Traveling/Art Cart Teachers: November Stepping Stones

Back in April, I posted a list of 10 Things a Traveling Art Teacher Will Always Do.  The article is now available in this month's Arts & Activities Magazine!

Art teachers face challenges daily in their situation, whether they're in a classroom, pushing a cart, teaching in a temporary space, or traveling from school to school.  I do happen to hear from many art-on-a-cart teachers and travelers that they have common challenges, and being a traveler myself, I knew how they felt.

Here's my simple top ten list, but if you want to read the full version, please take a look in the Arts & Activities Stepping Stones article for November.

1. A traveling art teacher will never get all the names of students correct. 

2. A traveling art teacher always forgets something when driving, walking, or flying from one school to the next. 

3. A traveling art cart teacher will always leave a little something behind it your room.  

4. A traveling art teacher may not be able to attend an extra event.   

5. A traveling art teacher will most likely miss the memo.  

6. A traveling art teacher will always make room for storage. 

7. A traveling art teacher might turn down your extra crayons.  

8. A traveling art teacher will tell you no.  

9. A traveling art teacher will always drop something outside of their car or down the hallway. 

10.  A traveling art teacher will be jumping for joy at the end of the school year when all they have to do is push the cart back into the storage closet and lock the door!

Starting Your School Year Off With a Smile! September's Stepping Stones

Arts & Activities issues this image as a sneak peek into their September 2012 issue that will be off the press within a week!

For my first article for the 2013-14 school year, I wanted to focus on how to keep a positive outlook when starting off with the students.  It can be hard for many...some of you have multiple classrooms to set up while others only have a cart and storage room.  No mater what your responsibilities are, you make the best of it!

When you start at the beginning of the school year, remember these key elements to having a successful year:

1.     You have the power to brighten your students’ day with art.  As the art teacher, you are giving your students a chance to speak their thoughts and emotions in ways they cannot say in words.  Having this outlet helps students to be creative thinkers and inventors in their own way.  You are giving them that outlet.

2.     You have the ability to enhance student learning through art.  You bring history, culture, literature, and mathematics into your classroom.  You show them how to problem solve to work through mistakes.  You show the students how manipulating materials can make wonderful creations and how we need art in our everyday lives.

3.     You have the ability to change your situation.  If you struggle with teaching from a cart?  You’re not the only one, and many teachers are sharing their input in art educator groups on the internet.  Are you feeling disconnected from your staff?  Invite them to your room, or start a conversation when you visit their room.  There are ways to make your situation more positive, and even if it takes some work, persistence pays off.   

4.     You are the advocate for the arts in your school, district, local, state, and national community.  Believe it or not, you are the spokesperson for the arts wherever you work.  If you carry a negative attitude about your situation, you will reflect that in your practice.  Show your passion for the arts in each project you teach and all displays you create.  Be proud of your student work and show it off whenever you can.  If you feel burnt out, reach out to others in your field.  There are plenty of art teacher groups on social networks willing to give advice and listen to your concerns, challenges, accomplishments, and honors.

If you are interested in viewing the full article, please click here for the September article of Stepping Stones in Arts & Activities Magazine!!

Acrylic Painting with Elementary: How to Be Responsible and Avoid Catastrophe

I teach in a district with a wide variety of needs, and with traveling, I see how those needs change from school to school.  For example, at my home base school, 80% of my students are from low income homes and the transient rate is high.  We can have up to 100 students transfer in or out of our school each year, which can disrupt steady learning.  At my second school I travel to, there is a low transient rate as well as a lower percentage of low SES students.  I can see a difference in learning styles.

For years, I was afraid to touch acrylic painting with elementary students.  I did not feel they were responsible enough to handle a paint the was tougher to wash off.  Yet, the material always loomed at the top of my mind because I personally love acrylic painting.

I decided to slowly introduce acrylic painting as an after school class to my 5th and 6th grade students.  I limited the class size to 15 so I could have time to individually work with them.  I offered the after school class at both my schools (one school was classroom and one school was on a cart, so I asked permission to use a classroom to teach the class).  After a few successful years, I felt it was time to finally introduce acrylic painting as a project to the 5th grade.

You know how they say you learn the hard way before you get it right?  Here's what I discovered:

I knew acrylic paint does not wash out of clothing...unless you know what you're doing.  I should have informed parents and students in advance.  As a result, I had many parent phone calls.  I also discovered that my students forget to have proper protection from getting acrylic paint on the tables half the time, and it's a challenge to wash off.  Clean-up is also an issue.  If you just give a class a countdown, they will bump into each other, drop their paintings, get into arguments over who got red paint in their cute sweater, and cause more chaos than you need.  Lastly, with extra care needed with washing the brushes, I learned very quickly that if I didn't have a plan, I would lose half my brushes in the first week of the project.


Material Tips and Responsibility (for you and the students)

Here are some tips I use for material responsibility, which totally improved the lesson flow:

1. Send a note home to parents informing them about the materials and how to properly wash it out of clothes.  Thank you, Pinterest, for offering additional techniques.

2.  Tell the students about the paint in advance.  Inform them not to wear their best clothes on art day for the next few weeks.  You will be amazed with how quickly a student can turn and blame another if they get one red paint dot on their brand new white sparkly hoodie...now you can say you told them so.

3. Collect a ton of newspaper.  Leave a pile on each table, and once projects are passed out, remind students who forgot to put paper under their projects within the first 5 minutes.  This will save you a clean-up headache at the end of the class.

4. Use disposable paper plates for your palette.  This will save you so much extra time with clean up, and it's much easier to set-up and clean-up when teaching from a cart.

5. Choose your acrylic paint wisely.  Crayola bottles are good, but when you get to the middle of the bottle, you need to do the shake and squeeze to get the paint out.  Prang bottles are also nice, they poor out faster, but the consistency is thinner.  My favorite acrylic paint is Liquitex.  I use the tubes for my own personal painting and for after school projects, but for an entire grade, you need more than tubes.

6. Control the paint yourself.  If you let students squeeze paint out of the bottles, they will pour too much, which will waste the paint since you can't really put it back in the bottle!  When a student runs out of a color, have them bring the palette to you so you can control the amount of paint given.

6. Organize your clean-up techniques.  If you have a table set-up in your class, choose one table of students each week to collect water, brushes, and newspaper, as well as washing of the brushes (one table of students is better than an entire class getting up and cleaning)  Since I have 5 students at each table, two students collect newspaper from each table, one collects each bowl of water and brushes from each table, and two students to scrub and wash brushes at the sink.  I also informed the teachers that two students each week would be staying behind an extra 5 minutes to carefully wash out brushes.  This also gives all your students a chance to be responsible throughout the project with clean-up, while preventing everyone from moving around the room.  With project collection, the table asked to clean up puts their projects on the drying rack first, then I call a table at a time, saving students from dropping canvases or bumping into classmates.

Everyone has their own techniques in handling different types of paint.  I knew in the beginning of my teaching career that I could not handle acrylics with elementary, but after knowing their learning styles and behaviors after a few years, I took on the challenge.  Many of you have probably used acrylics with their students in the past, and if you have your own tips to handle responsibility with the paint, I'm all ears!

My next post will be on acrylic painting techniques.  Stay tuned!

Project Preparation: An Article from Arts & Activities Magazine

In March 2013, I created an article featured in Arts & Activities Magazine titled "Project Preparation."  Even in the middle of the school year, teachers who push carts and have little storage space to work with struggle in setting up their lessons and pushing all the materials from room to room.

I decided to focus on drawing materials (what students already have and what you should supply), storage tips, painting tips (for rooms without a sink), recruiting helpers, and clean-up allotment of time.

The magazine was featured during the NAEA convention in Ft. Worth!  If you would like to view the article, please click here.

The advice I gave was inspired by previous posts I had written for NAEA's monthly mentor section and in this blog from 2011 called "Painting and Drawing and Sculpture, Oh My!"

We all have our own ways of prepping our projects and utilizing our storage, but with limited space, many of us come across frustrating moments throughout the school year.  I remember those moments!  Instead of venting my frustrations to the staff, I searched for ways to work with what I had, and over time, it got easier.  Find you way to work with what you have, and if you have tips (especially since most of us have our feet up this summer researching for next year's curriculum or browsing lesson ideas), feel free to share in the comments!

Kindergarten Pop Art with Andy Warhol

Even though it appears to be as easy as a "sub project,"  there are just some concepts that need to be explained a little more with kindergarten... plus when you're on the cart and have few materials to work with, this is a good project for you!

All you need is:

-10.5" x 10.5" square white paper
-12" x 12" colored paper for a frame
-woodemn stencils, which can be purchased at Michaels Arts & Crafts (normally .25 a piece, or wait for a good sale to buy shapes in bulk)
-Markers
-Pencils
-Crayons

I start by introducing Andy Warhol to the students.  I show them a picture of Andy, as well as picture of his repetative paintings he made of "Pop Art." 

After showing how Andy repeated his drawings, I showed the students how to take one shape and repeat it four times on the square paper.

But how can you get the students to keep their shape in the centers of the four squares?  Easy.  Have the students fold their paper in half, then while the paper is still folded, have them fold in half again to make a small square.  Unfold and you have four boxes to work with!  Let the students have only one stencil to work with.  When I attempted to put a bowl of stencils out for the students to use, they kept chosing four different shapes because they couldn't make up their mind!  One shape to each student works best.

After the students have their shapes, use a pencil to trace the stencils in all four boxes first.  Tracing can be tricky for kindergarteners, so it might be a good idea to use simpler shapes for those who may struggle with sharp corners (use hearts, clouds, apples, or other rounder shapes instead).

After tracing the shapes in all four boxes, have the students trace their pencil lines with markers.  I do not like students coloring in with markers for this project because it does not look as nice, but tracing helps the shape pop out more.  Once traced, students complete their project by coloring in each space with crayons. 

Since we are learning repetition and contour, I do not introduce color theory with the blocks, although it is a good idea to visit the idea of complimentary/analogous/monochromatic colors later on in older grade levels.

Complete the project by gluing a frame to teh back and you are done!  I can take 1 to two 40 minute class periods for students to complete this project.  If they do not finish within the first class, I have students practicing forms with play-doh once they finish with their project on the second day.

Balancing Curriculum and Materials

Back in February 2013, Arts & Activities featured my article titled "Balancing Curriculum and Materials."  The article focused on how to time up your lessons throughout the year (so you don't have too many heavy-ended material projects at once) and managing sculpture materials.

The theme of February's magazine was clay, and since clay is the least used material when pushing carts from room to room (so I've heard from many art teachers), I wanted to share how it is possible to work with the tricky material without a classroom.

I based parts of my article on an older post I had written back in 2012 titled Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture, Oh My!  .  When pushing a cart from room to room, it's tricky to balance the excess materials on the cart, and I had found a few tricks to balance the load.

One of my biggest keys when working with sculpture materials on a cart was student help.  In the morning, I would leave the materials in the classrooms with the teachers, and once the classes were cleaned up and finished, I would have students carry the materials to the next room, or place the bin of sculpture items in my storage room.  Cleaning took a little longer than normal, I just budgeted in more time at the end for clean up to get all the clay off the desks!

How have you managed to work with clay while traveling?

10 Things a Traveling Art Teacher Will Always Do

1. A traveling art teacher will never get all the names of students correct.  We sometimes have over 800+ students we see a week, and half of them have siblings.  Yes, I will call you by your sister's name, or mis-pronounce your name, but at least we're close!  Do you know all your students' names, AND pronounce them correctly?  Congratulations, you have a great memory.

2. A traveling art teacher always forgets something when driving, walking, or flying from one school to the next.  There is no way on this earth we can remember every material we need for lessons, and as much advice as I or anyone can give, that jump drive will be left in that one computer at the other school.  It always hits me while I'm driving to that next school, and expletives with that little black box are inserted over the mouth.

3. A traveling art cart teacher will always leave a little something behind it your room.  At least your students are awesome enough to return that item back, right?  Like the magnets I leave up on your board, or my project examples, or those paintbrushes your students were washing as I was pushing the cart out of your room...

4. A traveling art teacher may not be able to attend an extra event.   The secret santas, surprise potlucks, treat days, gift exchanges, wedding/baby showers, and retirement parties...unless we're at your school that day, we may not be able to make it.  And if you're a traveller and you do make them all, give yourself a pat on the back.  Trust us, it's not that we don't want to get involved, because it would be nice to be part of the school family.  We just have a bit more to juggle on our plates.

5. A traveling art teacher will most likely miss the memo.  Sometimes, we will never know what special event is going on from one school to the next.  Oh, there's a surprise assembly?  Sorry...didn't get the memo, unless it was in the school bulletin. Just please don't get mad at us.

6. A traveling art teacher will always make room for storage.  You have to put those student projects somewhere!  Don't be surprised if you find a storage bin on top of your shelf or a portfolio of student work shoved in a closet space.  We gotta do what we gotta do!  Although, it is polite to communicate first with the teachers!

7. A traveling art teacher might turn down your extra crayons.  We are appreciative that you're thinking of us with the extra supplies (because sometimes it helps), but trust us...we really don't have the extra space to store it on top of all the projects we have to stash already.  You can still offer, because many of us are tight on budgets, but don't be mad if we tell you we have enough.

8. A traveling art teacher will tell you no.  You want us to make that special poster for your class project or special nightly event?  Sorry...we also have school musicals, displays, contests, shows, etc. that we also have to work on...for ALL the schools we travel to.  No offense, but we can't do all the visuals.

9. A traveling art teacher will always drop something outside of their car or down the hallway.  That's the nature of the game.  We only have two hands.

10.  A traveling art teacher will be jumping for joy at the end of the school year when all they have to do is push the cart back into the storage closet and lock the door!

Handling Recycling Projects While Traveling

Recycling projects while I push a cart???  With what storage space?? How would I begin collecting materials?  How would I manage those materials with a cart and/or traveling?

These are just some of the questions I've heard asked by traveling art teachers and teachers with a cart.
It is possible to create projects out of recycled materials, and promote Earth Day at the same time.  We may not be able to handle full-on large scale amazing sculptures, but we can still get the message across to reduce, reuse, and recycle!

Design your lesson.  What project did you want to make with recycled materials?  Are you combining the project with Earth Day, or promoting using recycled materials to create year round?  Think about what materials are easy to collect, or use materials that have been donated to you.  Bottle caps make great murals, and they also make great bugs for Spring projects.

                                               Angry Birds made with toilet paper tubes!

                                                     Butterflies made with coffee filters

                                        Eric Carl Inspired Caterpillars made with egg cartons

                        DeBuffet Inspired Sculptures made with pantyhose wire, and styrofoam


Time out when you want to have your project.  Is your project based on a season of the year?  Think about where to place your project with the art curriculum.  Murals could last all year, so you can send out a letter at the end of the previous school year asking parents to collect colorful bottle caps for a fall mural.  Or...collect the caps at the end of winter for some Spring bugs.  Coffee filters are also great all year, and most used in Spring for the butterfly projects!

Figure out how to collect the materials for your project.  If you plan far enough ahead, you can have letters send home to parents asking for materials, such as paper towel tubes, newspaper, paper plates, coffee filters, washed out containers, 2-liter bottles, or more!  In the beginning of the school year, I ask for materials I know I use in abundance: paper plates and bowls, tablecloths, q-tips, and the typical baby wipes and kleenex ration.  Paper plates are used for projects, paint,and printmaking, and you can find them stacked in corners around my room for half a year.  The last thing I care about is aesthetic quality, as long as I have those materials!

One of the biggest issues to face though is storage of collected materials.  If you lack storage on your own, consider ways to collect materials that will work for you, such as collecting smaller materials. Coffee filters, cloth pins, toilet paper rolls, bottle caps, or any smaller objects work best in situations with little storage.

If you have the space for it, 2-liter bottles are good for many sculptural lessons, such as paper mache animals, Chihuly glass towers, and more.  Since most teachers are limited on their space, it would be wise to send out letters to the parents of students who wish to participate in an after school activity, or choose an entire grade level...depending on the size of your sculpture.

So you're looking at the above picture and saying, "I don't have the space to do that," I hear you.  Consider it an after school activity, and find a co-worker willing to share their space with you to make it happen.  I was able to, and with a full hour after school to work, it was much easier to set up and clean up than having an over-crowded 40 minute class on the cart.

Work with the space you have.  If you push a cart and lack the time for anything large, work small.  There are a few projects I enjoy every year, and one of them is Kindergarten's Chihuly Paper Sculptures.  It's been passing around on Pinterest all year, and I know quite a few teachers with no budgets who enjoy this project as well.  All you need is coffee filters, markers, spray starch, tape, and plastic cups.  I printed out pictures of Dale Chihuly’s glass flower sculptures, talked about how glass is fragile, and explained how the students will make their own sculptures with paper.  Have a coffee filter already colored to show them how much the filter should be colored, and spray the filter over a plastic cup to have students watch the colors blend together  (the tape is to mark the students names on the cup so they can be re-used for other classes).  It’s a neat, one day/40 minute lesson that the kids love, and the kids take them home the next day.  It’s easy because it is affordable, takes up less space, and the teachers love it.  It’s also easy because you’re pulling out fewer materials on a cart, and teachers can let the cups dry in their own classrooms.

Figure out how to promote your student's work!  Without spending all that time decorating the hallways and re-taping projects that constantly fall down, figure of a way for your students to be involved.  You can have students sell their work as a fundraiser (buttons, magnets, bookmarks, etc...).  If you have a bulletin board, display your work using staples or push pins to hold the work up longer. Did your students create classroom murals?  Have the class display the mural outside of their classroom doors!

Here are some great recycled projects I have found that I would like to share (besides the links I have posted above).  If you find a project that you enjoy (and can be managed while traveling or on a cart), please share it in the comments!

Kindergarten: Fish made out of used CDs

Kindergarten: Eric Carl Inspired Caterpillars made with egg cartons

1st Grade: Buggy Mobiles with egg cartons

Family Fun Crafts: Site with lots of recycled projects 

Giacometti Inspired Sculptures with aluminum foil

Skeleton with coffins (using used watercolor containers)

Masks made with lunch tray containers

Multicultural Milk Jug Masks

Donut Sculpture with Wayne Theibaud (newspaper)

Pour Paintings (to use with leftover paint)

What to do with leftover paper scraps

Painted Aluminum Cans

Being an Advocate for the Arts While Traveling

This week is my Spring break, and now that I'm at the end of it, I realized how much I needed to empty my mind for a brief time and re-collect my thoughts.  After time with my daughter (and my feet up), I looked back at some previous article I had written and realized I did not post my Arts & Activities articles since December!

My January issue involved how to be an advocate while traveling.  I originally wrote the post to describe ways to promote your students' work and the importance of your art class with the school and local community.  One of the may negatives I have heard from teachers who travel is that they feel unappreciated and hidden away in their schools.  The reasons vary; some say it's because they do not feel like they have a place in their school, or that they are so overburdened with their schedule, they don't have time to share their curriculum.

In my Arts & Activities article, I focused on ways you can advocate for the arts without overdoing your schedule.  This article was based on one of my earliest posts in this blog, which you can visit here.

How are you an advocate in your schools?  What have you found to be the most successful in promoting your art program?

Why Pinterest is a Blessing for Traveling Art Teachers

There are tons of blog posts out there that brag about the amazing superpowers of Pinterest.  This post may not be so different, but I felt it's important to share just how much Pinterest has helped me with my lessons while traveling, and even on a cart.

Pinterest helped lighten the load of materials to carry.  Yes, that's right...less materials to pack from school to school.  What made it possible?  The ability to upload print-outs and documents to share.  I have also found other print-outs shared by other pinners that have been quite useful!  Since I've started using Pinterest in my classroom, I spend the morning printing up my handouts for my classes from the pins I have saved onto special boards.  Now all I carry from school to school is my laptop, which is a HUGE load off my back.  I started off with a suitcase every day!

Pinterest helps my organize my lessons.  I have my boards set up in grade levels, along with separate boards for seasonal projects, cultural, cross-curricular, literature based, etc.  I plan it that way to make it easy to find a project idea.  Everyone is different, and I like to call it "organized chaos."

Pinterest helps me to find my websites faster.  When I start a lesson, I create a Powerpoint, or show an interactive website.  Instead of keeping websites in my favorites bar (which has filled up so much I can't find anything anymore),  I organize those sites in boards set up for my projects.  I've even begun setting up a Pinterest account for my school email, so I can organize one project at a time with the ideas I've used.



Pinterest makes it easy to show videos.  Similar to websites, I save videos that I show with certain projects.  When I attempted to save videos in my favorites bar at work, I couldn't find them because they all started with "www.youtube....." (which is impossible to figure out sometimes!)  With the ability to pin videos onto my boards, I can quickly find my pin and open the video for students to view!

Pinterest made it possible to collaborate with other teachers in my district...without taking extra time to meet!  You know how you can create a new board?  Add another pinner to your board by typing in your co-worker's name (if they're on Pinterest too), and you two can share pins together for your cross-curricular lesson.

And as much as everyone's heard this before, the same goes for every art teacher who uses Pinterest: Pinterest has helped expand my curriculum.  Thank to all the amazing art teachers who believe in sharing ideas and not selling them, a network of 21st century skilled art educators borrow ideas on Pinterest and blog posts pinned onto Pinterest, and they even pay it forward by posting their own projects!

Personally, I do not believe in selling lesson plans (unless you go through the efforts of creating your own book), I believe in a network of sharing ideas.  I do not feel I can claim any project ideas as my own original work because I may have been inspired by thousands of other ideas without remembering where I may have received them.  I love to see others take an idea I shared on Pinterest and re-pinning their accomplishments with their students.

I believe in paying it forward.  If you've borrowed lessons from Pinterest, re-post your finished projects.  Share your accomplishments.  Follow other art educators and open new doors for collaboration.

Lastly, I need to pay my respects, because with the help of Pinterest, the viewership of my personal blog has increased.  Every post I make in my blog is pinned so I can share my insight with others, and the word can spread.  Thank you, Pinterest, for helping the art teachers, including those who travel.  You helped lighten my load to carry.

Live From Ft. Worth, It's the NAEA Convention Wrap-Up!

Instead of going day by day within the last stretch of the NAEA, I would like to share some highlights about the convention that stood out the most to me.  Please note that I am wishing to share my personal experiences at the convention to show what others can do with information I have gathered.  Many art educators are unable to attend the national conference due to shortfalls with money or school activities. Information given out at conferences should be shared with all so we can stay up to date with current trends in art education.  This may be from a personal perspective, but I didn't want to give the impression of saying, "look what I'm doing, everyone!"  I merely just wanted to share the wonderful ideas I gave gained or have given.

On Saturday, March 9th, many art educators that are known on Twitter dressed up as "Art Teacher Superheroes."  We were asked many times what the idea was behind our crazy costumes.  Back in the fall, many of us tweeting art teachers came up with the idea that art teachers are superheroes in our own right.  We have the amazing ability to adapt, create, and inspire our students.  One educator came across the company Ink Pixi, which had a superhero logo you can edit to your liking, so we all bought t-shirts with our Twitter names.  Other have bought shirts and put "Mrs. O," or the name of their high school.  We encourage others to be superheroes, so if you are interested in purchasing a shirt of your own, please click HERE!!!!

One art teacher created a logo image before the conference, so here's our picture in order, like the legos!

And yes...we dressed up like this ALL DAY!  Our other purpose was to share the benefits of being part of a PLN, which stands for "Personal Learning Network."  The video attached explains the positives of using social networking to collaborate with a network across the country, or even the world.

The session titled "Navigating Art-On-a-Cart: Strategies and Best Practices" had shared the results of research collected by my dear friend, Heidi Lung, who is a current doctoral candidate.  I plan on having a separate post to share the facts collected, and some pretty amusing photos as well.  I encourage you to please visit her website Art On a Cart Research for more information on her studies...especially since that's what most of what this blog is about!

Blogging Basics for Art Educators was one of the most informative sessions I had attended, especially since I care so much about this blog!  The presentation was hosted by the creator of Art of Education (AOE), Jessica Balsley.  Jessica had shared some tips for those wishing to start a blog, those who have one, and how to make a blog successful.  To view her full presentation, please click HERE.

As one of the NAEA Student Chapter Past Presidents, I support pre-service art teachers by speaking on panels to answer questions students may have about applying for jobs and what to do to keep up with professional support.  

In our panel, we had the current past-president of the Students Chapter, along with the national advisor, one of the writers of the National Visual Arts Standards, a Past President for NAEA, (me), and a higher education advisor from Kutztown University.  With the wealth of knowledge we had together, we were able to answer the students questions, such as what administrators look for in an interview, how to prepare, and what vocabulary to know when entering the district.  If anyone reading has any questions concerning this panel, future teaching interviews, or why I even shared this, please comment and I will answer all your questions!


Donna Staten is probably the most well known Pinterest art teachers, and we were lucky to have her present on using "Pinterest in the Classroom."  Donna went over all the basics of how to set up Pinterest, and how to manage boards for use in the classroom.  I will be designing a post concerning using Pinterest in your art curriculum as a traveling art teacher in the very near future thanks to the inspiration of Donna!  If you would like to follow her boards, please CLICK HERE.  I also personally thanked Donna for pinning my blog posts because I have had a higher number of page views since she has over 15,000 followers!

The NAEA convention gave me many ideas to use in my classroom, curriculum, blog writing, and overall development of my profession.  I always walk away with new ideas...as well as an overpacked suitcase of new materials and lesson plan books!  I am happy to know such amazing people in the art education profession, and they inspire me to continue being an advocate for the arts in education.  

Were you at the convention?  What did you like the most?  What did you feel needed to be improved?  I want to hear it from you!!!