Motivation

Back at it

Over the last three weeks teachers and students have been returning to schools throughout Maine and during this week I believe that all school doors will be open welcoming students to the 2016-17 school year.

I am certain that your emotions, as teachers, vary about returning to school. Sometimes the opening day speech from your school administrator is inspiring, sometimes it is the smile and hello from a student that you are really glad to see but I know this is not true for every teacher.

At THIS LINK you can see/listen to 15 TED Talks from educators. I hope that you will find at least one of them inspirational. A couple of them I’ve posted individually before here on the Maine Arts Education blog but many of them are new to me. I was moved by their stories and hope that you are as well.

Teaching is a noble profession and I believe the most important career in the world! I hope that your work this year will open students to possibilities and encourage them see the potential that they have to making our world a better place! Your guidance as a teacher can spark students to believe in their dreams and go after them. Encourage them to ask questions, follow their curiosity to reach and create. And, as for you, please remember that your teaching is touching the future. Your students deserve you at your best!

Now that Labor Day is behind us, I just want to say THANK YOU for the important work you will be doing each and every day in your classrooms and schools! As a veteran art teacher sent me in an email: “Make the usual unusual and the familiar unfamiliar.” Make it a great year for your students and yourself!

Atlantic Monthly

Recently published a “Culture Special Report” in the Atlantic Monthly

Several American artists including portrait painter Chuck Close, film director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, musician Paul Simon, car designer J Mays, fashion designers Laura and Kate Mulleavy, and others were asked “to discuss the sometimes messy, frequently maddening, and almost always mysterious process of creating something new.” They discuss the first ideas that inspire, creativity, and how some ideas turn into deep, meaningful, completed works of art. I thoroughly enjoyed, not only the interviews, but the images that accompany them. You might want to take components of the piece to share in pieces with your students, parents, administrators, and others.

You can read the stories by How Genius Works.