(memories from past Noctiluna summer camps)
This week, I have been holed up at home, researching and writing lesson plans for this year’s summer camp. I have been having an intense and passionate relationship with every art teacher’s muse, Pinterest (I love you Pinterest, mwah, mwah!), Google and my local library. Next week I shall actually leave my snug little workroom, poke my head out into the sunshine(you had better be there for me, sunshine), and stalk around a few galleries and museums, blinking like a mole that has just pushed it’s way above ground.
All in all it has been a pretty satisfying and productive week. I often complain that I miss teaching at a school, and being in a classroom every day. However, if I ever do go back to teaching at a school, this is what I will miss the most about my current job: Absolute and utter freedom, beautiful and blissful freedom to create my own curriculum, write lessons the way I think they should be written, choose themes and artists without any constrictions, and bring some flexibility to my classes…THIS I like.
And let me just say, I write a pretty sweet curriculum. I like words, and research, and planning, and I’m passionate about art education and kids. Someone should just go ahead and offer me a job as Grand Art Curriculum Champion of the World (does such a job exist?). Not boasting, just putting the word out. 🙂
Here is a quick stream of consciousness-style preview of some of the things we will explore this year at the Noctiluna Summer Camps.
Typography, graphic design, powerful messages and slogans, Shepard Fairey, Christian Jackson, minimalism, fairytales, illustration, bookmaking, illuminated manuscripts, Gothic lettering, The Gutenberg press, the Book of Kells, Irish folk tales, stencilling, food art, Yayoi Kusama, polka dots and patterns, sticker installations, Sonia Delaunay, textile design, Japanese indigo seascapes, Peter H Reynolds, printmaking with found objects, block printing, murals, public art, impermanent/transient art, Banksy, Ed Roth, graffiti, Parkour, line drawings by Picasso, Fauvism, Pigasso v Matisse (the book), art battles, color theory with OK GO….and the list will go on.
Well, that’s got me all fired up. Can’t wait to teach this year’s camp, better get back to those lesson plans! Happy Friday to my teeny tiny smattering of readers!!!
