Last week I finnished my 4 weeks working at my old school in it's Gamesweek sessions as the art teacher. Learned that even though I was probably the most talkative little know it all when I was little that talkative little know it alls are the bein of your life when your trying to teach. There was a complete mix of responses to the classes and the art room in general every day- some of the youngest ones just got it and experimented with the paint straight away and some just wanted to paint butterflies (if your a girl) and guns (if your a boy); there were some moments when I showed a little girl a painting by Kandinsky because she was painting coloured shapes and patterns and then I turned around again later she was painting with her eyes closed listening to the music, that was nice, and when a girl who did a brilliant painting of the Tyne Bridge's sillouette came in the next day with more drawings and paintings of different bridges, that was also nice. But the eldest ones- 13/14 which I have no idea why they are still going to a Gamesweek in their summer holidays as I would have point blank refused at that age were probably the hardest to start off with as they just didn't respect me as an authority at all- probably doesnt help that they were pretty much all taller than me, and just tried to take the piss and push me as much as possible. So the second time I had their group we did this version of a kindo of life class that I had done (similar to one anyway) when I was at sixth form where you draw your partners portrait, as much as you can do, in 5 minutes, then you rip part of that drawing off, stick it to another piece of paper and draw a different person, encoroperating the previous piece, you go on like this for a while then you reattach bits of all your drawings and try and salvige it as a portrait of a person. It took a while to get them into it and I did have to make sure they were all not messing about but by the end they all got really into it and even the most cheeky ones were trying really hard to make theirs better. This success is not to say that I won them over, just for about 45 minutes as the next time I had their group a boy called me a retard and kicked over an eisal on his way out! So during the days it was hard, and it was a bit monotonous doing watercolour (so I made tye dye and let them make tapestries and city sky lines but all most of them wanted to do was trace pictures of pokemon) it was a really good experience for me, and I think I definatley do want to do some form of teaching, maybe, but not with little kids, or even teenagers I think. Weirdly when I was talking to one of the Junior Leaders (they are like 16 year olds that help out but dont teach individual classes) about her As level art project, and basicaly had a miniature crit with, I realised how much I like the teaching part on a one to one, actualy helping someone in the process of making their work. So maybe not teaching but just doing crits for a living?
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