A final week of beginnings

This week I start working with the KG1 students.

I never understood before why colleagues at GDA got nervous teaching our academic director's daughter. I knew him and knew his kid and I wouldn't have been worried about being her teacher. But now I get it. In my first KG1 class I have Casey's son, and suddenly I'm nervous that whatever it is I'm doing, it's not good enough. I realize my fears are probably unfounded. The KG1 teachers have told me to keep my expectations low...these kids are SO young. So I planned a simple handprint collage sort of thing, which involved the art teacher trifecta of paint, scissors, and glue. This week they will each print their hands, in two weeks they will cut them out, and the lesson in two weeks is when they will glue their hands on a heavier sheet of paper along with a little poem that we used the year I was in kindergarten (a little memento that still hangs on the wall in my parents' house). The lesson went smoothly enough. However, I realized when I stopped and said, "Hi," to one of the KG2 teachers that she had handprints up on her wall, and I started getting eaten up by self doubts EVEN MORE, because what if the KG1 teachers had done handprints and handprints and more handprints???

Well, if this one had, she didn't say anything, but the moral of the story is, to me, to be sure and take the time to talk to the KG teachers and find out what sorts of things they've been doing in their classroom art stations, and plan accordingly. Not that I can't do the same things they do, but I need to be more aware of how they are using art.