Why Another Blog?

I remember being in my 6th grade art class. My teacher set out a still life and told us to draw it. There was no instruction and no help. When I was done my teacher said something like, "art might not be your thing." I believed my teacher and didn't draw again for years.

After I had been teaching for 12 or 13 years my principal asked who would be interested in an art training. I knew I was terrible at teaching the arts in my classroom so I volunteered. The first afternoon of the PD they said that after our break we were going to come back and draw a still life. I went to the bathroom and called my husband crying that I would need him to come and get me because I knew that I would fail at trying to draw a still life. He told me that I would be okay and that he knew I could do it. I went in with trepidation.

Then Scott Flox stood up and talked about drawing smiley/frowny faces, circles, and lines. I was doing it! I realized that I had just never been taught what to look for to be able to draw. It was life changing! It made me think about all of the things that I may have told myself that I couldn't do.

After that I jumped in with both feet into integrating the arts into my classroom. I lean more into integrating visual arts, but I am continually coming up with ways to integrate all of the arts into my classroom.

In searching for integrated art ideas I've found some amazing projects by teachers who teach in their specialized art form, but I've had a hard time finding regular ed classroom integration ideas. This blog is meant to be a place where classroom teachers can come and get some ideas of things that can be used to integrate art into their classrooms.