reschedules and intros

After two weeks of disrupted school residencies and winter weather, this week finds me scrambling to reschedule, reorganize, and refocus.  I learned a while ago not to book my calendar completely full,  but leave a little wiggle room for unforseen events.  My oldest son is home this week from college for break, so I had originally planned it as my Jan/Feb wiggle room week (not that he was wanting to spend everyday with me).  Now, I'll be at a rescheduled Elementary school most of the week, and next week will be essentially doubled up at another Elementary that I have a longer term project in progress.  The good news, of course, is that I can still fulfill these contracts, and the coordinators have been extremely helpful with making the time work despite their constraints and loss of traditional instructional time.

For this post, I wanted to touch on the importance of the introduction session of my mosaic residencies.  Generally when I go to a school, only half or less of the students have ever heard of mosaic art.  I spend about an hour with a powerpoint presentation that shows them about 15 examples of mosaics from ancient times to modern examples.  This is a very interactive presentation with historical stories about the art, multicultural references, pattern vs. picture, all tailored towards the age of participant.  By the end of the session, they have a broad understanding of what mosaic art is and can be.  Without this information, the making activity is just another arts and crafts project.  My presentation includes history, cultures/social studies, language arts (new vocabulary), math (shapes, measurement), and science (properties of materials).  You can't get any more curriculum integrated than that.  I invite anyone who does not see the value of arts in elementary arts education to come to my residency sessions... you might learn something!