organization (though you wouldn't be able to tell by my desk...) so I use this time to take inventory of what I have "in stock".

I'm not sure how other schools do this but we must have our requisitions in by the first week in January for the next year.  We have the opportunity to buy from the Boces bids or order from places like Dick Blick or Nasco.  I generally get my paper supplies, pipe cleaners, buttons, beads, etc. from the Boces bid (not always the best quality, especially the construction paper, but I have to give somewhere.  The watercolor paper is at least good!)  I turn to Nasco and Dick Blick for everything else.  A lot of the time, they tend to be cheaper than the Boces bids and of much better quality.

For example, when I bought Elmer's glue my first year, it was the Elmer's School Glue (which isn't very good I've learned) and over half the bottles were clogged and really hard to squeeze when I got them!  This last year, I bought the glue from Dick Blick and it was of much better quality...I think only 2 of 24 bottles had to be unclogged when I got them.

Anyways, the point of this post is for me to share my Art Room Inventory list that I created to go through my supplies and figure out what I do and don't have.  Since I haven't figured out how to sync Google Documents with my blog yet, I have shared my Art Room Inventory on the smART teacher website.  You can find it here.  These are all of the basic supplies that I take an inventory of every year to gauge my requisitions by.  I don't include glazes because I am usually out at the end of the year and I just order different class packs every year.  Hope it can be of some use to my followers!