I've been beating myself up all year with a combined class--I have 18
drawing and painting students (2nd yr) at the same time as 14 advanced art
students. The first semester I combined the classes and made them all do
mostly drawing projects--and I discovered no particular difference in
skill level....but I was approached by many disappointed students in the
advanced class who thought they deserved better.....so this semester I
turned advanced into a printmaking class and am continuing with d&p. The
adv. kids were so excited at first--we did acrylic transfers and then
painted or used prismacolors to make cool, pretty failure proof paintings.
Now, however they had to design a tesselated woodblock and print a final
projecct showing different colors of ink and papers in a tesselated
design. Meanwhile I'm reading Zen philosophy and doing sumi calligraphy
with the 2nd years---the whining would deafen you. Trying to run two
classes at once is killing me--noone is happy, especially me. Everyone
always feels like the other group is getting the best thing. There are
way too many kids in the room--it's at the end of the day.....I'm not sure
what the answer is. There are many teachers in this list who have the
same situation, and always will because we offer a lot of art classes and
we don't have enought teachers and hours to fill them, plus there are only
a limited number of students who want and can take the upper level
classes. I don't have any answers, but I'm full of frustration. Sid-
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# Sidnie Miller #
# Elko High School #
# College Avenue #
# Elko, NV 89801 #
# 702-738-7281 #
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