This is a weird post from me. No apology, it’s where I’m at right now. My Educator Evaluation Teachpoint file is complete.  I have submitted evidence and pondered over reflections. I have evaluated my students’ summative assessments against their formative assessments. My students’ grades are almost all entered into the computer. I could go on.

My left brain is exhausted, my right brain is screaming for attention. I know this because as my art club completed a recent project, I almost forgot to look at each piece as a whole, and instead got lost in the creative, artistic moments of exploration, discovery, and risk-taking within their work.

The projects were in response to posters the art club had completed for a Kentucky-Derby themed event hosted by our local men’s club. The posters were executed using the old-school technology of an overhead projector and they came out great. I’ll write about that another time.

As the fifth and sixth grade art club and I reflected on the project at the next meeting, they expressed a desire to create “horse” posters without the stress of worrying about a finished project. And they made these:

 

Wow! This is the project I was referring to at the start of this post. As I put the posters in a pile once they had dried, I couldn’t help photographing the artistic moments that caught my eye. Often as small as a business card, I see these sections as full paintings in and of themselves. Together, they created a feast for my right brain.

These artistic moments will hold me over until summer. After a full school year of facilitating hundreds of students in art making, creativity, and expression, this art educator has a desperate need to make art. Summer is coming. My right brain is excited.

Here are the artistic moments separately: