The Vanishing Act of Art

In my early childhood I remember art class fondly. The smell of a fresh opened box of crayons, sticky glue fingers and the sweet sound of cutting construction paper. Art took place at least once a week in elementary and almost daily in preschool classes. Lately I have noticed that art has taken the back burner in our traditional learning environment and I want to dig deep and figure out the "why" of this phenomenon.

Currently I teach art for the City of Cleveland and while my job is unusual in the sense that I teach outside of the school system, I tend to work very closely with the surrounding schools. How? well it is simple, during school hours I receive visitation from several classrooms that come from the schools next door or other district schools. These classes do not receive art classes in the building and come to me instead. It is a good thing for me because it gives me a taste of what it feels like to be a "real" teacher but without the headaches of the school board and throwing countless dollars to certification legislature. At the same time, I feel that my job is taking away from the teachers that went through the trouble to become a licensed art teacher. My job has become even more relevant as schools are moving toward an education system that does not include art what so ever, and that's scary.

Children in this time period are subject to so much media and technology. It is so hard at times to pry their attention away from their phones and computers to get them to show their artistic expression. The no longer have that creative outlet and have subsequently fallen into the rabbit hole of walking zombies playing into media influencers. That is not to say that media has helped propel creativity, but if they do not have the space, tools or time how will you express that creativity for themselves?

I see this on a first hand basis. Often times children do not freely create as I remember doing so.They need hard instruction and a general idea before divining in to an art project. Then when they do they are so largely critiqued by themselvess or each other. Sometimes they even refuse to do art because they are not somehow magically a realistic illustrator. Now I see them coming into my art room with mountains of math homework and study guides for the next big state test. This is not to say that education is not important, it's the most valuable thing that one can be given. But in my experience with educational burn out and emotional expression, art is so necessary.

If you or someone with children are looking for free art education join me by checking out my current class schedule on the home tab!