Entry No. 2, 2/2/2021, #balance

Balance is a very important part of life. This quality is something I want to focus on in my art piece, along with sustainability. Life can sometimes be stressful or overwhelming with school and work, and I would like to strike a good balance between all of the aspects of my life. This is something I would like to take with me as a teacher, as well.

In my experience, I think the best teachers are the ones who have the best work-life balance. To best evaluate experiences as a teacher, it is important to be calm and centered, and that can be found through good balance in other areas of life.

While I was teaching last year, I would take time in my free moments to do something that was for me. Sometimes this meant going on a walk, other times it meant doing yoga, or painting. This is reflected in my art work mainly in the fact that I made time to do it even with a busy schedule. It is very easy to fall out of the habit of creating, and making the time to do it helped calm me down. While studying to be a teacher, and when I am a teacher, I want to make sure I find the time to continue my practice of creating artwork.

All of the elements going into my art piece represent a part of my life that helps me balance work and school. The stick represents my walks with my dogs by my apartment, the tea bags represent the tea I drink everyday, the yarn represents the knitting I do, and the canvas represents painting. These pieces all come together to create an artwork that represents how I find balance in this sometimes crazy and chaotic world.

Community guidelines are vital to have within a classroom. These are values and principles that all members of the community should know about and have discussions on. While I was teaching, my classes and I came up with community guidelines together, along with the ones that were already established in the school. It is important to have these community guidelines because then all students and others within the established community understand the expectations for the treatment of their peers, their teachers, and their surroundings. Some examples of guidelines students came up with were respecting others’ ideas, listening when other students were speaking, and treating the art classroom and supplies with kindness.

While working with my students, I thought inclusion was the most important principle I could practice. With two art teachers in the room, I could focus on trying to make meaningful connections with all of my students. My students knew I would listen to them, and it made them feel that their views were meaningful and valid. They knew that I respected what they had to say and do and create as long as they were not harming anyone else. I was also authentic in everything I did with my students. I was upfront about things that confused me, or I would tell them when I had made a mistake. To me, this showed that I respected my students enough to let them know what was going on in the classroom. My entire year with my students was a service year and I would talk with them about how I felt called to help within my community. We also did projects centered around their own community, and in the environmental studies class, we focused a lot on respecting their town by cleaning it up and being aware of their impact on it.

My art piece shows these community guidelines in that I have consulted all of the members of my household to make sure it is okay with them if I set it up in the middle of our living space. There is integrity in the piece in that I allow the tea drops to fall as they may; I do not alter where the drops go once the bag is hung up on the stick. I am being respectful to my environment in that it is a completely sustainable piece. Through using objects found in my community and in my home I am representing social justice in that this is a type of art piece that anyone can make with things found around them.

When I am a teacher, I will sit down with all of my classes and ask them to help me come up with their community guidelines that are important to them. After that I will hang their community guidelines up in my classroom so that the guidelines can be referred to when situations present themselves. I will try to look at these guidelines before classes start each day to remind myself to practice and lead by example for my students. I know this will not always be easy, but I will do my best to always do right by my students.