Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Being Prepared and the Making of Flesh

"We'll call you tomorrow morning if you've got the job.  You'll know by around noon."

The principal did not call.  I knew I shouldn't have agreed to meet him for an interview so spare of the moment like that.  I had received a phone call the day before from a principal of an elementary school in the area who was interested in hiring a fine art teacher.  I had not applied.  He found my application for teaching art education from the previous year in the school district pool of applicants.

I was to meet him in an hour.  I rushed around frantically throwing on professional wear that had been tucked away in the back of our cluttered closet, grabbed my teaching portfolio, and was out the door for the forty minute drive.  I did not have time to prepare by researching the school other than printing out directions from Google.  It had been two years since teaching, and there was no time to review my materials.

The interview went okay, but it was no wonder that I didn't get a call that next morning.  I was a bit rusty and it showed as my brain hesitated to remember education terminology, and my confidence was incredibly lacking due to that.  If only I would have had even an hour to refresh, research, and prepare it would have made such a difference.

This happened at the end of last summer and I will not make this mistake again.



It's that time of year when the job postings begin to be posted for teachers and I have decided to re-read my art education textbook Art for Life:  Authentic Instruction in Art by Tom Anderson and Melody K. Milbrandt again, as well as revisit all of my lesson plans and remember particulars from my teaching experience.  I was thinking that it would probably be a good idea to write up a curriculum for the high school level again as an refresher exercise.  I always really enjoy creating them anyway to see how diverse I can stretch the unit while still strengthening the central theme of inquiry.

Another book I've been reading is Man with a Blue Scarf:  On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud by Martin Gayford.



It has been great so far by getting a glimpse behind the scenes of one of my favorite painters.  Thank you, Washington County Library, for giving me the opportunity!  I find it understandable, admirable, and crazy how long Lucian Freud took to create his works.  I believe this particular painting took around 130 hours.  That's an incredibly long time, but by looking at Mr. Freud's amazing works, I can see why it would take that extreme duration in order to get down such remarkable observations.  The flesh, the flesh.  No one does flesh the way Lucian Freud does flesh.

What have you been reading lately?

 

2 comments:

Jan Priddy, Oregon said...

I want to say something about how wonderful it is that an elementary school is looking for an art specialist. Even when I was doing my practicum in teaching art, there was only one district nearby Seattle that had elementary art specialists—isn't that sad?

I wish you luck with this. I loved teaching art and hoped to do it again before I retired, but it's not to be.

Krystal Booth said...

Thank you for the luck, Jan! That is extremely sad that only one district had art specialists at that time. Art education has definitely come a long way!

You would get a kick out of a listing I saw on Edzapp last night. It was a single full time teaching position that expected the teacher to teach high school visual art classes, middle school band and drama classes. It was overwhelming just reading the description!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...